Georg Feuerstein was an internationally recognized yoga scholar who began studying yoga at the age of fourteen. He is the author of The Essence of Yoga, Lucid Waking, The Philosophy of Classical Yoga, Sacred Sexuality, and The Yoga-Sutra of Patañjali.

Acknowledgments

Preface

Part I. Contemporary Sexuality: Its Failures and Possibilities

1. Taking Stock: The Sexual Wasteland
The Age of Sexual Bewilderment
The Sexual Stress Syndromes

2. Tracing the Roots of the Modern Sexual Dilemma
Guilt: The Feeling of Being Found Out
Shame: The Feeling of Being Unworthy
Our Heritage of Sexual Guilt and Shame
The Denial of the Body
Guilt, Shame, and Ecstasy
Sexual Addiction as Avoidance of Bliss
The Quest for Transcendence
From Sexual Malaise to the Loss of the Sacred

3. The Hidden Window: Spiritual Breakthroughs in Sex
Sex, Love, and Transcendence
The Power of Love: Erotic and Spiritual Breakthroughs
Sex: The Hidden Window

Part II. Sacred Sex Through the Ages

4. Sacred Sex and the Goddess: Ancestral Wisdom
The Erotic Cult of the Great Mother
An Erotic Flashback to 20,000 BC.
Sex, Magic, and the Life-Force
The Sexual Tragedy of Agriculture
The Goddess and Her Lover

5. Sacred Marriage and Sacred Prostitution
Hieros Gamos: The Sacred Marriage
The Phallic Principle
Phallic Worship
The Rule of the Phallus in Greece
Sacred Prostitution in Ancient Greece
The Sexual Servants of Mesopotamia and Egypt
The Temple Prostitutes of India
The Story of Sunta
The Contemporary Reappraisal of Sacred Prostitution

6. Erotic Spirituality in the Mystery Traditions
The Mystery Cults of the Ancient World
The Corn Mother Demeter and Her Votaries
Dionysos: God of Wine and Ecstasy
The Phallic Orpheus
Pan: The Lusty Goat-God
Cybele and Attis
The Mystery Cult of Isis and Osiris

7. Spiritual Eroticism in]udaism
Sex, Power, and the Goddess among the Ancient Hebrews
The Hebrew Sexual Heritage

8. The Eclipse of Eros in the Christian Tradition
The Christian Sexual Heritage
Mary: Virginal Mother and Bride of Christ
Eve, the First Man, and Guilt

9. The Medieval Love Mystics, East and West
The Resurgence of Eros in the Middle Ages
The Troubadours: Erotic Idolators
The Lover Within: Bridal Mysticism
The Mystical Eros in Islam and Judaism
On the Nuptial Couch with Krishna: The Hindu Version of Bridal Mysticism

10. The Jewel in the Lotus: The Lessons of Tantrism
The Secret Circle: A Story Set in India Around 1200 A.D.
Tantrism: The Historical and Cultural Context
Maithuna: The Love-Play of God and Goddess
The Serpent Power and the Transmutation of Sexual Energy
Tantric Eroticism and Freudian Sublimation

11. The Sexual Tao: The Chinese Way of Circulating Life-Energy
Tao: The Nameless Way beyond God and Goddess
The Tao of Sex: White Tiger and Green Dragon

12. Sexual Magic and Neo-Paganism
Sex Magic and the Magic of Sex
The Magical Power of Semen
The Reawakening of the Goddess in Neo-Paganism

13. The New Erotic Christianity
Alan Watts and Incarnational Theology
Toward a Nonpuritan Christianity
Matthew Fox and the Erotic Christ

Part III. The Challenge of Sacred Sex Today

14. Sex as Energy and Communion
The Sexual Threshold between the Secular and the Sacred
The Erotic Implications of Einstein's Theorem
Psychiatric Interlude: From Freudian Libido to Reichian Orgone
Sex and Evolutionary Energy
Spiritual Work with the Psychocosmic Energy
Sexual Communion

15. Toward an Erotic Spirituality for Today
Coming Down to Earth
Finding the Sacred in the Ordinary
God, Goddess, arid Intimacy
Ritual Beyond Neurosis

Notes

Recommended Reading

Index

A historical, cross-cultural survey of sexuality as a sacred spiritual practice
• Examines sacred sexuality in the world's religious and mystery traditions
• Explores contemporary "sexual stress syndrome" resulting from the absence of the sacred in sexual practice
• Reveals how to find the sacred in the ordinary
This book examines the history of sexuality as a sacramental act. In spite of our culture's recent sexual liberalizations, sexual intimacy often remains unfulfilling. Georg Feuerstein instructs that the fulfillment we long for in our sex lives can only be attained once we have explored the spiritual depths of our erotic natures.
Feuerstein delves into a wide variety of spiritual traditions--including Christianity, Judaism, goddess worship, Taoism, and Hinduism--in search of sacred truths regarding sexuality. He reveals that all of these great teachings share the hidden message that spirituality is, in essence, erotic and that sexuality is inherently spiritual. From the erotic cult of the Great Mother and the archaic ritual of hieros gamos (sacred marriage) to the institution of sacred prostitution and the erotic spirituality practiced in the mystery traditions, Feuerstein offers a wealth of historical practices and perspectives that serve as the bases for a positive sexual spirituality suited to our contemporary needs.