When I was a girl, “whore” was the most degrading name you could call a woman.

Certainly “tease” was much more acceptable, making you at once desirable and untouchable, while “whore” made you easy, used, abused, discarded, and cheap. On the far other end of the spectrum was of course the “prude” who was cold, closed, frigid, bitchy, and a highly prized trophy if one could strip her down into the gutter and reveal that she was in fact a whore in hiding.

Simply developing large breasts in your pre teen or teenage years, having fleshier parts of your body in general, or beginning menses at a young age, were all outrageous and yet highly common merits for being labeled a whore.

I remember as a girl hiding from everyone when I began menarche, and refusing to date any of my male friends, because as long as I could maintain a childlike body and a “clean” record I could somehow slip through the cracks and avoid the shameful projections of sexuality and its inherent and apparent sin. (Which by the way I still didn’t.)

Through healing my own traumatizing teenage experiences surrounding relationships and sexuality, working with women for over a decade as a feminine embodiment mentor, and passionately uncovering the women’s mysteries to reveal our true nature, I’ve come to discover that beneath the pervasive societal shaming of female sexuality… the Holy Whore’s power is hiding.

If we desire to remember this power, and to bring in back into our own lives, and in turn into the world, we need to trace our way through the story of the Whore across the ages.

Who is the true “whore” and where does she come from?

Etymologically speaking, “whore” comes from the Hebrew word “hor” which means “cave.” In Spanish, the word for “whore” is “puta” derived from a Latin word meaning “well.” The word “puta” in Latin comes originally from the ancient Vedas, where it meant “pure” or “holy.” In the islands of Greece, the central village, the hearth of the land, is called the “hora.”

All of these etymologies (of which there are MANY) trace us back to the “whore” as the “source” and ultimately to the “womb.” Once upon a time, the “whore” was the origin, the “whore” was Goddess.

So how did it come to be, that such a deeply sacred word, a word intended to honor the Source of Life, became a weapon used against women?

Sexual Shame born from “original sin”

What if the true roots and source of our sexual shame, particularly as women, was a distorted story that separated a woman from her original true power that resides within her own womb?

We know the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and the snake who convinces Eve to eat from the apple of the Tree of Knowledge, even though the voice of God has told them it is forbidden. We also know the ending of this story, Adam and Eve are banished from the Garden and shame becomes humanity’s greatest punishment as “sinners.”

But less of us know that this very same story offers an essential key into understanding the original separation of woman… the split of the Virgin and the Whore.

In Jewish Midrash which predates the Old Testament, Adam’s first wife was a sovereign Goddess named Lilith. Lilith refused to lay beneath Adam, and she was banished from the Garden, making her the original demon. After Lilith’s banishment, Adam bore Eve from his own body, through his rib, making her the subservient woman of patriarchy.

Collectively we’ve learned, whether consciously or unconsciously, that Eve is good while Lilith is evil. The one who lays beneath man is Godly, the one who refuses to be subservient is Demonic. On a deeper level, this shows us that a woman who gives her sex to a man is good, and a woman who is sovereign in her sex is bad.

Sexual shame comes from a deep ancient cultural narrative and consequent societal system (one that has been ingrained across thousands of years) that to be connected to our own sexuality makes us wrong in the eyes of our Creator.

In modern day Goddess culture, Lilith has become synonymous with the snake in the Garden who tempts Eve to eat. From a feminine perspective, we might imagine this act as the erotic awakening of Life, the fruit of the womb through which we will be called to taste in order to know ourselves as human.

Ancient traditions, most notably tantra, symbolize sexual awakening through the serpent. Snakes represent kundalini or life force energy which resides in the root, rises to the crown, and completes the circuit through our sex. Creation stories often depict the world as coming from a cosmic egg wrapped in a serpent. Snakes have long been associated with health and wellness, life force, and are the spirit animals of powerful healing Goddesses.

We might consider if sexual shame and original sin were patriarchal constructs fabricated to disconnect women from the source of our power.

Whores, harlots, prostitutes, and priestesses

Just as the priestess has seemingly been erased from his-story, so has the true power of the whore been distorted within patriarchy. In fact, the feminine title for “priest” is likely synonymous with “prostitute.”

In the past few decades incredible feminist scholars have reclaimed the spiritual power of priestesses in ancient times, through debunking false claims of them being concubines and prostitutes for the temples. Most notably, scholar Stefanie Budin author of “The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity” and Meggan Watterson of “Mary Magdalene Revealed.”

But I wonder… what do we lose when we exonerate powerful women from the label of “whoredom?” Could it be that women were once priestesses and whores?

In ancient times, womb priestesses were in fact the earliest "whores" in the temples of Isis, Hathor, Astarte, Asherah, and Aphrodite, and were highly skilled and trained in sex magic. It can be hard to imagine a time when spiritually and sexuality were not at all separate. Mother Mary herself is referred to in the bible as a “harlot” a term that came to be used for “whore” but originally meant womb priestess.

Holy hor and temple trauma under patriarchy

Considering our human history has only been recorded over the past several thousand years (and our Earth is billions of years old) it’s clear we’re missing some pretty major chapters in our herstory. This absolutely applies to our modern day understanding of the Priestess, most of which has been derived from what we know of Priestesses in the Near East between around 4000 BC and 100 AD.

That is to say… most of what we think we know about the role of the priestess comes from patriarchal temple times, when women served the Goddess on behalf of the masculine God. In this sense, priestesses were prostitutes for a system that disempowered them.

The Vestal Virgins of Rome, around 700 BC for instance, were chosen to serve in the temples as priestesses as young as six years old. In turn they received privileges not given to other women, including the right to own property. For thousands of years the role of the priestess has come with vows that disconnect women from true freedom in our sexuality.

The implications of this are absolutely enormous.

Just as in Genesis we learned that when a woman eats the fruit of sexual awakening she is eternally punished, and when a woman refuses to be sexually subservient she is exiled and banished, so have we learned that our sex, whether as virgins or whores, has never belonged to us.

As women awakening the Goddess Path and remembering our power as priestesses through ancient lifetimes and within our bloodlines, it’s likely we’ll meet some pretty tangled karmic places in us who still believe that to be a priestess means to be a martyr and a prostitute for the temple itself.

Consequently, we may believe that we must be slaves to our service, martyrs to others, sacrifice our lives, our dreams, our desires, or even our bodies, in service of the Divine. We may believe that we have to sacrifice our home, our relationships, and our right to abundance in order to even access our spiritual sexual power in the first place.

Rooting into the source of our power as womb priestesses

When repairing a healthy sovereign connection to the Holy Whore and her power as a Womb Priestess, I find it’s essential that we root deeper into the origin of where this power comes from in the first place.

The womb itself in the female body, and the womb of our Mother Earth.

While we may not have recorded language or story, we now have many ancient relics and paintings that elude to a far more Mother Centric primordial past. A past where our original religion was the very Nature that created us. Where we recognized the blood as the magic that brought birth and in turn Life.

If “whore” once meant cave, well, or source, it’s reasonable to assume that the Holy Whore was in one time the deep ocean from which islands are born. The sacred triangle in a woman’s body that births humanity. The rich fertile mud from which we all grew. The deepest springs that feed the rivers, the lakes, the waterfalls, and all live on this planet.

What if being a “whore” originally meant being deeply rooted in the Source of Life itself?

Wounds of Whoredom in patriarchal culture

Whatever within a culture has been considered taboo, shameful, or a means for abuse, rejection, and abandonment, naturally becomes relegated to the shadow. Our need to survive through tribal connection is so profound that we will dismember essential aspects of our wholeness to be safe and accepted within our culture, community, and of course within our family.

But eventually, the strategies we developed in order to survive become the limiting constructs that restrict our evolution as a species. I believe, we live in a time when the reclamation of the demonized aspects of the feminine are exactly what is required to continue to evolve as a humanity. To heal with our Mother Earth, I believe we must return to the Holy Whore.

Doing so, we must first contend with what I call the “Wounded Whore”… the distorted expression of Whoredom we were required to develop to survive patriarchy.

So… who is the “Wounded Whore” in you? In what ways did you, your mother, grandmother, great grandmother, great great grandmother, learn to contort the power of her life force as Goddess in order to function within a system of women’s oppression?

Most of us learned to adapt in one of two (or perhaps both) of these ways… repress the Whore and be the Virgin Priestess, or exploit the Whore and be the proverbial Prostitute.

The same core wound can manifest in seemingly opposing expressions. For some women, a wounded whore may manifest through sexual repression, fear of personal power, disconnection from one’s own wild nature, poor boundaries and people pleasing, self diminishment, and/or a lack of discernment in making wise choices.

For others, it may manifest through sexual reaction, manipulation through sexual power, sexual choices that dishonor oneself, self destructive attention seeking, overt rebellion in reaction to societal norms, and explosive anger and rage.

In what ways have you seen yourself at various stages in your development either repressing or reacting to the power of your own sexual essence? What was the deeper intention beneath that? What wanted to be restored, sanctified, embraced, and healed within you to remember the true nature of your sexual magnificence as Mother Earth?

The healthy whore in our world today

Just as it’s important to recognize the wound patterns and distortions, we also need a healthy understanding of the true nature of the whore so we can recognize her within ourselves and within our world.

If a true whore is a woman embodying her womb wisdom, her womb power, and wild red river of passion, we can assume that when a woman embraces her inner whore she becomes vibrant, healthy, and whole just like all vital expressions of nature.

As the voice of our power, discernment and our very life force, when we have a strong connection with our inner whore, we have a strong and healthy sense of boundaries. We have solid instincts that inform our actions and keep us safe from predatory energy in the world.

We feel the wild joy and passion of life itself, of being alive, of expressing ourselves creatively, and of trusting in our desires.

We do not react or repress our wild desires and sensual passions, rather we relate with them internally in a healthy way to address which are worth pursuing and which are worth transforming. We feel a deep connection with our own pleasure and feed ourselves the nourishment we need to keep birthing our creative expressions, never allowing ourselves to starve and hunger for food that might trap us in the outer world.

Above all, a woman fully embracing her inner whore has a deep love for Life and she radiates this magnetic quality into the world, bestowing all that she touches with a sense of awe and gratitude for our very existence.

How do we heal and reclaim this power now?

No matter how far we may have wandered, no matter how distorted the collective, and no matter how many generations removed we may be from our original priestess ancestors, we all have the power, the ability, and the sacred invitation to reclaim this medicine that is our birthright now.

Through awareness we can slowly strip back the projections and distortions that have deluded us from the truth of our sensual creativity and divine power. Journaling, meditating, reflecting, and sharing with trusted others in safe space.

Through loving self touch we can meet our sexual energy with a sense of reverence, devotion, and innocence to dissolve the harmful or traumatic imprints and caress ourselves with new memories of healing, safety, and love.

Through our courage to meet the shadow aspects of ourselves and to decide to be the safe space that can hold us through it, we allow more untapped power to flow freely to us and through us, that can serve us in our creativity and relationships in the world.

The journey is a spiral, it requires time, patience, gentleness, tenderness, self-forgiveness, and it’s always helpful to remember that you are worthy of a lifetime for unraveling the true nature that is you. What a sacred and precious gift to devote yourself to remembering you.

If you’d like to dive deeper into this medicine and self reclaiming, come receive our free guide Virgin and Whore with rituals, meditations, and journaling to more deeply embrace your whole sexual self expereince as Nature.