I will never forget the first time I came upon Lady Misato’s likening of “wife worship” to classic courtship behavior. It was a mind-blowing revelation for me. Lifelong impulses t
hat I had vainly tried to suppress, and that I had given into repeatedly in secret, furtive spasms, were suddenly redeemed. All those bizarre S&M images, associated in my psyche with shrinkwrapped, verboten magazines in back aisles of sleazy bookstores, were transformed into romantic storybook images of ladies fair and knights errant.
Thanks to Lady Misato, I could see myself as the knight, with my wife enthroned as my queen. Instead of hiding all my submissive yearnings from her, I was free to integrate them into my marriage.
A coup
le years back in this blog, in a posting titled “Swagger vs. Grovel,” I wrote that guys hanging out at strip clubs were actually practicing goddess worship, whether they knew it or not. I conjured a typical topless-bar tableau, with male patrons “packed shoulder to shoulder in the stage-side seats, gaping up in idolatrous awe and hanging their hard-earned cash along the railing. These are offerings to the prancing priestesses on high, who do the strutting and swaggering, affording the acolytes below only sneak peeks into forbidden paradise.”
I wasn’t making this up. In my bachelor daze, I had been one of those guys at the rail, or maybe sitting farther back, peeling off fives and tens and twenties I couldn’t afford as tribute to these tease-queens.
For awhile there I got pretty obsessive-compulsive about it. I wasn’t really looking to date a stripper—though that did happen once or twice—as for a goddess to worship. That didn't happen, but I did donate major portions of my minor earnings. I was lucky, looking back, that this all happened pre-Internet. Otherwise I would have been a prime candidate to become the moneyslave of some Web-savvy succubus.
My point in th
e earlier posting about strip clubs was stated this: “Goddess worship could hardly be more explicit, nor the imbalance of power between male supplicant and dominant female more visible. Vive la différence!”
And I didn’t, and don’t mean “Goddess worship” figuratively. For many guys, including me, there is a religious component to this adoration and apotheosis of the female. Kneeling and genuflection, obeisance, even groveling and foot-kissing, all these are religious postures hallowed by history and tradition. What is often termed “sub-space,” that intoxicating submissive rush experienced by some males in moments of surrender to a dominant female, can also be viewed as a legitimate variety of mystical experience.
Might it not be akin to the submissive ecstasy experienced by a monk or fakir enduring penance or self-flagellation while contemplating the Divine Feminine or the Goddess Mother?
Whether these masculine prostrations and devotions are sacred or profane, carried out in a sacred shrine, a candlelit chapel, a roadside strip club or behind the closed doors of a wife-led marriage, my hunch is that all qualify as goddess worship, pure and simple.
And what better way to start the day for any man blessed to live with a goddess? As Elise Sutton advised one husband in regard to his wife: “You should worship her and adore her every day.”Or, as one husband put it: “I am so lucky to have her to serve, obey and please every day of my life!”
21 comments:
Thank you for a great article. I prefer the image of myself as a knight, and my wife as my queen whom I must bow down to and obey, as I don't see myself as submissive. In truth, I am more dominant and she is more submissive, so this role is more fitting for us.
All females should be worshiped, and all wives must be worshiped. It is not who is dominant or submissive. A husband know his goddess well enough to know everything that pleases her. He should do everything he can to help her fulfill her life goals and desires. His goals and desires must be secondary and fulfilling hers means forgetting his, that is how it should be. She shouldn't be burdened with mundane housework when he is available to do this.
I disagree with your comment about men worshiping strippers. Worship means showing respect and admiration to women, and these men demean these women. Strippers almost always have lower self esteem do to what these men show them. These women deserve to be worshiped instead.
I think this is avery interesting proposition. I can relate my experience directly to it
An interesting article, for sure. But, I respectfully disagree with the idea of stripper patronage being equivalent to "goddess worship." I'd venture that the opposite might even be true.
For example: take a regular girl at a regular bar. College degree, good job, friends, boyfriend. How do you suppose she'd react to some random drunk guy grabbing her ass? Well, not favorably. As a stripper, though, she'd probably have to contain her natural reaction (to slap, maim, injure) and pretend to be flattered or offer a lapdance. Or whatever.
I don't pretend to speak for all women, of course. Some strippers might love it. Some might just love being able to pay their bills. I don't know. Is there a power imbalance going on? Sure. In FLR-type relationships, nakedness and financial subservience can symbolize a sub role. The dom holds the wallet, and wears the pants. How would a strip club be any different?
Just a thought. As usual, I appreciate the depth and variety of your articles.
In contrast to your thoughts on worship of strippers, the proper idea would be worshiping beauty contestants.
At a beauty contest, all the girls receive proper admiration and respect. Here girls, even of young age, can learn to appreciate proper respect, admiration and devotion. They can understand this is the proper way the male worships women. They grow up with much higher respect for themselves and are able to demand the worship owed.
The best situation for this is at the wedding. She presents herself to him at her alter; he gives his vow to love, honor, worship (respect, admiration, devotion) and obey her.
I have to weigh in and agree with Leslie on this one. I wear the pants in my household, and if there was ever going to be any ogling at a stripper, it would be I who would be doing it! Nonetheless, it is indeed a great post. I enjoy your work.
I seem to have stirred up a lively discussion, for which I’m grateful. I am impressed by the thoughtful responses from Allen, linewriter, Leslie, Suzanne (nice blog!) and Allen again. And you all pretty much agree.
Heck, I pretty much agree with you myself, and like I said, I spent hours in those dives! Except… really, I was worshipping. And I was respectful, even worshipful.
But of course there were any number of guys who weren’t. And dancers who, in the process, grew to have contempt for guys, and for themselves for selling out their own sexuality. This may be one reason that a certain dancers and prostitutes gravitate to girls over guys sexually. Who knows?
But speaking of lesbians, I’d like to quote Camille Paglia’s insights on strip clubs. And, oddly, she sees the power exchange actually in favor of the women. The quote below is apparently from an article that appeared years back in Penthouse. You can read a longer extract in the blog of “Goddess Ee Ling”--
http://goddesseeling.blogspot.com/2005/01/woman-as-goddess.html
Camilla Paglia: “The feminist analysis of prostitution says that men are using money as power over women. I'd say yes, that's all that men have. The money is a confession of weakness. They have to buy women's attention. It's not a sign of power; it's a sign of weakness. Look! The men don't know what to do! The money they're stuffing into the dancers' garters is a ritual offering, and the women are wearing their booty around their thighs. They're displaying dollars as trophies, just as the great women in history --the great queens and courtesans -- have worn diamonds and emeralds. Men are run ragged by female sexuality all their lives. From the beginning of his life to the end, no man ever fully commands any woman. It's an illusion. Men are pussywhipped. And they know it.”
"there is a religious component to this adoration and apotheosis of the female. Kneeling and genuflection, obeisance" You have quite a vocabulary. I had to go look up some of these terms.
Apotheosis - "to be made divine", refers to the exaltation of a subject to divine level.
Genuflection - bending at least one knee to the ground a gesture of deep respect for a superior.
Obeisance - acknowledgment of another's superiority or importance
Men are beginning to look toward women in this manner more then ever before. When women wear less clothing, men look to them more, wanting what they cannot have. Wearing less helps women become more empowered and more self confidence. I know my husband doesn't like me to be dressed skimpy when I go out (he is not permitted to complain or tell me what to wear though), but I do; I feel great, and know I have power over him. Women used to HAVE to wear dresses below the knee, and had to be "good girls".
I have noticed the difference at my daughters school. The girls volleyball team wears very tight short outfits. The softball team wears shorts and sleeveless tops, while the boys baseball team wears long pants and sleeves. The less the girls wear, the more the boys show devotion, admiration and respect to them. The school has a dress code but rarely enforces it, for the girls. Our daughter can wear skimpy shorts; she tells me several girls wear short skirts with no panties, and always get away with it. If the boys wear certain types of clothes, they get hauled in.
Our school district has budget problems and is looking where to cut. Many want to cut the football program, which never wins and few boys are interested in it here, and the wrestling program. There is a lot of interest in the girls cheerleading to become a cheer/dance competition (like the movie "Bring it On") I might add, our school board has only one male on it.
What I am saying is that women need to be proud of their bodies, and showing more of it boasts their confidence. Why do you think in a business office, or formal social gathering, men always have to wear shirt, tie, and jacket, while women wear dresses that show their legs and bear arms and shoulders?
And as a woman, I enjoy the Apotheosis Genuflection Obeisance from my husband.
I think whether adoring an "exotic dancer" is "worship" or something more debase depends upon the thoughts of the man. If he is imagining how wonderful it would be to be owned by her and to everyday kneel before her in submission and service.... that's worship. If he is imagining her in ways in which she is submitting to him.... that's not worship.
Either way, worshiping your wife is infinitely more rewarding and satisfying that giving attention to a dancer.
runpb - I think we can all agree on that!
Hi everybody,
I just wanted to introduce myself quickly. I have been reading through the blog and find it a wonderful resources, and it is one of the reasons I recently confessed my desires to be in a FLR to my wife. I am happy to say that her response was positive and we are starting this journey now.
Now I can make my comments in the other posts! I just wanted Mark to know he has another follower on his blog.
Thanks
uxorious-e, this is my favorite kind of blog-post comment! Congratulations on a happy embarkation on a voyage of wife-worship, and I am tickled that my blog posts may have played even a tiny part in your brave and intrepid decision... I hope you will keep me posted, by comment or email, on the shakedown cruise of your FLR. What an adventure! Be the best first mate you can be, and always do eagerly whatever your captain says!
Thanks Mark,
Your blog played a big part, just reading how happy and devoted you are to your wife made me say "I want that again"! And your concept of continuous courtship really speaks to me.
I will be on your blog daily trying to catch up (I am only up to April 2008) and will buy your book too, although my wife banned me from using the computer while she is around, so that will cut down on my available time.
Thanks again!
BTW, I am uxorious-e from a few posts back, using my Google login this time so my name comes up differently.
Whoa, Allen...
Speaking as a former exotic dancer YOU COULD NOT BE MORE WRONG.
Mark was very perceptive. He hit things right on the head. And having been a student of mythology and ancient goddess cultures, I was conscious in my wielding of power over the men in this way.
It always annoys me when men or women who have not passed through that initiatory veil can claim to know what it is like to be a dancer, to wield that power as an incantatory goddess from the stage, wearing nothing but pearls, high heels, and my 'girdle of Venus'.
I never dated customers. I preferred to keep my distance. I was a priestess and a performer of sexual interpretive dance. I traded in fantasies and illusions of an erotic nature. My draconian rule was that if you saw me in there, you would never know me outside.
Frankly, as many of these men were married, or thought they came from male-dominant paradigms, I regarded them as worshipers from the stage, and prey for their money among the tables. We used to laugh about how the men imagined we thought of them, how we played with the illusions they thought about us.
We saw you the way lionesses see the changing herd of animals at the watering hole as they hunt for the meat that sustains them and perhaps those they love. And as many of these men were stepping out on their wives, we did not want them. That is not a place to find a man. It is also a foolish place to find a woman.
In my own case, I was not fluffy and beguiling. They came to see the dread dark goddess of life and death, and live to tell the tale. They saw me, archetypally, with all social veils off. I sometimes wore a black trench coat of PVC and whirling my belt in the air would CRACK it on the floor. I would look out at them like I might devour them, sexually and physically, maybe even psychologically and spiritually. I resonated with ultimate danger and mystery, and they loved it. Some were terrified. This made me laugh.
And yes, I am happily married for more than ten years in a WLM. Of course. I would have it no other way. ;) I never forget how many fields of erections I conjured by my naked presence as the embodiment of the goddess. It is something that is a part of me always, every day, even when I am alone, and something that continually excites my husband, who sees me always with that element of feral danger, a savage sophisticate.
Since I embody the archetypes of not only wife, but mistress and dread goddess, my husband has no need to go to the temples. He is always proud that he got one of the fiercest ones for his own.
An important thing for women/wives to remember, is to embody the mistress/Mistress element, even if he says he 'wants' the makeup- free wife and mother (who he feels he can 'handle' and 'control', and who is less likely to be sought out by other men, and possibly be cuckolded).
Like in the movie 'The Dark Crystal, he is seeking to split the feminine into a dichotomy, to control it, the 'madonna' and the 'whore'.
Ignore him. It's his fear. Be a whole woman. Such men will leave the domesticated long suffering wife at home with the chores and kids, then sit at a comfortable distance with a beer, and ogle the very thing they fear and desire. These are the same men who rule their homes with an iron fist and then live a double life as the drooling slave of a professional dominatrix, because they have no outlet to surrender. They imagine they have things in control, but they do not. They have wandered into a lion's den where they are prey and ego gratification for working women who have the beauty talent and temperament to do a physically and emotionally demanding job, nothing more.
Best that you court the dominant woman, goddess, mistress, in your wives. You won't have your illusions of control - but then, they were only illusions anyway.
Dear Mark,
So embarrassed. I did not see the post come up and it did go through - several times!!
Please remove the extras. Thank you.
I enjoy your blog. I not only purchased a copy of your book recently, I sent one to one of my best philosophical male friends who recently became a husband.
Cheers. :)
Anonymous, wow, what a post! I'm going to reread it at my leisure, dreamily! (I got rid of the duplicate postings.) And thanks for sending a copy of the book to a newlywed male friend. It's a special reward knowing that my scribblings may actually help bring about some blissful wife-led marriages.
I take no issue with anything you wrote, but did indeed date and live with exotic dancers, one for several years. (I was the quiet one in the back, adoring, worshipful, donating large portions of my paycheck as tribute to a chosen goddess; later the guy who drives her to work and carries her costume bag inside, waits in the parking lot afterward, along with a lot of predator types.)
Do you know this poem by Baudelaire:
The Jewels
The lovely one was naked and, knowing well my prayer,
She wore her loud bright armory of jewels. They
Evoked in her the savage and victorious air
Of Moorish concubines upon a holiday.
When it gives forth, being shaken, its gay mocking noise,
This world of metal and of stone, aflare in the night,
Excites me monstrously, for chiefest of my joys
Is the luxurious commingling of sound and light.
Relaxed among the pillows, she looked down at me
And let herself be gazed upon at leisure — as if
Lulled by my wordless adoration, like the sea
Washing perpetually about the foot of a cliff.
Slowly, regarding me like a trained leopardess,
She slouched into successive poses. A certain ease,
A certain candor coupled with lasciviousness,
Lent a new charm to the old metamorphoses.
The whole lithe harmony of loins, hips, buttocks, thighs,
Tawny and sleek, and undulant as the neck of a swan,
Began to move hypnotically before my eyes:
And her large breasts, those fruits I have grown lean upon,
I saw float toward me, tempting as the angels of hell,
To win my soul in thralldom to their dark caprice
Once more, and lure it down from the high citadel
Where, calm and solitary, it thought to have found peace.
She stretched and reared, and made herself all belly. In truth,
It was as if some playful artist had joined the stout
Hips of Antiope to the torso of a youth!...
The room grew dark, the lamp having flickered and gone out,
And now the whispering fire that had begun to die,
Falling in lucent embers, was all the light therein —
And when it heaved at moments a flamboyant sigh
It inundated as with blood her amber skin.
— George Dillon, Flowers of Evil (NY: Harper and Brothers, 1936)
Mark, that was magnificent! I Love the poems of Charles Baudelaire, particularly 'Les Fleurs du Mal'.
How wonderful you were inspired to find that. It made me happy. I printed it out. So beautiful... "Slowly regarding me like a trained leopardess... I saw float toward me, tempting as the angels of hell, to win my soul in thralldom to their dark caprice once more, and lure it down from the high citadel where, calm and solitary, it thought to have found peace..."
You/He hit on something interesting there, the essence of the attraction to the 'naked feminine', unbounded from familiar patriarchal structures; evoking the unknown, the devouring but transforming; the angel/daemon archetype, the fairy lover, 'la belle dame sans merci'.
Patriarchal religions and philosophies are all 'transcendent', with the necessity of setting the spirit apart from and 'above' the body, and with rigid dichotomies splitting madonna and whore; body and spirit. See the movie, 'The Dark Crystal'.
Matriarchal religions by contrast were 'immanent', spirit known through the body, 'spirit embodied', hence a priestess in ecstasy embodies the energies and essence of the goddess. Woman is the void, the womb and the tomb. Man leaves a woman's water and blood and flesh to enter into the world. He is then told to despise, see as less than, and fly away from the feminine, though he always yearns to return to those watery depths and be subsumed. He does not always know how to do so though, for he fears as much as he desires.
Chivalric love was outlawed by the church in Europe when they began to see the worship of women as the rearing of the head of the goddess again and needed men to reject following an embodied goddess to worship their transcendent male gods and institutions: church, military and state. Yet, men still seek the mystery of the caves. That mystery, which is about their humanness and which holds the key to their most exalted refined expression of manhood (through chivalry and worship of his woman, marvel at the feminine.) He finds himself weak before it, and may see it as 'a dragon' to be slayed, but what really needs to be slayed are the illusions and fears that are the sad inheritance of patriarchy which keep him cut off from the feminine in both its nurturing, destructive and transforming aspects.
Here is the mystery. Man is struck by the beauty and power of woman, dies, and is born again, transformed, into what he can be - not a sneering 40 year old frat boy - but a knight who pledges himself to serve a Lady. There is much treasure of self-respect to be found in that, which can be carried out into the world. He becomes more refined alchemically, in his essence. He does not need to do silly things like wear a collar or take her name, like true elegance it shows without having to shout.
You have graced me with a lovely poem today. Do you know, that is part of the way my sweet shy husband courted me? Years later, he still sends me poems on the e-mail. To your male readers, you do not have to be a poet yourself, only to appreciate enough to find that which expresses your thoughts and feelings best. The web is full of poetry sites.
I leave for now with another poem I love by Baudelaire for you and the others to contemplate...
Following...
"Even when she walks she seems to dance! Her garments writhe and glisten like long snakes obedient to the rhythm of the wands by which a fakir wakens them to grace.
Like both the desert and the desert sky insensible to human suffering, and like the ocean's endless labyrinth she shows her body with indifference.
Precious minerals are her polished eyes, and in her strange symbolic nature angel and sphinx unite, where diamonds, gold, and steel dissolve into one light, shining forever, useless as a star, the sterile woman's icy majesty."
From 'The Flowers of Evil - Les Fleurs du Mal' by Charles Baudelaire
Very nice article. There is most ceretainly s spiritual connection here. Goddess worship can occur on many different plains many different levels. I believe Women can become Goddess incarnate, therefore, reaching deity level. Worship comes from your heart and soul, so if this what you feel, then it is real.
"The less the girls wear, the more the boys show devotion, admiration and respect to them."
Yes. When women wear less clothing, and also sensual dance - men worship her as a goddess.
The beauty of the female body - that's the power of women over men.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MB4UvHDXzug
Male - female worshiper
1 Timothy: "in like manner also, that the women adorn themselves in modest apparel..."
My opinion: modest apparel = No costly clothing (not very luxurious), only.
But girls and women should wearing nice sexy outfits, nice sexy dress. As flowers also the beauty of the female body is a joy for all people.
The Bible:
The Song of Songs:
"Return, return to us, O maid of Shulam. Come back, come back, that we may see you again. Why do you stare at this young woman of Shulam,
as she moves so gracefully between two lines of dancers? How beautiful are your sandaled feet, O queenly maiden. Your rounded thighs are like jewels,
the work of a skilled craftsman."
-------
Oliver
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