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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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