Sacred Sexuality Georg Feuerstein

This is an historical, cross-cultural survey of sexuality as a sacred spiritual practice. Georg Feuerstein delves into a wide variety of spiritual traditions–including Christianity, Judaism, goddess worship, Taoism, and Hinduism–in search of sacred truths regarding sexuality. He reveals that all of these great teachings share the hidden message that spirituality is, in essence, erotic and that sexuality is inherently spiritual.

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Excerpts

“Sacred Sexuality is about love – an overwhelming reverence for all embodied life”.

“Sexuality and spirituality are perfectly compatible”.

“In the mystical state (unio mystica) self and other are merged into a single whole”.

“The Great Mother, or magna mater, was celebrated as Inanna, Ishtar, Anath, Astarte, Isis, Nu Kua, Freya and Kunapipi”.

“Those who intuited and longed to experience the great mystery and sacred power behind sexuality went to the temple”.

“The snake was clearly associated with the fertility goddess and symbolically represented her. Thus, by [Judeo-Christian] God’s command, the free and open sexuality of the fertility-goddess was to be forbidden”.

“During the era of Christianity, sex became more closely linked with sin and the Devil”.

“The Christian patriarchs confused holiness with asceticism and celibacy”.

“The further back we go in human history, the more we encounter a life philosophy that was distinctly affirmative of both sex and God or Goddess”.

Feuerstein, Georg. 1992. Sacred sexuality: the erotic spirit in the world’s great religions. Rochester, Vt: Inner Traditions.


You may also be interested in Tantrism and Neotantrism by Georg Feuerstein (2006). In this insightful essay on Tantrism, the late scholar Georg Feuerstein explains the perils of pursuing a heightened state of sensory pleasure (whether or not orgasm is involved).