Teri D. Ciacchi MSW is a great many things: educator, counselor, artist, writer, performance poet, pleasure activist, temple priestess and one hell of a good time! She has been creating sex-positive culture and peer counseling networks in the Pacific Northwest since 1997. She identifies as a queer, femme, pagan, polyamorous, pansexual, kinky, anarcho-feminist slut. Teri's counseling practice focuses on serving members of alternative communities who may not otherwise receive fair, intelligent and compassionate services. Check out my blog <http:terrafire.blogspot.com>
AS an educator, Teri offers a wide variety of workshops and classes through the "TerraFire Academy of Aphrodisiacal Living". The following topics are the primary focus of her teaching: Body Positivism and Self-Love, Sexual Healing and Empowerment, Anti-Oppression Activism, Sacred Sexuality, and Clitoral Anatomy. She has been a proud member of Seattles Sex Positive Community Center (S.P.C.C.) since 2000, and served on their education committee. She also participated in the Pacific Northwest Sex Educator Forum from 2003-2005. In 2005 she created and ran the Wild at Heart Kinky Carnival, and was a core organizer for On a Lark Inc.'s Queering Femininity Conference.
Just to help out further, my last name is spelled Ciacchi and is pronounced as follows: CIA = the sound "cha"; as in the dance the cha` cha` and CHI = the sound "key" like what you use to open a door. So I tell people to remember a "key" doing the "cha cha".
By Teri D. Ciacchi MSW
Where did the idea of the TerraFire Academy of Aphrodisiacal Living come from and what are the origins of the vision behind its creation?
Well, I am glad you asked.
Once, a long time ago when I was still in my twenties, I had to choose a magical name for myself. People were frequently uncomfortable with my level of directness and self-confidence. I joked that people were “Teri-fied” of me, (a play off my first name), Then I decided to adopt this as a name I used in pagan contexts but changed it to TerraFire so that it invoked an image used in grounding meditations; the fire at the center of the living earth. Several years later, I became a ceramic artist and used the name TerraFire Arts when I sold my work. So TerraFire is my Holy self-created name.
Frequently, as people are getting to know me, they comment on how much they learn by being in my presence. I believe this is due to the fact that I very consciously live outside the dictates of the mainstream culture. I have nicknamed this culture the “weenie white boy world”. I do my best to create an alternative living space, which I carry around in my own energy field. I have created my own system of ethics and morality to accompany the following identities which I embody: anarcho-feminist, polyamorous “bachelorette”, Wiccan, pagan, sexologist, performance poet, philosopher, queer, kinky, pansexual, hedonist, pleasure activist, sacred whore, temple priestess, practitioner of sex magick. The fact of my embodying all of these personas/perspectives, is what causes others to learn in my presence. I received repeated feedback that hanging out with me is educational. Thus, my life is a performance art that instructs, in short, an academy
My spiritual teacher and Wiccan Elder Pat Ray gave me the book “Pagan Meditations” by Ginette Paris in 1993. In this book Paris shares her concepts regarding the creation of an Aphrodisiacal culture and context. Aphrodisiacalbeing defined as: the sexual perspectives and desires of a mature sex-positive, self-loving woman who understands her own nature as inherently Divine. Paris juxtaposed this concept to the current polarized notions of sexual contexts being either Erotic or Pornographic. She explains that the archetype and sexual perspective of Eros is that of a teenage boy who runs about chaotically striking people with the arrows of love/lust, sitting back to laugh at the results. She explains that the etiology of the word pornography translates as “ the writing of prostitutes”. I wish to be clear that I do not personally have any negative associations with this word or the practitioners of this ancient profession. The dominant culture, however, continues to revile prostitution and to a large extent demand it remain a criminal “offense”.
Aphrodisiacal is specifically a visionary feminist concept and as such provides the context for profound transformational political and personal sexual experiences.
My concept of Aphrodisiacal Culture stands in ideological opposition to the patriarchal concepts and subcultures of: swinging, wife swapping, orgies, and sexual infidelity (this being non-consensual sexual acts outside of committed monogamous coupling agreements). The problem of translating this concept and co-creating a temporary subculture that enacts its ethics; remains a major struggle in my ongoing attempts to create Aphrodisiacal experiences with others.
In my opinion, being raised in the mainstream American culture provides social indoctrination that predisposes people to have experiences of oppression, exploitation, and sexual repression. Relationship role models are based on non-consensual domination and submission. This socialization combines with people’s lack of positive and wide ranging sexual experience, lack of sexual self-esteem and a failure to understand the concept of Immanence to create confusion about and misunderstanding of Aphrodisiacal events. Considering all of this it has been no small miracle that the majority of people who have attended my academy have reported positive experiences.
The best way to increase people’s ability to understand Aphrodisiacal subculture is to educate them about its origins and provide them with personal experiences within facilitated Aphrodisiacal contexts. My ongoing experiences and education as a counselor and budding sexologist continue(s) to inform my understanding of and ability to create Aphrodisiacal culture. This is the goal of the TerraFire Academy of Aphrodisiacal Living.
