The Spell of the Sensuous: Touching the Divine with Everyday Exisitance!

So I spent the morning out in the rain with my lovely new lover; making out all over the Leach Botanical Gardens and reading pieces of books to each other and finding cozy little rock overhangs and dry places under trees to sit and hold each other. I brought my newest favorite book, The Spell of The Sensuous to read, which seemed highly appropriate considering what we where doing.

I cannot recommend Spell of the Sensuous enough, even though I just started reading it last night! It is written in a highly sensuous style, such as "For the largest part of our species' existence, humans have negotiated relationships with every aspect of the sensuous surroundings, exchanging possibilities with every flapping form, with each textured surface and shivering entity that we happened to focus upon..." The entire book is about the lost art of being sensuous with our environment and also about how the holders of magic in every traditional culture; the shaman, the midwifes, the witches and wizards; where also those who negotiated between their people and the natural world, how it was the job of the holy people to ask the spirits of a place whether or not they where taking too much and not giving back enough to the earth. It had not occurred to me that part of my job as a midwife would be this sort of negotiation; but really, when I think about it, this makes a whole lot of sense.

As a midwife, I get to guide people toward a more loving approach not only to birth and childrearing, but also toward their environment; I get to suggest breastfeeding as an ecologically sound practice, home birth as much less wasteful then hospital birth, burying the placenta, or eating it, as a means of recycling part of what the body grew, with iron and protein that was momentarily "borrowed" from the earth. I get to maintain an air of mystery and sensuousness, that both creates a "professional" barrier between me and my clients, and gives me the power to make suggestions that may change the course of a whole young family's life. We witch/midwives understand also that we hold great sacred space; that birth energy is about as powerful as human energy comes, and that we can direct that into the world as we see fit...

I remember coming home after the first birth I experienced; birth energy riding on me like a cloak...I felt high and was literally tingling all over. It was about two in the morning, but I had to wake my then partner up to let him know how I felt; but I was unable to express to him what it was I was feeling; all that I could say was "I just saw a little person come out of a bigger person!" My friend Michael B has also attended a few births, I asked him to describe the energy felt. He exuberantly raised his hands above his head and smiled and yelled "WAAAAAAAhhahahaha!"

That, I think, is an accurate description of the birth energy. And that, I think, is what The Spell of the Sensuous is all about; our sacred job, as traditional healers, to help people fully live and experience that magical, sensual energy which is sometimes described as "orgasmic birth" or "ecstatic birth."

Love ya,
Carrot