Reviews for The seven wives of Westlake

The average rating for The seven wives of Westlake based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-04-28 00:00:00 Steven Ricks This is one of those books that opened such a big view that I felt changed by it. Coming from a Jungian psychology approach, the author describes the archetype that has been severely suppressed by our modern patriarchal culture, with its shameful view of the body and sexuality. She goes into the history of Goddess dominated pre-Christian religion, and the common practice of sacred prostitution, where sexuality is considered sacred and a channel through which one can access the Divine, and that the Divine is a loving source that the priestess is essentially becoming herself, and through her one can be in direct union with this source. A far cry from our modern view of Spirit as something far removed, over us and not really a part of us. The sacred prostitute, the channel through which we are put in touch with Spirit, is all but forgotten in our modern world, and the chasm this leaves in our collective psyche has devastating results. This book goes into history, and then into the author's work in analysis with patients, and the results she achieved by working with this suppressed archetype. Extremely interesting, and helpful for me to understand many things about myself, and the collective condition of our society.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-01-28 00:00:00 Humberto Olmos In every heart, both male and female, there is an eternal and immutable touchstone of joy. All too often that joy is lost in contemporary society, through harsh experience, or in the rush towards simplistic ideologies like "men bad, women good" (or the opposite). Nancy Qualls-Corbett attempts to show both men and women how to transcend the narrowly-defined sex roles and oppressions that have been imposed on them from childhood and to rediscover that touchstone of joy. She succeeds admirably, I think. The Sacred Prostitue is not about selling our bodies or the prostitution of pleasing and serving others to our own detriment. Rather, it is the antidote to these kinds of self-destructive behaviors. As we learn to express the source of joy in ourselves, to glorify it despite what we have been taught or bad experiences or what society may say, we liberate our lives. We transcend the old boundaries and grow. I am not talking about joy in a strictly sexual or sensual way here, and neither is Nancy Qualls-Corbett. The prostitute is a metaphor for the kind of healing that happens when we give ourselves over totally to love and the possibility of allowing joy to happen in our lives. First, we must learn to love and please ourselves, then we can learn to love and please others. And that is the true sacredness.