[Liminal Letters] The radical path of The Sacred Bimbo + Holy Himbo
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Not into weekly newsletters? You can opt-out of the weekly newsletter without removing yourself from other updates HERE! Hey, Reader! I never really got the bimbofication trend. At least that was the case until a few years ago: I had started working with Hermes-Mercury. I was in a Mercury-ruled profection year. It was a time of much research and refinement of my magical & spiritual techniques, theories, and practice. I was in the "thesis stage" of my magical & spiritual growth, as I explained it to many folks. What I meant by that was that I was in a stage of bringing together and synthesizing the exploratory and experimental work I'd been diving into over several previous years. I was reading and researching and taking classes and taking notes. I was thinking and reflecting and trying to find the through line through all of it. My mind felt like it was constantly on, constantly going. And that's when bimbofication started to make sense. If you're not familiar with the bimbofication trend, you can read more about it here. Like so many modern trends, it's a collective phenomenon that is not easily defined. But at the core of it is an embrace of self, an un-self-conscious and unapologetic self-acceptance and self-love. It's a choice to find empowerment in - in the case of the bimbo - traits that society demonizes for their femininity. In the aftermath of that deeply Mercurial year, I began experimenting with intentionally setting aside time as "bimbo time" where I would set aside my phone and just be. I'd do yoga or watch a movie and I'd practice letting my mind just...stop...I gave myself permission to stop thinking, stop trying to puzzle everything out, stop trying to fix everything or predict everything that could go wrong. It was amazing and eventually this grew from something I did occasionally when I was feeling stressed or burnt out to a regular weekly practice with a name. I started calling it my "Sacred Bimbo Time", which evolved into "Holy Himbo Hour" as my gender expression shifted. Sacred Bimbo Time/Holy Himbo Hour is time I set aside every week is time I intentionally set aside to turn my brain off so I can just vibe & align with pleasure. Lately, this has meant reading a lot of romance and erotic novels in the bathtub. The activity isn't necessarily what matters. What matters is allowing myself to become absorbed in something I would normally consider not serious enough for my attention, even if it brings me pleasure. The point is prioritizing my pleasure and my enjoyment over any sort of external judgment - and that includes internal judgement that is rooted in a fear of external judgement! This has been a deeply personally meaningful and healing practice. But after reading Audre Lorde's "Uses of the Erotic" recently, I think there's a kernel of radical possibility in intentionally choosing to get deeply acquainted with one's pleasure and joy. "Uses of the Erotic" is a short and very readable essay, and I encourage you to give a read. For the purposes of this essay, however, let me summarize: “This is one reason why the erotic is so feared, and so often relegated to the bedroom alone, when it is recognized at all. For when we begin to feel deeply all the aspects of our lives, we begin to demand from ourselves and from our life-pursuits that they feel in accordance with that joy which we know ourselves to be capable of. Our erotic knowledge empowers us, becomes a lens through which we scrutinize all aspects of our existence, forcing us to evaluate those aspects honestly in terms of of their relative meaning in within our lives. An ethics is a grave responsibility, projected from within each of us, not to settle for the convenient , the shoddy, the conventionally expected, nor the merely safe.” Sacred Bimbo Time is a way of reacquainting oneself with the erotic - including and beyond the realm of sex. In my opinion, the thing that makes the bimbo such a maligned figure in our society is not her femininity nor her sexuality. It is her embrace of the erotic in all realms of her life. And this embrace of the erotic beyond sexuality is the thing that unites this archetype beyond gender. The bimbo, himbo, and thembo embrace the erotic in all realms. The bimbo, himbo, and thembo do not fear the "YES" that rises from deep within, quoting again from "Uses of the Erotic": “We have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves, our deepest cravings. But, once recognized, those which do not enhance our future lose their power and can be altered. The fear of our desires keeps them suspect and indiscriminately powerful, for to suppress any truth is to give it strength beyond endurance. The fear that we cannot grow beyond whatever distortions we may find within ourselves keeps us docile and loyal and obedient, externally defined, and leads us to accept many facets of our oppression as women.” We can only hear our deep "YES" when we let our minds get quiet, when we let the external noise fade away. That's what Sacred Bimbo Time/Holy Himbo Hour has done for me. It has allowed me to get reacquainted with the loud, erotic, orgasmic "YES" that resounds in my body in all realms of life, not just during sex. If you wanna hear that yes and unleash its power into your life, into your community, into your activism, into the ways you're building a new world, the Sacred Bimbo and Holy Himbo can be guides and archetypes into unleashing your erotic expression. If you give Sacred Bimbo Time a shot this week, feel free to reply to this email and let me know!Likewise, if you can think of a pairing like Sacred Bimbo or Holy Himbo for thembo, let me know! (I'll credit you, ofc!) The best one I've come up with is Thaumaturgical Thembo but it just doesn't quite ✨hit✨ In Case You Missed It:
This Week's Joys & Gratitudes
What's bringing you joy this week? Where are you finding magic? Feel free to hit reply and let me know! Until next time! In Joy, Magic, and Solidarity, P.S. Know someone who would find magic in this newsletter? Please forward it on! Word of mouth is one way we weave connection & magic! |