Fire of Love
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Fire of Love
A Year With the Female Ecstatic Saints
This was co-written by Jess and Marissa. You may choose to read the essay and poem, read either the essay or the poem, or read none of it and go jerk off instead.
I lost my mind and came to my senses. August gave way to September in the woods of Northern Maine, where I was camping for several weeks a few hundred feet from the Atlantic ocean.
Near my camp was a clearing. In the center of the clearing was a plant. Monotropa uniflora. Ghost pipe. I became obsessed with the ghost pipe. I caressed it, sat with it, listened to the song of its sensation.
Each evening, I set a cup of water beside it. Each morning, I woke and drank the water. I tried to take the forest’s essence into me. Over the same time period, I was reading Vanessa Irena’s powerful pamphlet, Ecstasy: A Devotional Guide to the Female Mystics. Inspired, I rose at dawn and prayed in circles, half-twisting, half-dancing, praying St. Catherine of Siena’s prayer:
In your nature, eternal Godhead I shall come to know my nature. And what is my nature, boundless love? It is fire, because you are nothing but a fire of love. And you have given humankind a share in this nature for by the fire of love you created us. You, light, give me light. You, wisdom, give me wisdom. You, supreme strength, strengthen me. Amen. Amen. Amen.
I felt I was praying to all beings at once: to the ghost pipe, to the forest, to the sea, to the stars, to the saints, to myself. To everything standing up alive together. I felt the edges between all those beings dissolving. What I went through in Maine was an initiation into ecstasy, guided by the female saints. Over the coming months, I would dive deeper with my dear friend and magical collaborator Marissa. We agreed to host regular journeys with the female saints together, working our way through Vanessa’s book and beyond. Having done so for nearly a year, we are now attempting to share some of what we have learned along the way.
Erotic Relations
The female ecstatics were a group of Christian visionaries who lived during the Middle Ages. Denied access to scriptural and philosophical study, these women instead sought direct communion with God through their own bodies via meditation, prayer, and extreme asceticism. Irena writes: “The visions they experienced during their numerous ecstasies granted them spiritual authority at a time when women had little, and their contributions to the mystical tradition are immense. [...]”
What became essential to my and Marissa’s understanding is that the practice of the female ecstatics was an explicitly erotic practice. Over weekly Zoom dates, drinking late afternoon coffee with cream, we would try to tease out the meaning of “erotic,” turning over the mouthfeel of different definitions. We enjoyed one from ecofeminist writer Terry Tempest Williams:
“Erotic means 'in relation.' Erotic is what those deep relations are and can be that engage the whole body – our heart, our mind, our spirit, our flesh. It is that moment of being exquisitely present.”
It does not speak well for us as a people that we even have to make the distinction between what is erotic and what is not, because an erotic connection is a life-engaged making love to the world that I think comes very naturally.”
The engagement of the whole body – physical and ethereal – became essential to our understanding. There are mystical paths that take one outside of the body. But if we are embodied consciousness, then the body is the site of the sacred. We are a particular way that matter and energy have come together at this time, having an embodied experience that nothing else has had in this exact way before. This body is not incidental, nor a cage, nor a prison, nor an imperfect expression of something else; it is part of our inheritance that connects us to all things. To say otherwise is unjust to all the beings who were born and died so we could have this body.
What were we inheriting from these saintly ancestors? Why is it that these writings found their way to us now, why is it that they whispered in our ear? Could it be that what they saw, what they felt and heard could not be it’s full becoming in their now, but could begin to become in our now? Were our prayers – our ecstasies – recreating theirs? Or reconnecting us with them – with what they prayed to and for?
Jose Munoz conceives of ecstasy as “an invitation, a call, to a then-and-there, not-yet-here…a collective potentiality,” “an invitation to step out of the here and now of straight time” and to embrace the possibility of futurity.
Marissa and I were no strangers to the ancestors speaking to and for the descendants. We were used to doing things for the benefit of the not-yet-here; is it so strange to think of St. Teresa of Avila doing the same?The female ecstatics return to speak to us, so that their teachings may be re-embodied in the words of today, and passed down in turn. These teachings survive because they are important and structural to the universe. These ideas and experiences exist outside of time and may be sent as ships to the ancestors and descendants to sail on the rivers of collective potentiality. They exist for us (the descendants of these saints) and for our own descendants; they are a glimmer of hope for the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.
To come into relationship with these teachings in their fullest potential requires we cast off the original sin of the body – that we trust the body, in order to hear what comes through the body. It requires that we come to our senses and be present with the conversation of sensation happening in our bodies. What if the river of our collective future potential – our future potential, our descendant’s potential – is the very blood flowing through our veins? What if the guilt of original sin is the dam (to be damned, to be in hell, to be in purgatory) blocking the flow of what can sing through us, preventing the sailing of the ships sent by our ancestors? What if we can’t fucking hear anything because we aren’t listening properly?
When we tell another body that they should be feeling one way that they aren’t feeling we don’t really hear what they are saying to us. When we tell OUR body that it should be feeling a certain way, we can’t really hear what it is saying to us. We can’t really hear what our ancestors are saying to us, what our descendants are asking of us—we can’t receive their help, their blessing, or their guidance through our bodies. When we self-flagellate with sin, guilt, and shame, we cannot hear. The desire for the apple, the desire to know is it. It’s not what happens because we are bad or how we fucked up. The desire to become is not something we even have conscious control over. It’s something that is just always happening. What happens when we say No to that flow?
Sin & Dam(n)ation
Many damaging things happen when a river is dammed. Water quality degrades. Algal blooms occur, and can create oxygen-starved ‘dead zones’ incapable of supporting life of any kind. Debris builds up at the mouth of the reservoir, and downstream the river is starved of habitat-creating materials. Dams are considered a major driver of global environmental change. Most recently, it’s been suggested that dams contribute to disastrous flooding, when what they were meant to restrict can no longer be held back.
Damming the rivers of the Earth’s body reflects what happens when we impede the flow of the erotic within our own bodies. We become sick, stuck, built up. We become incapable of housing life, for life is an essentially ever unfolding and flowing process.
We can find evidence of this in what happened to Hildegard of Bingen, when she denied the ecstasy flowing through her in the form of visions… “Still hesitant to record her visions, Hildegard became physically ill. The illustrations recorded in the book of Scivias were visions that Hildegard experienced, causing her great suffering and tribulations. In this text Hildegard describes her struggle within:
But I, though I saw and heard these things, refused to write for a long time through doubt and bad opinion and the diversity of human words, not with stubbornness but in the exercise of humility, until, laid low by the scourge of God, I fell upon a bed of sickness; then, compelled at last by many illnesses…I set my hand to the writing. While I was doing it, I sensed, as I mentioned before, the deep profundity of scriptural exposition; and, raising myself from illness by the strength I received, I brought this work to a close – though just barely – in ten years. […] And I spoke and wrote these things not by the invention of my heart or that of any other person, but as by the secret mysteries of God I heard and received them in the heavenly places. And again I heard a voice from Heaven saying to me, 'Cry out, therefore, and write.’
It was her refusal to write that caused Hildegard to fall into sickness, her refusal to allow herself to receive the aliveness of the world around her, an aliveness that she experienced as the secret mysteries of God.
If there is sin, this is it. The breaking of right relation; the debasement of sexuality and the body, the numbing of the ability to feel, which harms not only the self but all other beings, our ancestors, our descendants. St. Kassia wrote the hymn of the sinful woman, whose only redemption occurs through the power of love – but in particular the kiss, the sensation of loving touch.
Accept the fountains of my tears, you who from the clouds draw out the water of the sea; bow yourself down to the groanings of my heart, you who bowed the heavens by your ineffable self-emptying. I shall kiss your immaculate feet, and wipe them again with the locks of my hair, those feet whose sound Eve heard at dusk in Paradise, and hid herself in fear. Who can search out the multitude of my sins and the depths of your judgements, my Savior, savior of souls? Do not despise me, your servant, for you have mercy without measure
We are speaking of the erotic love that powers the whole universe. In a healthy culture, eros pervades our relationship with the living world – not just our intimate relationships with other people. The feeling stirred by the grace of a lithe Birch, by the magnificence of an ancient Oak, by the power of waves crashing against a rocky cliff, by the sublime beauty of mountains and forests reflected in still water, the way a horse moves, is felt in the body – in the ways it changes heartbeat, breath, it stirs the movement of blood and the awakening of every nerve ending. It is a feeling not only of awe but also of connection, connection which brings meaning. It is erotic in the oldest, truest sense of the word.
bell hooks wrote that love is not a feeling, but an action: love is as love does. Love as an action requires us to accept that we choose our actions, that intention and will inform what we do, and that such actions have consequences. It is our choice to step into this living connection with the world, an action we take to allow ourselves to know the erotic as it is and always has been.
Moreover, this river of blood, this sexual force, is an open and available part of many spiritual traditions. I am thinking now especially of the account of Kama Devi, the Shakta Tantra practitioner interviewed in Megan Rose’s Spirit Marriage (arguably Jess’s favorite magic book of 2022). It is said of Kali that there is no way to understand her, no logic to explain her, no justification. It is said that she is like a storm, and that if we want to connect with her – that if we choose to love her – we must surrender to that storm of love, and in it, come to accept our human condition.
What is powerful about direct contact with the female ecstatic saints is that it redeems this inexorable force within the line of Christianity. A line which, for so many of us, has been dammed and degraded, the tool of colonization and Empire, and now cries out for the healing power of the erotic. So often the healing is tied to the very shape of the wound. What if the power we need to redeem ourselves, our connection with the earth and the divine, can be found within us and our own ancestral lines?
Ecstasy & Flow
The removal of dams restores the natural flow of a river and increases biodiversity. Enhanced plant growth along riverbanks provides habitat and food for more wildlife. Dam removal enables fish to migrate freely upstream and downstream. Flourishing returns. Restored and revitalized, when we say yes to flow our power is returned to us and from there we are afforded new possibilities for ways of being in the world:
Sexuality is not like power, sexuality is a form of power, and of the forms of power, sexuality might prove uniquely efficacious in both individual and collective healing. Further, I will suggest that sexuality’s power might be forceful enough to soothe the pains of colonization, and the scars of internal colonization.
When we move from the flow of our power – from our center outwards – we relate to each other differently. When we do not deny ourselves this erotic connection, when we do not brace ourselves against the flow, we live in connection with each other and everything around us. The process of decolonization is one of reconnection and coming together and acting from this place of togetherness, acting from a place of connection, acting as pieces in flow with everything around us rather than as solitary creatures in a world of scarcity, of not enough. It is the story of interbeing, not the story of separation. The erotic is what drives this flowing connection, it is what fills us up and walks us through a flourishing world of abundance.
The feeling persists that, despite having been told otherwise, sex is spiritual, and the simple honest orgasm is a spiritual experience. If we truly accepted sexuality, we would understand that sexual energy flows through everything all the time, like a river. Like a river, it flows through us, bearing nourishment, washing away what we don’t need, making us wet, connecting us to each other, carrying us towards our wildest dreams. Caffyn Jesse describes how the river of breath that is always flowing through us connects us directly to our sex, to our genitals:
“Breathing in, the lungs expand, pushing the abdominal organs down into the belly and the pelvic floor. The muscle fibers of the pelvis diaphragm slide apart, the tailbone tips up, the bones of the pelvis move slightly apart. Breathing out, the muscle fibers of the pelvic diaphragm slide together. The tailbone comes slightly forward, the bones of the pelvis come together slightly. The nerves in the nerve-rich area of the genitals are gently stimulated from the inside every time we breathe. As we begin to pay attention to this sensation within our bodies, we can honor the pleasure in this deeper breathing with mindful awareness. We begin to understand that we are actually designed to feel genital stimulation with each breath.”
If you dare, go and touch the mysteries of the female saints yourself. While we could tell story after story of our journeys and prayers, it would not substitute direct experience. There is no substitute for direct experience of mystery, of the touch of the universe exploring itself: one becoming two becoming three. The holy trinity, recurring fractally from the largest to the smallest -- even microbes fuck, donating genetic material to each other in a process called conjugation. Conjugation has no 'function' -- there is no need for asexually-reproducing beings to mate; nor does it have clear evolutionary benefit. Yet our smallest and most ancient ancestors, like us, are compelled to join with each other to produce something new.
One becomes two. The universe sets out to explore itself, to come apart from itself. Two becomes three–when we turn towards each other, when we fuck each other, when we dance with each other–and in this dance we know each other. In this dance the universe comes to know itself. And in knowing itself it becomes one again.
The one. Jess is alone in the woods of Maine, I am alone in my city. Becomes two. St. Justina brings us together, shows us the path we are to dance down, together. Two becomes three. Me and Jess and each mystic saint who graced us with her presence. In these meetings, in these knowings, we became one with the flow and the ecstasy of the all.
“Mistress Bride, would you say a word to me About the ineffable intimacy that exists between God and you?”
“Lady Knowledge, that I shall not do. Brides may not tell everything they experience. Holy contemplation and precious enjoyment You shall learn about from me. My privileged experience of God must always be hidden From you and from all creatures except for myself.”
Though we can present you with our experiences and thoughts, your privileged experience of the erotic will always be hidden from all creatures except for yourself. You are the only one who will ever know this flow in your body, you are the only one who can receive this for yourself. So we urge you, get pegged, get fucked, spread yourself open for the fingers of the world to explore your caverns. Lose yourself in the surge of your heart when you catch the sun setting, swim in the fluttering of your abdomen when smelling a rose, be wrestled to the ground, so enraptured with the moment that even the mosquitos feasting on your flesh become the deep penetration of the aliveness of the world around you.
Northern Maine, where I went camping and you are camping now The best story is where we make true and most holy all that is fucked up human, humility, humus, holy desire I want to kiss your whole body with a Dominican’s thirst for Christ My love, I like how you get there Compelled at dusk to cry out: It is all that is. Still hesitant to know my nature, boundless love? I camped there on the knife's edge My mind was a web in the lithe birch on fire with the song of original sin this inexorable force within the universe which set my hand to taste The divine gives what we sing, Sing into relationship with God I drank the strength I received Had a deep desire to surrender "Sexuality is the mechanism by which man can find evidence of the Word" Why then so damned & degraded? All that Shakta Tantra choked on oxygen-deprived water I want to abandon the land, kingdom of dammed sediment, & sail the earth Christ burns with the world. The Army Corps of Engineers advances their war on weeping – all too human to say ‘We cannot deny a line drawn’ The Brides of Christ say: 'Cry out, therefore, for the scars of the erotic are saying where to flow.' Love is the voice from illness Now Siena's prayer: This body cannot provide habitat so do penance, pray, mortify yourself Find sense in senselessness. Jesus disguised as the silkworm done with all that cosmic machismo Those pierced feet whose sound even Eve heard touch what is erotic in this land of sin – To know this ecstasy before death. My fingertips rest lightly on an apple I make secret names for my body "Dhghem" meaning "early" “Erotic” meaning “in relation.” “Sex” meaning “home” It is my true will to suggest, that I am flame of God, orgasm, and you, my love, are what passes through the dam. A deep desire to receive help, Waves touching rock Heaven from the Atlantic ocean Blood bearing nourishment Washing away the force of pain without meaning Our descendents emerge from us So we must trust these bodies. I invite my descendents to touch me They too, are beings which have tasted of breathing No longer separate from the clouds
This definition came to us via the work of Seán Pádraig O’Donoghue, a Maine-based herbalist, poet, and priest doing incredibly important work on healing the erotic connections between humans and the more-than-human world. His influence is all over this essay.
From Jose Munoz’s Cruising Utopia via The Black Body in Ecstasy by Jennifer Nash.
In the Orthodox church, the Hymn of Kassia is chanted only once a year during Holy Week. Traditionally, this service is popular with sex workers, who may not often be seen in church at other times of year.
David Shorter, Sexuality
Caffyn Jesse, The Science for Sexual Happiness
Mecthild of Magdeburg, Chapter 19 Book 2 of The Flowing Light of the Godhead