Daka ~ Sacred Intimate
A Daka or "Sacred Intimate" is a man ("Dakini" = woman) who serves as a counselor/therapist/healer/guide with the capacity to remain objectively present and grounded while purposefully and therapeutically employing erotic energy to evaluate, counsel and address a client's deeply personal issues regarding sexuality, intimacy and relationship—fostering healing and integration thereof.
Today's Sacred Intimate bridges the worlds of Spirit and Sex, creating a safe and sacred space for healing, releasing of blocked energies and opening to a higher possibility of eros and sensuality. A Sacred Intimate provides spirit-sex integration-healing opportunities through counseling/coaching, education and somatic engagement.
SEX, and sexuality comprise a much larger container than what is commonly thought of today (copulation). Sexual energy, Eros, Kundalini, is what is adeptly and consciously activated and engaged with by the Daka ~ Sacred Intimate to evaluate and address the client's issues. When in proper balance, sexual energy heals, nourishes and inspires one's life.
Daka ~ Sacred Intimates have the ability to provide immediate intimacy and presence with whomever is before them. This intimacy is not resulting from a personal connection with the client, but comes from his training and inherent ability to reach a state of transpersonal divine-recognition of the person before them. From this non-personal state, a sacred container of engagement is created and the Daka ~ Sacred Intimate initiates the client into a state of bliss and ecstasy by adeptly working with kundalini energy and reconnecting and nourishing deep archetypal energies of the soul. *Read more about the modern origin of the term "Sacred Intimate" here.
The role of spiritual-sexual healer, guide, and counselor was fulfilled by priests and priestesses of the ancient temples. These were once called: Hetaera, Hierodule, Naditu, Devadasi. They were women dedicated to serving the goddess of love in her temples, providing spiritual-sexual healing rituals that merged spirituality with erotic energy in sacred ceremony.
Far from “profane” prostitution’s appeal to ego-persona sexual desires and base release of tension, the ceremonies performed by the temple priestess connected spirit with erotic energy through ritual and invocation. A man didn't go to the temple to purchase sex, he went to request a ceremony that was significant to his life circumstances—which he provided a monetary offering for. That ceremony included erotic energy employed by the priestess in sexual acts, with spiritual intention, and in the 'container' of ceremony devoted to the goddess.
The book “The Sacred Prostitute: Eternal Aspect of the Feminine” by Nancy Qualls-Corbett, describes the "sacred prostitute’s" raison d’etre (pg. 40): “…was to worship the goddess in love-making, thereby bringing the goddess’ love into the human sphere.” It goes on to describe the Sacred Intimate ceremony: “In this union —the union of masculine and feminine, spiritual and physical— the personal was transcended and the divine entered in. As the embodiment of the goddess in the mystical union of the sacred marriage, the sacred prostitute aroused the male and was the receptacle for his passion. Her human emotions and her creative, bodily energies were united with the suprapersonal. She touched basic regenerative powers, and thereby, as the goddess incarnate, assured the continuity of life and love. The sacred prostitute was the holy vessel wherein the chthonic and spiritual forces united."
In this context the value of the Sacred Intimate's presence and service seems vital to the health of not only individuals but also the whole community. Ancient writings indicate that men would come to the Love Temples after returning from war to be cleansed of their war energy and be made harmonious again through a ceremony to the goddess. This apparently had a profound effect of calming and integrating the violent and negative energy associated with war —returning society to peace and wholeness. Truly this was a sacred function -one sorely missing today.
Some modern “Love Temples” are appearing with dedicated goddess-worshiping priestesses and priests with a similar function that the ancient temples performed. However, in today's version highly developed treatments for emotional-psychological-spiritual-sexual healing that do not involve copulation are used by most practitioners—drawing a distinction between mundane mercenary prostitution (sex for money) and highly principled, objective and considerate therapeutic treatment of sexual trauma and presenting the higher possibility of integrated sex and spirituality.
Women who see a male Daka ~ Sacred Intimate receive help in reclaiming and healing their spiritual-sexual wholeness and feel empowered as a sexual being. Men who see a woman Dakini performing this sacred service are catalyzed to new levels of spiritual-sexual union, consciousness awakening and expansion, and soul nourishment.
No where else in our culture are there healthy resources for people to directly experience spiritual-sexual healing. Many are still taught that spirituality is vastly superior to, and should be separate from sex —putting sex in a lowly, selfish, lustful, place to be acquiesced to only when no longer able to control the base desire to copulate like unconscious animals. Such is the experience of shame and judgment many in our culture feel regarding sexual experience.
Conscious spiritual sex teaches us that our bodies are a conduit of spiritual energy that profoundly connects us to the divine. Through sacred sex practices we may experience levels of connection with our partner—and the divine— that we never thought possible.
As a Daka ~ Sacred Intimate: I am not a sex worker, surrogate, or escort. I do not provide a "date" experience for men or women. My purpose is to serve an individual's or couple's spiritual-sexual integration and expansion through healing and enrichment therapies that include spiritual counseling and addressing the emotional, psychological and physical aspects of well-being.
