Why I'm not a Hedonist

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“All acts of love and pleasure are her ritual.” This is a really troublesome phrase. I’ve heard it used to explain very hedonist behavior, excesses that would make Caligula blush. I think that interpretation misses the point.

 

First off, let’s clarify something. That’s “Love and pleasure,” not “Love and/or pleasure.” An act has to be both an act of love and pleasure, not one or the other, to meet the criteria. This means that the child molester isn’t doing a ritual to her, nor is the rapist, the sexual predator, or any other deviants that are creating one sided pleasure scenarios that the other party isn’t equally into.

 

Now, that tricky word, Love. We can take this to mean several things. Does it mean brotherly love? Erotic love? The love of a scholar? Or does it refer only to the deep passionate soul union that only deeply committed people share? I’m not in a position to answer this, as we get no direction from the original source on this. I’m content to let it go with the broadest interpretation.

 

But, the place where I get culled from the hedonist crowd is the end. “Are her ritual” indicates to me that these things are sacred. Moreover, they are beyond normal sacredness, as they encompass a ritual in the name of the divine. Many people interpret this to mean that every time they meet a new friend and find a handy bush behind which they hump like weasels on crack, that they are doing a ritual to the goddess. I can’t get behind that. Ever held a ritual in a sewer? A junkyard? In the middle of a bus station? Probably not, because people like fairly sacred spaces for their rituals. This includes headspace. That’s why we have meditations in or before rituals, why we clear a sacred space, and why we create different language patterns for what is spoken in ritual.

 

The same applies to acts of love and pleasure. I’m not saying that before we start the horizontal mambo we need to cast a circle, recite poetry, and meditate, but we do need to be in a good headspace and really feel connected with the divine for it to be a good, proper ritual to the goddess or god. (Although, sex in a consecrated circle with a little poetry can be fun and empowering, and meditation focus before lovemaking is important to both Tantra and the Kama Sutra.)  But it’s a bit disingenuous to say that last night’s orgy is a ritual to the divine. Does an orgy really have a sacred feel? Is it done with a sense of higher purpose? Did it feel like a ritual? (That’s not to say that all orgies are not rituals. The Greeks had them in the temples of Aphrodite, and the few reports we have from then indicate that they were done with fairly solid sacred principles.)

 

So, that is why I am not a hedonist. I cannot justify the pleasure I get from some act as being automatically divine. It needs to have a sacred component for me. That’s why I worship the divine in a mate during the lovemaking process, like the adherents of Ishtar did in the distant past. (Or at least, I think I did. It’s been a while…) If I can’t get to the place, it’s not lovemaking, just recreational friction.