The Holy Whore
For I am the first and the last, I am the honored one and the scorned one, I am the whore and the holy one.
- NAG HAMMADI CODEX 1945
We live in a “modern” society where we fear the forbidden wild erotic power of the Feminine and have tried persistently to rid the world of the harlots, whores and sinners. Truth be told, we cannot tolerate the sin of a whorish woman. We must purify her, we must take her to the light, we cannot meet her wildish darkness.
Until Now…
WHORE
In our modern times is offensive, degrading, maybe even traumatizing for some… but do you know the real meaning of the Holy Whore, the Harlot, and Sinner?
Such beautiful terms marred and charred by the inferno of ignorance and yet now is Her timely resurrection, her resurgence and reclamation.
The goddess was worshiped for the first 200,000 years that homo sapien was around and in ancient times, The Great Mother, the birther of Creation, was once known as the Great Whore.
The word whore referred to a priestess of the mysteries. In the Semitic languages of the Middle East, hor meant “cave” and “womb.” The title word harlot also meant “womb of Light,” suggesting one with the wisdom of an awakened womb.
“Going to hell” once described the ancient path of shamanic descent into the Earth Womb for rebirth. Into the darkness of the primordial womb for emergence into a world full of wonder, ecstasy and delight.
Interestingly, the word most commonly used for Mary Magdalene in medieval times is the ancient priestess title of harlot.
We can begin to see how the esteemed and ancient traditions of the sacred feminine were demeaned and insulted, their languages stolen and reversed, demonized and be-deviled.
Feminist researcher Barbara Walker writes of ancient Babylon:
“As Mother of Harlots, Ishtar was called the Great Goddess HAR. Her high priestesses, the Harine, were the spiritual rulers of ‘the city of Ishtar.’”
Harine closely resembling modern word Harem,
“the sanctuary of the women's quarters”.
In both Sumeria and Babylon, Inanna and Ishtar, Goddess deities of love, sensuality, fertility, procreation and war were called the Harlots of Heaven.
In ancient Greek religion, Hera (Hara) is the goddess of women, marriage, family and childbirth. Hera is portrayed as a majestic and solemn goddess, sitting on a throne, and holding a pomegranate (symbolic fruit of womb wisdom) in her hand.
The earliest appearance of this sacred title is in the writings of ancient Sumeria where ‘Hur’ (as in whore, har, or hor) is a word of the primordial and sacred womb.
The title of Holy Whore celebrates a woman’s embodiment of an “awakened womb”— the magical, creative, cosmic kundalini power. The hur is holographic, fractal, multidimensional spirit that resides in the womb of every living woman, as well as the underworld womb of the earth that births and shapes creation.
When we see the root word hor/har/whore we descend into the feminine cave, and know we are in the presence of an honorary title of a divine feminine priestess.
Emma Restall Orr, druidic priestess, author, and poet, writes:
By the honorary term Whore we do not refer to a prostitute, rather a ‘Whore’ is a title of spiritual sexual power, whispering back to a time when the feminine was revered as the Creatrix.
The etymology of Whore can be sourced from a multitude of archaic origin languages.
Hor is where we get the terms Holy, whore, harlot and horizon from.
The [Har]imtu were an Akkadian class of priestesses of Inanna, originally connected to sacred sexual rites as Hor/ Har is Sumerian for Goddess and meant sacred one, specifically referring to sacred sexual spiritual power in ancient Sumerian - which was the first language ever spoken.
The Egyptian root word HOR means "High Flying One" in reference to Horus who is the flying hawk solar deity. Hence Isis, the Egyptian Goddess of motherhood, magic and mysticism is the Heavenly Harlot, the high flying one who birthed / mothered Horus, the divine child. Horus is where we get the term horizon from, the new beginning of each day full of possibility, openings and inspired intentions birthed from the divine goddess.
The Holy Hors -
witches, priestess, seers, wise women
In the earliest Gnostic writings, the feminine counterpart of God is known as Sophia Prounikos - the Whore (Goddess) of Wisdom.
The ancient priestesses held holy titles such as Whore, Harlot, Hathor, meaning “the pure and immaculate ones” — the wisdom keepers.
The Horae (Horai, Hours), who in Greek Mythology were the goddesses of the seasons, cycles and the natural portions of time. The Horae were originally the personifications of nature in its different seasonal aspects, but in later times they were regarded as goddesses of order as “They bring and bestow ripeness”.
In Hebrew the word horaa also meant “instruction” and the word hor meant “light.” In fact, the Torah, the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), took its name from related holy hor root words.
In the Bible, Horasis -another whore word- was used to describe an oracular, ecstatic vision and once again was the ancient Greek word for womb enlightenment, often bestowed through the sexual union. Most often, it was priestesses and prophetesses who were famous for their sexual oracular vision with their penchant for sensual salvation through their seership.
And the expression “whoring” is used in the Bible to chastise people who return to worshipping the ancient goddesses and consulting her Holy Whore oracles. Throughout history we hear of the temple priestesses with the gift of oracular visioning, the Sibyllas, the Peleiades, ‘doves’, the priestesses at Dodona, the oracles of Delphi known as the Pythias - ALL Holy Whores.
Yet throughout time, we have experienced a feminine apocalypse - a revelation of the fall and restoration of the goddess - a world where Holy Whore describes a woman who deals in not so sacred sexuality and is hurled as insult.
The whore is thought to be a woman who definitively degrades herself.
Yet does she?
Every mystic, priestess, visionary, midwife, herbalist, witch, maiden, mother and crone is a whore.
So we don’t need to divest this reality of whoredom, we need to help reclaim it, by remembering its true meaning, so the Holy Whore of the feminine can be rebirthed to her rightful rose throne of regality, radiance and rapture!
The Goddess whispers into the Collective,
You have seen my descent, now watch my rising.
Stay tuned for the next blog post on the Sacred Sinners!
