feminism

The Wild Lover’s Ten Commandments: Sensual Wisdom from Magdalene’s Tongue.

 

She did not descend from a mountain, and I was not lost in a sandy dreamscape.

We stood at the cliff’s side overlooking a wild sea, a fierce wind tossing her unkempt curls and bidding us to step back from the rocks. The picture of feminine longing, we were. Her hands were busy peeling a vegetable foreign to me, and she seemed much more solitary Witch than lover of Christ.

I told her all my secrets then, though she knew most of them already. We looked the same age, this Priestess and I, but her wisdom was ancient and pervaded her entire being as if only her aura needed be licked to taste the ire of Lilith. Every lover’s wound lived inside of her, and she humored me while I ran through my list of petty gripes and grievances.

Not once did she roll her eyes while I bemoaned countless betrayals and losses, and never did she condescend and ask me to relinquish my selfhood for the sake of partnership.

By the time I finished, the sky was violet and the New Moon was high. She was holding me close, and whisper-crooning a tune born from a culture I did not know, in a language I did not speak. She kissed me between lines, and I laid my hand on her heart to feel the resonating pulse-beat of the Feminine Divine.

The words she spoke next dripped from her full lips like sweet brew blessed by a chocolate alchemist, and they will never be carved onto any stone tablet. I willed myself to remember every word; had I a knife, I would have cut the Magdalene’s wisdom on my skin, but instead I devoured her commandments and forced them to sink their red, throbbing roots into every cell of my body.

I let her lovers’ poetry penetrate every rigid wall I had built inside my hungry heart and darkened womb, and I vowed to live my remaining days as a living, cosmic sex-prayer.

“Thou shalt know your longing as holy,” the Priestess began. “There is magick within your Witch’s will and temptress’ desire, the Iccha Shakti. Let your wanting be a benediction in its own right, and rush not to fulfillment too quickly. Revel in the endless night before your lover’s return, the rise of the hand before it touches your cheek, the static before the lightning strikes, and the breathless pause before the sun rises above the black tree tops; this is the stuff of nature’s lust.”

I fell back on the ground and crushed my eyes shut while she leaned over me and continued. “You are Parvati’s hips swaying for Shiva, the Witch waiting in the woods for her devil, and my bare-breasted heart-drum beating for Christ. Do not shun the in-between moments. Learn to harness what it is to want. Better, learn to live in the want, and you will tap into a sacred well of soul-deep passion in which only the wildest lovers can swim.”

I exhaled long and slow, letting my legs fall open, and rolled my tongue along the roof of my mouth in the slowest of spirals.

“Thou shalt let your love fall and rise in waves of unbridled sexuality, quiet spiritual connection, and generative bursts of creative fusion. Both of you are at once Maiden, Mother, Crone and Hunter, Father, Sage. Let your lover’s rhythms move as they will, and, my love, do not let your lover cage your wild. You will not wake the same woman tomorrow who sits with me now, and your ever-changing nature is an ode to collective Feminine’s swelling and thinning. Let us expect no one to remain the same, and let us declare our right to be a glistening-skinned, plump temple dancer one moment, and a bone-thin, wise elder the next.”

The Priestess began tracing my collarbone with her warm tongue, and I held my breath. I rested in the pure yearning as she had instructed, resisting every primal urge to crush her soft body close to mine, and she continued:

“Thou shalt show your lover the rawest version of yourself you know, for you both deserve the most beautiful and soulful medicine that is you. So, too, expect your lover to always reveal her truest face. A loving and wild relationship is sustained by two souls doing their own work in this wounded world, coming together to nourish the third entity that is their venerable relationship as if it were a fragile, innocent babe. I exist without my God-among-men, and he without me. Any lover can exist alone; it is a soul-designed decision to partner with another for an enduring amount of time, to sacrifice entire years of cocooned introspection and sacred solitude, but, my Witch, the wild lover never surrenders to being tethered.”

She spoke into my skin, kissing down my body while I fixed my gaze moonward and bit my lip.

“Always stay wild. Thou art contained by no relationship. Every late-night confession, sensual benediction, and candlelit communion is a step in the cosmic lovers’ dance; some are planned, and some are quite spontaneous. Some dances will last a lifetime, and others will barely last the duration of a single song. None of them define who you are in your bones.”

I drifted into a trance in that moment, getting lost in the pulsing stars above me and the rhythmic flick of her tongue between my thighs like an exclamation mark at the end of her every sentence. “Thou shalt remember who you are! You are not who they said you should be! You are not who you fuck! You are not light! You are not dark! You are the mystic radiance of the North, East, South, and West! You are the Child of Light and holy hell-spawn come together in Tantric fusion!”

Everything dissolved into a burst of diamond light then. I wondered if I had been licked to death, but I could still hear her. “Thou shalt know the impermanence of your lover’s touch, for our very flesh is temporary. One moment my God-among-men was inside of me, and the next moment he was gone. Relish the longing while you can, for spirits know no physical satiation, no cycles of desire and satisfaction.

To long is human, and the longing of lovers is the most beauteous force in existence. Lust after pleasure, and let them call you a demoness. Thou shalt demand pleasure like you demand to be heard. Raise your voice, and make yourself known to those who claim to love you.”

The Priestess’ voice trailed off, and all I could hear was the sound of the ocean gushing in time with my breath. When my eyes could focus again, I saw my own face reflected in her black-mirror eyes. She traced ancient, unfamiliar symbols onto my belly while my heart slowed, and she whispered into my ear so loudly I swore her voice was sourced from inside of my aching ribs: “Thou shalt tell your lover, and tell her fearlessly, what you truly want out of this life.

Open yourself to her answer too, knowing your name may not be spoken, and commit to deep truth-telling. Thou shalt speak from the Maiden’s sensual presence, the Mother’s compassionate heart, and the Crone’s wise spirit.”

I fell asleep in the arms of Christ’s lover, cradled against the bare breasts of the Sacred Feminine, and thanking her for her holy truth. Just before I sank into my depths, she gifted me with a final commandment: “Thou shalt let your love run wild. Let it wax in high-fire flows of molten lava, peak at fruition, then cool into renewed form before crumbling to dust; should it be born again, it will be because each of the lovers’ souls are served. Hold steadfast to your selfhood and surrender to the many seasons of a wild relationship. May you pray with your luscious body, and may you bless us all with the holy water running down your legs over and over and over again. May you revel in sacred solitude but never be lonely.

All blessings to you, my lover. Until we meet again, all blessings.”

***

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Danielle Dulsky

Danielle Dulsky

Danielle Dulsky is a heathen visionary, Aquarian mischief-maker, and word-witch. Author of 'Seasons of Moon and Flame: The Wild Dreamer’s Epic Journey of Becoming', 'The Holy Wild: A Heathen Bible for the Untamed Woman' and 'Woman Most Wild' (New World Library 2020, 2018, 2017), Danielle teaches internationally and has facilitated embodiment trainings, wild circles, communal spell-work, and seasonal rituals since 2007. She is the founder of The Hag School and the lead teacher for the school’s Flame-Tender Facilitator Training and online coven, The Hag Ways Collective, an E-RYT 500 and YACEP, a Fire-Keeper for Ord Brighideach, and a dedicant to Irish-Celtic spirituality. She believes in the power of wild collectives and sudden circles of curious dreamers, cunning witches, and rebellious artists as well as the importance of ancestral healing, embodiment, and animism in fracturing the longstanding systems supporting environmental unconsciousness and social injustice. Parent to two beloved wildings and partner to a potter, Danielle fills her world with nature, family, art-making, poetry, and intentional awe.
Danielle Dulsky