The Binge Crimes: Lady Mafia - Mystic Mother | 2. Goddess Bless

Episode Date: September 6, 2022

When Tracy Elise tries to create a tantric goddess temple in Phoenix, some say it’s not a house of worship, it’s a house of prostitution. Want the full story? Unlock all episodes of Mystic Mother, ad-free right now by subscribing to The  Binge — All Episodes. All at Once. Plus you’ll unlock brand new stories, dropping every month  - that’s all episodes, all at once, all ad-free. Just click ‘Subscribe’ on the top of the Mystic Mother show page on Apple Podcasts or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access wherever you listen. Find out more about The Binge and other podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Campsite Media. Are you offended if I call it the sex church? I'm not offended, but that reduces what it is, which is a beautiful exploration of how to cultivate and master your energy, and reduces it to just a very small thing. This is Tracy Elise, the founder of the Phoenix Goddess Temple, doing an interview with local daytime TV host Pat McMahon. Chances are you have no idea who he is unless you grew up in Phoenix.

He's the former star of The Wallace and Ladmo Show, a kids' program that ran for more than 35 years. unless you grew up in Phoenix. He's the former star of the Wallace and Ladmo show, a kids' program that ran for more than 35 years. He's kind of like a local celebrity, but one you immediately associate with your childhood, which makes this interview seem even more bizarre and awkward. I'm doing this with great respect because I really love the idea of the freedom that you're talking about

that other churches so often suppress, okay? Yes. But when I come to your church, isn't it really a massage with a happy ending? No, no, no. But Pat McMahon is asking Tracy the same questions a lot of people have. Okay, the delaying on of hands with oil, right? Yes, which is an ancient laying on of hands. Then what do I call that if it isn't a massage?

We call it whole body healing, which is to bring a person a sense of wholeness in their body. Tracy is used to people questioning her faith, and it's part of her mission to explain how sex can be spiritual. But it's hard for a lot of people to understand that. It's just all so taboo. The only question that I have is the question that a police officer would have, or the vice squad would have, or churches, other churches not so involved with tantric Release would have, and that is why it is that if you and I at your doorstep agree on a price for your services, why you are not a bordello. Yes, God is blessed. From Campside Media and Sony Music Entertainment, you're listening to Witnessed, Mystic Mother.

Episode 2, Goddess Bless. I'm Afua Hirsch. I'm Peter Frankopan. And in our podcast, Legacy, we explore the lives of some of the biggest characters in history. This season, we are looking at the life of the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. It's fair to say he's a complex and controversial character. Almost 150 years since his birth, how does his legacy hold up today? Follow Legacy now wherever you get your podcasts. Or binge entire seasons early and ad-free on Wondery Plus.

Tracy didn't always believe in sacred sexuality and tantric healing. She grew up the oldest of four sisters in Fairbanks, Alaska. Their father was a smokejumper who loved nature, and their mom stayed home with the kids for many years. It seems like Tracy had a pretty average American childhood. She was even a pageant queen at the Alaska State Fair. So we wanted to understand how she became the mystic mother of a goddess temple. Tracy didn't want to be interviewed, but she did put us in touch with

one of her sisters, the youngest, Shelly. She was the most fun as a big sister. She orchestrated a lot of singing and dancing in the home. For example, when our parents were, you know, when they gave us chores to do and they left the house and like have it done by the time we get home. And she would put on music and try and make it fun for all of us to do the chores we were supposed to do. Shelly says the family wasn't particularly religious. I called us Holly Lily Christians. We went to Protestant churches, Presbyterian and Methodist, primarily around the holidays. But we didn't go regularly.

Our parents wanted us to grow up with our own belief system and decide that for ourselves. The sisters all took different paths. One sister is agnostic, another Jehovah's Witness, and Shelly was deeply involved with a fundamentalist Christian church for 20 years. And then there's Tracy. Tracy talks a lot about how she developed her own religious beliefs in old interviews and on social media. Since we couldn't speak with her, anytime you hear her voice, it's from one of those recordings. In this YouTube video, Tracy says she had questions about God from a young age. When I was about six years old, I remember my mother and father telling me about God and that God was male. God was like my father and God was not like my mother, not like me,

not like my sisters. And I remember asking really strong questions about that and saying, well, can I talk to God? Can I see Him? Is there a picture? And they always said, no, no, no one has ever seen a picture of God. No one's actually... you can't talk to Him like a person. And I said, well, how do you know that it's a father and not a mother? And I remember very much how I felt when I read about Eve and how Eve was evil and caused humanity to fall and that women were blamed for getting humanity kicked out of paradise. For Tracy, as a young girl, the message was really clear. As I went through my life and tried to adjust to the fact that I

was less than all of the men, that my mother, my sisters, and then I had a daughter, and that all of the females are less in spiritual power than are the men. So Tracy adjusted. She got married to a Catholic man when she was 21, and they had three children.

She was actually living a pretty conservative life. She says she even campaigned for Pat Robertson, the famed conservative televangelist, in his 1988 presidential bid. But at some point in her late 20s, she became really disillusioned with patriarchal religions and traditions. She even changed her name from Tracy Johnson to Tracy Elise because she didn't want her identity to be attached to a man. And those questions she asked as a kid, they kept coming back.

I was determined to find out if anybody anywhere could tell me about the feminine aspect of the creator. So she started looking for answers. She read about different religions that worship more than just one male god, and she came across Neo-Tantra. Tantra is a set of ancient traditions that may be traced back to Hinduism and Buddhism. It may involve ritual and meditative practices in pursuit of spiritual enlightenment. But Neo-Ttantra is a modern, largely Western interpretation that often focuses on sexual practices and experiencing the divine through the channeling of sexual energy. After several years of soul-searching, Tracy and her husband separated. In a document, Tracy wrote that it was because of spiritual, religious, and sexual differences.

She later moved to Seattle to live with one of her other sisters. Here's Shelly again. Leaving her kids for a period when she left Alaska, that was really hard. They were young, you know? And there was a lot of pain involved with that. She's told me she felt like she just had to find herself. One of her other sisters, Abby, says it was all a shock for their family,

and it was hard to accept. We don't know a lot about this time in Tracy's life, but there is a conversation about this between Tracy and Abby in court. They talk about how Tracy had a tantric experience with a spiritual man, an Osho follower. She was with him for a while, but it didn't work out. And Tracy tried to go back to her old life, the one with her husband and her kids. They even went to counseling, but that didn't work out either. What I recall is like a bomb going off in the family and that you were making a decision to do something that none of us could understand. We don't do that here.

And it's dangerous. And you could get into trouble. Tracy committed to her newfound spirituality. And she became really interested in the intersection of sex and religion. I've had so many people tell me that religion and sex do not go together, but that's their version of reality. Sex education in America looks like this. It's biology and body parts. It's germs and controlling the spread of germs. And it is, you know, how do you avoid an unwanted pregnancy? They jump from that to porn. And that's our sex education. So

we have to deal with this energy because it's why we exist. When Tracy started practicing neo-tantra, everything changed for her. And when I found Tantra and goddess worship, I knew that I had come home and that I could be a priestess of the mother. Tracy became part of a goddess temple in Seattle and practiced there for six years. And then she felt pulled somewhere very different. Here's Tracy's friend who goes by the name Kamala Devi. She's like, I want to reach people. I want to change people. She really followed this Christ consciousness where she wanted to embrace the leper and like go and help the lost souls and help the people who needed it the most. Something really called me. I would call it the Great Spirit. You know, you get a calling, and it's something that you just can't say no to.

Tracy says she was called somewhere far from the dense green forests and perpetually gray skies of the Pacific Northwest. I felt called to serve in the Valley of the Sun. The Valley of the Sun, a.k.a. Phoenix, Arizona. That's after the break. From the award-winning creators of the hit podcast Father Wants Us Dead comes the stunning new true crime series

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In the spring of 2008, Tracy opened the Phoenix Goddess Temple out of a residential home. In these big cities, people are really under a lot of stress, taking care of their families, earning a living, commuting. I really felt like, you know, a busy city needs to have an urban temple where people can get away for an hour or two with someone they love and just relax. Okay, so what do you need to start a goddess temple? Well, you need a space, some massage tables, a shit ton of coconut oil, and you need goddesses. Hello? Hi, my name is Melissa Sturgis and I had missed a telephone call from this number.

Oh, hi. You called a better job? Yes, yes I did. And have you been doing sensual practice? Um, yes. For probably about 10 years now. Okay. I want you to send a headshot and a body shot. And I'm not talking about it has to be sexual or nude.

Because we don't put our ads out that way. Send a headshot and a body shot and we can change futures. And send us a little notice about why you feel like you want to come and work at the goddess temple and what your spiritual path is. In order to spread the word about the temple and bring in seekers, they advertised. In places like the adult services section of local newspapers. And Backpage.com, a classified site known for advertising sex work. Here's Rebecca Carrara again, a.k.a. Aphrodite.

We put ads in, or at least I did, that said, you know, a soothing touch from a goddess. And I don't know what I said, but they're very enticing and picture, you know, a couple pictures. I have to tell you, I've had a little bit of a, I don't know if I want to call it like a spiritual journey kind of thing. This is a seeker calling Tracy for the first time. I had seen you before on your website a while ago, and I kind of wanted to come see you. I don't know if it's your eyes or what it is. It's kind of like a deep soul kind of thing or something. I don't know.

But I've never been with like a spiritual woman so i it's you know it's hard for me to explain oh okay well it'll be a fun thing i think you'll enjoy it it's more dimensions is what it is well that's what i'm looking for i'm kind of like like seeking. It's kind of like a, I don't know, this sounds weird, but it's kind of like a yearning seeking kind of thing. So I just want to experience something that I haven't experienced before. Usually it was obvious why they were calling. They were more interested in the sex part of sacred sexuality. This seeker sounds unsure about what he's asking for, so Tracy explains what he can expect. Okay, in a one-hour session on a first visit, what I usually do is, rather than get into tantra too much, I'll do a little bit of tantra and a whole body healing,

which is a giving of love and energy and touch to your body. This idea that goddesses bring love and energy and touch, it's really important to Tracy, because it's part of her religion. The temple draws on many old traditions, but the combination of them creates a new set of beliefs. Tracy says there are aspects of Hinduism and ancient Egyptian practices. She even says the transformation chambers, the rooms where healing sessions happen, are modeled after Catholic confession booths. So Tracy wants to be clear.

What she does at the temple is different from prostitution or sex work. Here's Tracy's friend Kamala again. She's like, I don't want to be associated with the prostitute. That's not what I do. And we went back and forth, and it wasn't a legal thing. Like, she wasn't like, I don't, she was just like, prostitution is not at the heart of why I do this work. The temple actually had its own terminology for a lot of words to separate the sacred from the mundane.

For example, a bed is called a grand altar, a massage table is an altar of light, and a wand of light is a penis. But for first-time seekers, this can be confusing. And they don't always understand the difference between sacred sex and sex work. And that's what I want when I'm telling you what I'm seeking. I haven't had an experience. I mean, I've had sex with women, you know, different women, but I've never had a spiritual, sexual experience with a woman.

I know that you are therapeutically taking care of people like me, and so I'm just wondering what my fee would be to take care of you. So this is where things get tricky. This seeker is asking Tracy what her fee is for the session, a session he just said he expects will be sexual. Oh, a fee? No. It's really about an energetic exchange. Okay.

So when you bless us financially, you bless the whole temple. I'm looking forward to seeing you at 10 o'clock for the 90 minutes. And you bless me and I will bless you. As soon as the idea of a fee comes up, Tracy shoots it down. Because to her, it's not a fee. It's a donation to the temple. Just like putting money on the collection plate that gets passed around at church. Though, they did post suggested donations on their website. $2.04 for an hour, $3.03 for 90

minutes, and more for certain sessions. A goddess we spoke with said most seekers did leave a donation. But there were also a few who didn't. We request these offerings. We don't always get these offerings. Some people leave nothing. Some people leave less. Some people leave more. There was no guarantee that we would ever receive these financial offerings.

This might sound like semantics, but the way you interpret this is everything. It means you either see a temple or a brothel, a goddess or a sex worker. 33% of seeker donations went to the temple to cover operational expenses. But then goddesses got to keep the rest. And depending on how many sessions a goddess did in a week, the money could be pretty substantial. We can't confirm this, but one goddess told us

she made six figures in a year working full-time. Rebecca Carrara, who we heard from last time, said she made good money too. Anywhere from $500 to up to $1,000 a day. That was nowhere near what she was making before. Probably most of the women were in financial trouble, and there was something missing in their life. Rebecca told us she didn't feel shame about her work at the temple, but that didn't mean she felt comfortable talking about it with her friends or family.

I didn't want a bunch of questions. I just didn't want to hear it. Because I knew that I was on the right path. When I did tell somebody, I said, I work at a temple and I do hypnotherapy and life coaching. I wouldn't say that I did sexual healing. They just wouldn't understand. She's not wrong. When I come to your place, I'm not going to just take my watch off. I'm going to take my pants off, too.

Not only were there people who didn't understand, there were people who didn't even try to understand. One of the things you have to know is I'm extremely protective over my district and over the constituents that I serve. And I mean extremely protective over them. This is Sal DeCiccio. He's a conservative city councilor in Phoenix, and he represents a largely affluent district. He's known for being outspoken and unapologetic. I was told that this goddess temple was going to be a home and a house of prostitution. So I do what I normally do,

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Mitsubishi Motors. DeCiccio held this meeting at Camelback Bible Church. He says he chose this location because it was central and could fit a lot of people. And it had nothing to do with the fact that it was a Bible church. And I said, look, this is going to be a very short meeting. I put up a picture of my district. I used my finger and I walked around the lines of my district. I said, if you come in this district, I will have the police department on you. I will have the city attorney on you.

I will have neighborhood services on you. I said, you're not welcome here. She called me a very paternalistic individual. I said, you can call me anything you want. But what I'm telling you is that I'm in charge of my area and you need to find another location because this entire city

is going to come down on you. You also mentioned you're a big supporter of freedom of religion. This is our producer, Sarah. Were you at all concerned that maybe having this meeting and telling them that they weren't welcome, that people might see you as being repressive of someone's religious beliefs?

Let me think real hard on that. No, I didn't think that at all. So absolutely not. It was a home of prostitution in a neighborhood that just isn't going to happen. DeCiccio's strategy kind of worked, and Tracy didn't end up putting the temple in his district. There was no immediate fallout from this, no legal action or police investigation. But DeCiccio did make really clear and really public that he believed this was a house, or in his words, a home of prostitution. So we just want to pause for a minute and acknowledge that we've been using the word prostitution because it has a specific legal definition and a criminal penalty associated with it. Prostitution is essentially the exchange of sex for money or goods. In Arizona, the law says prostitution means engaging in

or agreeing or offering to engage in sexual conduct under a fee arrangement with any person for money or any other valuable consideration. And it's criminalized in the U.S. It's only legal in certain counties in Nevada where it's licensed and regulated. But it's a really loaded word. It implies criminality, and it has a lot of stigma associated with it.

For many in the industry, the preferred term is sex work, because it acknowledges that this is a legitimate form of labor. Sex work is an umbrella term that can include both criminalized and legal sexual labor. So it can include things like erotic dancing or camming or working in porn, as long as it involves consenting adults. But Tracy never wanted to be under that umbrella. We had been told on a number of occasions that maybe we should just turn our transformation chambers into little porn studios because if we filmed it and our seekers and

initiates became the lead actor in a porn movie and our priestesses and healers became the lead actress in a porn movie that we might be legal and I've always said no I think that this is a very intimate and private exchange and I don't think that filming it creates a sacred context. Tracy knows the law, and she always maintains that what she does is not sex work, for a few reasons. One, there's no guarantee that anything sexual will happen between a seeker and a goddess. Two, there's no official fee arrangement. Any money given is purely a voluntary donation. And three, it's her religion.

Tracy believes she had protection under the First Amendment because it guarantees religious freedom. And the Phoenix Goddess Temple was her house of worship. At the Camelback Bible Church meeting, Phoenix City Councilwoman Maria Bayer said, the city is carefully reviewing neighborhood concerns and hoping to balance those with a pretty delicate First Amendment issue, according to the Arizona Republic. Tracy said later that this had a, quote, bearing on her mindset.

If she was breaking the law and in such a public way, why hadn't she been arrested? Here she is on the local TV show again. Are you afraid you're going to get busted? No. And you're going to get arrested? No. Why?

Because I think that even though there's confusion about what we're up to, I think that the need in society is much greater than the fear around that we might be doing something. You know, we're a church. We're not breaking any laws, and we are a church. And listen, that's not for me to judge, because somebody is going to always question you. But the one thing I don't question, you're a very good guest, and you're very convincing.

So I'd like to think you really believe what you have said. What I do is not easy, and I do it for the mother. Tracy repeats some version of this over and over. She said, we're a church, and I believe that Tracy 100% believed everything that she said to the women. This is Tara. She was a goddess at the temple for a few years.

And somebody asked her, is there a 501c? Tara means a 501c3, which is a tax-exempt status with the IRS. So asking this question, do you have a 501c3? It's kind of like asking, are you legit? Tracy's response was never super clear. But she did say that the temple is a non-profit. I want to say that we're non-profit and every penny is accounted for. We had immaculate, immaculate non-profit accounting. Immaculate.

And this was reassuring to goddesses like Rebecca. I remember one time she showed me, like we were going through paperwork, and she's showing me a 501c3, and she showed it to me. It was all filled out and everything, and I just assumed that it was right, that it was true. This was a church, and they were allowed to have donations. So when I saw that paper, I just thought, God, you know, it's just one person that found a loophole somehow or another,

and this is all legal. Next time on Witnessed, Mystic Mother. I don't remember exactly how she told all of us that a New Times reporter was coming to the temple. Tension started to build around the temple quite a lot. That experience was bullshit. And I said, if you're ever on your way to work and you see Maricopa County Sheriff's office vans in that parking lot, just keep driving. He said, you need to get out of that temple right now. Take everybody with you that you can.

I didn't know how bad it was going to be, but I should have known. To be continued... so you can step in the booth and kind of be anything. Well, for us, and I'm going to guess for some of you, that thing is... Anime! Hi, I'm Nick Friedman. I'm Lee Alec Murray. And I'm Leah President. And welcome to Crunchyroll Presents The Anime Effect. It's a weekly news show.

I literally, when I saw it, when I found out about this, I literally had, like, a a nervous breakdown in a good way. With the best celebrity guests. I've never pirated anything, but I'll steal it if I have to. That was how I felt when I started to get really hooked on Black Butler. Oh, it's coming back. It's coming back. So join us every Friday, wherever you get your podcasts and watch full video episodes on Crunchyroll or on the Crunchyroll YouTube channel. It's hosted and created by me, Katie Hennick. And me, Leah Hennick.

This series was reported by Sarah Ventry and written by Sarah Ventry and Emily Martinez. Additional reporting by Katie and Leah Hennick. Sarah Ventry is our managing producer. Our story editor and executive producer is Emily Martinez. Additional editing by Mike Meyer. Produced by Katie and Leah Hennick. Associate producer, Sidney Fleischman. Additional production assistance

from Mo Laborde and Ron Warner. A huge thank you to Rebecca Ross, our legal researcher. Our theme song was composed by Betsy Gans and Chris Norby and performed by Betsy Gans, Chris Norby, and John Rauhaus. It was recorded and mixed by Michael Krasner

and mastered by Chris Norby. The series was sound designed and mixed by Claire Mullen. Our recording engineers are Mike DeLay and Gavin Rain at Real Voice LA. Special thanks to Campside's studio manager and mix engineer, Ewan Lai-Tramuen, and Campside producer, Johnny Kaufman. Our fact-checkers are Sarah Sneath and Callie Hitchcock.

Additional research from Alex Yablon. Thanks to Debra Dawn, Hugh Urban, Susan Stieritz, Rianne Eisler, Sfrana Borkataki-Varma, Phoenix Kalita, Natalia Winkleman, and Miriam Wasser. And thanks to Tracy Elise, who gave Campside permission to use videos she created. The Pat McMahon Show is a production of KAZT-TV. And a special thanks to our operations team. Doug Slaywin, Aaliyah Papes, and Allison Haney. Campside Media's executive producers are Josh Dean, Vanessa Gregoriotis, Adam Hoff, and Matt Scher. If you enjoyed Mystic Mother, please rate and review the show wherever you get your podcasts.