Bridger of Worlds

The Dual Nature of Sacred Sexuality: Exploring Creation and Destruction as Life Force

• Ioannis Kokkinos

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In this episode of the Bridger of Worlds podcast, host Ioannis Kokkinos explores the profound mysteries of sacred sexuality—a practice that connects body, spirit, and divine energy. Rooted in ancient traditions and modern healing approaches, this episode reveals how sexual energy has been honored as a source of power, transformation, and spiritual awakening, and how reclaiming it today can lead to deep healing and embodiment.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

  • Tantra and Taoism practices for sexual energy mastery and spiritual union.
  • Ancient Greek, Roman, and Egyptian traditions that celebrated sexuality as sacred ritual.
  • How sexual energy is both creative and destructive, shaping life force and spiritual growth.
  • The impact of sexual trauma, cultural repression, and generational wounds on intimacy.
  • Why ritual, intention, and safe containers are essential for sexual healing and transformation.
  • How to reclaim sexuality as a sacred path, dissolving shame, distortion, and suppression.

This episode emphasizes that sexual energy is not just physical pleasure—it is a sacred life force that, when consciously cultivated, can bring profound healing, empowerment, and divine connection.


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Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Bridger of Worlds podcast. I'm your host, Ioannis Kokkinos. Thank you so much for joining me. If you're on YouTube watching, thank you for tuning in and if you're on one of the podcast platforms, thank you for tuning in as well. So today I have quite an episode for you.

I will be elaborating on some things I touched upon in last week's episode. So please touch base with the Art of sacred sexuality, which is what I talked about last week if you have not done so already, hopefully you have. Uh, last week was more about setting up the container. Um, setting up proper boundaries, right?

Knowing how to work with our sexual energy, to be intentional with it. To be conscious with it, because it is the energy of creation, right? So we are channels for this energy. And I also talked about how when we open up sexually, we are also opening up to the non-physical and to the intangible. So it is very important uh, to know our sexual natures on very intimate levels, as well as to heal any trauma that we may be carrying surrounding our sexual energy. Um, this doesn't benefit only people, or this doesn't only speak to people who have been sexually traumatized. The thing with sexual energy, it is the force of creation as it is destruction, but I'll be getting into that a little bit later on in this episode.

Exploring Sacred Sexuality

Today's episode, we're still talking about sacred sexuality, but we're talking more about ritual. What can that look like as well as why sex can be so triggering, why it can bring up so many feelings of shame, guilt, and fear. Because this is, of course, very collective. It's very generational. It is ancestral.

And I just want to bring this to the space today because it is an important conversation to have. So let's start with sacred sexuality. Uh, what is it? Right? 

Tantra and Taoist Traditions

Sacred sexuality when we think of it in our modern day world, our minds probably go toward the east, right? So we think of tantra most likely. Now, the western world has made Tantra very much solely about sex, but that's not actually the foundational teaching of tantra. Tantra does have branches that include sexuality. But in a nutshell, tantra is basically using the physical experience as a means to access the divine.

So sexuality of course, is one means of the physical experience that we can meet the divine. Our sexual energy comes from the divine. It's from the higher force. It's what's has created everything. So this is why when we think of sacred sexuality, uh, we're probably most likely thinking about tantra. In the Taoist tradition as well. We do also see sexual kung fu, which speaks to the circulating of sexual energy throughout the body, through the back channel, up the head, back to the front channel. And this is a way to use sexual energy as a means to become super sensory, which basically means to realize our godliness in our humanity. That's essentially what Tantra is as well. Both creeds speak to the divine union of the sacred masculine and the divine feminine. So when we're setting up ritual, as far as the tantric practices are concerned, we have Shiva, the sacred masculine. We have Shakti, the Divine Feminine, which speaks to creating the safety, creating the container for the feminine sexual force to be raised. This is the Kundalini energy that is meant to be raised through our chakras in order to activate our higher spiritual centers, our third eye, and our crown chakra.

So we also see this in the microcosmic orbit, different language, different symbolism. In the Taoist creed, they do talk about the union of Yang and Yin yang is the masculine, which is represented by the dragon, and yin is represented by the feminine, which is symbolized by the phoenix, and we are to bring these two in union.

So sacred sexuality is the symbol of basically the union and reunion of the sacred masculine and divine feminine. So we know this, right? When two human beings come together to create life, to create the baby, it is the active, penetrative force, the masculine polarity, and the receptive, passive force, which is the feminine polarity coming together to create life.

Now, of course, it speaks to polarities, right? And the physical act of sex is the symbol for this energetic, spiritual union that is very real and very much alive in the cosmos, in life and in creation.

Ancient Practices and Divine Union

Now when we look to the west, uh, in today's age, obviously there's really no doctrine that talks about divine union, but this does not mean that it did not exist and that it still does not exist through esotericism, mysticism. If you look through the symbols, if you look through the allegories and the metaphors, we do see teachings and doctrine of divine union, but basically in the west, these practices, the sacred sexual practices were very much emphasized in ancient Greece, in ancient Rome and ancient Egypt, among others. In ancient Greece, these were the hieros gamos mysteries, and they were not gatherings or rituals just for the sake of feeling pleasure and getting off. It really was a container and a ritual set up to meet and connect and experience the divine. So man would embody the God, woman would embody the goddess. They would come together through sexual union in order to represent the symbol of sacred marriage, the sacred marriage that is the cosmic marriage, which is the sacred masculine and the divine feminine.

So we saw this in Rome as well. We saw this in Egypt. The hieros gamos mysteries in ancient Greece were very much centered around evoking the God, Dionysus. And as I said in previous episodes, Dionysus or Dionysus was the God of ecstasy, was the God of resurrection. And was a prominent symbol that really spoke to the human experience of going through some form of suffering and coming back from it, going through it, going through a death of sorts in order to experience rebirth. Dionysus was the prominent resurrection symbol in ancient Greece, and these hieros gamos mysteries were centered around this specific deity. In Rome, it was Bacchus, which was the Roman equivalent of Dionysus. In Egypt, it was Osiris, which was the prominent resurrection symbol of ancient Egypt. Which again, was a myth symbolizing divine union between the feminine and the masculine. Isis who traveled down into the underworld to put Osiris back together again after he was dismembered. So we can say that the religion, the one religion, spoken through many deities, many languages, many metaphors, many allegories. The main religion of the ancients was divine union. They fully well understood and knew that it was the masculine energy and the feminine energy of the cosmos that created everything.

And as human beings came into existence, as we evolved, we were eventually able to come together in sexual union to create life. Because we are reflections of this macrocosm, we are reflections of this universal life force. So last week I said how this energy is the thread of creation and that we are channels for this energy.

We need to be very mindful and intentional and responsible when it comes with it toward this energy because we do open up. 

The Impact of Suppression

And here I wanna mention that when these civilizations and let's say they're polytheistic religions, started to become suppressed and rejected and denied by the early rise of the monotheistic religions, a lot of these sexual mystery rites and these types of rituals went very much underground.

And because they became very much denied and suppressed, they were no longer sources of prayer, channeling and meeting the divine, but became sources of shame, fear, and guilt. There was a lot, a lot of distortion and shadow that manifested in the name of sacred sexuality.

So collectively this trauma's still very much alive. We're still all suffering from this unconscious wound. But this is why when we think of sex or when we want to talk about sex or you know, something sexual comes up, uh, it can be very triggering, right?

The thing with sexual energy is that it is a creator. Yes. We know because it creates life, creates a baby, but it is also a destroyer. And what do I mean by that? So in some of the earlier episodes, I talked about Eros and Thanatos. Eros is this primal force of creation that courses through everything.

It's also the physical expression of universal love according to the ancient Greeks, and Thanatos is its counterpart. Thanatos means death, but it doesn't mean that Eros is the good guy and that Thanatos is the bad guy, right? Everything is neutral from creation's perspective. So we can't say that's because life is being created, that's good. And because life is being ended, it's bad. We tend to say that it's bad because it hurts, right? Loss hurts. We don't want good things to end. We don't want things to finish if we don't want them to finish. Right? But it is a part of life. Death is a part of life as much as birth, like destruction is very much a part of life as much as creation. When we look to the wilderness, when we look to the elements, when we look to the natural forces and the natural phenomenons of our world, right? Tornadoes suck, hurricanes suck, avalanches suck. Earthquakes suck, right? Volcanic eruptions. These are all devastating, detrimental, destructive aspects of life, but they happen nonetheless because it is a part of life.

And we see this in the wilderness with the animals, right? We see the hunters and the hunted. We see all sorts of death and decay throughout autumn and winter. But with that death comes renewal. With those endings come new beginnings, and this is really the ultimate message of any religious and spiritual creed, is that after Death follows life, and guess what?

Sexual Energy and Trauma

Our sexual energy holds all of this knowledge, holds all of this intelligence because our sexual energy creates as it destroys. So what happens when our sexual energy stays in the bottom centers and we're not working with raising the sexual energy, which is also what was happening in ancient Greece and ancient Rome and ancient Egypt, just like they were doing in the east and are still doing in the east through sexual kung fu and tantric practices.

Really, it is about raising that sexual energy up into the heart, eventually the third eye, the crown, and we learn to circulate the sexual energy because if this sexual energy does stay in the bottom centers, which is basically our root, sacral and solar plexus chakras, it can be very much about the ego and what happens when sexual energy stays solely with the ego? It becomes about power, and it becomes about misuse and abuse of power. That is why a lot of the, let's say, underground societies, all the people that were cast away as far as sexual mystery rights were concerned throughout history. Anybody that continued with sexuality was deeply shamed and deeply guilted for it.

Those persons and their sexual energy very much stayed in the bottom centers and stopped being about love. It stopped being about prayer. It stopped being about healing. It stopped being about connecting. It start, it stopped being about accessing the divine. So all this bleeds into our collective unconscious, right?

This is very much a trauma that is still alive and our ancestors carried, and so we're carrying unconsciously as well. So it became very much about a very distorted expression of sexuality, which was the underground stuff versus the above ground, which was all about purity, light. Um, you know, very much not connecting to the inner wilderness and to the animal nature of our humanity. Right. So it's very much about either one or the other, but that is not at all the case because when it comes to our sexual energy, a, we are fully meant to experience it and to embody it in our lifetime, that is our birthright. The traumas that can come up through our sexuality don't need to be sexual in nature.

Because what happens is our sexual energy arises from our root chakra, right? So that is the bottom center. It's at the base of the spine, it's the perineum. We experience all sorts of shaming and guilting and fear in the early stages of our life, and a lot of that emotional suppression gets stuck in

Our root chakra. So already, when our sexual energy wants to rise and express itself, it's carrying trauma. And because trauma is very much linked to needing to feel safe, which is the root chakra, and the need to, emote freely, and the need to become vulnerable.

That in turn its shadow aspect, its shadow. You know, the counter will be to try and control as much as possible. That's why there's so much sexual crime. Rape, pornography, right? We see all sorts of sexual trauma or trauma at the hands of sexuality because the sexual energy has stayed stuck in the bottom centers, right?

So the root chakras about safety, the sacral chakra is about emoting and feeling also the sensual experience. And then our solar plexus is very much about our will and our solar plexus as I talked about in some episodes ago, is where ego actually develops. So we need to develop a healthy ego at the level of the solar plexus, so if the ego is wounded and our sexual energy is our creative energy, we will not use that creative energy for the sake of actually healing and manifest a life of authenticity, truth, love, and all that good stuff. It's gonna be about control, it's gonna be about power. And I think that a lot of the men that are addicted to pornography or are watching porn in some way, shape or form get to live vicariously through these feelings of control, domination, and you know, feeling a sense of power. So I talked about this in some episodes ago, and I talked about my experience with pornography and like the symbolism of pornography. But basically if we're not doing the work, if we're not dealing with our shadow material, if we're not dealing with our traumas and because our sexual energy can hold, like.

The most basic, most raw traumas of our humanity, of safety. The need to feel safe to emote and the need to develop a sense of self feeling, a sense of empowerment. A lot of us will get stuck in front of that screen wanting to feel a sense of power vicariously.

Healing and Ritual Practices

In ritual, right? If we want to actually start to heal sexually and if we actually want to work with our sexuality, with our sexual energy as a means to meet the divine because that is the original origin story of our sexual energy is a means to meet the divine.

Everything else is programming. Everything is, everything else is collective trauma and generational shame and guilt. Whatever triggers fear, shame, and guilt as far as sexuality is concerned, is noise. It has nothing to do with the truth because our sexual energy came from God. So we can use our sexual energy to reunite with God, and that is the divine union creed that we still see in Tantra today in the Taoist tradition, in ancient Rome and ancient Greece, and ancient Egypt and other cultures as well. But because it got so denied and suppressed in the West and these three civilizations especially, they were powerhouses, they were power stations for these mysteries. And when we, look to these countries, when we look to these places, uh, in today's age, there's nothing, nothing about any of that because of organized institution and how it deemed everything demonic and evil and shameful and bad and disgusting. So that became incredibly traumatized. The above ground became incredibly traumatized because they were essentially wanting to sever off the lower part of their body.

They thought that being animalistic, being wild, having a primal nature, had nothing to do with God, which couldn't be further from the truth because the wilderness comes from God. The universe is incredibly primal, the world life force is incredibly primal, right? Creation, destruction, recreation.

There's nothing more primal than that. And we are carriers of this energy, and yes, a lot of us don't know how to hold it. A lot of us are suffering maybe because we have absolutely no idea how to hold something like this within us, right? We all have different natures.

We all have different experiences of how we can express this energy. Most of us are probably not taught the truth about this energy and what it actually is. So we suffer, we watch porn. We suppress ourselves sexually. We don't speak. We stay silent. We're mute. Right? We can't talk about something so shameful and so bad, right?

And not just regurgitates, it's a trauma that just keeps regurgitating. So we need to start having the conversations. We need to spread the word, and we need to actually talk about sexuality in safe spaces. And that really is all the ritual we will ever need if we're wanting to work with our sexual energy and to set up a ritual. Again, we are opening up to the non-physical and to the intangible.

So it is important to create safety, to set up container and boundaries for our sexual energy to come through. And we can even call benevolent forces in, right? Because there are forces, there are entities, there are energies throughout history that are also benevolent in nature that have to do with the raising of the sexual energy, the sexual fire.

Just like there are energies and entities that want to do harmful things and stay very much in the bottom energy experience of sexuality where it's very much about misuse and abuse of power. When we're opening up our field and when we're setting up the container, we need to be very intentional of what we want to call in and what we want to put out.

There are ancestors, there are guides, there are energies, there are entities that very much well know the truth of sacred sexuality, and that really we just need to learn how to raise the sexual fire through our chakras and learn how to move this energy throughout our bodies. Nothing will be more self-empowering than this. We become masters of our emotions. We become masters of our experiences. We become masters of our reactions. This is not about controlling anything and anybody outside of us. Self-empowerment and to feel empowered and powerful. It's to become a master of yourself. When you become a master of yourself, when you learn to master your reactions, your emotions, your triggers.

This is how you can move through life. This is how you can really manage your day to day, no matter what is going on around you, no matter what chaos, no matter what shitty situation or shitty person comes your way.

And this does start with our sexual energy because our sexual energy is, our creative energy. And it needs to move up from the bottom centers and go up because if it stays in the bottom centers, it will amplify our traumas. If we're not doing our shadow work, if we're not healing and processing our traumas, then our sexual energy will be expressed from a much more egoic experience, which will be all about control.

It'll be about self gratification. It will be about controlling others, manipulating others. So ritual of course, can be practiced with partnered or solo when it's partnered, both literally need to be on the same page. Both literally need to know what is being called in, what is going to be offered, and of course

this energy exchange, this sexual energy exchange that will occur between the two partners will be for healing, will be for expansion. One is serving the other as one is receiving from the other, and that is prayer , that is channeling, that is meeting the divine. That is the deepest form of intimacy.

And then solo. This can also be done solo. When we want to become more intimate with our bodies, we want to heal our wounds. We want to hold space for our wounds. We want to be there for ourselves. We can use our sexual energy, our creative energy, as a means to meet the divine through ourselves.

Because really in order to meet our partners, meet our lovers, to be able to be in that kind of relationship, we have to hone and forge and cultivate the most important relationship that we do have, and that is with ourselves. And sometimes we can't do it all on our own. But for someone who wants to, let's say, become their own healer or who wants to show up for themselves because maybe back in the day they never did or they didn't know how to, they have every single right to want to be that channel of creation for themselves in those moments. There's nothing shameful about that. That's not bad, there's no guilt there, right? It's our energy and we need to become sovereign and responsible with our energy. We need to become conscious of it because we essentially need to master.

We need to master our sexual energy and by mastering our sexual energy, we have to go into our traumas. We have to go into the unprocessed. We have to commune and work with our shadow because our shadow can very much hijack our sexual energy, which is what I talked about before, when it becomes about abuse and misuse of power and control.

So. I'm bringing all this to the space because I believe this is why sex can be so triggering, even if we've not had a sexual trauma, even when we've just been living our life. You know, normally nothing really harmful or painful has happened, but there's just something we feel when we start to think or talk about sex.

And this is all in the collective. This is all ancestral. This is generational. And we can point our fingers to organized institution. We can point our fingers to the underground occult practices that severely misused sacred sexuality. In today's age, we see the repercussions that is pornography and the addictions of pornography.

We see sex clubs around the world that have nothing to do with safety, with connecting with the divine, with prayer, right? It's just about hedonism and getting off. That can be fun, but does that take you closer to God or away from God? Is that conscious or is it just an expression of the shadow? Because when it comes to sexuality and sexual energy, it is a very powerful force. It is the most powerful force of the universe. So we can't so unintentionally waste it or show up in spaces where there's no container set up, there's no safety, there's no communication, there's no intention, right? Intention is everything. Intention is everything with everything. Yeah, because that is what makes something conscious. When we are intentional, we become conscious.

So it is absolutely important to become conscious of this energy because we're opening up to others, we're opening up to the universe, we're opening up to the nonphysical. So we have to know what we're calling in and what we are offering. At the end of the day, bottom line.

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

So I think that's enough food for thought. I'll leave it here. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you're on YouTube watching, please hit that like subscribe button. I so greatly appreciate it. If you're on one of the podcast platforms, you can send me a text.

You can share the episode if you so feel called. Uh, I would love to see you over on social media as well. I'm on threads, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, throw me a message over there. I'd love to hear from you. I will be back next week, as always, every Thursday with a brand new episode here on Bridger of Worlds.

And in closing, please remember that you are the medicine and I am just the messenger. Thank you very much.