I Just Went to My First Ever Jesus-Themed Sex Party

“You can write down your boundaries and desires at the BDSM station back there,” a flamboyant greeter tells us, as we step into the hall of the Vancouver mansion.

The ‘BDSM station’ turns out to be a cork notice board, filled with handwritten notes, in which attendees of tonight’s event outline what they’d like to get from the evening. One man would quite like his girlfriend to watch him have sex with another woman. Another says she would like to be flogged.

Soon, the ‘play space’ will open. But first we must watch as 85 or so ‘worshipers’—dressed in the classic 0 BC style of togas, knight outfits, and sexy lingerie—pack into a salon that’s been turned into a sordid biblical scene by tonight’s hosts: the Holy Eros Institute. Apart from me and the VICE photographer, every guest here has paid top-dollar to be a part of “the untold love story of Mary Magdalene and Jesus, an immersive erotic theater ritual experience.”

‘Temple nights’ like this one are becoming more and more common in tantra scenes around the world. Think of them less like all-out orgies, but as somewhat structured evenings of fruity fun with the aim of exploring sexuality, healing trauma, and, of course, dismantling patriarchy.

We settle down into silence, and a man dressed in white bangs a drum while chanting like a shaman. “Thanking the indigenous elders and wisdom keepers and all of those who have come before us,” he intones. The lady sitting cross-legged beside me remarks quietly that an Orthodox Christian friend considered coming, but when he learned of the performance’s nature, it was a hard no. “He was concerned about all the sacrilegiousness,” she says, making a kind of fussing motion with her hands.

This opening gambit from our heavenly compere continues as a giant wooden ‘X’ is hauled into the room. I can see where this might be going. “Let’s acknowledge the parts of the planet where this story originated from, where there is a lot of pain and destruction,” he says. “Please send your intentions to … Palestine, Lebanon, Israel.” Tonight’s shenanigans, it’s announced, are “part of the change.” How, exactly, is unclear.

Co-producer Phoenix Amara, with a 10 lb ball python draped over her shoulders, lays down the law when it comes to chemicals. “This isn’t quite Eyes Wide Shut, but it could be something like that,” she says to us all. “If you are called [to get high], stick to a psilocybin or marijuana microdose. Things can become chaotic with too many substances. This story is medicine enough.” Earlier, in the invite, she reminded guests, “We’re not gathering with the sole focus of fucking each other … We are gathering to liberate our sensual selves.”

Amara summons the “Princess of Darkness” and a lady in red enters, wearing high heels and accompanied by a male servant—a fallen angel—whom she leads around on a leash. 

The servant removes her long-armed silk gloves, and it gradually becomes clear that the man playing the drum is Jesus Christ. That is to say, two other men grab his arms and legs and affix him spreadeagled to the giant ‘X.’

Then his eyes roll back and he feigns an orgasm.

“We spent millennia being told we were born of sin, the cravings of our loins inherently shameful,” says the Princess of Darkness. “We’re here to tempt you back into the old religion.” The writers of the Bible “were afraid of pussy,” one of my fellow worshipers hisses, disparagingly.

Jesus is uncuffed and led away to who knows where, and now here comes the Virgin Mary, wearing a lacy white dress clad with a flowing veil. Portrayed by tantric performer Cheyenne Sapphire, Mary starts crawling provocatively across a table. “God… is that you?” she inquires to no one in particular. “You’ll do what to me? Oh, OK, I’m ready! Let me give you all of me.” 

Suddenly, she is enacting quite a compelling scene.

“Take me! Take me!” she exclaims, twitching with delight, running her hands down over her breasts. “Oh yes, God.” She bangs on the table and shudders, before flummoxing onto her back. “Once you’ve been fucked so well you see God, you begin to feel things,” narrates the Princess of Darkness, “secrets of the universe begin to appear like breath itself. See her not as a sexless vessel but a goddess who fucked a God.” 

I wonder whether God is listening, if he feels happy or disrespected by the apparent heresy, or by the subtle inference that there is more than one God—an idea largely anathema to monotheistic Christians.

But there isn’t time to consider such lofty questions. Now it’s our turn “to be nursed by the Holy Mother and take a sip of the elixir that raised a boy to become king of kings,” someone declares. This means drinking Mary’s breast milk, represented here by almond milk. Mary purrs appreciative noises as folks slurp up the creamy liquid from their cupped, bare hands.

Abruptly, the story of Jesus fast forwards from his conception to the Last Supper. Jesus—you can follow him on Insta—is seated with a gang of cheeky-looking disciples and “favorite of the favorites,” Mary Magdalene. (After centuries of marginalization, Mary Magdalene was acknowledged as “the apostle to the apostles” by the Catholic Church in 2016, who said she was the first to witness Jesus’ resurrection.)

“They tried to tell you another story!” yells the Princess of Darkness. “They said she was a repented whore! Yet those who risked their lives to give us a taste of ecstasy in a cruel world are doing God’s work.”

In an eyebrow-raising moment, she then likens Jesus and his disciples to an ancient polycule.

“Like all polycules, things got complicated.” And lo, Judas snogs Jesus’ face off, as sinister dance music plays and the traitorous disciple whips our Lord and Savior with a belt and a wand shaped like a crucifix.

Now it’s time to feast, on a banquet of salmon and meat koftas. I chat to one female worshiper who has come without her husband. On the BDSM wall, she had stipulated that she is here to “heal shame” and that while she is open to friendly touch, she is taken, showing me her sapphire ring as proof.

The show resumes, with Mary Magdalene (played by “ritualist” Aubrey Aurora) sitting on Jesus’ lap, appearing to have sex without moving. She looks satisfied. “It’s not just any kind of sex that brings you closer to God,” says the Princess of Darkness. “Some kinds of sex will send you to Hell, but there is a kind of passion that lifts us up to the Heavens.”

Following Jesus’ death, key figures in the formation of Christianity—notably Peter—discredited Mary Magdalene as a “scarlet woman” not to be trusted. (It’s said she was prone to the same ecstatic trances that women were later violently persecuted for, during so-called witch hunts.) This characterization is at the roots of Western oppression of women, we are told, and half a dozen women dressed in red cavort like sexy snakes, gyrating with orgasmic gusto to the tune of an ominous drum beat as the blue-robed Peter is forced to observe these priestesses of sexual energy flexing, as a kind of penance for being a prude old bastard. 

“The holy grail will be waiting for you, if you dare to gaze your eyes upon it,” someone announces. We soon understand that by “holy grail,” they mean Mary Magdalene’s vagina, as we are instructed to hand-write confessions of moments in life when we may have “denied the power of pussy.” We queue up to place these scrawled mea culpas in a copper bowl in front of Magdalene’s spread legs. I try to stare respectfully, and not just blankly ogle her vaginal opening, which is partially obscured by a cord of beads.

Next to me, two priestesses are reciting magic spells in tongues.

It is, to say the least, all rather entrancing. A female sex educator tells me: “It was really magical. I recognised that it moves the world with its power.”

A male attendee has a more prosaic view. “I felt very horny and at peace at the same time,” he offers. “It’s a very nice one.” 

From there, a panoply of activities break out in “the divine dungeon,” from spanking and flogging, to shibari, sensual electrocution, and “wax play.” Others don ball-gags, some are handcuffed, more filter up from the dungeon to the lovers’ room. A threesome between two girls and a guy wearing a collar and leash is in train. 

As the real debauchery gets going, I homed in on Jesus and Mary Magdalene to ask about their previous lives. “At one point, I was going to church five times a week,” says Jesus actor Devaiya Ra. “I prayed the gay away for nine years! I felt like everything that was true to me was wrong and a sin. It was built upon roots of shame.” 

This led to severe depression and suicidal ideations, he recalls—until he came out to his father aged 17 at bible camp, shortly after being enrolled as a youth pastor. His dad graciously accepted the news but others turned their backs: “They said I was blasphemous, a sinner.” Ra believes this kind of erotic retelling of Jesus’ story could destigmatize eroticism and non-hetero relations and even lead to “intergenerational healing.”

Aubrey Aurora, who played Mary Magdalene, had a similar journey, growing up in Oklahoma in the heart of the US bible belt.

She broke with the Church at the younger age of 13, after having sex for the first time. “I used to have a purity ring on this finger, right here, from age five,” she says, adding that often sex is cast as profane. “I wanted to be a good girl, for my parents to be proud of me.” Through her work today, she says she is “bringing back the sacred to the profane, weaving them as one—and getting paid handsomely for it.”

Now for the million-dollar question: How did I do with the pussy gazing? She giggles, and for a moment I fear she has me down as one of those who could not make eye contact, closed their eyes, or even looked away. “Your gaze was quite piercing and your energy was reverent,” Aurora says. “I really enjoyed that moment with you.”  

A moment of relief, at the end of what has been a memorable evening.

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