erotic
Of Spirit, Soul and Kamasutra
Wednesday, March 11th, 2009 | arts, mythical, sex | 3 Comments
When I was really, really young, there was a whole Kamasutra trend among my friends, male and female alike. The mythical Art of Lovemaking was arousing everyone’s imagination. It sounded deep, mysterious and dirty, and it was all about an universe we were yet to discover. Our minds were tremendously fancying twisted positions and strange techniques, and nothing seemed as exciting as this naive surface-scratching.
Of course, it took me some years to get it right. Some life experiences and some reading, and most of all, some “giving up preconceptions” work, which, I have to admit it wasn’t easy.
Kamasutra was written around 150 B.C. by the Indian scholar Vatsyayana and it is composed of seven parts, 36 chapters, and a total amount of 1250 verses. It describes the practices and discipline of sensual pleasures and it is NOT a tantric text. It does not describe tantric rites, nor do its content have tantrical connotations as it is a book for the noble and the righteous, and it does not address the specific group of the Left Hand followers. On the contrary, it’s rather practical than mystical and it refers to the carnal, legitimate pleasures of day-to-day life.
One of Kamasutra’s more important concerns, however, it is the spirituality of its reader and its relationship to carnality. The book approaches matters of soul with wisdom and it raises important warnings for the young and inexperienced profane, unaware of sexuality’s hidden dangers. Seeking these pleasures for your senses is enriching you, but it can also enslave you to this world and its materiality, to your own desires and the karma they create. That is why Kamasutra is also emphasizing one’s relationship with the other: choosing, getting to know, getting close and getting intimate. Before talking of positions and penetration it talks of kissing and embracing, of beginning and ending, of arts and virtue. Of loving and committing yourself to giving pleasure to the loved one. Of understanding and practicing sensuality as a whole.
“Kama is the enjoyment of appropriate objects by the five senses of hearing, feeling, seeing, tasting and smelling, assisted by the mind together with the soul. The ingredient in this is a peculiar contact between the organ of sense and its object, and the consciousness of pleasure which arises from that contact is called Kama.” (Vatsyayana, Kamasutra).
If interested, you can find here the original translation from Sanskrit, as first printed in 1883.
Nude Photography
Thursday, October 9th, 2008 | arts, sex-appeal | No Comments
When the new born art of photography made its first steps into the wild world of the 19th century, it soon became clear it was going to change the world forever. The way reality it reflected reality was something no one had never seen: real, strong, precise. That precise that it claimed different aesthetics and a different view upon the morality of arts. A painted nude is a painting, one can recognize it as artwork and place it somewhere faraway from the immediate, from excitement. Because it is a painting and only a painting, and no matter how accurate it would be, it will never look really real. But a piece of nude photography is something different. The person in the picture is right there, just the way she is in real life. Unbelievably similar. You can almost thing of touching her. You can desire her, fall for her, because you can tell she is real. And that, my friends, is a scandal. Or at least it was considered this way in the late 19th – early 20th centuries period. In France a whole bunch of nude photographies were called postcards – although it was pretty obvious they weren’t meant to be sent by mail – and, although, actually because, many men truly appreciated them, they got banned in some more religious, conservative countries of the time, such as the Ottoman Empire.
Later on, however, the works of artists such as E. J. Bellocq, Julian Mandel, A.H. Nicholls or Edward Weston brought into people’s attention the iridescent beauty of human forms, male and female alike, when “indecently” exposed. When there is truth, purity of thought and strength of expression one cannot make up any accusation of pornography. Art is having something to say and showing it indirectly, instead of saying. It is when any primal, basic, unrefined material gets past his usual borders and becomes light.