"Throughout the centuries and across cultures, they might have been known as sacred prostitute, temple priestess, sexual healer, sacred whore, Tantrika, or FireWoman. Euphemistically, today they might be called women of the night-in a general sense, they all exchange sex for money. For me, they are women of the light, not light in contrast to dark or black or night, but light in contrast to unaware, unconscious, repression/suppression, and denial.
What makes these friends unique in contemporary times is not that they are compensated for their sexual expression-in some way most of us enter somewhere into the equation of time, attention, affection, security, and other indirect exchanges for sexual connection, marriage being the predominant form in our culture. What makes women of the light unique is that they exchange consciously. Even more important, they provide a context of compassion and wisdom in the exchange. They are teachers of the heart. They are visionaries, stepping outside of constrictive, traditional beliefs about women and men. Their bodies are their temples, to which they invite others. Their purpose is to support a deeper discovery of the spiritual flame that burns within us all. Sexual energy, in a broad sense, is this flame.
In Palaeolithic and Neolithic times, when "God" was more likely to have been female than male, it seems to have been common for women and men to serve in the temples as spiritual-sexual teachers, healers, and priest/ess, at least in European and Middle Eastern areas prior to the rise of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Today women of the light no longer have a public temple where they can share their sacred ceremonies openly. There is no lineage down through which the sacred mysteries can be revealed from high priest/ess to initiate. Legally, socially, and religiously, the sacred prostitute is out in the cold. Without the temple, without an unbroken lineage, these women have been pioneers in a re-emergence of these ancient teachings and now are becoming the elders, the holders of the wisdom, as most enter their fifties, sixties, and even their seventies."
Excerpted from Women of The Light, Kenneth Ray Stubbs
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