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A Priestess Path is the story of a beautiful young woman named Nancy. Nancy is shy, reserved and does not stand up for herself. She is often taken advantage of in her personal and professional life and has a severe lack of personal power. Her boss is selfish, abusive and controlling, her father was overbearing and demeaning and this has resulted in a Nancy who cannot stand up to the men around her. In fact she clings so tightly to what little power she has in her life that at the age of twenty six she's still a virgin.
One day she attends a lecture being presented by a friend of hers from university. It has been many years since they knew each other and he has been working in the fields of anthropology and religion. He discusses the Divine Feminine and when he speaks his passion for the Great Goddess is evident. Nancy, under pressure from her friends to cast away her virginity, considers this man, David, to be a suitable candidate.
But David is the outer head of an ancient order that serves the Great Goddess. He is the Steward of the order and a High Priest, his heart and soul belonging only to the ancient Queen of Heaven. He agrees to be Nancy's first lover on the condition that they sacrifice her viginity to the Great Goddess who is also the Goddess of love and fertility. Nancy agrees and during her first sexual encounter the Goddess takes Nancy away in a vision and initiates her as a Priestess. David then oversees her training in Western Occultism and the Order's elaborate system of sex magic and through this Nancy grows as a person eventually becoming strong, self confident and indominable. She begins to take control of her life and stand up for herself. A transformation which, eventually, leads to her taking on the role of Steward herself.
The worship of the Goddess is something that has always been a part of my heart and soul. Through this book I hope to bring some of that beauty that she has shown me to others of like temperment. Though this book details explicit sexual encounters it is my hope that the gentleness and power inherent in them will not be lost on the reader.
Obviously one of the most important themes is that of transformation. Nancy represents the untapped potential in all of us which is held back by our environment and prevented from flourishing. Like a seed kept from light, water and heat the best parts of ourselves never have the chance to grow. All it takes is a change in environment, a little light, a little water and suddenly we begin to grow and take form reaching out to our potential like the branches of an oak tree. For some of us it is the Goddess that we need to allow into our lives without restriction, hesitation or limitation. For others it is, perhaps, the God which can direct them to grow. Regardless, it is the Divine Light which must be unfettered and allowed to flow through us which makes us grow into, and discover, our true Self.
Sexuality is also a major theme. People tend to repress sexuality in a number of ways, not the least of which is the romantic ideal of a single person fulfilling all of our needs and desires. We repress our sexuality in order to conform to these ideals, often to the point of depression, alcoholism and drug abuse in an attempt to short circuit our innate needs and desires. We've managed to make one of the most beautiful aspects of creation into a dirty habit which is frowned upon by society. Sensuality is lost and many pervert sex into a game by which conquests are counted as notches on a bedpost. The "playa" mentality devolves into basically using another human for masturbation rather than actually enjoying them sensually on multiple levels.
Within the context of the book sex is often used as a method by which to build power or share energy in order to create a specific effect on the universe. This cannot be done through a quick fuck but requires time and effort in order to create the hightened level of power necessary for the work. In this way sex can become a living meditaiton and open a conduit to the Divine Light. It is a method of worship and through it we can worship the God and the Goddess through the manifested body of another human being. We can treat that body as a sacred expression of the Divine, especially if it is a body that we are attracted to on a sexual level (which is more complex than people think). In this way sex and sensuality become the sacred eucharist of the Goddess and through them we create and strengthen our own relationship with the divine.
The religion depicted in the story is not "real" in the sense that such an order exists but rather is a synthesis of a number of orders, schools and religious traditions. For those used to the Christocentric religions of the West the religion of the Goddess as I have presented it will seem very alien indeed. The very idea of "meeting" the Divine face to face could be considered blasphemous to some. To others it will strike a chord within and they will instantly understand what is being presented for they themselves will have had similar experiences. In this way the Goddess worship presented in this story is an extension of my academic thesis on the nature of the Divine and how it works through spiritual media in order to bridge the gap between the finite and the infinite.
It is for this reason that I often refer to the God and the Goddess for both are an extension of the one Infinite Divine which is beyond human understanding. In my papers I have explored technical details as to how all of the Gods and Goddesses of history are but extensions of the Inifinite Divine created as personalities, masks if you will, by which we may know the infinite while remaining finite ourselves. The Feminine Divine or Great Goddess is but one such manifestation and it is She who, in turn, wears the masks we have called Freya, Isis, Aphrodite, Ceres, Verdandi, Ceredwin and others.
Although the religion is fabricated I maintain that it is based on sound theory as well as my own experience of both the Coven and the Lodge. Combined with my own relationship with the Great Goddess I have tried to present the framework of a "mystery religion" based on everything from the Isiac Religion which covered most of Europe and Britannia, the Wiccan reconstructionist movement (such as Alexandrian, Gardnarian, and Odyssian), the Rosicrucian traditions and modern Ritual Magic orders.
It is my hope that I will manage to impart to the reader the same sense of the Goddess as did Marion Zimmer Bradley and Dion Fortune before me and that, through this, help others find the Great Goddess on their own terms.