Trusted Space - Lifestyle

Post Modern Marriage - A Return to Eden?

Here is the "Fall". Natural Man and Woman are being expelled from the Natural World and are being banished into the Agricultural world of the Middle East of about 5,000 years ago.

It's a myth that tells of a deep historic truth. It tells of the great shift in human culture that took place as we ended 4 million years of living a Hunter Gather life and took up Agriculture.

More than our source of food changed. Our entire worldview changed. We no longer saw ourseleves as being partners in nature but now as lords above nature. We no longer saw oursleves as being partners in creation with our human partners but also either as lords or servants.

In this new world of ownership, of control and of obedience, the relationships between men and men and between men and women and between parents and children replicated the relationship between big men and their herds.

Genesis declares the new contract like this:-

Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;

Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

I laugh to myself when I hear of people defending traditional marriage. They defend this. 

"Oh it's not that any more I hear you say." Really - well divorce courts seem to suggest that it is.

Something isn't working anymore with our core institution. 50% of marriages end in divorce. After a couple of drinks, most of us admit to at least being bored, many to being angry with our spouses. Look at our children. Many feel that they are "trophies" to be shown off or worse they feel like bargaining chips as their bitter parents use them as weapons in the war of the sexes. 30% of children in Canada, most from the middle class, are in deep trouble by 6. They have had such a poor social environment that they cannot behave socially and they cannot learn. This is not merely an opinion. It is a fact. Please look here and here for the evidence.

How can this be? How can marriage drive such unhappiness and such social failure? 

Imagine if wolf packs no longer nurtured wolves and allowed them to thrive? Imagine if killer whale pods became sources of whale dysfunction? Imagine if ant colonies damaged the future of ants?

What if we had indeed lost paradise 5,000 years ago? What if the price for agriculture was that we gave up the natural social arrangement that naturally made us most human?

How could we return? Would we have to don skins and take up hunting and gathering?

I think that the life of a courtesan can help us see parts of the core of the Natural Social Arrangement. I also think that many of us now live the life of the post modern Hunter Gatherer.

Please join me in this post, as I walk unsteadily to a place that eschews control and obedience  but instead embraces life and potential. To a place that looks below the surface and beyond functionality to where the human spirit lives in all of us. As I fumble my way home to Eden. The most Trusted of all Trusted Spaces.

The Courtesan - Sex as Trusted Space

When we looked at the mind of a courtesan, we learned that the core of her educational process and the heart of her attraction to powerful men was a highly developed ability to listen.

Here we look at how she extends her power by her ability to listen with her whole body. Here we will find out why so many prominent courtesans did not need to be conventionally beautiful. Here we will discover the true secret of the bedroom that Cosmo readers will never find in the magazine.

As Diana and I looked back at the men who were the partners of the great courtesans of history and as we also explored our own experience, we found an interesting common element about the men. Nearly all had had emotionally and or physically distant mothers. Nearly all had over developed from the neck up.

Talleyrand, dropped as a baby and crippled, claimed never to have spent a night under the same roof as his mother. Dickens who loathed his mother, claimed that it was better to have a mother who was deceased than detached. His feeling of loss pervades all his life and his work. In his work, nearly all his novels have orphan heroes or heroines. In his life, he had a composite Courtesan who replaced his wife Catherine. It was made up of his sister in law Georgina Howarth who shared his house as a Esther Summerson type of housekeeper and his love partner, Ellen Ternan, an actress who was his Nancy. Averell Harriman had a socialite mother who was never around for him but only for her causes - one of which was Eugenics! The list goes on.

Men who overcompensate in the mind for the loss of a mother's love can be exceptionally vulnerable in the bedroom. They tend not to know their own bodies at all. Once eminent, the pressure to perform in an area of fear builds. Others expect that they will be great in bed too.

Perhaps the most tragic of these figures is the late Duke of Windsor. He gave up his kingdom for the woman he loved. Many wonder at that that. My bet is that this was more than love. Wallis Simpson made him feel like a king as a person. He gave up one Kingdom for another kingdom that in the end mattered more to him - his very self. Let me explain.

I open this post with a picture of the Venus of Willendorf. This is no attempt to offer a literal representation of beauty. These Venuses offer instead the inner beauty of the ideal woman who uses her body not only to birth a real baby but to comfort and birth the spirit and the ideas of an adult man.

Sex in this context is part of the deeper idea of the Sacred Marriage.

It is a transcendent act of holistic fertility where the product is a more fertile kingdom.  It is a generative act that fertilizes the world itself. This was why men and women would make love in their fields. Sex in this context becomes a sacrament and is an offering to the wider world.

Men who have had a frozen childhood seek this symbolic return and this symbolic rebirth.

This is why the surface of the body means so little to the courtesan. It is her soul that is the attraction.

Here is Germaine de Stael. Men were driven made for her.

Mme de Staël was not a beauty. "I would gladly give half of the wit with which I am credited for half of the beauty you possess." she wrote in a letter to Madame Récamier. However, her talents attracted influential men. In a portrait painting by François Gérard, she looks somewhat plump, but she has a glittering, alert look in her eyes and she smiles cheerfully. "Men of wit are so astounded by the existence of women rivals that they cannot judge them with either an adversary's generosity or protector's indulgence. This is a new kind of combat, in which men follow the laws of neither kindness nor honor." (from On Literature Considered in Its Relationship to Social Institutions, 1800)

So how do Courtesans develop these skills and this outlook on sex and on love?

As with many Courtesans, Diana's early experiences were with older men. She always preferred them when she was young. Later in life, she preferred younger men - but I get ahead of myself.

Innately, she knew at 16 how to ensure that a man of 50 would feel safe. Some of her lovers were as vulnerable as I indicate. Others of course were very experienced and they taught her the technical skills of the bedroom, as they taught her about music at the Opera.

So as with the mind, Diana and other courtesans became exceptionally technically skilled. But as with the mind, her true skill was not a skill at all. She offered her full heart and her trust. And in so doing received her man's full heart and trust in return.

Here is a recent note from one of her dear friends:-

Still, you are the same upbeat Diana, and
I can still summon your laughter and sense of humor, your compassion and
understanding.  You deserve all the happiness that life has to offer.   I
was very fortunate to have spent time with you.

She says of him:-

We were together more than 20 years ago. We had a very interesting intellectual relationship which has never faded.  He is nearly 70 now.  A brilliant man, self educated on top of his two degrees.  A writer, a carpenter, a car mechanic, a scientist, a doctor, and a brilliant photographer.  Too small for sports, 5'6' he had to use his brain to attract women.  At 60, he took his black belt in Karati.  He taught me a great deal.

Louis XV stood on his balcony and wept as Madame de Pompadour's hearse went by. It was the greatest honor that he could give her in a society that was all about how close you were to the King.

So in the sacred marriage of the courtesan, fidelity is different from the Christian ideal of marriage. In the sacred marriage, fidelity is spiritual. It is not bounded by contract nor till death. It is a transcendent value that includes death.

So in chapter 3, we will look at marriage as we know it - a modern construct based on property - can co exist with the sacred.

The Mind - The Core of Courtesanship

The underlying premise of this series is that real power and real independence for women lies outside most of the conventional routes. The choice I am going to advocate in this series is to re-examine the role of the Courtesan. If you seek to have real power that belongs to you and that you can keep all your life - read on.

The choice is not to become more like a man nor is it to become more feminine. As I learn more, I see that their common accomplishment was to become the complete and integrated woman with a strong anima and a strong animus. They chose neither to over compensate on the masculine side not the feminine. They found the middle road.

In their mind - they have a particular facility with how men think and see the world. In their body, their great appeal is that they are warm and compassionate.

To Conquer a man, first conquer his mind.
To keep a man, make yourself a necessity to his life. (Diana)

Let's dig deeply into Diana's dictum. Let's start with what conquering "His Mind" may mean. By the end of this post you will see that this process is not as simple as you may think at first glance. We will end with a hint at what becoming  a "Necessity" may mean. In the following chapter we will enter the bedroom and get the full meaning of what Diana is saying.

What is the mind of a courtesan and how is it formed?

They begin their education not conventionally at school but by being schooled.

Pamela is "adopted" by Winston Churchill during the war and becomes his hostess as he entertains the leaders of the war effort. This is where she met and loved Averell Harriman, General Fred Anderson, Bill Paley and Ed Murrow. They were some of her early teachers. Germaine de Stael was schooled by her real father, Jacques Necker, Louis XVI's finance minister. It was because of her father's that she first met the love of her life, Talleyrand. Pamela was 19 when she began her role as Winston's hostess. Imagine you are her and that Ed Murrow takes you under his wing! Imagine that you are Ed Murrow! What would you be talking about? Don't snigger men like Murrow need to talk more than the other thing.

Courtesans have an affinity for older men even when they are very young and they seek out "Teachers". Their schooling begins not in the bedroom but at the dinner table.

Here is Diana on her 16th birthday. Our father is hosting a party for her at Annabel's and we are just leaving the house. Like Pamela (By her adopted Father Winston) and Madame de Stael (by her real father), Diana's first teacher was our father. She became exposed to the masculine mind through thousands of meals with our father who held court with an endless stream of powerful men. Diana, like Pamela, became his formal hostess at around 16 as our mother had already begun to withdraw from active life. She, like Pamela, was drawn to these men. My friends of my age were much dismayed by this!

Not one Courtesan has been described as the most beautiful woman of her time.  All have been described as very interesting and well educated. More educated than other women of their time.  Having a degree in something does not an educated person make.  A well educated woman, has a very broad education, as if she had 10 degrees.  She has an innate understanding of men and their interests. 

What were the gifts of each woman.  Languages, art, architecture, poetry, writing, maths, physics, wine , antique furniture, literature.  How was it possible that such young women in a time when many women knew next to nothing would make these women so special so intelligent so driven, that there is not a woman even now who could really compete with them.

They spoke Latin, Greek, French, Italian and English.  They collected thousands of books, when to have a library was something so extraordinary at the time and so expensive.

Today I go into lawyer's houses and I can't find a single book.  Most people in Canada have never studied Greek or Latin.  Queen Elizabeth the 1st spoke 6 languages fluently by 18.  She was well versed in many other subjects too.

Has education reached such a low in our age?  Why is education not valued like it was in the past.  When Americans do exams they are multiple choice, not essays about the subject.

Where are the Salons of the 18th, 19th centuries where very clever people swapped ideas and gathered for the sheer pleasure of spending time with the most incredible people of their time.

Somewhere, we have lost the interest in being truly educated. We have sunk to the lowest form of education in the 20th century.  We have systematically dropped the finer side of the subject and become so much less than we were.  I think of Emilie, (Emilie de Chatelet, mistress of Voltaire and translator of Newton's Principia) plunging her hands in cold water so that she could finish her work. Working night and day to produce a translation that has not been bettered over time.  No one has come up with anything superior to her translation, of which she made a couple of different ones, so that more people could understand it.

We have become ordinary over time.  Who stands out today.  Who writes today and changes the world.  Who goes to prison in the west for ideas that challenge the system.

"How awful" you may say. These women, and Diana, surrendered themselves to older men. But Diana and Pamela never gave up themselves. What they learned was that if the created a Trusted Space, the men would feel safe with them and not only come into that Space but need to go there for themselves.

Let me explain. I opened this post with the classic cover picture from My Fair Lady. On the surface, Higgins has all the power. But as he "Grows accustomed to her face" the power balances out.

On the surface the courtesan is classically well educated. She left school at 16 at the time of the picture. But by listening and by becoming engaged with those that she cared about she became educated in the way that she describes it. Diana speaks 4 languages. She has a deep knowledge and love of music and literature. She is a student of history. She knows even more about warfare than I do. She is a very successful business woman in her own right and understands how credit and banking work and how to run a good business. 

These are all accomplishments that most women who have 3 degrees do not share. But this is still her surface education.

What she learned at a deep level is how to listen.

What happens to you when someone really listens to you?

You feel wonderful. You grow. Your ideas grow.

What is true listening?

It is when a person hears you without judgment. That does not mean they merely nod and agree with you but that the rigorous debate that you have with them is bathed in acceptance of you the other person. This is of course Trusted Space. What then is the product of a conversation where one truly listens to the other? It is of course that this trust is reciprocated. What happens then? Mateship.

What then is the effect on the listener who offers this opportunity of both the rigor of an informed debate and the safety of true acceptance. She herself grows and is offered the love that she gives in return.

That is why Madame de Pompadour is able to end her physical relationship with Louis XV after 5 years and continue to rule France for another 15 years until her death. No one else made the King feel so loved and so he gave her all that he could in return. He was faithful to her in transcendent way that endured beyond the grave. She lived on too in his heart until his own dying day.

So the bottom line for education for the Courtesan route of life is to love to listen. By listening, we learn. By listening we help others learn. By listening, both grow. What greater gift than to be heard for ourself. Then we truly become Mates.

This leads us to sex. In the next chapter, we will discover that the Courtesan's great talent in the bedroom is that she listens there as well.

As in her mind, body of the courtesan is a well honed instrument that she uses with exquisite skill. But her greatest talent is to offer her body to her man in complete safety and acceptance. She knows how vulnerable men really are. In particular she knows how vulnerable men of accomplishment in public life can be in the bedroom. She completes the Trusted Space of her Mind with the Trusted Space of her body.

In so doing she sets in motion the complete gift. She gives her all. She gives her complete self - her body and her mind. In giving all, as we know in the rules of the Gift Economy, she creates the conditions for having the gift returned.

That is where her power lies.

Join Diana and I soon in the Trusted Space of the Courtesan's body

A Fulfilled Woman?

Carly or Pamela?

"Who is Pamela?" You may ask. Pamela Harriman was one of the most influential women of the 20th century. You still haven't heard of her. Well that was part of her power. She was the consummate insider.

As a young woman, she was known for her beauty. But she was so much more than that. Without a formal education, she became known for her mind. She was at the centre of power in both the UK and the US in her 20's and thirties and never relinquished her influence on the most powerful people of her time.

Having begun life in genteel poverty, she became very wealthy. Having been a figure of scandal, she became a major force in American Politics. Having been a significant force in the Clinton election, she astounded her critics by becoming an exceptional US Ambassador to France.  She died, still active in mind and in body, while swimming in the pool, at the Ritz in Paris. Over 1,000 people came to her funeral at the Washington National Cathedral.

So how did she do this? Well she was a Courtesan. Not a prostitute. A Courtesan.

So what's a Courtesan? You wouldn't like to be called one would you?

This is the first chapter in a short series that will make the case that being a Courtesan may be a role that a truly modern, post industrial woman may aspire to. That is if she wants to become economically self-sufficient, psychologically independent, personally powerful and attached to a steadfast group of lifelong devoted friends who are both men and women.

We will discover together the secrets of the courtesan and see how this life can work today. You will see, I hope, that their ability to create a Trusted Space emerges as a critical role in the development of their relationships and in their own lives.

We will visit Veronica Franco who lived in Venice in the mid 16th century, a poet and author and a mistress of a King of France. We will drop by and meet Emilie de Chatelet, mistress of Voltaire and maybe the most brilliant woman physicist whose translation of Newton's Principia, remains the current best French text today.  We will look more deeply into the remarkable life of Madame de Pompadour, mistress to Louis XV, back room ruler of France and devoted friend of the Queen. We will spend time with Madame de Stael, mistress of Talleyrand, who was the power behind much of literature in the Napoleonic era.

It is my great joy that I take this journey with my best pal, my sister Diana, whose own life has been the life of a courtesan. We will bounce back through time as we meet her honoured predecessors and see how her own life has mirrored theirs.

Here she is, aged 23,  as she  steps out into this life. Here in her own words is how she sees this life:-

Courtesans don't make men lose their heads, they are not Helen of Troy.

They gain the man's everlasting respect, re: Talleyrand returning to Germaine every time he was in trouble.  She was Necker's daughter, but more interesting than that was her mother.  Also Swiss, and she had been engaged to Gibbon.  A pastor's daughter, she was well educated and did much to advance her husband's career. 

She had a great salon on Fridays where she entertained all the most influential men of the time,  Germaine, grew up in the centre of a very elite group of people
and women. 

Her father was a brilliant forward thinking financial man. So from both sides she inherited something far more precious than looks.

Looks are transient.  A beautiful woman becomes a faded beauty, something sad to behold.

A clever, witty and kind woman ages without her age being noticed, and she, has maturity, and good sense and  a great deal to offer younger women and she knows well her time has passed and she loves nothing more than to pass on her experience to a
younger intelligent woman she respects.

Age is no obstacle for her.  She has no need of plastic surgery because she takes on her new role as grand dame with great relief.

She has had many men and many experiences, and she is happy to live with her memories and move forward with her personal interests.  She does not need to diet because she is now fulfilled by things that feed her mind. Her pleasure of the body has been replaced by the utter pleasure of all things interesting to her. 

She sleeps alone and comfortably.  She leaves the fretting of love and not love to younger
women.  She has no more of those thoughts to cloud her mind and take away her sleep.  She is comfortable with herself.

Her old lovers if still alive, remain faithful to her in their minds, and look back with a certain amount of sadness, but also they are grateful to her for all that she brought to them.  They do not think of her as someone who has broken their heart, but as someone they shared a relationship, that was probably the most special relationship of their lives.

I am very happy with my age and all that goes with it.  I have been totally fulfilled as a woman. 

Menopause for me has been wonderful.  I have embraced being a grand mother, and feel no loss of my previous sexuality.  All my fantasies have been fulfilled.  I have loved and been loved, and am still loved by my darling Geoff, who leads a life of total freedom, since I am very absorbed with my own interests, and yet we have our moments during the day when we chat. 

He has no curfew, nor any chores.  He lives a life that he wants to.  He works and then comes home to do all the things he likes. 

No rules, no my way of doing things.  He can drop his clothes on the floor leave his dishes on the floor.  He lives just as he wants.  He gives me money to pay for his needs and that is that. 

He has total freedom. He does not have to attend any party, or function.  He is a man with a woman at his side, who demands nothing of him, but he has that comfort when he needs it and he has food to eat and he has his meals prepared. There are no times for meals just when he wants to eat.

I have no duties either.  Total freedom of my spare time.

Please join Di and I as we travel through time and her life and explore the secrets of the Life of the Courtesan

1. Chapter 1 - The mind - The Core of Courtesanship - Being well educated versus going to school
2. Chapter 2 -  Sex - The art of being really loving rather than making love
3. Chapter 3 - Husbands/Mates, Fellowship and Fidelity - Going beyond the body to the whole person
4. Chapter 4 - Post Modern Relationships - Return to Hunter Gatherer Society
5. Chapter 5 - The Kingdom - The underlying contract with nature and with Our Nature