ABSTRACT DECODING THE SOLOMON MATRIX Leiner, Akiva, & The Sexy Song of Solomon Leiner had hidden in the folds of his text a great secret. Said simply, Leiner was the lineage heir and inheritor of the ancient Wisdom of Solomon. A o di g to Lei e ’s hidde ode, the o e t teachings of the Wisdom of Solomon had been transmitted personally from master to student, down through the generations, until they reached him. But it was more than that. The very core of my being shuddered with some mixture of fear and joy when I realized that Leiner wanted to transmit these same teachings to me. – Marc Gafni Dr. Marc Gafni & Dr. Kristina Kincaid Decoding the Solomon Matrix We, the authors, have spent years of our lives praying to enter the inside of the inside, to know the mysteries of Eros and sex. Early in my (Marc) journey into Eros, I entered deeply into the sacred Aramaic texts of the Hebrew wisdom tradition. I have spent most of my life immersed in, enlivened by, and in devotion to these manuscripts. In my early twenties, I had the first glimmerings of a slowly dawning realization. Deep in the Hebrew mysteries was a radical vision of the erotic, the sexual, and the sacred, which fascinated me. As this vision gradually clarified through several decades of study, I realized this wisdom was essential to the next stage of human evolution. I began to understand that the future of our planet rested upon a return to Eros. Eros was the key. If we could but understand that mystery, ethics would become clear, and the sacred would sort itself out. I knew intuitively that the sexual was the key. After all, how could it be otherwise? Either God is more than slightly sadistic with a significant interest in teasing and even torturing us through the ordeal of sex, or in some mysterious way it is the key to this whole life jou e . “olo o ’s temple was the center for the mysteries. Th e sexually intertwisted cherubs were the clue, but what did it all mean? In 2000, I went to Oxford University to write my doctoral thesis, which was long overdue. I wrote about my teacher, the great mid-nineteenth-century mystic Mordechai Leiner of Izbica. Leiner was a Hasidic master. Hasidism was the ecstatic movement of God-intoxicated, mystical activism that swept through Europe in the late eighteenth century. At some point it dawned upon me that Leiner as keepi g se ets. A d h ould ’t he e? He as, afte all, iti g i the t aditio al pious setting of classical Jewish orthodoxy, where one cannot be too careful. Institutional politics, egos, hidden fear, and even demonization of the sexual were all at play then as they are today. I desperately wanted to enter the inside of the texts and know their secret. I somehow knew that my life, and the life of all that is, depended on it. Lo e o die as the ph ase that a o sta tl through my mind. I knew that I could not conquer the texts. Instead, I surrendered to them and pleaded with them to take me home. But surrender is not sufficient. To learn secrets, seduction is also necessary. It is only that sense of radical commitment and utter devotion that allows one, with grace, to seduce a sacred text into disrobing and revealing her secrets. Leiner himself called such a te t the Goddess ithout he ga e ts. Slowly, after years of reading and then many intense months of poring over the same material for almost fifteen hours a day in the Oxford library, with thousands of pieces of paper filled with scrawls and textual clues strewn all over my apartment, the outlines of a secret code began to almost miraculously appear. I was stunned to tears. I sat for weeks and months on end with fifty yellow otepads, follo i g the fai t paths of hat I alled o d luste s. Fo e a ple, e e ti e Lei e would talk about wine, I would jot it down on a yellow pad. I would collect and note all his seemingly random references to wine. Then I would look for patterns in the references. I began to see that these seemingly out-of-place, random mentions were anything but random. Then I would look up all of the earlier Aramaic sources he alluded to with the wine references. I wanted to see whether his symbolic understanding of wine was original or whether he was part of a lineage. If he was part of a lineage of sources with a hidden understanding of the symbolism of wine, then was he simply transmitting the lineage, or was he adding some novel dimension to it? I would then pray to intuit the next right word cluster to gather. I would then collect all of those words and search for the intentional pattern in the way Leiner was using the target word. Then I would look up the earlier sources he referenced with that word, searching again for pattern, lineage, and originality. I repeated the same process with many dozens of words. A few led nowhere, but most did not. Slowly and surely, a clear and astonishing picture began to emerge. The code began to crack open, and the erotic text began to show itself, revealing her secrets. Leiner had hidden in the folds of his text a great secret. Said simply, Leiner was the lineage heir and inheritor of the ancient Wisdom of Solo o . A o di g to Lei e ’s hidde ode, the o e t tea hi gs of the Wisdom of Solomon had been transmitted personally from master to student, down through the generations, until they reached him. But it was more than that. The very core of my being shuddered with some mixture of fear and joy when I realized that Leiner wanted to transmit these same teachings to me. I was shocked, amazed, and delighted by what emerged as the text began to reveal her secrets. I realized that according to him, the hidden Wisdom of Solomon was all about Eros. This was not a word that Leiner ever used. He knew neither Greek nor English, but Eros is the closest English app o i ate that I ha e ee a le to fi d. He deplo ed a luste of ode o ds like “he hi ah the se sual fe i i e goddess di i e , f ag a e, Ki g “olo o , i e, Judah, te ple, a ished God, deep fe i i e, a d God’s u ediated ill, k o di e tl a d ot th ough the la . The meaning of the code words was well hidden. It was only by collecting every single reference to the word and then checking them against earlier Aramaic sources that I came to realize these were code words. I understood they were being intentionally deployed by Leiner in highly consistent and deeply erotic patterns. Leiner, in one veiled reference, makes it abundantly clear that he is transmitting the Wisdom of Solomon to the reader who can pierce the veil. The process of cracking the Leiner code of the Solomon matrix was erotic, exhausting, and ecstatic at the same time. At some point I understood that my mind would not take me there. The text had revealed something of her nakedness to me in an act of grace. But she would reveal no more until I surrendered even more deeply. She demanded my utter devotion to her truth. My relationship to the text was purely erotic.i If I would falter, she would close. When my heart opened, she would spread herself to reveal her gifts and drip her nectar into my soul. There was a moment in which She, the text, consented to dis o e, to appea as the Goddess ithout he ga e ts. The puzzle sta ted to pie e itself together. During the entire process, She was always in charge. That was self-evidently apparent. Even when I appeared to be seducing her, she was in charge. It became clear that the Wisdom of Solomon was connected to the temple. Remember this is the same Solomon who built the Temple in Jerusalem. This is the temple that had the famed Ark, as in the cinematic phenomenon Raiders of the Lost Ark, at its epicenter. I remembered again the terse epig a of the G eek histo ia Thu dides: Whe o ds lose thei ea i g, ultu e ollapses. The o ie’s ultu al efe e e to the lost A k as ot lost o e. It as the that I ega to o de : Wh should ’t e just let the A k sta lost? What do e seek i the e o e of the A k? Re e e that the Ark is the center of the Holy of Holies in the inner precincts of the temple. Atop the Ark were t o he u s, se uall i te t i ed o e ith the othe . The sa ed te ts ead, I ill speak to ou f o et ee the t o he u s. ii The voice of wisdom emerges from between the sexually intertwisted cherubs. This is the core transmission of the Holy of Holies and the essence of temple consciousness. What did the hidden tradition of Solomon mean by all this? It is worth remembering that Solomon did not fare well in the Bible. The rabbinic voices that canonized the Bible marginalized Solomon. They said he was led astray by his thousand wives and lost his way. There is not one classical source in the entire rabbinic cannon that excuses Solomon entirely of sin in relation to the feminine—except for my teacher and his direct teachers, who were the direct holders of the actual lineage of Solomon. Mordechai Leiner was able to transmit to me in the Oxford library the deeper truth hidden in the Solomon matrix, the truth that forms the core of his teaching. Solomon was not led astray by the feminine. He was guided by Eros. He was right, but he was also before his time. Solomon saw clearly that the entire world was dripping with divine Eros. Therefore, there is no need to search for meaning because everything is always, already, filled with meaning. There is no place to go other than where you are. You cannot be late, e ause it’s happe i g o . The e pe ie e of ei g adically alive—on the inside of all the faces of Eros—is fully available to you in this moment. You must simply step through the portal to the inside. All the faces of Eros are revealing themselves to you right now. You can enter the inside of the inside, live in the fullness of presence, participate in the yearning force of being, feel that you are indivisibly enmeshed in the larger fabric of reality, and know that you are an irreducibly unique expression of that seamless fabric, right now. When you unfurnish your eyes and cleanse the doors of perception, you will realize that you are a uniquely needed, chosen, honored, and loved expression of reality. You are a good child of the universe. You will know the will of God, without need for recourse to any external authority or text. You will feel completely humble and wildly powerful. You will realize there is a gift that you can give to life, which can be given by you and you alone. Giving that gift, nurtured by all the faces of Eros, will sustain your experience of radical aliveness. That is what it means to live the erotic life. These were core teachings in the hidden Goddess sources that lay at the center of the hidden temple isdo . This is the se et of the se uall i te t i ed he u s atop “olo o ’s A k. This is se et of the Mary Magdalene line in Christianity and the inner truth of the grail quest. The grail is the chalice, the feminine form, the goddess, Eros herself. Eros is the plentitude of meaning when all questions are not answered but simply fall away. The goodness of life, of every breath, becomes self-evident. The erotic delight in aliveness suffuses our hearts, minds, and senses. This is what the true evolution of o s ious ess ill ield: a o ld i hi h ea h pe so ’s u i ue eati it ill e desi ed, ho o ed, and needed in the great Unique Self–symphony. But that is not all. Solomon understood that consciousness would not be fully awakened or evolved u less e a e a k to ou se ses. “olo o ’s se uall i te t isted he u s speak the g eat t uth of his wisdom. The sexual models the erotic. The sexual is the ultimate teacher. The sexual is the great instruction taking us home to the utter goodness of reality. It is the goodness of Eros that whispers to us of the goodness of all of existence. For reality is Eros. More than that, the cherubs point to a subversive vision of society rooted in the wisdom of everawakening aliveness, pleasure, and transformation. We will talk more of the subversive nature of Eros in later chapters. For now, let us recognize that Eros undermines convention and invites us to live on an entirely different level of delight and devotion with each other. The e oti a d the hol a e o e. It is fo this easo that the o d fo te ple i He e is si pl ikdash, hi h ea s hol . It is fo this eason that the epicenter of the temple was the Ark with its sexually intertwisted cherubs. It is for this reason that the word of God, the way of wisdom, poured out from between these cherubs. The gift I received from the Goddess in her transmission of the Secret of the Cherubs was not made possible by any capacity of mine. It occurred purely as a gift of grace from Her, and it came with many demands. It is a gift that has required intense sacrifice and commitment from me. It is a gift that until today I am hesitant to fully receive because of the immensity of its power and the everpresent potential for misunderstanding. But it is a gift that I know the world desperately needs, so I am committed to giving it in the best way I can for as long as it right to do so. This great teaching, that the sexual models the erotic, is the core of the Secret of the Cherubs. The teaching was transmitted in an unbroken chain from generation to generation. It was transmitted from Solomon to Luria to Nathan to Leiner to me. I transmitted it to my co-author, Kristina. She and I have founded the Integral Evolutionary Tantra School to create a band of outrageous lovers who will know and teach this truth. It is not merely a cognitive truth or even a truth of only the heart. It is a truth of the body. The Secret of the Cherubs is a truth where the holy trinity of body, heart, and mind merge into the sustained pleasure and passion of radical aliveness directed toward great purpose. The Sexy Song of Solomon In the great chain of transmission beginning with Solomon, there was a teacher who lived historically around the time of Jesus, who walked in Israel not long before the fall of the Jerusalem Temple. He was one of the g eat li eage aste s ho oth e ei ed “olo o ’s t a s issio of the “e et of the Cherubs and added to it in a significant way. His name was Akiva. AKIVA: MYSTIC AND LOVER In the Kabbalistic tradition, Akiva was an archetypal lover. He witnessed the destruction of the temple and understood deeply that the temple is the axis of Eros and that Eros is the essential force of attraction, the clasp upon the jeweled necklace that holds the whole world together. Akiva, however, initially learned of Eros ot f o ooks o old ise aste s. His life’s jou e ega as a poor shepherd. He was an outsider, not part of the rabbinic or priestly power classes in the Jerusalem of the time. He was a shepherd in the fields, playing the flute for his God and his sheep. He was beheld late one afternoon by Rachel, the beautiful daughter of Kalba Savua, patriarch of Je usale ’s ealthiest a isto ati fa il . “he sa hi a d she k e . G eat lo e a d passio e e kindled. They married against the fierce objections of her family. She was disowned for marrying a si pleto , ut e oti lo e a d E os e a e Ra hel a d Aki a’s spi itual aste . Akiva was so madly in love with Rachel that he yearned to trace that love back to its source. Aflame with love, he made his way to the academy and emerged twelve years later as the greatest spiritual master the Hebrew tradition had ever known. He was master of the law, not because he was the most cognitively gifted among scholars but because he was in love with the Eros of every letter that formed every word that formed every sentence that comprised the Hebrew law. He felt ideas before he spoke them. He was ravished by the Divine and impregnated with wisdom. To all his disciples, he made clear: his true teacher was Rachel. Not just because, as is usually understood, she urged him to study for many years away from home in the academy, but also because the erotic love they shared was the greatest teacher of the spirit Akiva had ever known. Indeed, the Ka alists u de sta d Ra hel to efe oth to the eal o a ho lo ed Aki a a d as a metaphor for the Goddess—for Shechi ah, fo E os. The te ple, hi h stood fo ost of Aki a’s life, was the center of Eros. Akiva saw the sexually intertwisted cherubs above the Ark and received their erotic transmission. So when the temple fell, he needed to make people understand that for all its magnificence and even holiness, in the end it was but a symbol of something more. It was the symbol of Eros. Most people fall when their temple is destroyed and they are exiled from their land. Akiva taught that temple consciousness was more potent than the physical temple, sacred as it might have been. Temple consciousness was all about living the erotic life. Akiva instituted, within Hebrew mysticism, a profound yearning for the rebuilt temple of Jerusalem. But he was not talking about a building on a hill. He was talking about a return to Eros. Eros was the New Jerusalem. But unlike the ancient days, when the erotic life was the province of only the elite, Akiva yearned for a democratization of Eros, in hi h the e is o lo ge a eed fo p iests e ause e e o e ill e oti all k o old. 1 ef o ou g to THE SONG OF SOLOMON Aki a taught: If the To ah ould ot ha e ee gi e , the e ould ha e lea ed all isdo f o the “o g of “olo o . The To ah i the He e t aditio is the di i e sou e of all isdo i e e dimension of life and in all sectors of society. The Song of Solomon is the biblical poem of outrageous love and Eros, which speaks of spirituality in explicit sexual terms. The essence of the Solomon tradition is that all wisdom is written not in the law books but in the law of our bodies, the law of the sexual. Even if the Torah, the classic law book, did not exist, we could learn all Torah, all wisdom, from the Song of Solomon, the song of the sexual. Here we have again the Secret of the Cherubs: the sexual models the erotic. But the sexual does not exhaust the erotic. The sexual teaches us how to live in Eros in all the nonsexual dimensions of our lives. HOLY OF HOLIES Akiva had a second teaching, which dances us one step further on the path of Eros and love. Akiva participated in a great debate with the other sages over whether to include the Song of Solomon (also called the Song of Songs) in the biblical cannon of sacred books. The song was written as a dialogue et ee t o lo e s. Let hi kiss e ith the kisses of his outh. His f uit is s eet to outh . . . His th ust is upo e i lo e. The a espo ds, You lips a e like the thread of scarlet . . . Your breasts are like two roses . . . Your closed garden, your secret fou tai . . . is delight. As you can imagine, the sages of the day protested. The song appears to be a sexual love song, perhaps to be sung in ancient taverns and beer halls; what place could it have in the sacred writ, they said? To this argument of the sages, Akiva had a twofold response. First, he pointed out that the Song of Songs is a mashal, an allegory. Second, he argued that while all the books are holy, the Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies. The traditional sources agree that Akiva was saying two distinct things: do not be afraid of the content of this book; it is not about sexuality; the sexual is but an allegory for the spiritual love between the human being and God. Second, he was saying that this lofty spiritual love is central to religious endeavor. This book therefore was not only holy but the Holy of Holies. This was the classical reading given to Akiva and the Song of Solomon by virtually two thousand years of tradition.iii That reading, however, was but a cloak, allowing Akiva to hide his truly radical esoteric doctrine. That doctrine was none other than the Secret of the Cherubs, the spring of enlightenment from which we have been sipping. When Akiva said the Song of Songs is a mashal, he meant not an allegory but a model. That is to say, the sexual story of the lovers in the Song of Songs is a model for the erotic. The e oti , as e ha e see , is ide ti al ith the sa ed itself. This as Aki a’s i te t he he cried out ith su h passio a d pathos that the “o g of “olo o is the Hol of Holies! This is how the erotic che u sti s ead the sa ed te t i Je e iah : : No lo ge ill the tea h thei neighbor or say to one another—know the Lord— e ause the ill all k o e, f o ou g to old. Me efe s to essence or spirit. The word know in sacred text refers to carnal knowledge (see Genesis 4:1: Adam knew his ife E e, he e the o d k o efe s to se ual oupli g . Je e iah is a e ei e of the “olo o li eage that ea s fo the de o atizatio of E os, e e o e ill e oti all k o e ithout eed fo the ediation of external authority. Akiva is in the direct lineage of Solomon to Jeremiah. 1 This as ot a asual etapho affi i g the i po ta e of the ook. Rathe , it o tai ed Aki a’s deepest mystical intention. The Holy of Holies in the temple, destroyed just a few years earlier, was for Akiva and the people the personification of Eros. The cherubs reminded the people that the sexual was the window to the sacred. The secret of the sexually intertwined cherubs atop the Ark was, you remember, not that sex is all of the erotic but that sex models the erotic, which yearns to be lived in all dimensions of life. The power of this idea did not fall with the destruction of the temple. The fall of the temple, insisted Akiva, must not be the fall of Eros. For every moment when life was engaged erotically, the temple was rebuilt. Moreover, Akiva was reminding a people who had just been disempowered politically that in the end political power structures are but an illusion. Humans are powerful because by living erotically a person participates in and creates the divine union, because consciousness and action are the touchstone of divinity. That is what Akiva meant when he said the Song of Solomon is the Holy of Holies. The Song of Solomon holds the temple consciousness, hidden in the Secret of the Cherubs. The entire thrust of the Western tradition was to rebuild the temple and return to the Garden of the Eden. Both refer to the same movement in the evolution of consciousness. That is the implicit cultural image of the lost Ark. Th is was the spark that ignited the popular best seller The Da Vinci Code that allured so many when it was published at the beginning of the twenty-first century. This is the true meaning of the grail quest, the orienting myth of Western culture. This is the yearned-for desire at the heart of Jewish culture, to rebuild the temple in the New Jerusalem. The grail, the Ark, the cherubs, all point in one direction: to Eros. And particularly to the precise relationship among the erotic and the sexual and the holy. The sexual models the erotic. The erotic and the holy are one. EROTIC TASTES AND TEXTS FROM THE SONG OF SOLOMON Let us sample segments from the Song of Solomon to taste something of the power and poignancy of the Secret of the Cherubs. As we read, remember with delight that the Song of Solomon is part of the i li al a o . Re e e agai that it is a out this ook that Aki a sa s: All [ i li al] ooks a e holy, and the Song of Solomon is the Holy of Holies. The Song of Solomon is the new Holy of Holies. It is the New Jerusalem. The sexual is the g eat tea he of E os. The song is written in the heteronormative world of biblical sexuality. It needs to be recontextualized to honor the full range of sacred sexual possibility. So please read your sacred sexual preference into the text. The song opens with kissing. This is not a peck-on-the-cheek kind of kiss but rather a passionate kiss of adi al a ousal. Let hi kiss e ith the kisses of his outh: fo th lo e is ette tha i e (Song of Solomon 1:2). I thei kissi g she dis o e s that his outh is ost s eet “o g of “olo o : . He fi ds that the oof of he outh is like the est i e “o g of “olo o : . The English translators were accurate here. The verse does not describe kissing that is limited to lips. Yeshake i eads the He e te t, lite all t a slated as kiss e, i pl i g, kiss e all o e , all of e. I the o igi al He e , the eade feels the full passio of these highl se ualized kisses. O e translation captures this sense of the o igi al He e ith the o ds: You lips o e e ith kisses “o g of “olomon 1:2). The “o g of “olo o , a oused the delight of the passio ate kiss, o ti ues: I ha e o pa ed thee, O my love, to a mare harnessed to one of the chariots of Pha aoh “o g of “olo o : . Mares excite stallions. He is the stallion; she is the mare. This is a powerful ancient sexual symbol. He is fully aroused by her to the rawness of his sexuality. The mare and stallion suggest images of fully aroused wild Eros. She is no less aroused. In the full heat of se ual allu e, she sa s, While the Ki g as o ou h, pe fu e ga e fo th its f ag a e “o g of “olo o : . The f ag a e of he et ess allu es the air. “he i ites hi to d i k he et ess ith the o ds: I ould ause thee to drink of spiced wine of the jui e of po eg a ate “o g of “olo o : . The po eg a ate is a lassi al a ie t s ol of the feminine yoni, or vagina. TEACHING THROUGH AROUSAL The Song of Solomon, to the reader who knows how to decipher its symbols, is a book of highly intense erotica. It would be very hard for the spiritual seeker reading this sacred text not to be aroused. The allure of the graphic sexual imagery works its magic on the mind, the heart, and the body. The descriptions intentionally invite awakening of the sexual imagination. The text seeks to teach through arousal. The He e sti s talk a out the gift of e lighte e t as it’a uta de’le’e la, ea i g a ousal f o a o e. This is the gift of di i e arousal that lives available to all, written into the script of our bodies. In the realization of the wisdom of arousal, we awaken to the utter goodness of our lives. When the goodness of arousal merges with our core experience of being irreducibly unique, we begin to feel at home in the world. As we will see, uniqueness is the fifth quality of Eros. In the sexual we feel personally addressed, even as we feel the common quality of allurement that threads through all of reality. The realization of the goodness of Eros, coupled with awakening to our Unique Self, is the elixir of greatness for every life. The goodness of Eros integrated with Unique Self–realization is the portal to our authentic knowing. Through this portal we know that we are held, loved, chosen, and desired by all of reality in every moment. The Song of Solomon addresses the seeker, each of us, personally, and calls us to the full Eros of our lives. It is in the personal address of the sexual to every human being that the democratization of greatness is born. For it is the dripping nectar of sexual pleasure gifted uniquely to each of us that affirms that our lives are dignified, worthy, and desired by all that is. POWERFUL SEXUAL IMAGES Let’s fu the e plo e the se ual i ages i iti g us to Eros that form the matrix of the Song of Solomon. His left ha d should e u de head, a d his ight ha d should e a e e “o g of “olo o 8:3). They are lying down. In this positio she tells hi to d i k of the jui e of po eg a ate. Ho eautiful a d pleasa t ou a e, O lo ed o e, ith all ou delights! You statu e is like a pal tree, and your breasts are like its clusters. I say I will climb the palm tree and lay hold of its fruit. O may your breasts be like clusters of the vine, and the scent of your breath like apples, and your outh like the est i e. I a elo ed’s, a d his desi e is fo e “o g of “olo o : –10). The man is an apple tree with dangling fruits of delight, and the woman is a palm tree to be climbed in love. The invitations imaged in the explicit sensuality of all the most recognized symbols of blessing in an agricultural world are designed to arouse. Climbing the palm tree, opening the garden, eating the lush fruits, drinking the wine and milk—all are images of a life whose value needs no explanation o justifi atio to a so iet ooted i the h th s of atu e. Gi i g o e’s elo ed the gift of o e’s arousal is a great source of aliveness. Radical intimacy is to let your beloved witness your arousal. I as a all, a d easts e e like to e s; the I as i his e es as o e ho fi ds pea e “o g of Solomon 8:10). The name of God in one biblical ve se is “haddai, lite all t a slated as east. iv The beauty of the feminine invites man to a state of contentment where he may find peace. Figs, Love Apples, and Secret Gardens The fig tree puts forth her green figs . . . Arise, my love, my fair one, a d o e a a “o g of Solomon 2:13). The fig is one of many ancient symbols of sexual fertility that abounds in the Song of Solomon. In some Middle Eastern languages, the word was used to represent the yoni. Open up a purple fig, and in it you see the image of the feminine yoni. The a d akes gi e fo th f ag a e, a d eside ou doo s a e all hoi e f uits, e as ell as old, hi h I ha e laid up fo ou, O elo ed “o g of “olo o : . Ma d akes, also k o as lo e apples, e e elie ed to arouse sexual desire. The Song of Solomon is filled with fruit, symbols of the phallus and yoni—pomegranates, figs, nuts, apples, grapes, and mandrake, all enjoyed in her ga de . A ga de lo ked is siste , ide, a sp i g lo ked, a fou tai sealed. Your shoots are an orchard of pomegranates with all choicest fruits, henna with nard, and saffron, calamus, and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense, myrrh, and aloes, with all choice spices—a garden fountain, a well of living water, and flowing streams from Lebanon. Awake, O north wind, and come, O south wind! Blow upon my garden, let its spices flow. Let my beloved come to his garden, and eat its hoi est f uits “o g of “olo o : –16). The lover is invited into the ga de of the o a ’s et ess. The e is a g eat feast as he e te s the hot e a e of he se et ga de . I e te ed ou ga de a d plu ked ou po eg a ates . . . With the lover, the reader enters the garden engulfed by the fragrance of myrrh, aloes, cinnamon, and frankincense—spices used to perfume a bed in preparation for lovemaking. Honey, Wine, and Lilies I ha e pe fu ed ed ith h, aloes, a d i a o . Co e, let us take ou fill of lo e u til the o i g P o e s : –18). The spouse sa s: U til the da eak, a d the shado s flee a a , I ill get e to the ou tai of h, a d to the hill of f a ki e se “o g of “olo o : . The mountain of myrrh refers to the clitoris, the raised area above the secret garden (vagina), covered with gentle hair, a reference to the mons veneris, the sacred mound. I a o e i to ga de , siste , spouse: I ha e gathe ed h ith spi e; I ha e eate ho e o ith ho e ; I ha e d u k i e ith ilk “o g of “olo o : . In des i i g the se ual a t as eati g ho e a d d i ki g ilk a d i e, the te t affi s the utte goodness of Eros. M elo ed is i e, a d I a his: he feeds a o g the lilies. U til the da eak a d the shado s flee a a , tu , elo ed, a d e thou like a oe o a ou g ha t upo the ou tai s of Bethe “o g of Solomon 2:16, 17) . A lily approximates an alluring image of the yoni. He feeds upon the lilies. The i age is lea , o pelli g, a d a ousi g. But hat a e the ou tai s of Bethe ? O e t a slato eads this passage as pla like a oe o a ha t o pe fu ed slopes. “lopes a e des ipti e of mounds, the ou tai s of Bethe , o ou tai s of di isio , th ough hi h u s a e lush a d oist alle . As a apple t ee a o g the t ees of the fo est, so is elo ed a o g the ou g e . With g eat delight I sat in his shadow, and his fruit was sweet to my taste. He brought me to the banqueting house, a d his a e o e e as lo e “o g of “olo o : –4). You feel the delight of fe i i e desi e i the te t. His a e efe s to the spouse’s phallus. “e is love in the body. The image again is clear, compelling, and arousing. The Fire between Them All the ooks a e hol ; the “o g of “olo o is the Hol of Holies. Afte eadi g the te t i so e depth, o e ealizes the full auda it of Aki a’s lai . To sa the “ong of Solomon is the Holy of Holies clearly rejects the sex-neutral and sex-negative narratives. But it also displays the triteness of the sex-positive narrative. The sexual Song of Solomon, as the Holy of Holies, points to something far more potent and profound than a merely sex-positive outlook. But even the narrative of sex sacred (sex being sacred because it creates children) does not capture the sexual vision of the Song of Solomon, because the sexual so exquisitely described in it is not related to procreation. The images evoke the sexual as a radical practice of delight, quite i depe de t of a p o eati e i te t. The “o g of “olo o is athe “olo o ’s g eat poe of temple consciousness. The sexual is the source of all wisdom. The sexual models the erotic. The erotic and the sacred are one. We conclude this section with a final teaching from Akiva. He points to the Hebrew words for man and woman: I-Y-SH (‫ )שיא‬and I-SH-A (‫)השא‬. They are made up of two sets of letters. The first set of common letters (I-SH) appears in both Hebrew words. These two letters together, comprised of the Hebrew letters aleph (‫ )א‬and shin (‫)ש‬, form the word eish (‫)שא‬, meaning fire. Fire represents sex, Eros, and passion. The Y (‫ )י‬and AH (‫ )ה‬that appear respectively in the Hebrew words for man and woman are in Hebrew yud and hei (‫)הי‬. These are the letters of the name of God. ‫ = שיא‬man ‫ = השא‬woman ‫ = שא‬fire ‫ = הי‬Yah, the name of God Akiva taught that when a man and a woman come together in sacred union, God is a third partner in their intercourse. It is not merely sex sacred because they participate in the potential creation of new life below in the visible world; rather, the sexual is always creating new life above, in the divine. The pa t e s ot o l fulfill the sel es i E os, ut the also fulfill God. I Aki a’s la guage, he lo e s a e a oused i the a ess of passio , the “he hi ah d ells et ee the . Aki a is da i g to suggest that the Shechinah, which dwells between the cherubs in the temple, dwells between man and woman in sexual union. Sexual union, in the Kabbalistic tradition of the Secret of the Cherubs, is the great mystical act that heals all the worlds above and below. The Hebrew mystics of the Kabbalah write of man and woman in these words: They should prepare themselves to be of one desire and one intent so that when they join they become one in body and soul; they become one in soul by aligning their wills in cleaving; when they unite in sexual union they become one in body and soul . . . It is then that God dwells between them in unified oneness.v Eros, we now begin to understand, is the primal desire from which the world springs into being. God’s E os eated the world. Our lack of Eros could destroy the world. Love or die. The mystics of every religion—those who lived on the inside—understand that this is not mere metaphor. Every act of union causes and participates in divine union. The human being participates in the divine love affair, even as God participates in the human love affair. For beneath the veil of illusion and separation, all really is one.2 Notes i I will talk about this textualization of Eros on page 149 of A Return to Eros. ii Exodus 25:22. iii See, for example, the wonderful independent scholar George Feuerstein, Sacred Sexuality (New York: Tarcher, 1993), 120–121, on the Christian mystics reinterpreting the Song of Songs as lofty mystical experience utterly divorced from the sexual. This is the classical reading offered by virtually all of the mainstream texts— an interpretation diametrically opposed to the Secret of the Cherubs. iv The verse is read to v See Gafni, Mystery of Love (2003), 63–65. 2 ea , as o e ho fi ds pea e . . . fo hi . This is the truth of the science of enlightenment in every great tradition. This truth is now being validated again by systems science, general dynamics theory, chaos and complexity theory, and zero point field theory emergence science.