Thelemic Pantheon
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One other point:
The word 'whore,' in English, usually refers to a woman who has sex with multiple partners. That can <i>include</i> prostitutes, but is by no means restricted to them. I know women who prefer this lifestyle, and feel fulfilled by it.
A 'prostitute' is someone who is selling his or her body to another who wants to use it for some kind of sexual act. I have known several women who have worked in the sex-trade, and a couple of men. They found it interesting, but also self-destructive: that is, not a valid expression of their True Wills, except perhaps as an educational experience.
Share your body with someone else, and you retain control. Sell it, even temporarily, and you have lost that control. You might literally have to fight to regain it, from what I've been told.
A whore can be free, a prostitute always risks slavery.
Edward
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Edward,
You speak for me. I don't like the term whore,either. I am not uptight or known to be a victorian nun. I was pretty friendly, hey.
Why is a woman is considered a slut if she is indisciminate with how many men she sleeps with? Or if she has done so quite a bit? If that is the criteria, then many men are sluts, too. Actually, most of the men I know. Many partners?
However there are women who have no problem with musical lyrics that have the term whore or 'ho. Chris Rock did a show, where he said he loved rap, but the lyrics were not respectful. That is why he couldn't understand all the sisters who dance to it, rapping along to music - who would lay a guy low who called them a ho to their face.
Guess, like all words, it is the context it is being used that matters, and the attitude it is done in.
In L.V.X.,
chrys333 -
Hi Chris, 93,
" You speak for me. I don't like the term whore,either. I am not uptight or known to be a victorian nun. I was pretty friendly, hey.
Why is a woman is considered a slut if she is indisciminate with how many men she sleeps with? Or if she has done so quite a bit? If that is the criteria, then many men are sluts, too. Actually, most of the men I know. Many partners?
However there are women who have no problem with musical lyrics that have the term whore or 'ho. Chris Rock did a show, where he said he loved rap, but the lyrics were not respectful. That is why he couldn't understand all the sisters who dance to it, rapping along to music - who would lay a guy low who called them a ho to their face.
Guess, like all words, it is the context it is being used that matters, and the attitude it is done in. "I don't have a problem with the word 'whore' if it's a self-chosen title. I think Anne-Marie was saying she's fine with it, and that's fine with me. I don't have the answer on why men aren't accused of sluttiness, other than that the balance of the sexes is still way off. I assume the whole thing of hos from rap is similar - it's self-identification of oneself as a sexual outlaw, a label worn with a certain pride in the freedom it confers. "Look at me, I can {shag} too" (The Moderator or some automated software apparently alters the F-word if it shows up here.)
As the last post pointed out it, Kelley was freaked out by the idea of the Whore, since as a man living at a time when Revelation of St John was viewed literally, he found the concept way beyond his comfort zone. There's a deliberate provocation to its use in Thelema, as with the term 'Beast.' It's a jolt to everyday consciousness structures.
I find it easiest to relate to the archetypal level with Babalon, or at the very least the Yetziratic idea, then work back down to Assiah. That keeps the essential concept clearer, and makes the physical result less confusing on the personality level. I also note that few if any serious practitioners that I've known seem able to sustain a regimen of one or two partners a week. The majority seem to prefer stable, long-term set-ups, which are based on established trust, and permit a subtler exploration of polarity.
93 93/93,
Edward
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Anne-Claire,
"My name is Anne-Claire."
My apologies.
Edward
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@Edward Mason said
"Perhaps there's a cultural divide here between North American and European perceptions, but there has been a major debate on this continent in the past couple of decades over this whole issue. "
It is yet a serious misinterpretation to compare America to the whole European continent, where (at least in the west) each country has a people, an history, a "personality", a culture, which is totally different from even its most direct neighbours, so that "European perception" don't exist.
On the other hand, if one compares French and American perceptions, yes, indeed, I can't help being stupefied by your reaction, coming from a 57-years-old Thelemite.
But my English is so bad that I may not have been very readable, and I will try to renew my statement more sedately - -
I suppose you read Eliphas Levi, another wicked French, since your avatar is the pentagram drawn by him.
So, you do have an idea about what is meant by "analogy in the three worlds".
In this case, there is no need to be French to understand that:-
A woman offers herself:
a. When she desires someone.
b. When she wants to amuse herself.
c. In return for a material gain. -
This tripartite structure is to be found, in the first place, in the highest form of womanhood, the divine form of the Goddess:
a. Life offers all Her blessings to him who has been able to subdue Her (the Magician)
b. She dispenses high-and-lows, full of joyous new developments, to him who knows how to charm Her (say, the "extraordinary character", the illustrious person, etc)
c. She allows a rationned subsistence in return of a tedious work to the man-of-the-herd. (every mediocre people.) -
And, of course, this tripartite structure (harmony making no exception) is to be found again in the most "incarnated" expression of womanhood, the prostitute, with:
a. Her pimp.
b. Her gigolo.
c. Her johns.
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So, this analogy was not only meant to be funny, but to illustrate the universality of the principle "as above, so below", and "kether is in malkuth, and malkuth in kether, but in another way", so that we are fully justified when we see, like the tantrikas of Anne-Claire, the Pure Divinity in a low-birth prostitute, and, inversely, when we call the great goddess Babalon a Whore.
Above and below are One, but in a perpetual motion, like it is expressed by our emblem, the lovely star, or unicursal hexagram.
It is deplorable indeed that some moral conditionned-reflex drives you to try to separate Heaven and Earth and so to perpetuate the error of Judeo-Christianity. -
Believe me, dear Edward, life is fantastic.
Of course, She may seem crude to those who try to restrict Her to the artificial standards of a soap-opera - But she is always coherent.
And, once again, harmonious without an exception.
So, when we are able to see the goddess hidden in a hooker, and to realise that the formula "life's a bitch" can be a thanksgiving, we understand this harmony. And understand that gods and goddesses are not concepts - they live - For, where there is an order, there is an intelligence.
Get rid, dear Edward, of knee-jerk politically-correct reactions, they can only harm your intelligence.
A Thelemite sees things as they are, not as the Modest Woman, who has her axe to grind, would like them to be. -
Merlin, 93,
I am not sure how much is getting lost in translation here.
I am not saying anything at all against the idea of the divine whore as an archetype or a goddess, and I am not saying anything about a woman - or a man - who choose to express herself or himself sexually in any manner. But your own original post said:
", for any woman, there are only three types of persons: the one who gives her money to be received by her (trick, or john), the one she receives to have fun and with whom she spends money (gigolo), the one she receives because she's in love with him and to whom she gives money (pimp). "
I still dispute that. The problem I see is that men can use their social position of power to hurt women. Ultimately, the woman is also responsible for what occurs to her, but a truly Thelemic society has no need of prostitutes. Do you understand my earlier post about the difference between a prostitute and a whore?
", there is no need to be French to understand that:
- A woman offers herself:
a. When she desires someone.
b. When she wants to amuse herself.
c. In return for a material gain. "
The Book of the Law tells us to "take your fill of love as ye will, where when and with whom ye will! But always unto me." That is the opposite of prostitution - it is a free giving of self, with no expectation of an outcome. It totally rejects the notion of 'material gain'.
Ownership and paymentare Old Aeon ideas.
I can see the goddess hidden in a hooker - the problem is, the hooker rarely finds that goddess, only the drugs she is using to dull her pain. Perhaps you have not known any women who are former prostitutes? Their stories are not usually about being goddesses.
93 93/93,
Edward Mason
- A woman offers herself:
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@Edward Mason said
"Ownership and paymentare Old Aeon ideas"
I do totally agree indeed!!! The misunderstanding between us relies on the fact that I am taking examples in life as it is, whereas you are talking about life as it should be.
When the Law of Thelema will be generally accepted, and I hope to live long enough to see this, such a discussion will be ridiculously lapsed, you are right.
In the meanwhile, I perfectly understood what you wrote, and I insist: the crudeness of life must not drive us to deny reality, even using vocabulary distorsions.
Besides, as Thelemites, I think we should stop considering women as men-in-a-lower-stage-of-evolution, or to see them like "philanthropists" of the old days used to see "savages". The real feminism is to see women as women, and they are usually much fiercer and more efficient than men when it comes to tackle life.
As you said, each person is responsible for oneself: you cannot hurt kings, and there are men who are much more tied by the bounds of mariage, morality and conventions than women by social male supremacy, which does not really exist anymore.
Moreover, melodramas of those who choose to see themselves rather as victims than as gods are totally deprived of any interest.