This room is where we spend most of our time... even though we're generally asleep <g>.  Sexuality is sacred, and good sex will keep the energies of this room positive.

The Sacredness of Pleasure           Sex and the Lucious Fat Lesbian           Wicca and Body Image
by Starhawk                                   by Terre Poppe                                     by Medea

General Comments:
Most of us will spend one-third of our lives asleep.  Good feng shui in the bedroom means good energy when we rest. As this room is primarily for sleeping and recovering energy.... colors, artwork, and other objects should convey peace.

• Televisions, stereos, or entertainment areas are better placed far away from the bed, ideally in a completely different room.
• The bedroom is best sited at the rear of a house, away from the front door, where we can retreat at the end of a long day to unwind and relax.
• The proper placement of the bed depends upon many things, the most important of which is practicality.  Ideally, its placement should result in easy access when making the bed and changing daily linens.
• The bed should not block closet doors or passage to dressing areas or bathrooms.
• As in the placement of a desk, the most auspicious location for the bed is opposite the door, diagonally across from the entry in the opposite corner, not necessarily all the way against the wall, but allowing for a feeling of space around the bed and a commanding view of the entire room and all who enter.
• When a bed must be placed under slanted ceilings or eaves, it is a good idea to minimize the effect of imbalanced air circulation this placement causes.  Installing canopies or light fabric hung from the ceiling that covers the width or length of the whole bed, running parallel to the sleeping surface (such as a canopy of mosquito netting).
• Side tables, headboards, and nearby furnishing such as dressers, nightstands, or valets should have slightly rounded edges or be placed in such as a way as to eliminate cutting chi.
• It is best when there is not passageway behind the head of the bed, nor should there be a large window opening directly behind or above the headboard.

The Sacredness of Pleasure
by Starhawk

(This is a transcription of Starhawk's speech at the 1993 National
Conference Celebrating Bisexuality)

Hello. First let me say how honored and delighted I am to be here at
this conference, and to be able to participate in the important events
of this weekend..

We are at a crucial moment in history, a crossroads in which we as a
society must make decisions that will shape the next millenium. At
this vital moment, I would like to speak to you about questions of the
sacred.  Native Peoples have asserted the need to honor their ancient
sacred traditions as integrally woven into the fabric of their
cultural survival and land rights. But most progressive movements have
abandoned the terrain of the sacred to the Fundamentalists. As a
result, we are constantly having to define ourselves against a very
narrow view of the spirit..

For centuries, if not millennia, patriarchal religions have held that
what is sacred is outside the world, removed from the body, from
nature, from material being. The desacralized earth and her human
children are thus fair game for exploitation. Although even within the
most hierarchical religions there have always been earth-centered
currents, the main stream has defined the realm of the spirit as
separate and severed from the earth..

But there is another view of the sacred, one held by indigenous
peoples of every continent on earth, one which is probably the
earliest human understanding of spirit. In this view, the earth is
alive, not an object but a being in whose life we each
participate. The sacred is embodied, in the web of interconnections
that sustain life, in air, fire, water, and earth, in animals and
plants and humans, in the cycles of birth, growth, death and rebirth
that move through both nature and culture..

I speak to you out of one particular earth-based tradition, the old
religion of the goddess of Europe and the Middle East, called Wicca or
Witchcraft.  The Witch persecutions of the 16th and 17th centuries are
one of the great undigested traumas of Western culture. They involved
the torture and judicial murder of hundreds of thousands to millions
of women and men over a period of four hundred years. Eighty per cent
of the victims were women. Many of the men who were killed were
targeted because they were gay..

The burnings can be seen as a war on women, but they were also very
much a war on all the remaining cultural and healing traditions which
stemmed from the ancient understanding of the earth as living
being. And they were a war on sexuality. Most of the charges against
Witches were of sexual misconduct and perversion -- in the Churches'
terms.  The infamous Witchhunters manual, the Malleus Maleficarum
states that "all witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is in women
insatiable." The fear and horror that are still associated with that
time have left us with a deep fear of any sexuality that steps outside
the narrow bounds defined by the authorities. The burnings left us
with a fear of women's power, and a half-conscious sense that any
woman who takes charge of her own sexuality is dangerous and possibly
demonic..

The Burning Times were also the time of the African slave trade and
the conquest of this continent with the enslavement and destruction of
its native peoples. The too were defined as dangerous and demonic, in
need of control and Christianizing even if it killed them. Everywhere
the consciousness of the earth as a living being was attacked and
nearly but never completely destroyed. Now, five hundred years later,
when the very life support systems that sustain all earth's creatures
are threatened, we need that consciousness more than ever..

To say that this earth is sacred is to take a very radical position,
for what is sacred cannot be defiled or exploited. What is sacred has
a value inherent in itself, that cannot be measured by any other
standard or weighed by a profit-and-loss accounting system. If we hold
the forest sacred, we cannot clear-cut the last stands of old growth,
no matter how many short-term jobs that might provide. If we honor the
diversity of living things, we must be willing to preserve other
species. If the air is sacred to us, we can't sit by and run our air
conditioning as the ozone is destroyed.  What is sacred is what we are
willing to sacrifice for..

This vision of the earth is also integrally connected to our struggles
as lesbian, gay and bisexual people. For if we experience the earth as
a living being, then in all honesty I think we have to admit that
she's an erotic being.  How else do we explain fireflies, mangos, the
unfurling of ferns?  We are part of an erotic being in an erotic
universe, whose deepest purposes seem to be served by getting various
creatures to rub against each other in a wide variety of ways. Erotic
energy holds the universe together. What is gravity but the desire of
one body for another?

When we hold the erotic as sacred, we say that our capacity for
pleasure has a value in and of itself, that in fact it is one of the
ways in which we connect with the deepest purposes of the universe..

I believe that is the position we as bisexuals need to take..

In a world in which attempts to change our orientation by coercion and
force abound, lesbians and gays have necessarily defended the position
that homosexuality is inborn and unchangeable. While that is true for a
certain percentage of gay people, just as it's probably true for a
similar percentage of heterosexual people, those of us who are
bisexual, and honest, have to admit that our sexual orientation
sometimes seems to change with the phases of the moon or the level of
pollen in the air, or just with propinquity to whoever happens to be
around. I honor the lesbian and gay activists who have made their
sexual orientation a cornerstone of their identities, and respect the
political need for doing so and the strength that comes from that
position. But if I'm honest about my own sexual identity, it has
something to do with a deep reluctance to be pinned down..

How do we take a firm stand in the shifting sands of our own sexual
fluidity? How do we counter the vicious hatred that gets aroused by
saying, "I'm gay not because I have to be, but because I choose to be,
at least today I do, and I have a right to make that choice?" How do
we hold solidarity with our lesbian and gay sisters and brothers who
do not have the option to pass as straight?

When we say that pleasure is sacred, we take a firm stand on ancient
sacred ground. To affirm pleasure is to affirm life in its deepest
purposes, to value the intimate connections we make, the moments of
ecstasy we experience..

The overall culture greatly fears pleasure, in part as a legacy of our
painful history. Pleasure is mistrusted, seen as evil and demonic, or
at best, something trivial, not really worth the serious attention of
grownups. Sexual pleasure is supposed to be contained within
heterosexual matrimony and to result in procreation. On the other
hand, the secular culture subsumes pleasure to its ultimate value,
which is profit, packaging the erotic and objectifying sexuality in
order to sell products..

To be bisexual, as to be lesbian or gay, is not to lack morality, it
is to uphold a different morality, one which says that each human
being is the keeper of her or his own body, that inherent in our
body's capacity for pleasure is our moral authority to determine just
what sort of pleasure we want to take. It is linked with our stance as
women, that by virtue of our wombs we and only we can be the keepers
of our bodies' reproductive powers. It supports the struggles of those
of us with disabilities to be in charge of their own lives and have
access to full participation in our culture..

When we affirm our sacred right to pleasure, we are affirming life in
its variety, diversity, it's endless arrangements and
rearrangements. We are affirming our participation in the deepest
erotic purposes of the universe.  To assert this right is to assert
the right of the old-growth forest to remain a forest, not a lumber
yard, the right of the sacred mountain to be inviolate, the right of
the stream to flow clean and undammed, the right of every human infant
to be held in loving arms and nourished by loving breasts..

We need to define a new morality based on the honoring of our inner,
body-rooted authority and the integrity of the earth-body of which we
are each a part. We need to understand how our issues are linked with
the issues and struggles of many peoples around the world. Our
interests lie together. We need to envision a new world, one with room
in it for whales and howler monkeys and drag queens and grizzly bears
and ancient sacred tribal lands and leather dykes and plentiful rain
and happily married couples with two point five children and people
who just can't make up their mind and black-white-red-brown-tan-
golden-sepia-chocolate-ivory-ebony and who knows? maybe striped and
spotted ones of us..

For the last five years, I've been working on a book which attempts to
envision that world. It's a novel set in the 21st century, called "The
Fifth Sacred Thing"--and it'll be out by the end of this month. I'd
like to close by reading just a bit of the manifesto which opens the
book, the Declaration of the Four Sacred Things which sets forth the
values of that hopeful world:

"The earth is a living, conscious being. In company with cultures of
many different times and places, we name these things as sacred: air,
fire, water, and earth..

Whether we see them as the breath, energy, blood, and body of the
Mother, or as the blessed gifts of a Creator, or as symbols of the
interconnected systems that sustain life, we know that nothing can
live without them..

To call these things sacred is to say that they have a value beyond
their usefulness for human ends, that they themselves become the
standards by which our acts, our economics, our laws, and our purposes
must be judged.  No one has the right to appropriate them or profit
from them at the expense of others. Any government that fails to
protect them forfeits its legitimacy..

All people, all living things, are part of the earth life, and so are
sacred. No one of us stands higher or lower than any other. Only
justice can assure balance: only ecological balance can sustain
freedom. Only in freedom can that fifth sacred thing we call spirit
flourish in its full diversity..

To honor the sacred is to create conditions in which nourishment,
sustenance, habitat, knowledge, freedom, and beauty can thrive. To
honor the sacred is to make love possible..

To this we dedicate our curiosity, our will, our courage, our silences
and our voices. To this we dedicate our lives..

Copyright (c) 1993 by Starhawk.  All rights reserved.
This copyright protects Starhawk's right to future publication of her work.
Nonprofit, activist, and educational groups may circulate this speech
(forward it, reprint it, translate it, post it, or reproduce it) for
nonprofit uses.  Please do not change any part of it without permission.
Readers are invited to visit the web site: www.starhawk.org.

Sex and the Luscious Fat Lesbian
By Terre Poppe
(first published on the Microsoft Network's ezine site, UnderWire)

If, in 1974, someone had told me that in 20 years I'd be a sexy,
flirtatious, sought-after fat lesbian in her prime, I would have rolled on
the floor laughing. I was just coming out in 1974, a young, fat feminist
leaving my marriage because I finally acknowledged that women were primary
for me.

Back then I didn't know who I was, let alone know what I wanted in a
relationship. So those first few years were full of confusion, exploration,
mistakes, fun times and hard times, growing pains. I spent a lot of time
trying to be what someone else saw in me. I figured that she liked "this"
and so I must be "this" all the time. But usually "this" wasn't really me,
or was only a part of me, and the relationship would founder.
Now, all along I've enjoyed sex. In my earlier life, I even liked sex with
men. Somehow, in spite of my Protestant upbringing, I managed to escape the
indoctrination that I should feel guilt every time I have sex, especially if
I enjoy the sex. I'm not sure how that happened, but I find it a great
blessing in my life. I revel in good sex. And when I had sex with my first
woman lover, it was so qualitatively different (and better) that I had to
rethink my sexuality. What a fun new beginning that was! I like how I feel
when someone is making love to me; I like making my lover feel wonderful too.

My size has been a factor (more earlier than now) in my relationships. My
friends tell me that I am a great friend. They think I'm witty, kind,
compassionate, funny, silly, caring, intelligent. And they love me. Yet when
I've explored the possibility of a sexual relationship with a friend, I have
encountered surprise and confusion and fumbling around.
"Well, er," she says, "I really really like you, Terre. You are a terrific
friend! But, I, uh, don't feel that way about you."
No sexual attraction. No spark like I feel. My suspicions would quickly head
to "She doesn't find me attractive because I'm fat." I used to beat myself
up about it, and then beat myself up because I chose friendship with someone
who could think like that.

Somewhere along the line I realized there were more factors to someone
liking or not liking me than my size. I examined my feelings about myself.
Did I like myself? Love myself? What did I love? Why? What did I not love?
Why? I understood that my relationship with myself was the most important
relationship I could have. And how good a relationship I had with myself had
an impact on every other relationship I might have.

I started spending more time with myself, getting to know and like me, and
part of that was accepting me as I am and not as I might wish to be -
someday, maybe. I began living in the present, pampering myself, not putting
off until tomorrow what I could enjoy today. I became my own lover and
didn't have to have a lover to be sexually satisfied. I explored my own body
and learned what pleased me and gave myself the gift of orgasm and sexual
satisfaction when I wanted it. There was a double bonus from this: I found
that what I liked my lovers also usually liked. I could give them increased
pleasure too. I felt comfortable enough in my own body to let my lover know
what she could do to please me more.

A few years ago I was involved with a wonderful fat lesbian who was much
larger than I. She gave me the gift of truly adoring my body, and I adored
hers back. We took great pleasure in each other, loving every cubic inch of
our luscious fat bodies. We weren't afraid of pressing our bodies together,
didn't fear squashing some smaller woman. We loved our softness and the
rolling majesty of our flesh as we caressed each other. We explored the soft
peaks and layered valleys that made up our bodies. We gave belly laughs a
whole new definition as we jiggled and quaked our enjoyment.
As I realized my lover's very size was a turn on for me, I also perceived
how other women could find that same kind of love, of pleasure, in and with
me. I will never forget this wonderful gift, which I can share with other
women. I am fully present with my lover - there is only us, and all the time
in the world - when we are together. I offer my wholehearted, full-bodied
enjoyment of her touch, of her loving me. I am a silly lover, taking a
child's delight in the most mundane things - the little bubble of
contentment that comes out of my lover's mouth, the number of wrinkles at
the corner of her eye, how even our snoring fits comfortably together.
Who am I today and how dare I write so boldly? I am an audacious,
unrepentant, sexy, fat lesbian. After a dry spell of no lovers except myself
for several years, I was lovers with four different women over the course of
a couple of years, and then I met my current love. We married a year and a
half ago.

I try to live each moment fully and with as much enjoyment (and giving as
much enjoyment) as possible. I stand out in the bright colors I like to wear
- I was noticeable before as a dark mass in those murky colors that are
supposed to slenderize. Since I started wearing the colors I love, the
colors that make me feel good, I am still noticeable, but now it's usually
in a more admiring way, with a grudging respect of my boldness. I am a
bodacious fat lesbian who takes up lots of space.

copyright Terre Poppe
All rights reserved.
Used with permission

Terre Poppe was part of a politically active coven in Washington, DC, in the
late 1970s; she has been a solo practitioner for many years now.  Currently
she resides in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, where she continues her
writing and magic.

Wicca and Body Image

         One of the first books I read on Wicca, I believe it was "A Wiccan Bardo" by Paul Beyerl, mentioned that after practicing the Craft oftentimes the sex appeal of practitioners would begin to increase. I looked at it with interest, and personal denial. I was NOT sexy. I was fat. I was the person who was teased by my male friends about being cute with my pot-belly, knowing that the subtext was my pot-belly kept them from finding me sexually attractive. I was cute like a little sister, a 19 year old with baby fat. Yet, as I practiced, I found that the Goddess accepted me as I was. The Goddess was fat, and fertile, and sexy. I was a reflection of the Goddess, with a willful escape from the fertility part. I began drawing pentacles that were a little thick in the legs and the middle -- so the pentacle would look like my body at its healthiest. The psychological event occured: I felt good about myself, and I was sexy.  I realized the Goddess was thin and delicate, too --- or fat and sexy like me.

         My body image has always affected my spirituality, and continues to do so. When I have "I hate my body" days, I feel like I just can't connect with the Lord and Lady. I am imperfect, I am not worthy.  Perhaps it's a carry-over from my Christian days, when that Bible verse about "your body is your temple" would be quoted in every Sunday School class I took while the teachers or my pastor glared at me. I was offensive, I was sinning, because my metabolism could not keep up with societal demands. It sank into my being that I was always a step behind my potential because my size held me back. Although I have finally become comfortable with the idea of myself as sexy, I still have to work hard to maintain that recognition of myself. Thanks to those helpful quoters of the Bible.  The negative perception of my body came from my early spiritual life, and it tainted the pool I draw from for my adult spirituality. After years of self-cleansing, I still find occassional spots of that poison.

         When I came into paganism, I began to realize a few things. The first was that I was not alone in my body image troubles, and that they had been a subconscious factor in my attraction to paganism. A female deity is a deity who understands PMS, bad hair days and the need for freedom from the enslavement of beauty -- so that we can move into real beauty. When I found the Goddess, I began to find that freedom.  When I went to the Women and Sprituality Conference in Mankato, I noticed fat women and thin women celebrating themselves and each other. Gone was the tacit seperation or the condescending accompaniment of the thin to the fat. When I have attended pagan rituals and gatherings, I have noticed that men and women move about freely, not caring about their images as they all come from the Lord and Lady. But I have also heard a dichotomy, much reflective of the hateful way that Bible verse was used on me: "Shouldn't they take better care of themselves? I thought in paganism harm none means taking care of yourelf?"

         Perhaps this dichotomy reflects some of the internal bickerings between certain groups about "Barbie doll" Goddesses or "Dyke" Goddesses. Although ultimately we all do belong to the Ancients we have pledged ourselves to, as a result of sibling rivarly we all try to divide ourselves into groups and name ourselves as the favored ones. Body type, like skin color, can be one of the easiest ways to do this. There is still an overall ignorance about the reality of overweight people -- that we are not gluttonness, lazy or neccessarily out of shape. Although pagans as a whole attempt to enlighten themselves, the comments I've heard from older and younger members of the community suggest there remains serious ignorance regarding what is mostly a natural variation in body type. We may not be violating the Rede by wearing our bodies as is -- in fact, for some, staying overweight might mean adhering to it.

         I must emphasise here: health is important. It helps us function in our daily lives, it makes our bodies strong conduits for magickal energies and it helps us absorb the shocks that magickal life often brings us. I think the damaging error comes in that some people mistake "perfection" for health. The human body was not made to be perfect; it is a temporary vessel that needs maintenance. Part of our spiritual work involves living in and increasing our ability to maintain that body.  But, eventually, it will break down as it is meant to break down.  Weight may or may not be a factor in that breakdown, depending on the person.  No matter what we look like or how we pray, we are all equalized by death. Weight loss or gain - or any change in the body, whether from natural or manufactured cause - leads to a transformation of self from the outside to the inside. We change who we are in appearance to gain something usually intangible - better health, attention, strength - many of these reasons are also the reasons we engage in personal spells or rituals. To change the physical appearance of the body is to actively seek a form of death, as death is recognized as the ultimate form of transformation that occurs in many ways throughout a single lifetime.

         Knowing that the same critical eye has followed me and others in my situation  from my prior socio-religious world to my pagan religious world does upset me a bit: one of the most stifling aspects of my childhood was the people kindly taking me aside and telling me I needed to lose some weight. They were actually more insulting than the people who yelled comments about the shape and size of my derriere from pick-up trucks. Perhaps it would have made a difference if I had my elbow tugged on less frequently than once a day from a different person every time.  Evidently, since I was a nice girl, I didn't "deserve" to be fat, but since I was "fat" I "deserved" the insulting behavior. I know without asking I am not alone in this experience.

Although it upsets me, I can trace in part where this form of criticism re-appeared in modern paganism Gerald Gardner saw fit to create a Craft Law stating that a High Priestess should be physically beautiful, and young. Notably, no such requirement was made of a High Priest. Many groups, whether descended from Gardner or created seperately, have dropped these requirements. Placing demands on the body when the cause of those problems may well be outside of the control of the person is unfair, and fortunately more than a few pagan groups recognize this.  Aging is beyond the control of all the pagans I know, no matter how good their magick. Beauty can be created by many, but to create an illusion really cheats a group out of the unique qualities both visually and astrally that each person carries with him or herself.

         I contend that body image questions are one of the seperators among the pagan population, but, fortunately, not as much of a separator as it once was. Many women in particular have come to the pagan world to heal -- and many of those injuries come from the demands that our bodies look a certain way.  The pagan ideology I first encountered freed me from my own concepts of what the human body should look like, and re-focused me on how my body should feel. When we move our consciousness away from our own stereotypes of what is good and bad, and ask honest questions about the way we live, the question of body image is one more divider that can be removed from our community.

 Medea
 Elder, Shadowmoon Coven
 Mistress of the Coven Ezine