I am Reverend Teri D. Ciacchi of Living Love Revolution which is both a Free Church and a form of integrated social change activism. Living Love Revolution teaches and holds events focused on self love, spiritually-centered open relationships and sacred sexuality. I am a religious scholar, an author and a visionary healer. I have a private practice that provides healing sessions to those who request them. More details on my training and education are available at the end of this letter and on my website.

I have known Tracy Elise since 2004. I worked with Tracy Elise’s previous temple the School of One in Seattle for nine months in 2005-2006 as the Education Director. My purpose as the education director was two fold 1) to hold classes to train the practitioners of the Temple in Sacred Sexuality techniques and the herstory of Sacred Sexuality in the Goddess traditions 2) To educate the general public about Sacred Sexuality and Sex Positivity by holding weekly classes at the School of One. I am able to provide a curriculum of what I taught if that would be useful.

In my understanding we are living in a time of great turmoil and social transformation. We are living in a Postmodern (both/and) era and many things are changing. One of the things that is undergoing a radical transformation is the nature of Spirituality and Religion. Religions which arose in the beginning of the Modern (either/or) era no longer serve the needs of a great many people. These older religions are dualistic and align themselves with state and patriarchal structures. Many people, including myself feel that religions with black and white thinking are based on fundamental concepts that split the world, and human beings within it, into two sides: good and evil. My experience of the world and myself are much more complex than this and so I turned my attentions to traditions and teachings that reflect values of connection, integration and oneness.
There are hundreds of thousands of practitioners of Wicca, Paganism and Neo-Tantra in the world and yet, very few of them feel called to create a religion out of these practices.
Tracy Elise is a person who felt called to create her own church. Her personal revelation and following conversion to the path of the Goddess has been well documented on her website, and in her television and radio interviews, in an authentic and direct manner.

Tracy Elise, has in my presence acted consistently with her espoused beliefs and religious convictions. I believe in Tracy’s sincerity as a person called into service by Deity. She has found herself in a dangerous and complicated Postmodern situation. The healing services she has trained herself to provide and has received as direct transmissions from Deity in her personal spiritual practices are absolutely in line with her beliefs and calling. People who receive such transmissions are rare and unique. The legal system and police are not prepared to see anything but prostitution and are not educated to be able to distinguish between a new non-patriarchal religious/spiritual practice and an exchange of sex for money.

The existence and worship of Ancient Goddesses and the concept of a Sacred Whore are not new in any sense of the word. The works of Feminist religious scholars such as Judy Grahn, Betty De Shong Meador, Elinor Gadon, Diane Wolkstein, Patricia Monaghan and the works of Jungian analysts Sylvia Brinton Perera and Nancy Qualls-Corbett provide ample evidence of historical precedent and the current psychological hunger for the return of this archetype to mainstream culture. Deena Metzger wrote an article in 1986 published in the Utne Reader called : “Re-Vamping the World: the Return of the Sacred Prostitute”. While I have been researching and reading the resurgence of this archetype into the mainstream for decades, Tracy Elise is the first person I have personally known to create a Free Church based on her personal convictions that she is to embody the Goddess and provide direct services.

The contradiction here is not in Tracy Elise or her beliefs. The problem comes from an out of date Modern legal system that is still engaged in black and white thinking. Tracy Elise is both a spiritual healer and a sacred sexual practitioner. The state of Arizona spent a lot of tax payers money in a six month investigation and heavily armed SWAT team raid of a church full of non-violent priestesses practicing their religion. We need new laws and new definitions that distinguish forms of prostitution that involve pimps and trafficking of unwilling street prostitutes from practitioners of sacred sexual healing. Forms of exchange where willing practitioners exchange money and goods with willing seekers for healing hands on services need to be distinguished from illegal acts of prostitution.

In my opinion, seekers who attended the Pheonix Goddess Temple, were members of a Free Church who entered their Temple for healing sessions and they should have the same right to privacy and exemption from legal investigations as Catholics who attend their church for confession. What happens in a healing session between a Priestess of that Temple and a seeker who comes for healing there is a private matter and none of our business. In a country that respects and protects all religious beliefs; even a Religion that sees the body as holy and sex as a sacrament, this would be true. I hope to live into a future where the local, state and federal governments allow the same freedoms for small newly emerging revelatory Goddess based religions as it has for the dominant dualistic religions of the past.

I send my blessings and prayers to Tracy Elise and thank her for acting in accordance with her will and her calling.

Sincerely,

Reverend Teri D. Ciacchi MSW
Living Love Revolution
www.livingloverevlution.com
livingloverevolution@me.com
(206) 612-3511

Some of my training and credentials are given here for those interested.
I was ordained in the Fellowship of Isis and started the Iseum of Minerva-Appias in 1999. I have two other ordinations as a Wiccan and Pagan Minister. I have a bachelor’s degree in Interdisciplinary Ecology from Stephens College. I have a Master’s degree in Social Work which i obtained in 1988. I have worked as a psychiatric social worker in a number of non-profit agencies serving “chronically mentally ill adults”. I have taught at the University of Oregon in the Human Services Department. I took the core curriculum of Landmark Education and was an introduction leader for 2 years. I took the Buddhist vow of refuge from Reginald Ray in 2010 and sit regularly with the Dharma Ocean Sangha. I have studied many forms of therapy, many forms of somatic healing, (reiki, Polarity Healing) and many forms of spirituality and religion including; Neo-Tantra, Wicca and Buddhism with many teachers in many systems. I have created my own daily spiritual practice based on a unique synthesis that arises from my bodies’own intuition.