- Mary Ellen Tracy
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Mary Ellen Tracy Other names Sabrina Aset Occupation Neopagan High Priestess, writer, actress Years active 1984-present Spouse Wilbur Tracy Mary Ellen Tracy (aka Sabrina Aset) (b. 1943) is the self-proclaimed high priestess of the Church of the Most High Goddess, who was convicted in 1989 of a single misdemeanor count of running a house of prostitution in connection with the operation of the church, located in West Los Angeles, California. Ms. Tracy is a graduate of the University of Miami, cum laude in chemistry, did graduate work in chemistry at UCLA, and received her masters in Environmental Sciences/Chemistry from Portland State University.
Contents
Background
During the late 1980s, The Newhall Signal, a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles County, presented a series of articles about the Church Of The Most High Goddess, founded by Mary Ellen Tracy and her husband Wilbur Tracy, where sexual acts played a fundamental role in the church's sacred rites.[1] The articles aroused the attention of local law enforcement officials, and in April 1989, the Tracy's house was searched and the couple arrested on charges of pimping, pandering and prostitution. They were subsequently convicted in a trial in state court and sentenced to jail terms: Wilbur Tracy for 180 days plus a $1,000.00 fine; Mary Ellen Tracy for 90 days plus mandatory screening for STDs.[2][3]
The Church
According to Mary Ellen and Wilbur Tracy, the couple - both former devout and dedicated Mormons - created and founded the neo-pagan Church of the Most High Goddess following a divine revelation received at an ocean side cottage in Santa Monica, California in the year 1984. In testimony later given in a Los Angeles superior court, Wilbur Tracy described "a brilliant light," through which "knowledge was being poured in without voice." Tracy further claimed that God appeared to him as an old man, with flowing white beard and long white hair.
On April 24, 1984, in broad daylight, I had a revelation that changed my life and the way I perceive the world and others. However, because I was blinded by the ignorance of the modern education, which I foolishly accepted as knowledge, I did not immediately understand the full impact of the revelation. I failed to understand that the mind can perceive only what the mind can conceive. What I experienced was beyond my conception, while my perception was completely distorted by what I had been taught was enlightenment. It was only when I set aside my prejudices--those beliefs which I had been conditioned to accept as fact, but which were in fact false--that I began to understand the experience.[4]
As a result of their alleged divine experience, Mary Ellen and Wilbur Tracy founded their church, with precepts based on their own research into ancient Egyptian practices. Ms. Tracy, a classical scholar in her own right, assumed the role of High Priestess of the church, whose divine duties included engaging in sexual intercourse with congregants. According to Ms. Tracy herself, she had sex with over 2,000 men as part of a ritual of spiritual cleansing.[5][6][7]
The Sacred Prostitute
Much has been written in recent decades about the phenomenon of the so-called Sacred Prostitute in ancient religion. According to Tracy, ancient women possessed
... power and authority through the use of their intellect and femininity, just as men today have power and authority through their intellect and masculinity. As a Pagan and the High Priestess of The Most High Goddess of the ancient Egyptian Religion, I am aware of the worth of a woman. I do not want to be, nor do I try to be like a man. The ancient Pagan priestess was a guide who lead men on the path to the divine. Men were cleansed and brought to a higher level of spirituality through the rituals of The Goddess. When the influence of male dominated religions increased, the Christians and Moslems killed the priestesses in the name of male gods and destroyed the teachings and writings of the goddess religions. A woman who enjoys sex is no longer killed as a witch, a heretic or an adulteress. But we've still got a long way to go to get back to the open sexual freedom enjoyed by women in the days when the religion of The Goddess covered the earth... We need to progress 'backward' in time and attitude, to pry ourselves out of the 'Dark Ages' of this sex-negative society and truly appreciate and enjoy the wonderful Goddess given gift of our bodies.[8]
Some scholars such as Robert A. Oden,[9] Stephanie Lynn Budin[10] and others, have questioned whether the practice, as an institution whereby women and men sold sex for the profit of deities and temples, ever really existed at all. Scholar Julia Assante has suggested that the classical view of temple prostitution is more of a construct of the 19th Century Western European mindset than an anthropologically correct representation of facts.[11] Other writers, such as Jungian psychologist Nancy Qualls-Corbett, believe that there is ample evidence to support the view that the sacred prostitute did in fact exist as an essential and vital part of ancient cultures.[12] One of Dr. Qualls-Corbett's key observations is that modern men and women are diminished by Western culture's separation of sexuality from spirituality, and that by studying the works of ancient sacred prostitutes and sexually oriented temple priestesses, a healing "union of opposites" can be achieved, thus restoring sexuality to its rightful place in spiritual and religious thought in particular, and human life in general.
Writing with great candor of her personal experiences as a sexual High Priestess, Mary Ellen Tracy says:
In my calling as a priestess, I have sex with men of all sizes, shapes, colors, backgrounds, professions -- an infinite variety -- every day, several times a day (and even more often would be better). To date I've had vaginal sex with over 2,779 different men, oral sex with over 4,000 different men, and being bisexual, I have eaten a couple of hundred pussies along the way. Since I'm a very sexual person, I've had sex, not just in the religious rituals, but in a wide variety of places in addition to the usual bedrooms, sofas, chairs and back and front seats of cars - like doctor's examination tables, college professor's offices, faculty lounges, dormitories, showers, swimming pools, Jacuzzi, beaches, woods, tents, campers, business offices, back rooms of stores, warehouses, rest rooms, government offices, parking lots, trucks, elevators, on the hood of cars, in adult films--on and off camera. I've even sucked cocks through the open window of my car and through a hole in a wall. No! I hadn't met the men before. Men hit on me everywhere I go and I'm not one to pass up an up-ortunity (sic) to enjoy myself sexually.[13]
As a result of her various legal difficulties, Mary Ellen Tracy was asked to permanently discontinue her voluntary work with the Placerita Canyon Nature Center in Newhall, California.[14]
Film, television
During the early 1990s, Mary Ellen Tracy hosted her own Public-access television talk show series, Sabrina On... . She has also appeared in a number of x-rated films under a variety of stage names, including the Positively Pagan series, and Club Head 2 (1991). On January 29, 1992, Mary Ellen Tracy was featured on a television broadcast of [Donahue],[15] as well as The Montel Williams Show, appearing with such other New-Age spiritualists as Aidan Kelly, First Officer of the Southern California Local Council of the Covenant of the Goddess, and Avilynn Waters of the Los Angeles Nest of the Church of All Worlds.
See also
References
- ^ Weekly World News article about Wilbur and Mary Ellen Tracy, with photograph of subjects
- ^ New York Times: "Religion Based On Sex Gets A Judicial Review," May 2, 1990
- ^ Star-News, December 25, 1991
- ^ Where Are The Gods? by MaatRaAh
- ^ http://www.watchman.org/cults/sexgodss.htm
- ^ http://articles.latimes.com/keyword/mary-ellen-tracy
- ^ Rome News-Tribune - Sep 10, 1989
- ^ A Feminine Feminist by Sabrina Aset, High Priestess of the Church of The Most High Goddess
- ^ Robert A. Oden (1987), The Bible Without Theology: The Theological Tradition and Alternatives to It, University of Illinois Press, ISBN 0-252-06870-X. pp 131-153.
- ^ Stephanie Lynn Budin (2008), The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-88090-4. http://assets.cambridge.org/97805218/80909/excerpt/9780521880909_excerpt.pdf Preview: pages 1-10.
- ^ Assante, Julia. 2003. "From Whores to Hierodules: The Historiographic Invention of Mesopotamian Female Sex Professionals." Pp.13-47 in Ancient Art and Its Historiography. Edited by A.A. Donahue and M.D. Fullerton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
- ^ The Sacred Prostitute: Eternal Aspect of the Feminine, by Nancy Qualls-Corbett, Inner City Books (February 1988)
- ^ What Do You Call A Female Stud? by Sabrina Aset, High Priestess of the Church of The Most High Goddess
- ^ Los Angeles Times: Convicted Prostitute Loses Nature Center Post, January 13, 1993.
- ^ http://books.google.com/books?id=UUiwqYOTyCIC&pg=PA261&lpg=PA261&dq=%22sabrina+aset%22&source=bl&ots=o_gvj56DpM&sig=scc3c9Rt40p3eqDBj5hRmV-MXuQ&hl=en&ei=So26S9HkNoL0sQODxOT7BA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=48&ved=0CK4BEOgBMC8#v=onepage&q=%22sabrina%20aset%22&f=false
External links
- Website for Sabrina Aset (Mary Ellen Tracy)
- A Feminine Feminist by Sabrina Aset, High Priestess of the Church of The Most High Goddess
- Sabrina Aset at the Internet Movie Database
- An Overview of Religion in Los Angeles from the 1930s to the 1980s, compiled by Clifton L. Holland
- Find A Case: August 28, 1996 SABRINA ASET ET AL., APPELLANTS v. GIL GARCETTI, AS DISTRICT ATTORNEY, ETC., APPELLANT Appeal from Second Appellate District, Division 4, No. B087160
- Novelguide.com: Witchcraft and Neo-Paganism
Categories:- 1943 births
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- American chemists
- Neopagan religious leaders
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