13th Century Courtly Love Part 2

Today we are going to continue our discussion of the 13th century and courtly love, but we are going to go back in time a little bit to a person by the name of Guilhem in the 11th century, who was the seventh count of Poitiers and the ninth Duke of Aquitaine. He was the most powerful nobleman in Western Christendom and very influential in the development of this entire idea of courtly love which we are exploring.

He fought against the church doctrine that the fires of hell were stoked especially hot for adulterers. He apparently liked his ladies and he wrote love poems. He argued that love was an exultation, not an abasement of the soul. It was not a sordid sin but a divine mystery and the lady who offered that special gift was a goddess to be adored and worshiped.

He basically proclaimed that sexuality elevated the soul and what he was doing was bringing Tantric philosophy into the Western world. This is one of the first appearances of the sacredness of sexuality and it became a favorite theme of scholars, singers and poets.

Now remember this was during the time of the Crusades and the man of the house was gone. The ladies were lonely and they needed some way to spend their time so they wanted to hear love songs that were meaningful to them. And gradually a convention, or a script came into being, which was of a great lady who fell in love. She was loved by a romantic hero of the lower class and this romantic hero struggled to become worthy of her and win her love. In the end he did win her love. That story was repeated over and over and over in many variations through the centuries and it still is today.

It was a couple generations later, in the 12th century that the prerequisites of virtue and chastity were added to this mix. These songs and poems were acted out in the fashionable world of the nobility and they brought courtly love into existence.

It's just like what happens today when Hollywood creates something and then the general population gets caught up in it and play make-believe acting it all out. That's what was happening then. But it really caught on! Poets declared that elevating love to the immaculate plane of chastity cleansed their own souls of all carnality and left it free to soar, to lift them up high into the spirit realm.

This was different than the Arab world where a special place was created for women in the harem. But virtue and chastity became the European harem.

The basic story went like this. The heroine was a lady of high and noble birth who was married to a very powerful husband and somehow she was not satisfied. She was missing something in her life, and her lover, who was of a lower stature strove to become worthy of her and finally, at last succeeded in attracting her love. But it had to remain secret. It was a mystery that they both shared and set them apart from other people.

The interesting thing is the power that this theme had among the population because it is still popular today. But back then, the minstrels and the troubadours never sang of consummated love. They only sang of unconsummated love. The chaste love, the kiss, the embrace and modest contact with the nude lover was permitted, but not the final act of consummation.

These are such fascinating things that have metaphysical and Tantric implications. One thing is the love triangle. This is even such a powerful concept that the tarot card of the lovers has three people in it, not just one.

The man has to choose between the angel or the physical woman. There is something in this fantasy of courtly love that satisfied the needs of both the body and the spirit for generations. Even today the love triangle interferes with so many people’s experience of love.

Tantrism teaches about the power in the exchanges of sexual energies and not just about physical sex. An important part of it is talking about chastity, the embrace and the holding back. That’s how the energies develop and strengthen between two people, especially when it’s never allowed to be consummated.

Dion Fortune, the famed occultist, in England talked about the deliberate use of magic by building up those sexual tensions to an electrical point where they were almost unbearable and intolerable. Then they would use those magical energies in a conscious, deliberate way to work magic. This was not sex magic the way it's commonly thought of. It was actually the tension that was created and not allowed to be consummated.

This tension of sexual energy that's built up is actually what Tantric teachings are really all about. It is the sharing of these energies on the nonphysical planes, that actually develop the soul. They help to complete a person inside and they allow males and females to become more sexually balanced.

So this idea of courtly love went crazy within the nobility. This was the educated class. This was the higher class and they were tapping into this high form of tantrism even if it was not recognized as such.

But what was happening to the sexuality of the common folk? They were playing the same games, but they were a lot more undisciplined about it and sexuality ran rampant among the common folk. I mean they were just out there having random sex without knowing how powerful it was.

Sexuality was rampant among the entire population and the Church was having a very difficult time with it. It was happening in the monasteries and in the convents. It was happening to the nuns and to the priests and monks.