From "When Your Deities Have Dicks and Pussies" in the brand new book Conjuring Black Funk: Notes on Culture, Sexuality, and Spirituality, Volume I by Herukhuti (Vintage Entity Press)
The many years of training and learning within the [Khemetic/ancient Egyptian] priesthood opened my eyes to what I had been experiencing the years prior. I was able to develop my skills and abilities. I finally had an Afrocentric framework for understanding my Self and my world. One of the aspects of African spirituality
for which I am most grateful is the depiction/representation of deities. I grew up in the priesthood seeing images of divinity that were both female and male. God was female. God was male. God was female and male. The gendered nature of God in the African spiritual context was contrary to the patriarchal God I had known in Christianity and Islam. Auset, Hetheru, and Mut were just as instrumental in my life as were Ausar, Heru, and Amen.The many images of God depicted beautiful Black women and men. These beautiful Black women and men had bodies that were sensual. Sensuality is a very important aspect of African spirituality. These Gods have dicks and pussies. Ausar’s mummy stands with Ausar’s Black dick bold and erect. Auset’s Tat is worn as a belt buckle depicting the thick lips of her pussy and the firm elegance of her clit. For African spiritualists the body is of God, an aspect of divinity, and therefore worthy of the same kind of love and care we devote to the soul.
During ritual we dance and sing and celebrate with our Gods. They “mount” us and we act as conduits for their words and expression. Being mounted can be an ecstatic, orgasmic experience. The sensual power of our bodies is affirmed in our communion with our Gods. The sweat pours down the celebrant’s back – twisting and turning. God adds a bump and grind – the body shakes and shivers. It’s one of the most addictive experiences I’ve ever had. Each time I return to ritual I shudder in anticipation.
The priesthood did not become my permanent home. I eventually left. My principle reason for leaving was that I had grown beyond the point that my spiritual teachers in the priesthood could be of support. My next lesson was to understand how my specific sexual identity could be integrated into my life and into my practice as a priest. All of my spiritual teachers in the priesthood maintained heterosexual identities and their experiences outside of that context did not offer them the competence that I needed. The following eight years after leaving the priesthood I devoted to exploring this lesson.
I had my past experiences as a sexual being to assist me in this endeavor. I had been sexual with males and females since I was a kid. The naturalness of those experiences I now liken, although I didn’t always, to my communion with the ancestral and spirit worlds. During those eight years, I did a lot of reflection and some reading about gender, sexuality, sex, and spirituality. I did even more conscientious, passionate fucking and sucking as an “exploration in the truths” of my body, desires, and pleasures.
Advance praise for the book:
“What a book! Hugely informative, often surprising, consistently thought-provoking and completely lacking in shame or pretense, it's the kind of book you wish you'd written yourself but are very, very happy to have read.” - Robert Fullilove, EdD, Professor and Associate Dean, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University
“I am engaged by the compelling insights of this feminist/womanist pomo afro homo on the intentional practice of sex, culture, and spirit. Whether you be bisexual, versatile, gay, top, trans, man, woman, str8, bottom, on the DL or an old black dyke like me, you will want to get into Conjuring Black Funk.” - Cheryl Clarke, PhD, Author of The Days of Good Looks: Prose and Poetry, 1980-2005
“Dr. Herukhuti uses ingredients to prepare a new recipe for the 21st century diet. If they hunger for something more than the typical fast food served as Black thought, it is a meal that Afrocentric beings will find very nourishing. His advocacy for the complete and total sexual freedom of consenting human beings has the taste of a new epistemology. He is a gatekeeper to a sacred banquet of sex, sin and Spirit that few are ready to acknowledge; let alone eat.” - Ron Simmons, PhD, President/CEO, Us Helping Us, Washington DC
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