X is for XXX – Pagan Blog Project 2013

And so we come to X. As an Anglophone who doesn’t have much to do (if anything) with Aztec, Mayan, Chinese (maybe) or Greek deities, the X prompt gives me pause. So much so that it apparently stopped my in my tracks last year.
Okay.
 
But this year, I think I can manage at least one entry on the subject of “X” or, in this case, “XXX”. Much to my surprise, I have a goddess of sexworkers in my pantheon.
People who know me, or who read my other blog, maybe won’t think this is all that surprising, but back when I sent out my all-call for deities (this was just over ten years ago, if I think about it), I was a staunch anti-porn feminist and it was only much later – like “when I got divorced” later – that I realized that I’d done something Funny with my Goddess Job Descriptions.
 
Earth Goddess Job Description: Hearth, home, abundance, growth, parenting, food, cooking, shelter, pregnancy.
 
Sun Goddess Job Description: Passion, dance, wealth, money, careers, courage, overt sexuality.
 
I had split my understanding of “abundance” and, in my case, “the purpose of my ovaries” into two parts (or three parts, if you bring Maia – with her queerness, creativity, peer-to-peer attachment bonds, and midwifery – into the equation). One of them had (and has) a lot in her jurisdiction that is very much the socially-approved-of realm of The Wife, even though (to my knowledge) Mattaer has never had a spouse of any kind. (I might be wrong about that. She’s just never mentioned anyone to me, is all). The other was… all the stuff I was afraid of, that I felt were things that happened *to* me, that would be done *to* me, rather than *by* me.
 
A year after that, I was in a romantic relationship with a woman who was involved in various areas of the sex industry, and it was only when she had a really bad night[1] one New Year’s Eve that I realized that one of my Goddesses – with her courage, her sexuality, and her career/money work – was exactly the deity to be praying to under those circumstances.
 
Much, much later, after that relationship had ended, I got asked to perform for the AGM of the local sexworkers rights organization, and I wrote the following poem for that set.

~*~
 
Invokation
 
Before you can fuck
you have to make that call
It can be a cold call
a cat call
a booty call or a business call
but every call
is a call to Her
calling Her in
calling Her up
out of the depths of you
invoking Her fire
Her taste
Her scent
 
so I’m calling
Her on whose altar
beeswax pools
burning
head-turning
evoking that yearning
 
yeah, I’m calling
Her as I’m learning
how to hip-shimmy
coins jingling
and mingling
glances
making advances
learning to take chances
and finances
into my own hands
 
I’m calling Her
who is making that
sap rise
sun rise
She who is making that
bank balance rise
She who makes my
blood rise
heat rise
She makes the honey run
down my own thighs
 
She is the swelling
of leaves in bud
She is the welling
of springs in flood
She is Clit hard
rising like grain and
rising like rivers
fed by spring rain
and I’m calling
Her
On whose altar perfume invokes
heady scent of honey
She calls up sex and money
She calls up every name
in my little black book
She calls up every name
that She every took
Every name that we cry when we come
 
Oh God,
Oh God,
 
Oh
God
Who is on my lips
when I’m speaking
God who is down between my hips
when I’m leaking
all that salt water
ocean flow welling
swelling
 
Oh God who is in the telling of
I want this
and this
like this
here
now
Oh God
before whose altar I bow
 
Oh God
on whose altar
sheets and legs are spread
Oh God
whose altar is a bed
and a till
 
Oh God
on whose altar I spill and spill
beeswax
coins
perfume
the gushing libations that come
only when I do
 
 
~*~
 
 
TTFN,
Meliad the Birch Maiden.
 
 
[1] She continues to be fine. It wasn’t that kind of a bad night. It’s all good.