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.

From

AGRICULTURAL FERTILITY AND   THE SACRED MARRIAGe

Source: Frymer-Kensky,   Tikva, In the Wake of the Goddesses: women, culture and biblical transformations   of pagan myth, (1992) Fawcet Columbine, New York. © All rights reserved   to author. Text presented here for aid in studies and research purposes. Not   included copious references.

....... The sexual congress of king and goddess-figure in the sacred marriage ritual provided a powerful symbol for the union of forces involved in the creation of fertility.

From the perspective of Western culture, this ritual seems alien and bizarre. We are not used to sexual behavior as part of religious ritual, and find such acts alien to our Judeo-Christian traditions. We also think of sexual intimacy as a consequence of an ongoing relationship, rather than a sole constituent act of a relationship, which has no other expression.

Despite the strangeness of the concept, when we look beyond the cultural differences to understand this sacred Sex in its own terms, we find a powerful symbolic drama. The sacred marriage is a multileveled metaphor with powerful and poetic dimensions of meaning. It is significant that the prime divine figure in this drama is not a fertility or mother goddess. Instead, the ritual involves sexual union with the goddess who represents the lust which allows for sexual union. This gives sexuality a prominent place in the cosmic order as an important pathway to fertility. Just as sexual intercourse leads to human and animal fertility, so too the sexual congress of the sacred marriage could led to the agricultural fertility of the land of Sumer. Human sexuality, familiar for its domestic importance, is seen in this ritual as the known, visible component of the world´s regenerative processes; it is the anatomical analogue or aspect of cosmic renewal.

Sexuality is such an important force for renewal because Sex unites.

The Sacred Marriage is about union, about the coming together of the many elements that together make a fertile world.

Through this act, renewal and regeneration occur when the male component of fertility (Dumuzi) combines with the female component (Inanna), thus unifying the various aspects of cosmos. Male and Female appear as the interlocking pieces which combine to open the riches of the universe. The union of the two principals in the sacred marriage signifies, expresses and effects the meeting of the male-female axis of the world.

To go a step further into the metaphor, the union takes place at the sacred storehouse of Inanna, and Inanna, the goddess-partner, is not only the goddess of sexuality but also the deity of the storehouse. Dumuzi, Her Divine partner, which whom the king is identified, probably represents the living spirit within vegetation and animals. Through their union, civilized endeavor is mated to this regenerative ability, and their combination enables the true surplus abundance upon which urban civilization depends.

In this Sumerian ritual, Dumuzi was enacted by the king, who became the god in the performance of the ritual. The king was the avatar of Dumuzi, but at the same time, he was also the human king of the state. Through this act, he received from Inanna the blessing of a fertile and prosperous reign. In this way, the sacred marriage symbolizes yet another necessary union, for it underscores the important principle that it is through the concerted effort of the gods and humans that the fertility of the world is assured. The gods bring fertility through their control over rain, air, sun and soil. Humans bring abundance through their work in fields, canals and storehouses. The sacred marriage of the king and the goddess is a dramatic expression of this divine-human partnership.

Yet another layer of symbolism lies in the fact that the human/divine partner is the king. The sacred marriage brings together the king and the goddess in the most intimate possible ways, and thereby allows the king access to the world of the gods impossible for other humans to achieve. In this way, goddesses mediate between the world of the gods and the world of the king, a subject that is discussed in the next chapter.

The role of the goddess in the sacred marriage is graphic and immediate: She is the Sex-partner. At issue here is not gender, but organic Sex.

The goddess is important precisely because She is female, because She possesses female sexual organs and can participate in the sexual act. Not surprisingly, it is the goddess of sexuality, the goddess-as-Sex-partner, who is the Divine partner in the sacred marriage. The graphic language in the sacred marriage hymns is not an indication of sexual prurience or pornographic interest. On the contrary, these hymns are a celebration of Inanna as vulva, of the goddess as "cosmic cunt".

The sexual organ of goddesses provides the best way for goddesses to be active in the cosmos, in procreation and agriculture. Even though we know the relationship between copulation and birth, our experience of them is separate and different.

And the goddesses are different: it is the mother who produces children, and the Sex goddess whose sexual activity brings fertility to earth. But in each case, it is the Sex organ of the Sex-partner through which the universe is regenerated. In ancient Sumer, divine vaginas bring birth and renewal. When, as in the Bible, the divine has no vagina, how can the world be renewed? Clearly the entire conception of nature has to undergo fundamental change.

 

Comments

[The English Courtesan]

Another fascinating post Robert and so much of this fits with my own experience. I'm amused and delighted that Diana too liked older men from an early age, as that is something we share. I have never pondered why this is, and have always just accepted it as a fact, that older men like me and that I like them, but your post has made me think...

I'm intrigued by the concept of the sacred marriage. That may well explain why I like outdoor pursuits so much! ;-) On a serious note, you have made me think of sex outdoors in a different light, as part of the cycles of renewal and regeneration, and almost as a way of giving something back. There is a particular memory which I hold dear, which is that of making love in a stone circle on a windblown sunlit Yorkshire moor. There was something immensely primeval about it, and I think that is one reason why I will never forget it, the other being the man with whom I shared this wonderful experience. It transcended the purely physical in ways I can't quite explain...

You are so right however that sex is only a part of the union, albeit a fundamental one. Equality, of the King and the Goddess as Frymer-Kensky so lyrically puts it, are another aspect of it. I recently wrote a post on the 'Chola - Sacred Bronzes of India' exhibition at the Royal Academy in London. My personal favourite was the statue of Uma and here is an extract from what I wrote:

...Uma, ‘The Peaceful One’, was the consort of Shiva, and was also known as Durga ‘The Inaccessible’, Devi ‘The Goddess’, Mahadevi ‘The Great Goddess’, Kali ‘The Black One’ and Parvati ‘The Chaste Wife’. Just as a powerful man or woman needs their courtesan, so Uma was a central part of Shiva’s work. Legend has it that Shiva alone can protect the world from evil, but only when Uma is present can he bestow grace on an individual soul...'

That equality and the absolute trust it brings are undoubtedly part of what the courtesan offers. Have you read Gillette (Ex-Courtesan in Transition) at http://ex-courtesan.blogspot.com/ ? I will send her a link to your post if I may as I remember her powerful writing on the subject of trust and in particular rebirthing experiences.

I can't wait for your next installment!

Livvy xxx

[Robert Paterson]

Sorry I am being slow but the pressures of earning a living are in the way at the moment - hope to get back to this next week.

It is so helpful to have your encouragement
Rob