1. Is affirmative consent needed? A case study
Beltane is an annual Pagan fertility festival marking the arrival of Summer. Last year, I celebrated at Mississippi’s Wyld Fire. The organisers rented a private campsite in a forest; approximately 40 adults camped for three days, participating in communal meals, rituals, and recreational activities like swimming, foraging, and hiking.
In preparation for the main ritual—the Great Rite—two attendees were selected from a pool of hopefuls to represent the fertility deities, the May Queen and Oak King. The ritual’s facilitator briefed those two “protagonists,” on their ritualistic roles and, after a communal meal, the Great Rite began.
Attendees formed a large magic circle around the woodland altar. The May Queen and Oak King were fully clothed and ritualistically wore long, gossamer veils and leafy diadems. In this case, both people were women.Footnote 1 The Oak King laid on altar and—in the position colloquially known as the “cowgirl”—the May Queen straddled the Oak King. A foot above the Oak King’s chest, the May Queen held a chalice, representing the vulva; the Oak King held an athame, representing the phallus. Their hips gently rocked to-and-fro until—in dramatic climax—the athame was plunged into the chalice. This ritualistic representation of sexual congress is a conventional apogee of Beltane.Footnote 2
It was a powerful, lovely, and essentially canonical ritual. Afterwards, I commented to the Oak King, a friend of mine, on the understated subtlety of their gyrations. “I didn’t feel that I could thrust more, under the circumstances,” they explained. They felt constrained by social mores because they hadn’t received explicit prior consent from everyone in the circle. This essay interrogates this perceived limitation.
2. The affirmative consent model
My friend’s moral reasoning is commendably cautious. But I think it is mistaken: The protagonists didn’t need explicit, verbal affirmative consent from other encircling attendees to thrust vigorously. To the extent that they felt constrained, their reasoning exemplifies an over-application of the “affirmative consent model” for sexual interaction. Owing to a dearth of salient alternative ethical models, this over-application is relatively common within well-intentioned, feminist, contemporary, communal-erotic spaces.Footnote 3
The “affirmative consent model” for sexual acts was popularized by BDSM communities, especially guiding casual “pick-up play” outside of established relationships at kink events (Harris et al. Reference Harris, Morgenroth, Crone, Morgenroth, Gee and Pan2024). The model spread to other contexts, like sex parties, universities’ sexual conduct guidelines, and—increasingly—non-erotic actions, like photographing, messaging, complimenting, and hugging. Many Pagan community leaders promote affirmative consent as a model governing touch, including handholding, and participation in rites (Kraemer and Aburrow Reference Kraemer and Aburrow2015; Eileen Reference Eileen2019; Mooney Reference Mooney2015).
The affirmative consent model requires that consent is active, clear, unambiguous, enthusiastic, and freely given. Although the communicative act need not be verbal, educational and legal sources are almost univocal that tacit consent—such as simply not leaving—doesn’t suffice (Dougherty Reference Dougherty2021). This model is what the Oak King was referring to.
Contemporary “consent briefings,” which are commonplace at communal-erotic spaces such as sex parties, typically depict consent as fine-grained and detail-specific: consenting to kissing doesn’t imply consenting to breast fondling, for example. These briefings often convey deviating from an agreed plan or not disclosing pertinent information—including drug use, STIs, and relationship status—as incompatible with consent. The thought is, if participants don’t know such details in advance, they haven’t properly consented.
Legal scholarship documents this “specificity requirement.” Lucinda Vandervort (Reference Vandervort2012), for example, describes how in Canada:
sexual consent [is] defined as the unambiguous or express communication of “voluntary agreement” [which requires] specificity in what is agreed—the person agrees to something in particular […] a specific sexual activity. [This agreement] must be express, explicit, and unambiguous […] silence, passivity, or ambiguous conduct [don’t qualify].
I set aside questions about whether this operative conception of affirmative consent is correct. I instead highlight consequences of applying it to ritualised performance.Footnote 4
3. Erotic religious ritual: towards an inclusive, social sex ethics
Contemporary sexual ethics in analytic philosophy usually focuses on interpersonal contexts (classically, two people in a bedroom) and foregrounds Judeo-Christian or secular-atheist thought.Footnote 5 But erotic activity also occurs in public and communal spaces, like strip clubs and sex parties. These institutions often have rules, policies, mailing lists, membership dues, and leadership committees. A purely interpersonal sexual ethics thus overlooks normative features of these contexts.
Community-centred, spiritual erotic rituals, like fertility rites, are widespread, ancient, important, and philosophically interesting. Rituals generate distinctive ethical contours. Being performed in silence or darkness, for example, curtails normal communication. Attendees are typically not a mere audience, like customers at an erotic theatre or strip club who can come and go freely. They “hold the space”—sometimes in a magic circle—which creates social or spiritual pressure to stay. Yet Pagan erotic rituals remain understudied within philosophy. A comprehensive philosophical sexual ethics must examine such institutions.
Pagan erotic rites are diverse, ranging from private onanism to a 12,000-strong crowd on Edinburgh’s Carlton Hill.Footnote 6 Some, like Wyld Fire, are multi-day retreats. Some events have entry requirements, such as being invited or interviewed.Footnote 7 The Wyld Hunt was quasi-public. It was an advertised, ticketed event at a private, secluded campground.
This essay motivates a dilemma. If the permissibility of emphatic thrusting, and similar erotic acts, at grassroots quasi-public Pagan rituals like Wyld Fire relies on the prior affirmative consent of everybody congregated, then potential attendees must be pre-notified about what they might witness. This foreknowledge must be relatively specific, since otherwise it is unclear what attendees are consenting to. But this knowledge comes at a cost; it undermines some of the ritual’s value and reduces its transformative power.
On the other hand, if the attendees don’t know what will happen, and so can only affirmatively consent (at most) to a coarse-grained, broad description of what might happen, then affirmative consent does less normative work. Another theory is needed to explain the permissibility of public erotics in such contexts.Footnote 8
I incline towards the second horn. The permissibility of these actions stems from elsewhere, not from affirmative consent. And, given their distinctive features, we cannot simply extend interpersonal sexual ethics to such cases. We need a sociopolitical philosophy of erotic religious institutions.Footnote 9
4. Unobjectionable thrusts: action-specific affirmative consent is not needed
Sections 4–6 sketch why receiving detail-specific, explicit consent—the Oak King’s benchmark—is neither needed (§4), desirable (§5), nor feasible (§6) for displays of trenchant erotic acts in customary Neo-Pagan rituals in their typical contexts. That is, if protagonists perform a typical rite in its typical setting, affirmative consent from other attendees isn’t the apposite moral norm, even if the rite is erotic.
To forestall misunderstanding, I will emphasise: I argue that attendees’ consent isn’t always needed or desirable for Pagan rituals; not that it never is. And I focus on the encircling attendees’ consent, not the protagonists.
Let’s start with why attendees’ affirmative consent isn’t needed.
Consent “mak[es] permissible what was otherwise prohibited; making right what was otherwise wrong” (Hurd Reference Hurd and Schaber2016; see also Bolinger Reference Bolinger2019; Guerrero Reference Guerrero and Lackey2019). Hurd calls this “moral magic.” If an act is permissible and unobjectionable without consent, consent isn’t needed.
But is vigorous thrusting permissible and unobjectionable in this context? In institutional contexts, the history, conventions, norms, and widespread expectations affect what is presumptively permissible.Footnote 10 Beltane is an ancient, well-established fertility festival; the Wyld Hunt website is clear about rekindling and continuing those traditions. Adult-only camping retreats in the USA, whether Pagan or secular, often include “adult” conduct. Given this, rampant thrusting upon the altar is neither impermissible nor objectionable. Thus, onlookers’ consent was not required for this thrusting.
My colleague asked, “What if the protagonists had ‘full’ coitus on the altar? Would this require affirmative consent from attendees?” The normative role of social conventions and practices (which, in turn, influences attendees’ expectations) informs my response.
I have attended many Pagan rites—public and private; erotic and not—in Europe and North America and, because of this familiarity, I cannot imagine that everything is the same except that the protagonists had coitus. It isn’t a realistic possibility. Given Neo-Pagan cultural norms, if sex was on the table (or the altar, in this case), the possibility would be mentioned. Displays of kissing, nudity, and sensual fruit-feeding are within the “Overton window” of reasonable expectations for a contemporary quasi-public Neo-Pagan rite, without prior discussion, given Neo-Pagan social conventions and practices.Footnote 11 But full coitus (along with bloodletting, blood drinking, and corpse-burying) is not.Footnote 12
5. The costs of knowledge: action-specific affirmative consent is not desirable
I now motivate my main claim. Obtaining fine-grained, informed affirmative consent can be costly. Why? Consider the functions of rituals. Foreknowledge can hamper these aims.
5.1 Transmitting arcane knowledge
First, some rituals aim to convey (or create) sacred or protected knowledge. Participation can either transmit secret knowledge—via symbol, story, or experience—or earn initiates access to it by proving their worthiness, commitment, or skill. Arcane knowledge from ritual can define group membership, such as if the Stonecutters simply are those who know what happens during Stonecutter initiation ceremonies.
Some rituals aim to create secret knowledge. Consider, for example, Oxford University’s Bullingdon Club which allegedly ensures initiates’ loyalty by arranging humiliating ordeals that those initiates wouldn’t want publicised. By witnessing each other’s misconduct, they create in-group secrets.
Giving potential attendees prior knowledge—to help them decide whether to attend—can undermine these epistemic and bonding functions. Indeed, such functions help to explain the Pagan norm that one doesn’t disclose what occurred during a ritual or coven outside the group (NightMare Reference NightMare2010). (Section 7 reconsiders this norm.)
5.2 Ritual as experiential journey
Some rituals are an experiential or transformative journey—rites of passage mark or create “before” and “after” stages for participants, for example—which is diminished by thorough advance knowledge. To see why, suppose that (1) the affirmative consent model governed haunted houses, immersive art exhibitions, conversations, sermons, films, video games, drug use, nature hikes, adventures, and wild nights out. And (2) on the operative conception, this model requires participants to explicitly agree to what is coming.Footnote 13 This would clearly impede the goals of both the participant/audience and creator/organiser. Something is lost.Footnote 14 The resulting experience would be less enjoyable, exciting, vivid, novel, impactful, or transformative.Footnote 15 Epistemology typically focuses on the benefits of knowledge, but this is a cost of knowledge.Footnote 16
5.3 Merely knowing the limits can dampen the experience
Readers might wonder about affirmative consent based on attendees knowing the “upper bounds” of what might occur. Perhaps the facilitator specifies that penetration won’t occur, for example, and—knowing this limitation—attendees affirmatively consent to witnessing the ritual.
In response, first, typically attendees do know—from cultural fluency or event-specific testimony—some boundaries. (Neo-Pagans typically know that unannounced ritualised bloodletting won’t occur, for example.) And this knowledge plays some normative role.
But it’s worth noting that merely knowing boundaries can reduce an experience’s psychological benefits. In 2010 I attended Dialogue in the Dark, an immersive warehouse exhibition that simulated city streets, but in darkness. It thus recreates, for sighted people, a simulacrum of blindness. It was powerful. I think about that experience often.
Suppose I knew in advance that the designers precluded sudden frightening noises, such as screeching brakes as I crossed zebra crossings. With this knowledge, I would feel more comfortable. But this comfort comes at a cost. Reducing uncertainty about the possibility space can weaken an experience’s affective and educational impact.Footnote 17
Similarly, being told that the ritualistic representation of sexual union will “top out” with dry humping can reduce mystique or undercut the sense that an emotional, spiritual journey is being intuitively, spontaneously co-created.
5.4 The diversity of ritual functions: knowledge doesn’t always undermine the goals
Rituals have diverse functions and values. Some epistemic, experiential, and social functions of ritual are consistent with foreknowledge. Catholic Mass is predictable, for example. Some ritualistic aims even require foreknowledge. Consider Tibetan monks who pursue enlightenment and mental discipline by constantly repeating mantras. Foreknowledge is integral; surprise or novelty would undercut these rituals’ aims.
But, I have argued, detailed foreknowledge thwarts some aims. Unless those aims cannot be combined with erotic rites (or secular erotic displays, like burlesque), other models and practices for communal sex ethics are needed.
Since the affirmative consent model originated in BDSM communities, it’s worth noting that foreknowledge doesn’t hinder most BDSM aims, such as pain, arousal, power play, and emotional intimacy.Footnote 18 BDSM and Pagan communal-erotic spaces characteristically diverge in this respect. Thus, ideally practitioners can implement various ethical models, reflecting diverse needs, aims, and values.
6. Action-specific affirmative consent is not feasible: the facilitator and protagonists’ perspective
Concern for attendees’ consent focuses on the needs, rights, and welfare of magic circle attendees. This is important, but encircling attendees aren’t the only stakeholders. We mustn’t overlook community organisers and protagonists. Focusing on their aims and needs suggests that pre-specifying what will happen isn’t always feasible: the facilitator and protagonists don’t always know. And, furthermore, their ignorance is valuable and worth protecting.
6.1 Cultural evolution through unprecedented, experimental social forms: discover it by creating it
Many organisers of occult and erotic communities don’t merely aim to create enjoyable, educational, or transformative experiences for individual attendees. They aim to change society. Marginalised initiatives, like burlesque and contemporary Paganism, aim to emancipate communities from previous limitations towards new social forms, possibilities, or Overton windows. New pathways and social forms are forged through the events (Madden Reference Madden2008; Kraemer and Aburrow Reference Kraemer and Aburrow2015; Zwissler Reference Zwissler and Wilcox2025). As a result, existing social conventions and practices cannot forecast what will occur. Either the event is so marginal and experimental that society lacks well-established norms and practices, or the organiser aims to transcend those norms, and thus isn’t constrained by them.
Some rituals that aim to influence society use well-trodden, well-documented techniques. Consider military parades, which inculcate hawkish authoritarianism. These society-sculpting rituals aren’t especially experimental. They can be tightly choreographed, scripted, and predictable. Homespun Pagan community rituals, by contrast, are often experimental. The organiser herself doesn’t know what will unfold, which affects what one can demand from them.Footnote 19
Those organisers cannot describe a full plan because they need freedom to go with the flow. Suppose some encircling attendees begin to gyrate in sync with the protagonists’ hips, for example, and this idea disseminates throughout the circle. The facilitator might respond by saying “I invite you to move your hips in time with the union,” to promote cohesion. If this motion didn’t start organically within the circle, the same invitation could feel overbearing or awkward. Thus, detailed prior “briefings” can hinder rituals that aim to be exploratory and co-created.
6.2 Equal rites: authenticity and freedom for protagonists
Recall the protagonists—the two people representing deities. They are not actors to be choreographed. They are, on Pagan views, channels embodying divine spirits. Metaphysical questions aside, the protagonists are typically devout Pagans undergoing a significant, emotional, public rite.
Protagonists’ freedom to act intuitively or spontaneously is valuable. A preset plan can undermine their sense of authenticity and sanctity.Footnote 20 Williams (Reference Williams, Kraemer and Aburrow2015, 15) vividly describes realising the paramountcy of Priestesses’ freedom to choose whether to re-robe or remain nude “after reviewing who is in the congregation” at Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) Mass, for example. She redesigned her events to ensure this freedom.
Additional factors that make prediction or choreography difficult, impossible, or undesirable include intoxicants, trance and other altered states, and tenets of adorcism.Footnote 21 Given this, facilitators may function more like “monitors” than choreographers, intervening only if needed.
6.3 Against the “warning label” model of informed consent for pagan fertility rituals
Section 5 considered whether organisers could describe an event’s “limits” (that is, explaining what won’t happen) to enable informed consent. Now consider an alternative option: the website articulates what could happen, with language like “simulations of sexual congress, up to and including nudity, gyrations, and erotic groaning.” This “warning label” model resembles disclaimers that, for example, “Use of this gym can result in injuries, up to and including death.” On this model, attendees consent to holding space for anything falling within the warning label.Footnote 22 With this “warning label” in place, the Wyld Fire protagonists would have felt freedom to gyrate vigorously.
But this model raises problems. First, given the proposed normative role—namely, enabling informed affirmative consent—the “warning label” language must include all “extremal” possibilities. It should state multivarious things that might occur—drugs, nudity, supplication, etc.—that any potential attendees could object to “holding space” for. This might attract police, generate legal liability, or repel people unnecessarily by presenting the event as debauched or extreme.
And it will lead to disappointment. Why? Receiving information isn’t psychologically inert. Such content shapes attendee’s expectations about what will occur. Expectations influence experiences. If the website says, for example, the protagonists might gyrate exuberantly on the altar, it can feel like something went wrong, or attendees missed out, if they don’t. The protagonists might feel pressure to “live up to” the website’s description. It inadvertently functions like a checklist or script.
Indeed, given that a warning label must convey extremal boundaries along multiple axes of what might occur, any real-life Pagan fertility festival, however debauched, will seem like a muted simulacrum compared to the warning label. There is a systemic reason: warning labels warn of bad possibilities, such as injury. But, for most people, erotic displays at a fertility festival aren’t bad; they’re good or neutral. Thus the “warning label” model is structurally inapt.
7. On secrecy and error
Recall the secrecy norms that—to preserve mystique whilst protecting participants and arcane knowledge—proscribe disclosing what occurred during magic circles. Secrecy norms can conflict with the virtues of institutional openness.
Why? First, non-disclosure requirements that encompass potential mistreatment, mistake, misconduct, and discomfort in religious, sexual, or therapeutic contexts are morally dubious, especially if imposed within power hierarchies (Prasad Reference Prasad2018; Berstler Reference Berstler2025). Secondly, freedom to err is important for social innovation: a society that cannot permit error cannot foster creative social change. And people are (understandably!) wary of any risk of sexual misstep or causing social discomfort. Excessive chariness, though, can inhibit valuable Pagan communal-erotic experimentation.
Perhaps John Stuart Mill’s (Reference Mill1860) influential defence of cultural diversity and experimentation can help to reconcile these opposing values. Trying out ideas—the draft, poll tax, universal basic income, group marriage, free trains, bike lanes…—can be valuable even when some specific ideas prove unsuccessful. But on Mill’s account open communication is paramount: only with openness can heterogeneous groups learn from each other’s experiments. Can this epistemic value of social experimentation be reconciled with Pagan secrecy norms?
Given the conflicting values of sequestering Pagan knowledge and learning from errors, we can articulate a nuance in the norm: disclosing details can be prohibited unless those details are a mistake, abuse, or similar harm-reduction learning opportunity. Owing to the values of accountability and learning from error, the prohibition doesn’t apply to such details. To illustrate, suppose the facilitator puts powder on the ritual flame, turning it blue. This can be a circle secret—no telling allowed. But if the facilitator puts hydrocarbons on the flame, igniting the forest, they cannot demand secrecy.
Note that, as the comparison with Mill highlights, this updated secrecy norm still carries epistemic costs. Non-attendees cannot learn about valuable innovations, for example. Only the benefits of openness about error are gained.Footnote 23
8. Conclusion
I have argued that some Pagan ritualistic details cannot, or should not, be communicated in advance. But participant ignorance conflicts with widespread operative understandings of the epistemic demands of affirmative consent. Fortunately, I argue, explicit affirmative consent of this nature is not required from all ritual attendees before protagonists can permissibly perform erotic acts. Other ethical models for sexualised conduct apply.
Owing to distinctive communal-erotic and religious features, theorists shouldn’t simply extend interpersonal sexual ethics to ritual erotic contexts. For many, spirituality is central to identity; for Pagans, options for faith-aligned community are limited. Whether one joins an existing Pagan group (and thus is governed) or designs one from scratch (and thus becomes a leader), questions about legitimacy, authority, solidarity, equality, and access within social institutions are paramount. To take Paganism seriously, then, as an important social form, theories must look to the ethics of clubs, institutions, and governance. Like churches and educational establishments, Pagan erotic ritual is social infrastructure.
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to Cat Saint-Croix, Jon Garthoff, and Mario Juarez-Garcia for significant discussion that shaped the paper. Thanks also to Micol Bez, Katie Ebner-Landy, Lee Ignire, Quill Kukla, Emily Schumacher, Ty Siddiqui, Sable Switch, Chad Van Schoelandt, two anonymous referees, and the audience at the Greater New Orleans Pagan Pride Festival for their helpful insights. Finally, thanks to the Do the Magical Thing podcast for discussion and to the ritual’s protagonists and organiser for allowing me to write about this event.
Georgi Gardiner is an Associate Professor of Philosophy and GESS (Gender and Sexuality Studies) at Tulane University, where she also teaches Creativity. Gardiner researches epistemology, social philosophy, and meta-philosophy. This includes projects on evidence law, rape accusations, self-deception, doubt, attention, character, virtue, and the ethics of belief. Gardiner also writes on sex, love, kink, relationships, risk, crime, countercultural community, creative game-based pedagogy, circus, tarot, and the occult.
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