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Siva as Savior; non-Asian sacred sex

From: "Ingeborg S. Norden" 
Newsgroups: alt.magick.tantra
Subject: Siva as Savior; non-Asian sacred sex
Date: 28 Aug 1998 02:07:25 GMT

Greetings, Catherine!

You originally wrote:

>> >In recognition of my own personal heterodoxy, I twist a specific
>> >Christian phrase and tell folks that "I have accepted Lord Siva as my
>> >personal Saviour." Some people get the meaning, others do not.


I responded:

>> I seem to understand at least partially--that your relationship with
>> Siva is as intimate and meaningful as a devout Christian's
>> relationship with *his* deity.


You confirmed that, then answered my question about whether Siva actually
*is* described as a savior in Hindu sources.  So did a few other
subscribers; consider this part a "thank you" to everyone who helped!

In a way, you're lucky that your own religious texts are worded in a way
that lets you throw other people's buzz phrase right back.  My relationship
with Freyr often does get as intimate as yours does with Siva, yet I can't
use the ready-made comeback you do.  Because salvation as such is not a goal
of my religion, calling any Germanic god a "savior" would sound just plain
wrong.  (According to Asatru teachings, only people who commit heinous
crimes suffer significantly in the afterlife; and reincarnation, which
usually takes place along family lines, is not an evil to be avoided.)  The
best I can do is to latch onto the fundies' "Lord" references, as that's
what "Freyr" means in Old Norse:  it's a title that eventually got used in
place of the god's real name.


I originally wrote:


>> As for myself, I have tried to integrate sacred-sex practices into my
>> Northern spirituality....[my remarks on the near-lack of "authentic"
>> Norse material on sacred sex, and the fact that new-but-consistent
>> rituals still work within a non-Asian tradition]... There is a definite
sense of
>> connection to my god's holy, creative power; something more is going
>> on than just provoking a physical response to a stimulus.



You replied:

>Hey, you don't need to fall into the orthodoxy of believing that just
>because a text is a few hundred or a few thousand years old, it
>represents a higher or better glimpse of ETERNAL truth than what you
>yourself see when you look into your beloved's eyes today.


Touchˇ, Catherine!  While both my tradition and yours do respect the ancient
texts we have, they are not the be-all and end-all of spiritual practice
(sexual or otherwise).  Sometimes I wish I could feed the
older-is-always-better fanatics a week-old moldy cheeseburger and see if
THAT doesn't change their tune!...

Within my own tradition, I often remind myself that one of Freyr's titles is
"God of the World"--and that the Norse word used for "world" actually means
"human lifetime", not the planet or cosmos.  (In the words of a pagan friend
who learned that from me:  "Ohhhh, the god of the here and now!")  And
what's more important in a sacred-sex ritual:  going by what some long-dead
philosopher wrote in a book, or experiencing ecstasy *now*?


>The detailed attention paid by some retro-tantrikas to ancient
strictly-followed
>forms of ritual are, in my opinion, limitations on something more
>immense than any given guru, culture, or religion can describe.


Just goes to show you that fundamentalism exists in every religion you can
name--and that it has the same choking effect on real spirituality.


>I like Sanskrit as well as the next post-modern hippie, but i have to laugh
at
>the way some folks defend their hegemony over some Sanskrit word or
>another. Do they think Siva and Sakti really CARE?


And I've done my share of hair-splitting over Old Norse (*blush*), but I'm
sure my gods have better things to do with their time than decide who has a
more correct interpretation of the Eddas.  Again, anal-retentive theologians
in *any* faith can miss the whole point of following a religion.



>My mission in this newsgroup and on the web has been to testify to the
>myriad "spontaneous" discoveries of sacred sex that resemble but are not
>directly indebted to an Asian religious lineage. These "non-tantra
>tantras" are our best proof that the experience of sacred sex is a
>universally HUMAN experience. And that human universality is in turn our
>best clue that this bliss, this ecstasy, this consciousness of the
>divine in sexual union is available to all those who seek it, regardless
>of their race, creed, or country of national origin.



*thunderous applause*  If you'll pardon the clichˇ:  "You go, girl!"  Some
things are part of everyone's spiritual experience, even if a given culture
doesn't record it in the same detail that someone else's does.

[invocations to various deities snipped]

Yup, there's a darn good reason that even an atheist feels moved to shout
"oh God" when he's climaxing; it's just that we take it a lot more seriously
than the atheist would!  *LOL*


Ingeborg Svea Nordˇn, true kinswoman of Freyr...





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