The Ancient Normal: What We Lost When We Shamed Desire

Reverend Gin Bishop
Sep 30
3 min read

Opening Reflection

Once upon a time, intimacy was not a secret or a scandal.

It was woven into the very fabric of culture.

Cleopatra chose lovers without ridicule. Renaissance noblewomen held cicisbei at their side. French salons were alive with wit, beauty, and desire as natural as breath.

Desire wasn’t dirty. It was divine.

It was art. It was politics. It was medicine.

And then, we lost it.

The Rise of Shame

When Puritan inheritance and Victorian morality swept across Europe and the Americas, desire was rewritten as sin.

Older women with younger lovers became punchlines.
Pleasure was stripped of its sacredness and made suspect.
Intimacy was exiled from ritual and pushed into shadows.

What once belonged to temples, to mystery schools, to rites of initiation became the “forbidden fruit.” And America — steeped in Puritan roots — doubled down harder than anywhere else.

Today, we still live under this shadow. Intimacy is scandalized instead of sanctified. Desire is whispered about instead of honored.

What We Lost

When we shamed desire, we lost more than pleasure. We lost:

Rites of Passage: Traditions where intimacy was guided by elders and embedded in community wisdom.
The Archetype of the Initiatrix: The elder guide, threshold keeper, and teacher of embodied love.
Sacred Intimacy as Medicine: The understanding that desire heals when treated with reverence instead of ridicule.

We lost a theology of the body that once honored God in flesh.

Wisdom Across Traditions

Song of Songs: “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for your love is more delightful than wine.” Scripture itself once honored passion as sacred.
Tantric Texts: In Vedic traditions, intimacy was a pathway to union with the Divine.
Mystic Christianity: Saints like Teresa of Ávila described ecstasy with the language of embodied love.

The ancients did not divide flesh and spirit. They saw intimacy as a doorway into the holy.

What We Can Regain

Reclaiming desire is not regression. It is restoration.

We are not inventing something new — we are remembering what has always been.

To honor intimacy as sacred is to:

Honor history — recognizing traditions where love was celebrated, not shamed.
Honor the body — not as temptation, but as temple.
Honor Spirit — who delights in embodiment, not just ascetic denial.

The Dharma of Now

Our task is not to replicate ancient customs. It is to restore the spirit they carried:

To treat intimacy as blessing, not scandal.
To reclaim the Initiatrix, the elder guide who blesses thresholds.
To weave desire back into the sacred — art, community, ritual, and prayer.

This is the collective healing we are called to: not only breaking trauma loops, but breaking shame cycles.

Practice for the Week

Scriptural Reclamation: Read Song of Songs 1:2 aloud. Imagine hearing it in church. How would worship shift if passion were not taboo but testimony?
Shame Inquiry: Reflect — where has shame distorted your understanding of desire? Write one belief you inherited and one you are ready to release.
Blessing of Intimacy: Share — with a trusted circle or journal — one story of intimacy as blessing, not scandal. Name it as holy.
Embodied Prayer: Place your hand over your heart. Breathe. Whisper: “My body is not sin. My body is sanctuary.”