The Mistress of the Erotic

Towards the active realisation of your sexuality.

By George Barbier (French; 1882–1932)

A friend of mine, a lifetime lover and practitioner of esoteric philosophies once shared the experience he had with what one may call a modern-day courtesan (what I am to share is with his permission). No, she was not an escort, a gold digger or anything such, but rather a courtesan in a more esoteric or rather ancient way — a woman who is “open” and therefore exists at the periphery of conventional social life, pursuing a path that most women would not pursue. At the time, he was at the point of his journey when he was engaging in strict austerities and asceticism (here meaning self-control and mastery over one’s energy, not monasticism). When you begin to embody any aspect of reality, you also begin to attract into your life your polar opposites (who yet exist on the same axis and share the centre), so he encountered a woman who, just like him, existed as an outcast — she lived alone, inhibited her world and her place was filled with statues of Goddesses, flowers, incense, antiques and esoteric books. But unlike his controlled and concentrated asceticism, she was sensual, voracious and energetically “loose”. Men in her life were pleasant encounters but never attachments and he interacted with women in order to know them but avoided the conventional “suburban” life of wife and children.

She knew the what to do with the male body — his female peers were rather afraid of it or sought to be entirely passive themselves. At the time he found himself desiring a more heated and active form of femininity — a woman unafraid of herself and unafraid of him. He was so light and pure that he craved fire and corrosion. She did not expect him to pay her with money since she considered that rather crude, but she did expect a gift — and so he would bring flowers, jewellery and other things that he’d found that he believed would please her. They went separate ways but he fondly remembers her years after as someone who initiated him into experience of more complex and mature feminine energies and also into his own complexities and subtleties. The women around him often demanded and expected more “beastly” sexuality while with her, more subtleties and sensuality was allowed to be explored.

This story is brought to shed light onto more subtle and often hidden elements of female sexuality and also how a man relates to it (and his own sexuality and femininity as an extension to that). Our media and narratives are full of more passive, tense, restrictive and coiling aspects of female sexuality — manifesting often as romanticised and highly eroticised imagery of cannibalism, vampires and also in violent sexual fantasies, including those of degradation, humiliation or anything similar. I will speak on subtleties of this in another article, to help you understand it, but all the above has its root in what is essentially tension or “knots” around the sexual centre. However, the courtesan or the sacred prostitute if we wish to call her so as an archetype, shows another aspect of female sexuality, and that is how the female sexuality manifests when uncoiled, “loose”, heated, unashamed and unafraid. This is not to be confused with anything uncontrolled, non-discriminating or random, without unity or centre. It is not chaotic. It is the tension that creates chaos and randomness, harmony allows the free flow.

Male physique, while potentially creating arousal and curiosity in women, can also fill her with fear — male body is very expressive, potentially domineering and “loud”, so in a way it assaults. It almost does not want to magnetise you or fascinate you, but rather inspire awe and terror. In her fear a woman instead of engaging with the male body, paying attention to it or seeking to know it may just seek to be overwhelmed by him. Doing so, she neither has to face his nor her nudity (be it physical or more subtle).