Northwest Herbal Faire in Bellingham, Washington is an annual, weekend-long outdoor festival where herbalists, flower essence specialists, and a wide variety of green witches and craftspeople gather to share their ideas and products, and listen to live music. In the Pacific Northwest, you can be sure it’s pretty good live music.
A few years ago, I was a returning presenter there, speaking about something called the Doctrine of Signatures.
This is the Hermetic principle that says (for example) that the Sun, sunflowers, gold, the heart, love, leadership and Leo are all part of the same idea. In astrology, we associate a planet and a sign; but astrology is part of a larger system of organizing the natural world, and there are many more associations than the few we usually hear discussed. The Doctrine of Signatures is what brings these associations together.
Scanning the workshop board when I first arrived, I noticed that nobody had scheduled a class or group of any kind that discussed sex. Despite sex being a lovely, vital and challenging part of the natural world, and a subject that is part of the practice of nearly anyone who works with others, I was not surprised. It’s a discussion that for whatever reason, people usually avoid, particularly in public. Even most therapists have no specifically required training in sex or sexuality. The ones that do most often acquire their knowledge on their own. It’s considered a kind of special interest, despite the obvious general appeal of the subject, and the fact that handling the subject well requires both literacy and a comfort level with the discussion.
So, looking at this workshop board, I had an idea. It started as a joke. I took an index card and marker and created an event called “Cunnilingus and Clover.”
Eric Well, this again is greek to me.
My gut reaction before reading your references, which I know I will get to, is that the thinking could be the surrender of the self in the shared experience could be seen as an ego death, the drive to the blotto ejaculation. However, with pleasure guiding the journey, self is engaged.
I get confused with eroticism intertwined with the word sex. We are sexual vibrant beings. But my sexuality, as I feel it, is more all encompassing. I am feeling more of it again, after several years of dealing with alot of physical death around me. And the birdies are singing telling me spring is on the way. And there is nothing more sexual than a yard teaming and steaming with pollination. There is an eroticism, as I would define it, about it. It is life.
Being a sexpert of sorts, can you run a definition of eroticism by me again.
Victoria – there is a strict moral code enforced by women against women. Susie Bright, the truly magnificent sex writer and editor, this is about maintaining a high price on marriage. The moral code is really an economic code.
If we want to understand why Freud was so out to lunch, read Wilhelm Reich. Freud and most of his contemporaries exchanged the idea of sex as the core of the psyche for the idea that death is the core of the psyche. This ideas influenced psychoanalysis and by extension psychology, converting them into death trips. In psychiatric terms, Freud placed thanatos (the deatah urge) on the same level as eros (the drive to passion and eroticism). This is covered in the series, “It’s not about sex, it’s about self,” from which the self-esteem piece above is republished. I believe this is in the chapter on the 5th and 8th hoses.
love and lovingly
self and selflovingly
Eric Francis
The thought just occured to me. Why is it easier for me to talk about sex with men than women? I find a fear of being chastised by the sisters. I’ll have to take a look at that.
Eating red clover will never be the same!
More and more I find myself in the wilds with those people we call men. I will offer a clover flower and if he imbibes, I got my lead in. I will use your clover metaphor, eric, if I may. Why is this making me chuckle?
Oh by the way I would like to say that you have the most vuloptuous lips very lucious. LOL. Also I listened to the podcast you did and you have a very pleasing voice as well..
Love on ya !
Laura
Hey Eric,
This is my second time reading this story and laughing once again . You and this site have been a great find for, I feel you to be a soul brother. I found many of my thoughts in what you have written.
In relation to living life to its fullest I consider sex to be one of the most essential things, even foundational. Healing from the corrosive rot that was taught as well as experienced is ongoing. My awareness of my sexual nature has always been strong and because of this I am equally aware of the insane distortion of what is in reality the most beautiful.
Freud contributed some great things but when it came to sex he was out to lunch and to think our institutions still teach that rubbish believing it to be of merit.
I have always been puzzled by the ideas , attitudes and lack of honest discussion that came from without. What I found especially confusing was the consistent message that was voiced in the not too distant past where women would tell newly married women about the nessassary duty of the wife as if sex was a unfulfilling chore devoid of anything that equates with it being a pleasurable experience for them. The actual message being conveyed was that men have sexual desire which females don’t experience and that sex was a sacrificial nature.
Still another concept that’s reiterated continually is that a males desire for sex is 10 times greater than a woman. The explanations as to why this is so are numerous and I don’t agree with any of them.
One aspect I think influencing mens high sex drive is compensation for the inability to comfortably access and express the emotional richness of his nature. Influencing Females is inability to access and express their physical rich erotic side comfortably , this being compensated by becoming excessively emotional.
The resulting beliefs, roles as well as labels applied to both sexes are demeaning such as “men think with their dicks”, are “insensitive bastards” women are bitches , moody , needy and clingy.” Conflict and misunderstanding seem unsurmountable and solutions proving inadequate so far.
Sadly it’s believed and widely accepted by science that we were created with these very incongruous states, from this erroneous primary thought comes all following thoughts for understanding as well as explaining our nature.
While we were created differently this was done for the pleasure of sharing with capabilities for expansion not just physically but spiritually as well. While we have experienced great success with the former we have severely crippled ourselves in being able to experience the latter.
Shame is deviously used to psychologically castrate the emotional tone of males and for females their eroticism. This causes the extreme states of both male and female for the energy we hold does not dissipate
The shame has been cultivated for countless generations that we ourselves participate in its perpetuation.
While waiting in the dentist office the other day I spotted a mens magazine which had several articles giving advice about “How to get her to have more sex” , ” What a women is wearing will tell you if she is receptive to sex” , ect ect.. Being a female I was curious and what I found was that many instances where the female was deemed receptive it was described ” slutty” . Words are powerful in that once we have ascribed a meaning its very hard to dismiss the emotive tone it conjures even though intellectually understood to be playful it’s still ineffective in diminishing underlying tone.
We need a radical overhaul to dispel the entrenched lies which formed our beliefs about what I think to be one of the foundational keys to living life in its abundance. This is the stone the builders reject and the consequences are numerous.
Thanks for the close-up picture of clover…I can’t wait for spring to come so I can lie on my tummy and take a look for myself.
In my experience cunnilingus is either positively or negatively viewed…I’ve never come in contact with anyone who could “take it or leave it.”