A comprehensive illustrated guide to sex and spirituality. Sacred sex presumes that male and female essence underlies all existence. Their union, a marriage of flesh and spirit, body and soul, is the path to sexual enlightenment, bringing spiritual wholeness to material life. The Sacred Sex Bible , a comprehensive illustrated guide to sex and spirituality, looks at historical and cultural currents in sexuality and the influence of Western and Eastern traditions, from pagan to Tantra. Cassandra Lorius includes examples of sexual practice and rituals along with exercises on breathing and visualization as pathways to sacred sex, or blissful union with the divine. The book features: A history of sex in the West, including matriarchal cultures (goddesses and priestesses), Greco-Roman sex, Judaism, Christianity, the influence of religion in the pre-industrial age and cultural attitudes. - Approaches to sexuality, including paganism and earth rituals, shamanic rituals, yoga, body work, dance, Daoism and Tantra. - Neo-Tantra in the West, including new ways of infusing the sacred into sexuality -- awareness, creativity, focus on oneness, visualization, breath and body work. - A description of practices that include sensuality, flow and connecting body and soul. The Sacred Sex Bible is a practical resource for sacred sex teachers, therapists, students and practitioners, holistic practitioners and professionals (such as yoga or meditation instructors, homeopaths), pagans, Tantrics, Shamanists, Daoists, Eastern spiritualists and those exploring a new level of sexual fulfillment. Cassandra Lorius , MA, PGDip, is a couples' sex therapist and homeopath with a background in meditation, Tantra and Eastern spirituality. She is widely published on these subjects, including The Tantric Pillow Book . She lives in London, England. Introduction Sacred sexuality is a powerful concept that has endured for millennia. The idea brings together two primal motivating forces within us, establishing that something so primal -- sex -- can also be deeply satisfying on the more profound levels of our being. Sex and the sacred in the modern era have for the most part been separated and opposed, particularly with the rise of monotheistic religions and throughout the Christian era. In contemporary culture sex is treated as anything but sacred. In fact, it can be considered sacrilegious to use the language of the sacred in relation to the passions of the body. The notion that sex is about little more than physical gratification severely limits the capacity that it offers for exploring a more profound connection between two people. While, as a practising sex therapist, I agree that it's good to develop love-making techniques, the focus of most self-help books on achieving satisfactory orgasm ignores the other levels of experience -- emotional and even spiritual -- that great sex can offer. Descriptions of sexual satisfaction are not shy of using terms like 'heavenly' and 'blissful' -- qualities often connected to deep, respectful and appreciative partnerships, in which trust between lovers is paramount. There is a great desire in contemporary society to reclaim the 'holy' and make love-making truly divine. In making love with a sense of the sacred, your body becomes a temple and your partner's body a shrine. You use your bodies to worship one another and sex becomes a means of opening up to the sacred dimensions of life as a whole. In sacred sex, touch becomes precious; sounds and smells heighten your sensitivity and sensuality. The world of the senses intensifies your connection creating a shared experience as well as a mutual inter-dependence. Tried and tested techniques associated with spiritual awakening, such as yogic breath and visualization, are incorporated into love-making to create a multi-dimensional experience of sex as communion. Physicists and mystics alike are united in describing the universe as a dynamic field of vibrating energy, and practitioners of sacred sex call this field of energy 'bliss'. Regardless of their religious affiliation, many people describe the ecstasy that can arise out of deeply bonded love-making as a mystical union, which creates a lasting sense of oneness or peace in its wake. Among sacred sex practitioners, bliss describes a way of experiencing reality, rather than a goal of sex and orgasm. Sacred sex refers to both the context and the content of sex: couples approach their bodies as a temple permeated with the divine and their sexual union as a sacred form of union. They celebrate love-making and may see it as a gateway to blissful communion, in which they meet the divine in one another. These couples may choose to work at their relationships until there is a level of awareness, appreciation and trust that allows them to go deeper in exploring their sexuality. Other couples seek out and use techniques gleaned from older traditions, in which ritual sex was part of a different, and perhaps mor