On Religious Eroticism

I love playing with the connections between religion and kink. It’s so ripe with potential, juicy with taboo and transformation. What fills you with ecstasy? What brings you fully to life? What do you devote yourself to?

I’ve encountered terms like Religious Eroticism or Erotic Spirituality used to discuss these ideas. As a Recovering Catholic, I primarily find myself drawn to Catholic imagery and themes. Incense, candles, vestments, altars. Devotion, ritual, sacrifice, redemption. Priests, nuns, saints, sinners. The confessional. The consumption of flesh and blood. The body as holy, transformative. The symbolism and cultural associations can increase the intensity of BDSM dynamics, where we often play with themes of punishment, authority, and control.

I am a queer, kinky woman(ish), so of course my relationship with Catholicism is complicated. I feel aligned with how queer art and literary magazine ANARKISS explores why some artists use religious imagery to depict kink:

“Both explore power (who has it, who gives it, & what it means to surrender). But for many queer people, one is a source of shame, whereas the other is a source of power. There’s also an element of resistance to it. If religion excluded you, reworking its symbols can be an act of defiance… Combining kink with religion challenges deeply held beliefs, & invites conversation about control and freedom.”

Kinksters and queers say “why throw the baby out with the bathwater?” There’s still so much here that we can reclaim. Both religious devotion and BDSM share elements of surrender, transformation, and altered states of consciousness. The act of submission, whether in prayer or within the confines of a BDSM session, can lead to a sense of transcendence—akin to the euphoria experienced through fasting or other religious rituals.

Roleplay involving figures like priests, nuns, or saints can explore themes of power, devotion, and submission. It transforms the familiar narratives of faith and authority into avenues for exploring profound psychological and emotional depths.

A couple years ago I became infatuated with queer Mexican artist Fabian Chairez. His exhibition, La venida del Señor ('The Coming of the Lord'), beautifully juxtaposes religious ecstasy with sexual ecstasy. The taboo of the work is not what struck me, but rather the genuine reverence embedded in his paintings. My fascination with his art deepened when I learned that Chairez drew inspiration from Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s masterpiece, “The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa.”

The statue of St. Teresa of Ávila—yes, she inspired my name!—depicts the saint in a moment of transverberation, experiencing religious ecstasy. St. Teresa’s vivid descriptions evoke a strong sense of eroticism, as she writes in her Book of her Life:

“I saw an angel beside me toward the left side, in bodily form… I saw in his hands a long dart of gold, and at the end of the iron there seemed to me to be a little fire. This I thought he thrust through my heart several times, and that it reached my very entrails. As he withdrew it, I thought it brought them with it, and left me all burning with a great love of God. So great was the pain, that it made me give those moans; and so utter the sweetness that this sharpest of pains gave me, that there was no wanting it to stop, nor is there any contenting of the soul with less than God”

Bernini and Chairez weren’t the only ones to take an erotic inspiration from her words. In 1989, British filmmaker Nigel Wingrove wrote and directed a short film “Visions of Ecstasy” which depicts sexualized scenes of St. Teresa Di Avila with Jesus on the cross. The film has the high designation of being the only production rejected by the British Board of Film Classification due to the UK’s blasphemy laws, which were overturned in 2008. You can watch the 20 minute film on YouTube here.

When I was in Rome this spring, I was able to visit Bernini’s statue (see header image). It was moving to connect in person, as my current self, with something that has been such a symbol of all of this blend of kink and religion, both to me and to many others. My namesake, my religious trauma, my spiritual yearning, my autonomy, my own queer kinky creed, my sinfulness, my holiness. 

What do you think? 

What do you feel? 

What do you worship? 

How do you pray?

Xoxo Avila

View the religious eroticism mood board I posted on Instagram @mistress_Avila