Editing Sexual ritual (section)

==Private worship==

A sex organ "makes an admirable fertility symbol, and has been worshipped as such privately from time to time, or even publicly... gives dramatic promise of productivity and protection".<ref>Berne, p. 78-80</ref> Such "worship" may only become more common in [[late modernity]], as "in our secular culture, sexuality often replaces religion as a means of pursuing the meaning of life".<ref>Gail Sheehy, ''New Passages'' (London 1996) p. 328-9</ref> [[Alan Watts]] maintains that "when you are [[falling in love|in love]] with someone, you do indeed see them as a divine being... through a tremendous outpouring of psychic energy in total devotion and worship for this other person".<ref>Watts, in Anand, p. 62</ref> A woman may 'want someone who adores me... like he was adoring my breasts with his hands".<ref>Kate Cann, ''Sea Change'' (London 2007) p. 48 and p. 297</ref> A man (more ambivalently) may muse on "the white breasts he worships; adores; is scared of; detests".<ref>Sean Thomas, ''the cheek perforation dance'' (London 2003) p. 230</ref> For [[Shakespeare]], "this is the liver-vein, which makes flesh a deity, a green goose a goddess; pure, pure idolatry".<ref>G. Blakemore Evans ed., ''The Riverside Shakespeare'' (1997) p. 229</ref>

In the further reaches of [[chick lit]], "the male organ... becomes a tower of strength, a tree trunk in girth, the pillar that sustains the universe... a Pillar of Hercules, sustaining heaven"<ref>Amanda Hemingway, ''Soulfire'' (London 1994) p. 277 and p. 437</ref>—evidence perhaps that "the phallic religious tendency is alive in the modern and the civilized... a compulsive fascination"<ref>C. R. Aldrich, ''The Primitive Mind and Modern Civilization'' (1999) p. 153 and p. 146</ref> with what [[Jung]] termed "the phallus as the quintessence of life and fruitfulness".<ref>C. G. Jung, ''Psychology of the Unconscious'' 9London 1944) p. 57</ref> Correspondingly, the Western adept may borrow, in the quest "to create a Sacred Space... names given to the vagina in the East, including Valley of Joy, Great Jewel, Pearl, Lotus Blossom, Moist Cave, Ripe Peach, Enchanted Garden, and Full Moon".<ref>Anand, p. 72 and p. 215</ref>