Creating a Love Ceremony

An Invitation to a Pleasure Feast for the Senses!

by Diana De Luca

It is important to take time out of the ordinary, everyday routine to create a nurturing, sensual space. This can be done in different ways. You can put together your own "pleasure temple", a comfortable space indoors or out where you can feel free to express your sensuality. Why not have a picnic on your bed? Or a rendezvous in your living room for midnight at the oasis, or a moon-bathing fruit feast on a warm summer's eve?

Take a few minutes to arrange candles and flowers, create a circle of rose petals, or lay a trail of flower petals leading to the boudoir or table laden with goodies. You may wish to select special sensuous clothing, something to attract, arouse, or enhance certain features, perhaps using diaphanous fabrics and silks.

Music can soothe the savage beast and it can also arouse the sensual creature. Sounds can be a great inspiration and can include the yums and aaahhhs of eating as well as the moans, groans, grunts, and gasps of primitive passion. Try reading or sharing erotic stories and poems. Plan a passion picnic outdoors, where you can be inspired by a babbling brook, ocean waves, or any of the wondrous sounds of nature in a forest. Speak to your lover in an arousing manner.

Touch is the ultimate sensual and sexual sensation. You can produce pleasurable tactile sensations with soft velvety fabric, by brushing succulent silk across naked nipples, or by tantalizing, teasing, and tickling with a feather or an artist's paintbrush. The erogenous zones are the regions of the body that experience the most sensual pleasure and sexual stimulation when touched -- not only the genital area, but the lips, the neck, the ears, the nipples, the hands and fingers, the inner thighs, the breasts, and the base of the spine.

As we open our hearts to the sacred erotic dimensions within and honor our sexuality, we are nourished and healed on a deep level. Give yourself permission to celebrate your sensuality in a way that tantalizes you and awakens all of your senses!

Awaken to the love goddess or love god within. Open your heart to the earth's energy through the "souls" of your feet, breathe in life and passion. Remember that you are the source of your own pleasure. Celebrate life and the sacred erotic!

Creating Mood & Spicing Up the Atmosphere

You may want to send a special someone an invitation to share the luscious physical expression of the celebration of your sensuality through a pleasure feast for the senses. Try a written invitation, for example:

You are invited to spend the evening
with the Love Goddess Herself!
Let's meet in the living room
at midnight for a passionate picnic!

Setting the Stage

An erotic environment evokes all of the senses. You may start with a circle of dried or fresh rose petals or other flower petals. Create a large enough circle for you and your beloved to be able to stretch out in, with room enough for food, drinks, massage oil, pillows, toys, and scents. Colorful fabrics or scarves maybe draped over furniture to change the atmosphere. Set aside a special time for this celebration of the sensual, with no distractions such as phones, pets, computers, or televisions. Arrange for the kids to spend time at grandma's, or at a cousin's or friend's home. You owe yourselves this special time alone and it can nourish and strengthen your relationship. Remember: You must first nourish yourself in order to nourish others.

Lighting

Intimate lighting can change the whole atmosphere of the evening. You can place candles around the room or outline the rim of your circle of flowers with votive candles set in small jars. Tiny holiday lights work well and provide subtle lighting. A colored scarf placed over a lamp or tacked around a ceiling light fixture can change the scenery, but watch that it does not burn. Soft lighting using a small lamp with a colored bulb can evoke dreamy and seductive qualities.

Temperature

Keeping the room warm can inspire thoughts of wearing less clothing. It is a good idea to stack some extra wood indoors for a fire before starting the evening's festivities. I remember one passionate but cold winter evening when the fire was getting low but the wood was outside. Wearing only my sheepskin boots and a fluffy red feather tied in my hair, I ran outside to fetch a log or two. I was standing bare-booty with my head in the woodshed when I noticed the neighbors' car pulling into our shared driveway -- with its headlights on, of course. Caught with only two logs on, I waved!

The Bedroom

A trail of flowers leads toward and encircles the bed. How can you make the bedroom a rich erotic environment? What are some of the ways you could prepare this room to receive your most special lover? The bed could be dressed for the occasion in a set of new, colorful, slinky silk or fuzzy flannel sheets. Strings of small white or amber holiday lights hung over the bed give a warm glow to the room. Draping a few lengths of sheer fabric over the bed can give a cozy canopy effect, especially if you include some soft, fluffy, colorful pillows. Erotic art may be displayed to inspire and moisten thoughts and ideas. Scent the room by spritzing a seductive fragrant mist, and watch what unfolds. The bedding, pillows, and curtains can be sprayed with your personal fragrance to entice and lure. Have a playful picnic on your bed! Remember the massage oil or lotion and be sure to pick out fresh flowers to adorn the room, as they are sacred offerings to the goddesses of love.

Foods

Prepare a beautifully arranged tray of fruit and finger foods with bubbly beverages such as champagne or fruit sodas ahead of time for the evening, so you don't need to keep jumping up to get things. Snacking can be revitalizing during a passionate evening. If you enjoy cannabis, have a pipe or joints rolled and ready with a lighter and ashtray. Don't forget drinking water. You may wish to bring out your beautiful stemware, enchanting goblets, and special china.

Accessories

Have a special, sensual, silky robe just for these occasions. Shades of red, rose, and deep burgundy symbolize passion. Try black or red lingerie, if you usually wear white, and remember the magic of jewelry. Wear your hair differently or wrapped with twisted fabric; put on a touch of makeup to accentuate eyes and lips. By artfully adorning yourself, you are celebrating your beauty and honoring the god or goddess within.

Women and men have worn makeup since ancient times to be more sensually alluring. They often outlined their eyes with kohl to accentuate them and to protect against the evil eye. Women added color to their lips, cheeks, and eyes to make their faces appear as they do during sexual arousal. Henna, a plant-based coloring used to color the hair red, was also worn on the hands, feet, belly, and nipples as visually erotic artwork and for protection and blessing.

Let your inner wild woman or wild man inspire you to dress according to your mood or the phase of the moon. You may feel like wearing a loincloth and carrying a feather in your teeth for teasing, or dressing in a red silk robe, heels, and seductive lingerie. You may wish to start a collection of erotic clothing and adult toys. (It's probably best to leave the flannel teddy-bear jammies for another time!) Try silks, rayons, or velvets. Have you ever worn nothing but a silk scarf tied around you?

Soft, gentle music for relaxing or faster music with some good drumming for dancing can be collected ahead of time.

A Sequence of Events

You can start the day with a little note written about the evening's events. Why not begin by bathing together? Light candles, play soothing, sensuous music, or even take an aromatic and uplifting shower by sprinkling a few drops of essential oils onto the shower floor before stepping in. You may prefer your bath alone, or it may be shared with someone special. If you choose to share your bath, add liquid soap to a sea sponge to lather each other up. The tub awaits with aromatic bubbles, bath oil, or bath salts. A sensuous bath is also a wonderful way to soothe PMS and helps anytime you need a little attitude adjustment. Try putting in a handful or two of dried seaweed, which has a scent reminiscent of the sea, good for channeling your siren or mermaid self. Greens, blues, and all oceanic colors help set the mood. A couple of drops of food coloring makes the bath a beautiful blue-green without dyeing your skin. (Yellow, however, is not a bathwater color conducive to passion!)

Don't soak too long, as it can be overly relaxing. You may need to finish off with a cold spray to revive you from too hot a bath! A trail of flower petals now invites you to an arrangement of flowers, fruits, and shells in honor of Aphrodite. Candlelight flickers. Beautiful goblets await, filled with a magical love elixir). Toast each other:

May your cup be filled
with the sweetest nectar of love.

Sensual spray mists to scent the air and refresh the body may be used.

Anointing the body with fragrant oils or amber may be done now. Oil of rose, sandalwood, patchouli, jasmine, ylang ylang, or your favorite scent can be used. With a drop on your finger anoint the top of the head, with blessings to invoke the most sacred self to open to its beauty within. Anoint the heart center, that the person may open her heart, or his, to sensuality. The breasts and genitals maybe blessed with oil, honoring their strength and their gifts of life and pleasure. With hands upon each other's hearts, looking into each other's eyes, speak what is in your hearts. The god or goddess of love may be invoked to inspire and renew.

Whether the celebration includes self- or mutual pleasuring, remember that you can dedicate that beautiful, sacred pleasure and orgasm to whatever you want to bring into your life. Dedicate them to radiant health, a new, more appropriate job, a reliable car, a more comfortable home, or a special healing for you or others. Dedicating orgasms and sexual joy helps to return some of that beautiful energy to nurture our Earth Mother. Making love heals and nourishes our bodies, which heals and feeds our planet.

A wonderful thing to do for someone is to cover his naked body with a large veil of silk. Have him lie down first. Then very, very slowly pull one end so that it slides off tantalizingly slowly until the very last corner is lifted away.

Sensuous Fruit Feast

A silver tray of seductively stuffed dates scented with rose water, and a large platter of bite-sized pieces of fruits such as oranges, apples, bananas, kiwis, berries, pears, grapes, pineapple, mango, and papaya await dipping. Have one bowl of whipped cream and one bowl of chocolate sauce ready. Begin by dipping a piece of fruit in one or both of the bowls and slowly feed each other, using your fingers. Or place a grape on your tongue and have your lover try to kiss it from you or offer it as a fruit kiss. In between bites, you might share an enchanting rose punch or May wine .... Oops, some chocolate dripped upon your breast. This will need to be licked off...

A wonderful exercise is to take one grape or one slice of orange or other piece of fruit or bread and very, very slowly, cell by cell, eat and nibble at the fruit, experiencing every sensation, flavor, and texture. Take several minutes to do this.

Serve yourself as dessert.... You may wish to place a tablecloth down first. Lie down, then decorate your naked breasts or whole body with pieces of cake with strawberries, whipped cream, chocolate chips, and any of your favorite frozen yogurt sprinkles or your favorite dessert. (Maybe not cherries jubilee!) You are now ready to serve!

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This article is excerpted from the book Botanica Erotica by Diana De Luca. Reprinted with permission of the publisher Healing Arts Press, a division of Inner Traditions International, www.innertraditions.com

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