By Salomé Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer
“Ain’t no shame baby do your thing, just make sure you ahead of the game.”
-Missy Misdemeanor Elliott
Part I
The ancient priestesses sat at the mouth of their cave, up on the cliffs above the sea. The waves roared below, the sacred fire crackling within, firelight dancing on the walls.
They sat in ceremony some days, transcending far beyond their feeble flesh in order to receive wisdom from their deities. In the ethereal realms, the priestesses gathered riddles which folded in on themselves and looped back around.
On the earthly plane, the priestesses gathered leaves and roots and fruits for stewing, and pickling and mashing.
Most days, they tended their gardens and mended their shrouds and dusted altars and sang prayers and brewed their medicines.
On other days, the priestesses received pilgrims who brought offerings of honey, wine and silks. Spices from far off lands, fragrant oils and resins of frankincense, spikenard, dragon’s blood and oud.
Gemstones, precious objects and jewels all were laid before the altar.
And when men had spilled blood, they laid down their unclean swords at the bare feet of the priestesses, who alone had the power to cleanse the warriors of their sins.
The priestesses performed rituals of transmutation, honoring those who had been slain. They performed the rites of purification, and only when the warriors were clean, could they return to the city.
The priestesses held this power because they retained sovereignty over their wombs and their moonblood. Their bodies were vessels of the divine, belonging to no man- no husband nor master.
They answered only to the call of their Goddess, which of course, came from within.
Part II
The priestess sat perched in the window of the temple, the constant buzz of traffic a low roar on 3rd avenue, four stories below.
She had checked in with the booker, offered her gratitude and set her intentions for her shift. She had swept and dusted and lit incense upon the altar. She had made two cups of Holy Basil tea and offered the other one to Sofia.
And now, she waited.
Her slinky robe, regulation attire for awaiting clients, was draped casually across her chest, just catching on her erect nipple. It was always cold in this apartment.
This temple.
She now lounged on the IKEA futon, her foot resting on the storage ottoman, which contained many pairs of high heels that the priestesses were supposed to put on when they answered the door for clients, or when they went on outcalls.
She waited for the men to arrive, bearing offerings of cash- a “donation” to the temple. Sometimes they’d bring wine or chocolate too, or fresh cut flowers from the bodega. Once, a tiny vaporizer with cartridges from the client’s business trip to California.
“We’re priestesses masquerading as sex workers, “ Boss Mama loved to say.
“We heal the wounded masculine by teaching men to surrender to the goddess.”
And it was kind of true. But the temple served two Gods.
Two seemingly disparate ideologies which coalesced in this sparsely furnished midtown apartment. This space which hosted the sacred and profane, which was holy and secret and illegal but safe- so precariously strung upon the line between the exploitation of the divine feminine, and demanding that she be paid her worth.
The priestess/provider/ sex-worker (who wasn’t even sure if these distinctions were meaningful) was first lured to the temple by the prospect of abundance. In one session at the temple, she could earn as much as six hours of babysitting, or twelve hours behind a deli counter.
“Don’t worry, I won’t drink the Kool-Aid,” she had assured Kay, when she realized that the temple practices and philosophies went much deeper than bodywork plus a happy ending. And she had retained that healthy skepticism through her training and her first months as a provider.
But by now, she had seen the temple do magic.
In the temple, the priestess had learned to transmute denser energies with her breath and her touch. To let them pass through her and beyond her without polluting her body.
She had learned to gently coax men into submission, until all they could do was surrender to the juicy, powerful energy of the feminine.
She had learned to use her beauty and her sexuality as instruments of worship, of healing, and of economic gain.
She had learned that money was time/ was energy/ was sex/ was anything you could imagine it, visualize it being.
There was no denying that the practices were powerful and transformative. As the priestess offered loving, therapeutic touch to her clients, she felt energy moving and flowing, electrified beneath her hands. She had seen clients deeply changed by this work. She had seen energy transmuted from the cloying entitlement of the unbalanced masculine to the grateful humility of the pilgrim bearing alms.
When she received clients, she felt connected to the vast lineages of temple priestesses, light workers and sacred prostitutes who had come before her. The powerful women who assumed the daunting task of healing traumatized men through the only language they understood- sexual release.
Of course, some clients were just assholes. Boundary pushers who got off on breaking the temple’s rules, like petulant children. There was only so much the priestesses could do about that. If Boss Mama wouldn’t blacklist a boundary-pusher, the priestesses would still have to see him.
The priestess had first come to the temple seeking wealth, but in the temple she discovered that sisterhood was her greatest fortune.
The sacred, secret circle of priestesses- woven together by their shared practices, their shared space, and their shared clients. For many sisters, Temple was a secret that did not follow them home on the 6 train, the A train or the L.
It was a world they shared only with each other.
The priestess was so grateful for this covenant. Grateful for these lessons. Grateful for the expansion of her container, and the first inklings of financial freedom that she had ever known. She was grateful for the opportunity to safely flaunt her sexuality without the risk of real intimacy, or even of being touched most times.
But she did wonder if this coy, undercover method Boss Mama had, of training sexy 20-somethings to slowly manipulate men into submission, wasn’t just another way of pandering.
Her mother had once told her,
“You can’t just ask a man to do something, you have to make him think it was his idea.”
This had filled the priestess with a rage that she couldn’t quite put into words. And sometimes, the way Boss Mama talked about clients- especially the boundary pushers that she refused to blacklist- made the priestess feel the same way.
She knew this courtesan mentality, of hypnotizing the men by getting one’s tits out, was starting to feel outdated.
She wondered if continuing to coddle the already spoiled men wasn’t just perpetuating society’s traumatic imbalance between masculine and feminine.
“I won’t drink the Kool-Aid,” she had promised. And she hadn’t.
But she had filled her chalice with Sacramental Wine.
TO BE CONTINUED
About the Author:
Salomé Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer is an author, artist and scholar of human sexuality.
Her work pulls from her decade of experience as a sex worker, an industry that exists at the crossroads of trauma, intimacy, sexism, spirituality, labor rights, economics and policy.
