THE ANDROGYNOUS QUEER MYSTIC - Sex Stories

THE ANDROGYNOUS QUEER MYSTIC

... culture addicted so rigidly to sexist and gendered stereotypes, androgynes are often labelled as bi-sexuals or transsexuals, and some prematurely adopt these labels. Celibacy as an androgynous call I suspect that people called to a celibate vocation effectively embrace an androgynous identity. This is not something they have consciously chosen; more likely it is something that happens in the internal spiritual realm evoking a particular calling or vocation. Were such people always disposed to this calling - already marked out at birth as several ancient cultures claim? I feel unable to offer a meaningful response to this question. Whatever the preconditions governing the vocational call, the consequences remain the same and it is the consequences I am exploring in this essay. Celibacy in its primordial significance seems to arise from a passionate desire to share more closely in the erotic intimacy of the Divine. God is the supreme lover who allures and captivates the heart of the loved one. This can easily be depicted as a mystical calling for the rare few, with nothing of value or worth for the rest of humanity. I suspect that the opposite may be the case. The celibate fulfils a cultural role – perhaps a paradoxical one – exemplifying the ultimacy that is at the heart of all our desiring as a human species. Of course, the vocational motivation may be based on less worthy aspirations, some of which may even be pathological; this is an area for profound and comprehensive ...

... discernment. Despite this divine initiative – or perhaps precisely because of it – I wish to suggest that the celibate calling is a highly sexualised one. The celibate may well be the most erotic of all humans, honouring a very ancient understanding of the Divine as a highly eroticised life-f***e, impregnating the whole of creation. That being the case, two important adjustments need to be made to our thinking. Firstly, God is not a-sexual, and neither is any organism created by God. Secondly, the celibate needs expressive outlets for psycho-sexual energy, which cannot be adequately or appropriately channelled through sublimation or total abstinence. On this complex question, ancient cultures may have been far more enlightened than contemporary ones. They provided outlets for the expression and articulation of sexual desire other than those of the monogamous, married relationship. They seem to have understood better the intense and amorphous energy of human sexuality and facilitated its articulation through rituals and ceremonies whereby people were sexually intimate, inclusive of genital expression (not to be reduced to biological intercourse). We glean evidence for this through ancient Chinese and Indian art; through spiritually-informed traditions like that of the Tantric philosophy of ancient India; in the iconography of early Hinduism; through a vast range of initiation rites among indigenous peoples, and through the courtly customs of mediaeval Europe. That celibacy will ...