This is an excerpt from Rev. Teri D. Ciacchi’s essay Golden Waves & Priestess Bodies: Establishing a Queer-Centric Poly-Normative Aphrodite Cultus in Cascadia.
Aphrodite is abundant and expansive. She both inspires autonomy and facilitates reciprocity. She calls us to deepen our self-love and invites ecstatic sensory exploration in myriad forms. If we are to truly embody and embrace her we must have social structures that emulate her sovereignty and our interdependence. Because our definitions of deity, love, and sex are so different from those of the fading uberculture, we seek to create Temporary Autonomous Zones (TAZ) within Temple. These TAZ are spaces where people of all sexes, genders, sexualities, bodies, and relationship structures have the opportunity to explore and develop sexual autonomy. A Temporary Autonomous Zone, as described by Hakim Bey as “a mobile or transient location free of economic and social interference by the State”(Hakim Bey, TAZ: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism, 1985). Bey argues for the production of greater autonomy in the present moment, rather than the acceptance of domination in exchange for the promise of some future utopia. TAZ is the concept behind a lot of contemporary festival culture and was influential in the creation of Burning Man. Bey quotes Stephen Pearl Andrews as saying a TAZ is:
[…] the seed of the new society taking shape within the shell of the old” (IWW Preamble). The sixties-style “tribal gathering,” the forest conclave of eco-saboteurs, the idyllic Beltane of the neo-pagans, anarchist conferences, gay faerie circles – all these are already “liberated zones” of a sort, or at least potential TAZs.
TAZs are a potent form of declarative social Magick. In order to resist the default cisheteronormative patriarchal contexts for sex, The Priestess Body teaches and embodies a sex-positive, consent-oriented, queer-centric, and poly-normative sacred space.
We create our new paradigm by merging group dynamic practices from social change activism, therapeutic frames of Existential group therapy, and Witchcraft into a program of somatic exercises that take people through the LLR 6 steps of Sex MagickTM. We display this poster in the Temple space and teach the steps to all participants, first verbally, then experientially.