The History and Practice of Having Sex with A Ghost, Spirit, or a God

Can Spirits Have Sex With You?

Sex With Spirits is More Common Than You Think

The idea of sex with spirits, gods, and even sex with ghosts is ancient and widespread. Greek myths speak of Zeus taking mortal lovers in many guises. Daoist alchemy tells of adepts who reported having sex with a ghost in dreams as initiatory encounters. In Tantric texts, yogis unite with dakinis to attain awakening. Christian mystics like Teresa of Ávila describe ecstasies that are unmistakably erotic.

Yet the notion continues to provoke curiosity and unease: what does it mean for a human to have sex with a ghost, a god, or other spirit non-physical entity? Contemporary occultists who report such encounters are not anomalies; they stand within many long lineages of mystical eroticism.

Mythic and Mystical Precedents

From antiquity to the present, erotic contact with divinity has been framed as both transformative and dangerous.

• Greece and Rome: Gods often crossed into human beds, sometimes as benefactors, and just as often, as predators. Danaë is impregnated by Zeus as a shower of gold; Leda is seduced (or assaulted in some versions) by Zeus as a swan. Such myths suggest divine sex as both initiation and violation, and reminds us that just because one may be having sex with a deity, it doesn’t mean it’s all rainbows.

• Christian Mysticism: Teresa of Ávila’s vision of an angel piercing her heart with fire has long been interpreted as an erotic rapture — showing how ‘sex with a spirit’ can be read either as a poetic metaphor for emotional–spiritual ecstasy, or as a literal spirit-based sexual encounter. Scholars like Jeffrey Kripal of The Serpent’s Gift argue that Christian mystics often couched orgasmic experience in religious metaphors.

Eastern Currents of Having Sex with Ghosts and Goddesses

Daoist Traditions

Chinese esoteric traditions describe sexual union not only with human partners but also with spirits and immortals.

• Heqi (合气, “joining energies”): Sexual alchemy texts portray erotic practice as a method of harmonizing Yin and Yang, sometimes with spirit partners encountered in dreams or visions.

• Fox spirits (狐仙 húxiān): In folklore, fox spirits seduce mortals, draining or gifting qi (chi), also known as life force. While sometimes feared as energy vampires, others cultivated fox-spirit consorts as sources of occult knowledge. The Nine Tailed Fox is perhaps the most well known at times beneficent, other times morally ambivalent spirit of legends who engages in sexual acts with unsuspecting men. 

Tantric and Tibetan Buddhism

In South Asian and Himalayan Tantric traditions, sexuality, including sex with ghosts, spirits, or gods, is explicitly linked with enlightenment.

• Dakinis (མཁའ་འགྲོ་མ, mkha’ ‘gro ma): Sky-going beings who appear as lovers, initiators, or consorts. In the book Dakini’s Warm Breath by Judith Simmer-Brown, yogis describe sexual union with dakinis as a means of transmuting desire into liberating awareness.

• Dream yoga: Erotic dream encounters are framed not as indulgence but as tantric empowerment, where bliss and emptiness unite.

Japanese and Shinto Traditions

Japan offers parallel accounts of erotic encounters with deities and spirits.

• Kitsune: Fox spirits, like their Chinese counterparts, seduce mortals, sometimes granting insight or fortune, other times chaos.

• Kami possession: In Shinto and shamanic practice, kami (a category of divine being, spirit, or even sacred force) may ride mediums. Historical accounts describe such unions as “spirit marriages,” with erotic undertones.

• Benzaiten (弁才天): The goddess of music and beauty, often linked with serpentine or dragon lovers, embodying both seduction and blessing.

Southeast Asian Folklore

In Thai and Khmer traditions, phi (spirits) or naga serpent women take human lovers, exchanging sex for protection, wealth, or magical empowerment. 

Ida Craddock and Sex with Spirits in the West

In the West, one of the most remarkable modern figures is Ida Craddock (1857–1902), who insisted she was in a conjugal relationship with an angelic being named Soph. In Heavenly Bridegrooms, Craddock argued that spirit-marriage was real, ethical, and sanctifying. For her, orgasm was a hymn to the divine. She described angelic sex as physically felt and spiritually elevating. In Psychic Wedlock, she urged that “mutual uplift, mutual sacrifice, mutual joy” defined these unions. Craddock’s insistence on sexual mysticism drew the ire of censorship within Victorian America. Facing imprisonment, she tragically committed suicide. She was ahead of her time, and her writings became foundational for later occultists exploring witchcraft meanings around mystical sexuality.

How Do You Have Sex With A Ghost? Four Modes of Sex with Spirits

Across cultures, practitioners describe four main modes of sexual union with unembodied beings, including having sex with a ghost or spirit of a loved one:

• Masturbation with Intent
  Orgasm dedicated as devotional offering. Paschal Beverly Randolph (1825–1875), an African American occultist, taught that sexual fluids consecrated with intent became powerful magical materia.

• Trance or Astral Union
  Erotic encounters in dream, trance, or out-of-body states. These echo Tantric dream yoga and Daoist accounts of spirit visitations.

• Human Stand-ins
  A consenting human acts as a vessel or surrogate, with the act consecrated to the deity. This recalls the sacred sex workers of the goddess Inanna’s temples in Mesopotamia.

• Possession and Embodiment
  The deity “rides” or takes sexual possession of a medium’s body. Known in Hoodoo, Daoist trance, and Shinto possession rites, this is rare and ethically complex, as it blurs identity, memory, and to a degree, consent.

Risks and Ethical Considerations

Divine-erotic practice is never casual. Across cultures, common cautions appear:

• Consent: Not every spirit or god accepts erotic offerings. Practitioners stress discernment.

• Discernment: Energetic parasites, projections, and trauma can masquerade as divine lovers. Protective rituals using warding plants and other means are important safeguards. Getting clarity through divination or consulting a spiritual psychic medium is also recommended.

• Balance: Spirit sex is not a replacement for human intimacy. Craddock herself saw spirit marriage as complementary to earthly relationships.

Sex with gods is neither novelty nor aberration. It is an ancient, cross-cultural observance found in Greek myth, Daoist alchemy, Tantric Buddhism, Japanese folklore, and modern occultic practice. For some, erotic communion is a devotional act: orgasm as offering, intimacy as sacrament, desire as a path to transformation. From Zeus to Ida Craddock’s angelic partner, from Daoist fox-spirits to Tantric dakinis, the message repeats: human and divine can meet through eros, for peril or for blessing.

As Craddock wrote: “All true unions, whether of earth or of heaven, are sacraments of the same eternal mystery.”

Ever fascinated by spirit relationality,

Mimi
Spirit medium and occultist

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