I first heard about "sacred whores" when a friend invited me to an underground theater event featuring performances by "cutting edge sexual healers."

"Come again?"

"Y'know, sacred sex workers."

I looked at her blankly.

"Prostitutes. Jeez, you don't get out much, do you?"

The performance took place at one of those typically San Franciscan warehouse spaces where good-hearted, well-pierced radicals live together under the banner of collective anarchy. A woman, wearing a headdress that resembled a cubist vagina, took our money and silently led us into a crowded, torch-lit hall. Already seated were some 80 people -- their eyes shining with the naughty, self-consciousness at having arrived at a place worthy of their parents' worst nightmares.

The Master of Ceremonies, a silver-bearded man in a nun's habit, introduced himself as Mother Superior and told us we would soon be honored by the "new saints of unbridled sexuality." From his grandiose commentary, I gathered that we had stumbled upon a New Age subculture within the sex industry wherein prostitutes identified their work as spiritual. After two hours of twisted nipple rings, sacred blow job dances, erotic massage demonstrations for men dying of AIDS, and paeans to the Goddess's clitoris, I stepped out of the steaming performance feeling strangely unraveled. Who were these people? I considered myself liberated but prostitute as modern saint? My mind couldn't quite wrap itself around the idea so I decided to do a little research.

Next page: From quick cash to enlightenment.