I was born on the last day of the year of the Wood Dragon in January 1965 and I am writing this on the final day of the Wood Dragon year 2024-5. With Sun in Aquarius and my Moon in Capricorn, my lunar return is happening as I write and my 60th solar return justContinue reading “RIDING THE WOOD DRAGON”
Author Archives: shokti
Jesus Had A Boyfriend
“Certainly, the most controversial same-sex couple in the Christian tradition comprised Jesus and… the beloved disciple. The relationship between them was often depicted in subsequent art and literature as intimate, if not erotic.” John Boswell, historian “For centuries, the beloved disciple has remained a powerful metaphor for homoerotic friendship and love, and even today gay menContinue reading “Jesus Had A Boyfriend”
Carpenter on God as Male & Female
Quoted from Intermediate Types Among Primitive Peoples (published 1914), Edward Carpenter points out that ancient traditions around the world viewed the creator God, and the first humans created, as uniting both male and femaleness in one being: “…the reason or reasons for this tendency must be accounted quite deep-rooted and anything but fanciful. One reason,Continue reading “Carpenter on God as Male & Female”
The Gay Spirituality Library
A reading list of inspired and informative, liberating and enlightening texts about the spirituality of love between men. C19 and more ancient roots: Walt Whitman Leaves of Grass (especially the sections Song of Myself and Calamus) 19th century poetic visions of love between men Edward Carpenter Iolaus (1902) “…draws on and quotes from a panoplyContinue reading “The Gay Spirituality Library”
Cambridge LGBT Alumni Gather
I am attending the Cambridge University LGBT+ Alumni Association Annual Dinner at Girton College this weekend – and staying overnight at Churchill College, the first night I will have spent there since I graduated in 1986! The LGBT+ Alumni Association “aims to provide a personal and professional network for LGBT+ alumni, to promote awareness aroundContinue reading “Cambridge LGBT Alumni Gather”
Summer Solstice 2024
The long, wet Winter was followed by the chilly, wet Spring – but as we reach the Summer Solstice some heat and sunshine seems finally to be coming to Albion. On life’s ever spinning journey it’s extremely helpful to remember that we humans are not separate from the seasons, the weather, we are not separateContinue reading “Summer Solstice 2024”
The Long War on Trans and Gay People
As Spring approaches and a UK General Election looms, the debased and immoral Tories continue their cultural war against so-called ‘gender ideology’, with the vitriol directed mainly at born males who embody a strong feminine energy – transgender, effeminate, epicene, androgyne, mollie, intermediate type, woman-ish man: there have always been terms, in societies across theContinue reading “The Long War on Trans and Gay People”
The Witch of Gay Liberation
“Many mystics and psychics predict that the coming Age of Aquarius, the water bearer, spells an end to organized religion, especially Christianity, and that it will combine the best elements of a pagan past and modern thought culminating in the rise of various independent religious groups the world over.” Leo Martello, Gay Liberation Front Member,Continue reading “The Witch of Gay Liberation”
All Life Is One
In the Mother’s world all life is One There’s no need to seek ascension. No need to chase enlightenment: Just know it’s already here. Humanity lost the plot When it succumbed to fear – When it killed its shaman priests, And suppressed the spiritual power of women… Ever since then humanity has been driven ByContinue reading “All Life Is One”
FAERIE! Know Thyself! Be Thyself!
Oscar Wilde: ‘Know thyself’ was written over the portal of the antique world. Over the portal of the new world, ‘Be thyself’ shall be written. Harry Hay: Faeries everywhere must begin to stand tall and beautiful in the sun. Faeries must begin to throw off the filthy green frog-skin of Hetero-imitation and discover the lovelyContinue reading “FAERIE! Know Thyself! Be Thyself!”
The She in the He is the She in EveryBody
People are the mystery: some are sexy, some are stubborn, others are flexi; some people create and others just consume, some follow the trends, some sing their own tune. Some suffer, some party, some find the world when they lose everything. Some praise, some complain many are lost in the game. Some waken, some soarContinue reading “The She in the He is the She in EveryBody”
Lesbians Foresee the Glorious Age
In their book Lesbian peoples : material for a dictionary, joint authors Monique Wittig, and Sande Zeig, (the English translation of Brouillon Pour Un Dictionnaire Des Amantes, first published in 1976 – literal meaning Draft for a Dictionary of Lovers), look at historical and modern times from the perspective of a future ‘Glorious Age’ onContinue reading “Lesbians Foresee the Glorious Age”
Madonna & Child
The imagery of the Madonna and Child symbolises the deep relationship between the Great Mother Spirit and humanity. This symbol can be found way back into pre-Christian times, in the statues for example of Isis and Horus – the New Testament stories bring the ancient stories about the heavenly gods into the manifest, human realm,Continue reading “Madonna & Child”
The Pagan Days of Christmas
The pagan peoples of old Europe considered the days around the Winter Solstice to be very sacred, they considered them powerful times to celebrate their relationship with the Gods, nature spirits and ancestors. In the Roman Empire this was the season of Saturnalia, a time of feasting in celebration of Saturn, the supreme God inContinue reading “The Pagan Days of Christmas”
Solstice Sunlight
Let there be harmony between comrades, Let the real games begin – The old story wearing thin. Industrial military complex burning up the earth, Time for collective conscious rebirth. Solstice beckons, The light within renewed, Held by the Mother SpiritWe are making it throughThe shift of the Ages, The Apogee of Rages.Apotheosis for the species,FulfilmentContinue reading “Solstice Sunlight”
The Rise of the Sacred Androgyne
The sacred androgyne is the archetype of the Divine Self within us, sitting there both as the eternal Magical Child of the Gods and as the Adult who has achieved maturity, peace, wisdom and lightness, through experience of both joy and pain, and through the inner union of their ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ components. The sacredContinue reading “The Rise of the Sacred Androgyne”
Holy Womens’ Mysteries
Zsuzsanna Emese Budapest was born in Budapest in 1940, into a family with a long heritage of female herbalists and healers. She escaped to the West after the Hungarian Revolution and won a scholarship to the University of Chicago. In her 30s she got involved in the world of American feminism, where she found anContinue reading “Holy Womens’ Mysteries”
Harding on Goddess Priests
Mary Esther Harding (1888-1971) was a Jungian psychoanalyst, born in Shropshire, England, who lived for many years in New York with her long-time companion Kirstine Mann, and wrote books which Jung said, “sketched a picture of the feminine psyche which, in scope and thoroughness, far surpasses previous works in this field.” In her book Women’sContinue reading “Harding on Goddess Priests”
subject:SUBJECT
“When we begin to love and respect Great Mother Nature’s gift to us of gayness, we’ll discover that the bondage of our childhood and adolescence in the trials and tribulations of neitherness was actually an apprenticeship for teaching her children new cutting edges of consciousness and social change. In stunning paradox, our neitherness is ourContinue reading “subject:SUBJECT”
Shaman Psalm
A poem by James Broughton (1913-1999), included in his collection Ecstasies, published 1983.
The Androgyne Journal
The Androgyne Journal is James Broughton’s record of a few weeks in his life in 1960 when he experienced a soul awakening in nature, his inner female and male merging to take him through the gates of cosmic consciousness. The Journal was published in the late 70s and reprinted early 90s. Here’s a few excerptsContinue reading “The Androgyne Journal”
The Gay Lovers of Apollo
“In order to free homosexuality from being viewed through the lens of pathology and perversity, we may need to return it to the gods.” Christine Downing, Myths and Mysteries of Same Sex Love. Greek historian Plutarch (lived 46-c119 CE), who was himself a priest of Apollo, wrote in his work Parallel Lives: ‘And there isContinue reading “The Gay Lovers of Apollo”
In Eternity… All Humanity
Have I finally ACCEPTED that a year is short? That to live anywhere but the moment is to reduce one’s true self to naught? That the past must be forgiven, instantly sometimes, that things held onto just feed our shadow drives. BUT HOW TO KNOW what lurks within and beneath the fluttering mind? What doesContinue reading “In Eternity… All Humanity”
Bent is the Path of Eternity
“All things pass, all things return; eternally turns the wheel of Being. All things die, all things blossom again, eternal is the year of Being. All things break, all things are joined anew; eternally the house of Being builds itself the same. All things part, all things welcome each other again; eternally the ring ofContinue reading “Bent is the Path of Eternity”
The Uranian Vision
INTRODUCTION In the late 19th century, as the new science of psychology grappled with the notion of same sex love, the new term ‘homosexual’ did not sit well with some gay men, who believed that nature created queer people for much more than sex. Uranian was a term for same-sex lovers and genderfluid people favouredContinue reading “The Uranian Vision”
Laws that Punish Love: A History
It was in the 4th century CE that the first laws were enacted to punish gender-variant and same-sex attracted men, by Roman Emperors who had adopted Christianity as their, and the Empire’s, religion. In the Greek civilisation, which heavily influenced the Roman, gay male relationships had played a significant role in civilian life and inContinue reading “Laws that Punish Love: A History”
Eros: Ancient God of Love
In the civilisations of ancient Europe LOVE was regarded as a primordial, winged deity: In Hesiod’s Theogony (Greece, C8 BCE) only Chaos and Gaia were said to be older. EROS was the last God to be born from the fundamental, raw, divine energies of Creation – after him, other gods manifested through the union ofContinue reading “Eros: Ancient God of Love”
Sunak’s Disgrace
“This is a great move from a world leader,” says a pundit on Fox News in the USA about the UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s comment that “we shouldn’t get bullied into believing that people can be any sex they want to be – they can’t. A man is a man and a woman isContinue reading “Sunak’s Disgrace”
The Universe is an Ongoing Orgasm
The Universe is an ongoing orgasm the cosmic flow of bliss… Existence created through an almighty explosion that continues to bubble and hiss… and sex in the body is designed to attune us to this… Science nods to this with its Big Bang Theory but sees only a material ejaculation, ignores the fact that allContinue reading “The Universe is an Ongoing Orgasm”
Early C20 Fairies
In 1904 publisher Bernard Madfadden denounced “the shoals of painted, perfumed, Kohl-eyed, lisping, mincing youths that at night swarm on Broadway in the Tenderloin section, or haunt the parks and 5th Avenue, ogling every man that passes…” In the following decade another New Yorker declared that “our streets and beaches are overrun by… fairies.” GayContinue reading “Early C20 Fairies”
Walking Each Other Home
Gay spiritual teacher Ram Dass said we are all walking each other home… But home to where? TO ONENESS… To the recognition and understanding that we are SPIRITUAL BEINGS ON A JOURNEY OF DISCOVERY AND REMEMBRANCE, that life and death are two parts of the same experience, that we have passed through the veils thousandsContinue reading “Walking Each Other Home”
The Meaning of QUEER
“Queer is a continuing moment, movement, motive – recurrent, eddying, troublant. The word ‘queer’ itself means across – it comes from the Indo-European root – twerkw, which also yields the German quer (traverse), Latin torquere (to twist), English athwart. . . . Keenly, it is relational and strange.” Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1950-2009) “The soft-spoken queenContinue reading “The Meaning of QUEER”
Gay Nature Mystics of the 19th Century
As ‘the love that dare not speak its name’ began to be find new labels attached to it in the late 19th century, such as Uranian, Invert, Intermediate Type – and the one that stuck, Homosexual – there were gay men in Europe and America who could see the limitations of the terms that theContinue reading “Gay Nature Mystics of the 19th Century”
FROM SHAME TO SHAMANISM
The Spiritual Nature and Call of QUEER PEOPLE. “There must be radical healing of the gatekeepers if our globe is to truly be healed.” Malidoma Some Andrew Harvey, Gay Mystics (1997): “Delving into the truth of homosexual history, one begins to understand that homophobia is a purely human and relatively recent cultural construct, and itContinue reading “FROM SHAME TO SHAMANISM”
The Gay Orient in the early C20
Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935) was one of the world’s first gay activists. Both a writer and a doctor, he sought not only to define sexual variation – homosexuality in both men and women, as well as what we would now refer to as trans identity – but also to repeal laws that policed their expression inContinue reading “The Gay Orient in the early C20”
rainbow messenger 