Several women have lamented on our blog that, while the Heavenly Doctrines deal extensively with lust in men, there doesn’t seem to be any discussion of lust in women. That’s not quite true. Married Love 502-503 are the only numbers I’m aware of that deal with sexuality in women–but I find them bursting with thought-provoking truths:

502. The state of a virgin or untouched woman before marriage and after marriage. What the state of a virgin is before she has been instructed in the various aspects of the nuptial torch has been disclosed to me by wives in the spiritual world, by those there who departed from the natural world in their infancy and were raised in heaven.

They said that when they came into a marriageable state, from seeing married partners they began to long for married life, but only in order to have the name of wives and keep company with one man in a friendly and trusting association, and to be freed, too, from their condition of obedience at home and become independent. They also said that they thought of marriage only because of the bliss of the friendship and mutual confidence they shared with a male companion, and not at all because of the delight of any passion.

After the wedding, however, their virginal state, they said, was changed into a new one, of which they had had no knowledge before. And they said that this new state was one in which all the vital elements of their body, from the first to the last of them, swelled to receive their husband’s gifts and unite these to their life, that they might thus become his lover and wife. Moreover this state commenced, they said, from the moment of defloration, and after that the flame of their love burned for their husband alone, and they felt the delights of that swelling as the delights of heaven. So, too, because they were introduced into this state by their husband, and because it emanated from him and was thus his state in them, they could not possibly help but love him alone.

It is evident from this what the state of virgins is before marriage and after marriage in heaven. A like state exists also in virgins and wives on earth who are married at the earliest opportunity, as may not be unknown. What virgin can have knowledge of this new state before she is in it? Inquire and you will hear. It is different with those who before marriage encounter stimulation from learning about it.

503. Virginity is the crown of her chastity and a token of married love. We call virginity the crown of her chastity, because it crowns the chastity of marriage and moreover is the mark of her chastity. That is why a bride at her wedding wears a crown upon her head. Virginity is also a symbol of the sacredness of marriage; for after yielding the flower of her virginity the bride commits and devotes herself wholly to the bridegroom, now her husband, and the bridegroom conversely commits and devotes himself wholly to the bride, now his wife.

We call virginity a token of married love as well, because it is a part of the covenant, a covenant whose end is that love may unite them into one person or one flesh.

Men themselves, too, regard the virginity of the bride before their wedding as the crown of her chastity and a token of married love, and look upon it as the very morsel from which the delights of that love are to commence and endure.

It follows from these observations and those of the preceding discussion that after the maidenhead has been breached and her virginity tasted, a maiden becomes a wife, and if not a wife, a trollop. For the new state into which she is then initiated is a state of love for her man, and if it is not one of love for her man, it is a state of lust.