PART ONE of an interview with a woman who works with men as a sexual healer and with women as a coach in the erotic arts.

jb: You were raised a Catholic, right?
hw: Yes. I was very devout as a girl.
jb: So what happened? Stupid question, I guess.
hw: Yes. Puberty happened. The usual. I discovered boys. They discovered me. I discovered my body … I was a very horny teenager, I must say. One of my favorite pastimes, when I was home alone, would be to take one of my brother’s footballs and sit on it and rock myself back and forth. I would score lots of goals with that ball, I can tell you. And I didn’t have to touch myself, which was good – it helped to lessen the guilt. As I grew older, I struggled to reconcile these two loves – physical love and a love of God. There were these two sides to me and they were diametrically opposed. Years passed, years of living with this duality, and then I experienced myself being a temple prostitute. During a past life regression. You know how people talk about their whole lives flashing before their eyes? Well, a whole life flashed before mine. My life in the temple. I was born and raised there, the daughter of one of the prostitutes. This was my world – a very cloistered world, by the way – all I knew. I was a priestess – one among many – in a great temple devoted to the worship of the Goddess. I was living a life that was holy, and I was using my body to do it. I was pagan, promiscuous, without shame when it came to my body and sex, but no less devout or charitable or even chaste in my way than the nun I had dreamed of being when I was girl.
jb: Charitable? Chaste? How can that be?
hw: The charity had to do with being able to give myself to a man without reservation and without expecting anything in return. The chastity had to do with never being allowed to become emotionally attached to a man. Opening myself to his energy, to the spirit he embodied – yes. In the temple, the power behind the act or impulse was honored, not the person. It’s not the man, but the spirit in the man. The God in the man, if you will. He shows up when the man is aroused. It’s not the woman, but the space in the woman – for a visitation.