Why the Phoenix Goddess Temple Founder Insists She’s a Priestess, Not a Prostitute

Tracy Elise thinks we have a sex problem in Arizona.

As someone who has studied ancient sex practices for more than two decades and served as the head priestess at a Tantric temple in Phoenix, she should know.

She thinks we don’t talk about sex and orgasms enough, and that when we do, the discussion is hampered by the conflicting teachings we get from religious authorities and pornography.

She thinks that the human orgasm is a religious experience, and that sexual energy has tremendous healing powers, but that we don’t take advantage of it.

And she thinks a lot of men don’t know how to honor, worship, or treat women like goddesses — a problem that fuels a cycle of women having bad sexual experiences that prevent them from attaining their orgasmic potential.

“Sexuality is natural, it’s necessary, and a lot of it happens with ignorance,” Elise says. “I’m sad about what’s happening with orgasms: They’re meant to be a shared experience, but people are having them alone, if they’re having them at all.”

These problems aren’t necessarily unique to Arizona, she says, but because state leaders lean so far to the political right, our chances of fixing these problems on our own are grim.

That’s not to say all is doomed. As a priestess, healer, and minister of Tantra — the religion she practices to further the sexual and spiritual health of society — she says she’s successfully helped many people overcome a wide variety of sexual and emotional problems…. (Continue reading in The Phoenix New Times.)