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- Intuitive advisor Mia Banducci holds workshops around sex and rage to help women unleash their truest selves.
- Banducci incorporates meditation, breathwork, self-pleasure and spiritual counseling into her “sex magik rituals” to help participants understand their desires.
Eleven of us — all women dressed in lingerie, silk robes and other sheer or flowy clothing — are dancing, freeform, in a circle. Spacy electronic music fills the room, which looks something like a spa tent: Faded woven carpets blanket the floor, billowy white curtains drape from the ceiling and flickering lanterns cast abstract shadows on the walls, one of which is awash in glowing aqua light.
Nearly everyone’s eyes are closed as we dance individually — but together too? — partaking in slow, sensual movement, a tangle of curves and limbs. We swirl our arms above our heads, run our hands through our hair, swivel our hips and swing our butts.
“Connect with your body, your wild, true self,” says our host, Mia Banducci, who’s wearing nothing but a silky red bra and underpants, a strappy garter belt and a sheer scarlet negligee.
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We’re here on this Saturday afternoon — in a Beverly Hills office suite turned events space — for a sex ritual, led by Banducci, an intuitive advisor who goes by Mia Magik. The point of the $99, three-hour-long event is to draw on our “divine feminine energy” — the pinnacle of which is an orgasm. The exercise is supposed to help us embrace our body’s capacity for pleasure, shed sexual shame and detonate inhibitions. With those things, the logic goes, comes a “reclaiming” of our power and a manifestation of our deepest desires.
Who’s to say if a $99 orgasm can deliver all that. But, hey — there’s organic coconut oil on hand, which is a nice touch.
Participants loosen up during the “intuitive dance” at the start of the workshop. (Elizabeth Weinberg / For The Times)
Banducci is a modern-day witch working toward “bringing ancient wisdom into the modern world in a really accessible way.” She’s also an L.A.-based entrepreneur and self-empowerment influencer with more than 300,000 followers between Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, where she sells workshops and retreats and promotes her new book, “IntuWitchin.” Several of her videos have been viewed millions of times.
Suffice to say, she’s not your grandmother’s witch. With her cascading brown hair, come-hither expression and upbeat demeanor, she seems more like a cross between a Victoria’s Secret model and Tony Robbins. She wears a pointy hat in free YouTube tutorials and leads women into the Topanga forest for “rage rituals,” during which they scream and thrash sticks around as she guides them in unleashing pent-up anger.
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To be clear, Banducci doesn’t identify as Wiccan or Pagan. She considers herself “an earth-based spiritual practitioner” and trauma-informed healer. (“The word witch comes from the Old English word ‘wicce,’ which means wise,” she says.) Her witchy aesthetic appears to function more as a way to stand out and keep things lighthearted while helping women connect with one another and address their frustrations with modern society. She typically holds her rituals — sex, rage and otherwise — outdoors, in a forest or by the sea. For sex magik, she weaves in meditation, breathwork, guided imagery, self-pleasure, spiritual counseling and other techniques to help participants get crystal clear on their desires. Clarity, then, may lead to their getting that job or house or relationship. Though Banducci would say that they used sex magik to manifest it.
“Orgasmic pleasure is the most powerful energy on earth,” she says. “And when you are experiencing the highest pleasure to draw in what you want, you’re magnetic. It’s about becoming literally attractive to goodness.”
Modern witchcraft is a spiritual practice that takes myriad forms. It typically involves rituals around transformation tied to the Earth’s seasons or the moon’s cycles, and may incorporate ancient esoteric tools such as numerology, astrology, tarot cards and energy work, often for self-empowerment or healing purposes. It has found audiences both online and in person, especially in Los Angeles, where witches with hefty social media followings often lead in-person events. They include Amanda Yates Garcia (a.k.a. the Oracle of Los Angeles), Gabriela Herstik and AJA Daashuur (a.k.a. the Spirit Guide Coach).
Sex magik (often spelled with a “k” to differentiate from a “magic” based on illusions and trickery) dates back to the 3rd millennium BCE in ancient Sumeria, now southern Iraq and Syria, and has been around for centuries in the Western world. But it’s growing in popularity as another therapeutic form of self-love, says University at Buffalo professor Marla Segol, author of 2021’s “Kabbalah and Sex Magic.”
“It’s part of a larger self-acceptance movement that also includes intimacy workshops, body-acceptance workshops, even yoga,” she says. “Yoga, for many people, is about being present in the body, honoring that presence. Sex magik takes on the removal of shame and the sanctification of the body.”
It’s natural that the practice would flourish online, Segol adds. “Social media has become our public square and, in some ways, replaces institutions like churches in how it brings people together, especially to perform rituals.”
I’ve always been comfortable with my body and I consider myself “sex-positive,” as they say. But I was trepidatious driving to the sex ritual. We’d been told to wear comfortable, loose clothing allowing easy access to our bodies. Was my slouchy, off-the-shoulder sweater too revealing? Or not sexy enough? What would we be doing, exactly, for three hours? Who were these women?
It turns out the environment Banducci fostered was surprisingly comfortable — clean and intimate and safe. (The event was meant to be held in a Topanga home but was relocated due to the wildfires.) After the “intuitive dance,” Banducci led us in a guided meditation, during which we used our five senses to envision our desires.
Then we laid down on cushions positioned in a circle and got comfortable beneath soft, fluffy blankets. Banducci encouraged us to caress our bodies, perhaps our neck or hip, shedding as much clothing as we were comfortable with. It got very quiet. The music was sensual and meditative. Over the next 45 minutes, Banducci — who was also reclined and engaging in self-pleasure — guided the group in “orgasmic breathwork” while encouraging vocalization.
“All sounds are welcome,” she said. “Any time you give yourself permission, you’re giving others permission.”
Then it was not so quiet.
Afterward, everyone sat up, hair mussed and faces flushed. It was time for a classic circle share.
One woman, Alyssa Herrmann, 37, revealed that her throat felt blocked during masturbation, preventing her from orgasming.
“It felt like a pile-up. Stack, stack, stack. All clogged, here,” Herrmann said, gently touching her throat.
“A pile-up of what, specifically?” Banducci asked.
“Of not saying anything?”
“Yeah. That would be my invitation to you — even just for this week — ‘I say what I mean, and I mean what I say,’” Banducci coached. “That goes for your husband, for your work, for your friends.”
UCLA Emeritus Professor Dr. Gail E. Wyatt, a licensed clinical psychologist and board-certified sex therapist, says she wouldn’t recommend women explore their sexuality in a group setting.
“If a woman wants to get in touch with their body and get out of their comfort zone, they should go to a licensed therapist who has experience in sex therapy, where what she says will be understood and protected,” Wyatt says. “This [event], it’s a chance people took. And if it turns out to be positive for them, that’s great — but there’s no guarantee.”
Several participants, however, said they found the event empowering. The women in attendance ranged in age from early 20s to mid-40s and all but one were here for the first time. Most had heard about the event through a friend or on social media. There was an artist, a scientist, a life coach, a fitness franchise owner. They’d come to address hesitations around sex or to reclaim their voice, clarify intentions or conjure a sense of power and agency.
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Emaan Singh, a 28-year-old social worker from Orange County, grew up between Chandigarh in northern India and Southern California. She said afterward that she found Banducci’s workshop liberating.
“I grew up in a patriarchal environment in India. Like [it] is here too,” she said. “When women express their sexuality — this is all over the world — it can come with criticism or pressure from society. This was a way for me to express my sexuality in a way that wasn’t controlled by anyone else, without caring about the opinions and judgments of the people around me, and in a way that’s not attached to another person.”
Alayna Bellquist, a 42-year-old marine biologist from San Diego, said the experience was transformative in helping her reframe how she views her body.
“As a biologist, I see nature and wild spaces and every organism as perfect. But I didn’t extend that viewpoint and privilege to my own body,” she said. “The work I’ve done with Mia is helping me see that my body is nature too. And I should provide it the same grace and understanding.”
Sex magik, Banducci says, is particularly timely right now.
“The ultimate mother is Mother Nature,” Banducci says. “And we are desecrating our planet, using and abusing her — and she’s done. Women are saying, ‘Enough. We are done being raped and pillaged and plundered. It’s time to stand up.’ Sex magik is a reclamation of your power; it’s using your pleasure as a power and a resource.”
Banducci has led this particular sex magik ritual “hundreds of times” over the last decade, she says, at one-off workshops as well as retreats around California and in Europe. Her next one in L.A. is March 1.
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It’s her favorite ritual of them all, partly “because of the surprise of it.”
“We’ve been taught that the most natural thing in our lives — literally, how we all got here, sex — is something to hide and be ashamed of and not talk about. But when you let it be safe and free in a space together, it just ends up creating so much aliveness,” she said after the event.
“My mission is permission. Giving people the freedom to be their full selves.”
And with that, having “sent our orders up to the cosmic waitress,” as Banducci likes to say, participants wait to see what the magik brings. At the very least, a good night’s sleep.
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