Podcast: Sacred Sex, Dirty Thoughts and Witchcraft

In this episode of Wonderfully Witchy, we’re talking about sex, spirituality, dirty thoughts, pleasure, and why your sexuality doesn’t suddenly become more valid because you lit a candle first. Sacred sex can be beautiful, but ordinary, messy, horny human sex doesn’t need to become a mystical experience to be worthy either.

I reflect on experiencing sacred sex for the first time in my early forties, alongside the much less ceremonial realities of getting horny, wanting someone purely because you want them, and having wonderfully inappropriate thoughts about an incredibly attractive nomadic giant from Hinge. We’ll talk about the pressure to perform sacred sexuality, why pleasure doesn’t need spiritual justification, and why not every orgasm needs to manifest your dream life.

This episode is about presence, consent, honesty, care and letting your body belong to you. Whether your version of pleasure involves candles and ritual, laughing in tangled sheets, a quickie on the sofa, solo exploration or no sex at all, your practice doesn’t need to fit someone else’s idea of sacredness to be real.

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Key Takeaways

Sex doesn’t need to be sacred to be worthy
Pleasure doesn’t need a spiritual purpose, ritual setting or magical intention to be valid. Sometimes wanting pleasure is reason enough.

Sacred doesn’t have to mean solemn
Meaningful sexual connection can include laughter, awkward moments, playfulness and getting completely tangled in the sheets. Sacredness doesn’t require perfect choreography.

Presence matters more than props
Candles, incense, crystals and ritual can enhance an experience, but they don’t create connection by themselves. Presence, consent, honesty, respect and care matter far more.

Not every orgasm needs a job
Orgasm doesn’t have to manifest something, raise energy or complete a ritual. Sometimes an orgasm is simply pleasurable, and sometimes sex doesn’t need to end in orgasm at all.

Your body doesn’t have to perform spirituality to deserve pleasure
You don’t need to embody the divine feminine, invoke a goddess or turn desire into ritual before you’re allowed to enjoy your sexuality. Your body, boundaries and pleasure belong to you.

Transcript

Podcast Name: Wonderfully Witchy Podcast with Bry Jaimea
Episode No: 05, 31 October 2026
Topic: Sacred Sex, Dirty Thoughts and Witchcraft

Welcome to the Wonderfully Witchy Podcast. I’m Bry Jaimea, and today we’re talking about sex. Yes, we’re going to get a little bit spicy. So if you’re listening with the kids in the car or with your mother-in-law in the room, you may want to grab your headphones.

Specifically, I want to talk about the false divide that sometimes shows up in witchy spaces, between sacred sexuality and ordinary, messy, horny human sexuality. As though one is spiritual and elevated, and the other is something we should quietly tidy away before the candles come out.

Because here’s what I want to say, loudly and clearly. Sex doesn’t become magically valid only when incense and candles are involved.

Let me give you a little context. I have been practising witchcraft for marginally longer than I have been sexually active. So my spiritual life and my sexual life have been growing up side by side, and let me tell you, they’ve had a lot to say to each other along the way. And what I’ve learnt over all these years is that the line between the two is far blurrier than we like to admit.

I was in my early forties the first time I experienced what I would call sacred sex. And I want to sit with that for a moment, because I think it matters. Early forties. After decades of practice, after a lifetime of knowing my own mind and my own body, and it still took until then. If you’re listening and thinking, I haven’t had that yet, or I’m not sure I ever will, please hear me. There’s no deadline. There’s no test you fail. It isn’t a milestone you either hit on time or miss.

But here’s the other half of the story, and it’s the half people don’t tell you. Just because I’ve experienced sacred sex doesn’t mean every time we had sex after that was a spiritual connection. Of course it wasn’t. Sometimes you just get horny. Sometimes you want to be bent over the kitchen counter, you know? Sometimes you want to climb someone like a tree. Sometimes you have wonderfully dirty thoughts about that incredibly attractive nomadic giant from Hinge and you don’t need to turn them into a mystical experience. You can simply enjoy them.

And that’s allowed. That’s not a lesser kind of sex. It isn’t a spiritual failure, and it doesn’t mean you’ve forgotten your path.

Now, where does this divide come from? I think part of it is that a lot of us grew up surrounded by cultural and religious messages that divided sexuality into acceptable and unacceptable, pure and dirty, with very little room in between. That’s an old, old story. It shows up in religion, in culture, in the way we talk about women especially, who are meant to be pure, or desirable, but never quite both at once. And even those of us who left those stories behind sometimes carry bits of them with us. We just swap the language. Instead of saying sex is sinful, we say it’s only meaningful if it’s sacred, and sacred has a very particular look.

Sacred sex, at least in the way I often see it presented online, comes with a lot of props. There’s the divine feminine. There’s the goddess invocation. There’s the candlelight, the incense, the slow music, the long gazing into each other’s eyes. And I want to be clear, if that speaks to you, it’s beautiful. I love a candle. I love incense. If ritual helps you connect with yourself and a partner, then please, light every candle in the house.

But it’s one door into sacredness, not the only one. And it can start to feel like a checklist. Do I have the right crystals? Did I invoke the right goddess? Am I feeling divine enough? Suddenly a thing that was meant to bring you into your body has you stuck in your head, performing spirituality instead of experiencing it.

Here’s what I’ve come to believe. Sacred sex doesn’t need to be divinely feminine, and it doesn’t need a goddess. It can be two people. It can be you, by yourself. It can be a Tuesday afternoon with nothing but a showerhead and some honest curiosity. For me, what makes it sacred isn’t the stage dressing. It’s what’s happening in the room.

It’s presence. Being really there, not scrolling through your to do list in your head.

It’s consent. Not the grudging, I suppose so kind, but enthusiastic, ongoing, freely given consent, and the freedom to change your mind at any point.

It’s honesty. Being able to say what you want, what you don’t, and what you’re not sure about.

It’s respect, for your own body and for someone else’s. And it’s safety, both physical and emotional.

When those things are present, sex can be sacred with or without a single candle. And when they’re absent, no amount of incense will make it so.

And sacred doesn’t have to mean solemn. You can laugh. You can be ridiculous. You can lose your rhythm, bang an elbow, get tangled in the sheets and burst out laughing. None of that makes the connection less meaningful. Sometimes being completely comfortable enough to be silly with someone is part of what makes the experience feel sacred in the first place.

Now let’s talk about intention, because in witchcraft we talk about it constantly. We set intentions for our spells. We set intentions for our days. And I think we forget that intention can be beautifully simple. Sometimes the intention is to have an orgasm and feel pleasure. That’s it. That’s the whole thing. And it doesn’t need to be sacred to be worthy.

Pleasure is not a distraction from the spiritual. It’s one of the ways we’re in our bodies, and our bodies are where we live and where we practise. To say yes to pleasure, without apology and without a justification, is a deeply witchy thing to do. You don’t have to earn it with a ritual.

I think that’s the real intention behind a lot of magic anyway. We want to feel more alive, more connected, more at home in ourselves. Pleasure does that all on its own, and it doesn’t ask for a permission slip.

And not every orgasm needs to be a tool for manifestation either. Some of them are just lovely. Some of them are a bit silly. Some of them are the physical equivalent of a good sneeze. All of those are valid.

For that matter, not all sex needs to lead to orgasm at all. I think this one deserves its own moment, because there’s a lot of pressure around it. Some of the most connected, tender, present experiences don’t end in climax. Sometimes it’s about closeness, or play, or simply being skin to skin with someone you trust. If we make orgasm the measure of success, we miss so much of what’s on offer.

And while I’m at it, I want to say something to anyone for whom sex isn’t part of the picture. Maybe you’re asexual, maybe you’re not interested right now, maybe you’re healing, maybe it just isn’t your thing. I’ve been there myself, so I truly understand. So believe me when I say, your practice is not lesser. Your magic is not incomplete. Sexuality is one thread in a very large tapestry, and you get to decide how much of it you weave in.

So what do we do with all this? Here are a few questions I’ve started asking myself, and you’re welcome to borrow them.

Am I here, in my body, right now?

Is everyone involved, including me, saying yes freely and joyfully?

Am I being honest about what I want?

Am I treating this person, or myself, with care?

Notice what isn’t on that list. Nothing about the right incense. Nothing about a perfectly romantic setting. Nothing about whether it’s profound enough. Just presence, consent, honesty and care. Everything else is decoration.

And then, if you want the decoration, enjoy it. If you want the candles and the sacred space and the ritual, go for it. If you want a quickie on the sofa, go for that. You can be both the witch who lights a candle and the witch who can’t wait for the candle to be lit. Those people are the same person. They’ve always been the same person.

Because at the end of the day, the divide between sacred and ordinary is mostly something we’ve been taught. In my experience, they overlap, they swap places, and they blur into each other, and I think that’s rather magical in itself.

So here’s my invitation to you. Let your desire be uncomplicated. Let your pleasure be yours. Let the sacred show up in the quiet moments and the cheeky ones alike. And let go of any story that tells you your body has to be spiritual to be worthy.

Your body doesn’t have to perform spirituality to deserve pleasure.

Thank you for joining me for this episode of the Wonderfully Witchy Podcast. You can find more reflections, stories and spells over at wonderfullywitchyweb.com, where you can also sign up for my monthly newsletter, or come and say hi on Instagram at bryjaimea. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this one.

And if today’s episode spoke to you, please share it with someone who might need to hear it.

I’ll see you next time. And until then, be present, be playful, and keep trusting your magic.

With love, Bry Jaimea