Spirit Marriage: Intimate Relationships with Otherworldly Beings

by Megan Rose, Orion Foxwood (Foreword by)

Overview

• Presents interviews with ten contemporary practitioners of spirit marriage, exploring how the relationship developed and the opportunities and challenges

• Discusses the author’s own spirit marriage, including her awakening as an erotic mystic and her encounters with her Faery beloved

• Explains how to cultivate a spirit marriage, sharing precautions and practices to spiritually prepare yourself and navigate the potential challenges of spirit marriage

Exploring the phenomenon of the spirit spouse or spirit lover--an entity to which a human is psychically bonded--Megan Rose, Ph.D., examines the practice and purpose of spirit marriage around the world, presenting transcultural evidence of this form of sacred union in anthropological research, religious literature, mythology, folklore, and the oral tradition. She shares her in-depth interviews with ten contemporary practitioners of spirit marriage, including a Faery Seer, a Shakta Tantric, a West African Shrine Keeper, a New Orleans Voodoo Mambo, Haitian Vodou practitioners, and a ceremonial magician. Through these respectful interviews, the spirit-marriage practitioners tell their stories of initiation and of having a spouse who is both otherworldly and able to assist in waking- world activities. They offer intimate insight into this growing global practice and its larger evolutionary purpose. We learn about their experiences of first contact, the decision to marry, how the relationship is upheld by their community, and the impact on their other relationships. We also learn about the risks and challenges as well as one example of divorcing a spirit.
Sharing her personal experience, the author discusses in detail her own spirit marriage, including the erotic nature of being “spirit filled” and her encounters with her Faery beloved. She explains how to cultivate a spirit marriage, sharing precautions and practices to spiritually prepare yourself, interpret your paranormal encounters, and navigate the potential challenges of spirit marriage.

Presenting the first study of the transcultural, shamanistic practice of spirit marriage, this book shows how bonded relationships with spirits are needed now more than ever to assist with spiritual evolution.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781591434160
Publisher:	Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
Publication date:	03/01/2022
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	448
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Megan Rose, Ph.D., has a doctorate in East-West psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies and a master’s degree in religion in society from the Graduate Theological Union. She is an initiated ceremonial magician, a Shakta Tantric practitioner, and a senior seer in the House of Brigh Faery Seership Institute. She serves as an ordained interfaith minister and psycho-spiritual counselor and is the executive director of the Entheosis Institute. She lives in San Francisco.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 4: CONTEMPORARY STORIES OF SPIRIT MARRIAGE

We share our planet with many other species and beings--both seen and unseen--from the bacteria that live at some of the smallest units of measurable life to the celestial forces and powers that shape our solar system. These “invisibles”--although most often unseen, unheard, and untouched--have long been held by many spiritual traditions as integral to human development, and on occasion they are believed to make themselves known and available to the worthy individual. The wisdom traditions of our planet have long held the practice of spirit marriage to be a powerful means for the cultivation of extraordinary powers, acceleration of evolutionary development, and progression of humanity. These practices are esoteric and often shrouded in mystery cults and shamanistic initiations.

The calling to a spirit marriage comes in many ways and affects each individual differently. As such, the procedure and journey vary from person to person. Whereas one person may have self-medicated to shut out this extraordinary experience, another may have been encouraged to seek this union from an early age. Each person’s path to spirit marriage is unique.

This is why I believe it’s important to openly share our stories of extraordinary intimate spiritual contact, so that we may frankly discuss what appears to be a thriving practice amongst a not-insignificant portion of the population. To that end, in this section I’ve chosen to highlight the individual experience of those who have participated in a spirit marriage, rather than just give you an overview of the practices. I call this form of extraordinary, experiential storytelling normalizing the paranormal.

In the following pages are first-hand testimonials of spirit marriage practitioners whose marriages are an integral part of their spiritual practice. Front and center to their experience is the fact that most of these practitioners sit outside the scope of mainstream religion. They are witches, shamans, mambos, seers, tantrics, and more--all situated within a variety of edge-walking spiritualities. Their stories contribute to and elucidate on the contemporary practice of spirit marriage as a potential means for spiritual growth, personal development, and planetary evolution.
These present-day practitioners of spirit marriage have been trained and initiated into a form of ongoing relationship with an entity and they illustrate the power and vitality of engaging in intimacy with the Otherworld. These interviewees, in many ways, are sharing intimate and, for some, never before revealed details of a form of spirituality that might raise a few eyebrows in more traditional religious circles. So I encourage you to set aside any distaste you may feel about the edgier content in their stories, and give them the respect and honor one would give any holy person--for this is who they are: mystics, visionaries, and ministers in their respective traditions who hold spiritual power and religious influence. Nothing less than that was required of me.

For example, as I sat with each practitioner and collected their story, I was changed in ways that I am in awe of and deeply humbled by to this day. With each interview it was as if an extrasensory energy had been introduced into my nervous system. I left feeling expanded, altered, and sometimes as though my psyche had been in some way reconfigured. It quickly became clear that the interviews were more than just a process for data collection. I was encountering extraordinary beings who were now part of my constellation of spirit contacts.

Frankly, I was wholly unprepared for the intensity of that experience. Stepping into dialogue with the spirit spouses of my interviewees was consciousness-changing. My sensitivity became heightened to extraordinary ways of knowing, to perceiving subtle changes in the natural world, and to the nuances of emotion and thought in others. Many things in my life began to shift and reconfigure. My health, relationships, and career all underwent significant upheaval. The interviews I collected became more than just stories of a spirit spouse relationship. They became a kind of psycho-spiritual attunement and recalibration of my own mind, body, and spirit. Collecting the interviews altered me and affected how I interacted with beings in both the seen and unseen worlds.

It is my hope that by reading this book you may also experience some degree of that recalibration yourself. There is a mystery here. Perhaps you’ve experienced something like it before? You’re reading a book and suddenly your perspective shifts, the intelligence of the book takes you under its wing and opens new vistas of possibility, new portals of awareness. Non-ordinary beings are talented like that. They have a way of attuning us sometimes simply by our becoming aware of them.

It is my hope that the practitioners’ stories below will weave with my own to offer an illuminating and transformative experience for you. I have communicated--with great respect and honor--the stories of these sacred relationships that have been entrusted to me. In doing so, I am following the long-standing tradition of Earth-based spiritualities. By telling a story, a series of stories, I hope to illuminate both the unity and diversity within which we undertake intimacy with more-than-human consciousness. I see my role of scribe and coresearcher as a bequest from the spirit of this book to bring greater tolerance and diversity into the discussion of Earth-based spiritual traditions and subaltern spiritualities.

This is but an overview of how much variety and also how much similarity may exist among traditions that may have never been exposed to each other heretofore, ultimately giving these traditions and their practice of spirit marriage a common voice with which to share their message with the world. It is my hope that as a result of this work, spirit marriage practitioners--and those who feel called to undertake a spirit marriage--develop a greater understanding of their calling and a vision for how better to support others who walk this path. I hope they cultivate resources and form alliances with others who have similar experiences but are in different traditions, thereby feeling more supported and understood in a realm that can sometimes be isolating and confusing. It is also my hope that this book will stand as an exhortation towards more awareness and tolerance of oppressed spiritualities.

Ultimately, it is my fervent hope that this book will broaden our understanding of what it looks like to live with integrity in a world populated with extraordinary beings that extend far beyond the current anthropocentric worldview. In reading it you may find yourself opened to the possibility that perhaps humanity has had help from interceding entities from the very beginning of civilization, and that perhaps we continue to be guided and loved by these beings today. It is to this end that I hope this research will stimulate a discussion of how and where the continued practice of spirit marriage may take us collectively as a species and as a planet.

Telling Our Stories

Grounded in my own story and initiation into this practice, I have collected and compared the personal stories of ten practitioners of spirit marriage in the traditions of Haitian Vodou, New Orleans Voodoo, an African Traditional religion, Faery Seership, Witchcraft, Hermetic Magick, and Shakta Tantra. My goal was to learn more about the practices and experiences associated with spirit marriage and to determine commonalities, variations, purpose, and desirable outcomes among the practices and practitioners. I invited each person to go “on the record” with their story or to maintain anonymity. Two decided to go public, the rest have been given pseudonyms.

I chose to use a method of collection called organic inquiry, which involves the tools of narrative interviews, autoethnography, and feminist and indigenous praxis. Organic inquiry honors the sacredness of the researcher, participants--whom organic inquiry designates as coresearchers--and subject matter, and acknowledges the potential for transpersonal forces to guide the research. I consider the coresearchers to be both the human beings interviewed and their spirit spouses, who were involved in the interviews by nature of the dual consciousness believed to be held by those participating in a spirit marriage. I also adopted organic inquiry because the phenomenon of spirit marriage is reported to take place primarily in an altered state of consciousness, via intuitive and somatic means.

I asked my coresearchers open-ended questions in a conversational manner designed to help me understand the following: What is the purpose of this practice? Who is called to this path, and why? Why is it predominantly a subaltern practice? What are the benefits? What are the cautions? The guiding question of each interview was always: “How do contemporary practitioners of spirit marriage experience their relationship with an otherworldly being?”

Organic inquiry also allows for the idea that the innate intelligence of the research--the spirit-being that guides the research, what I refer to as my research daimon--would speak through the researcher. Through this method a co-creative story is told--a story of firsthand experience and knowledge of this practice from both the perspectives of the embodied human being and the spirit-being.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Orion Foxwood

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Feminizing and Decolonizing Our Perceptions of Reality

PART I
The Past
1 Hidden in Plain Sight
2 History, Folklore, and Religion
3 The Occult and Psycho-Spiritual Practice

PART II
The Present
4 Contemporary Stories of Spirit Marriage
5 The Faery Seer
6 The Shakta Tantric
7 The West African Shrine Keeper
8 The Washington, DC, Witchdoctor
9 The New Orleans Voodoo Mambo
10 The Haitian Vodou Practitioners
11 The Ceremonial Magician
12 The Erotic Mystic: Journey to My Divine Self
13 The Erotic Mystic: Encounters with My Faery Beloved

PART III
The Future
14 Cultivating a Spirit Marriage
15 Practices and Precautions

Conclusion: Normalizing the Paranormal

Glossary

Notes

Bibliography

Index

About the Author

Editorial Reviews

There is a certain amount of intimacy in all forms of spirit contact, but for a small part of the community of practitioners the contact is as deep as that of a beloved spouse. Spirit Marriage is the first book to explore this phenomenon in depth. The book is particularly valuable because it contains stories from the lives of beings engaged in spirit marriages today.

author of The Four Elements of the Wise Ivo Dominguez Jr.

Megan Rose takes us on an engaging journey through the history of spirit marriage, from its ancient roots to contemporary accounts of its modern-day practitioners. An important and illuminating study of a fascinating subject!

Vere Chappell

Broadens our usual conceptions about romantic love to include the dimension of the more-than-human. In tending and nourishing these sacred connections we step into traditions long suppressed or ignored but vital to our rounder sense of what it means to love and be loved.

Craig Chalquist

Spirit Marriage is not only a guidebook to forming bonded relationships with Spirit, it is an invitation to awaken our own spiritual potential.

psychic medium and author of The Path of Elemental Salicrow

This is a book that deserves careful reading with an open mind, not something to dismiss out of hand. It comes from the personal experience of the author and is not a new viewpoint—relationships between humans and other level beings have been recorded down the ages. An interesting and thought-provoking book.

author of The Ritual Magic Workbook and The Shinin Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki

Have you heard the call of the Beloved? You are not alone. Megan Rose captures stories of people in loving relationships with spirits and provides a road map to enter into a relationship for those who have heard the call. She combines insights gained from these interviews with her extensive academic and magical training to arrive at a profound and nuanced understanding of the experience. Spirit Marriage is that rare book that grants voice to what has been hidden and encourages those who dare to follow the call to love.

author of Practical Magic for Beginners Brandy Williams

An inspired and inspiring exploration of the phenomenon of the Hieros Gamos, and how it can contribute to the spiritual regeneration of human life on Earth. Regardless of whether you think you will ever enter into a spirit marriage— or are already in one—you will find Rose’s book to be a heartfelt and deeply engaging exploration of this widespread spiritual practice. Read it, and prepare for new and compelling insights into the spiritual destiny of humanity.

Bruce MacLennan

Megan Rose’s exploration of this widely practiced but little-known phenomenon is illuminated with impeccable scholarship and a deep intuition born of her own experiences in this area. I know of no finer book on this important topic. It belongs in the library of anyone seeking to understand the emerging possibilities of connection and collaboration with allies in the realms of Spirit.

spiritual director of the Lorian Association and a David Spangler

It is through her embodiment of the three ‘keys’ of devotion, discernment, and discipline that the book becomes a catalyst for the reader’s own journey of divine or extraordinary embodiment. This book will phenomenologically alter you.

Monica Mody

Megan Rose offers a well-researched path to meaningful, long-term relationships in the unseen realm. This is the book to read if you are interested in developing intimacy with spirits close to you and being relationally well about it.

Pavini Moray

Until death do us part, we will love Spirit Marriage for expanding the usual ideas of what sex is to cosmic proportions. Anyone interested in romance, the erotic, and/or mysticism will find reading this book a match made in heaven.

authors of Assuming the Ecosexual Position Annie Sprinkle & Beth Stephens