Goddess Violet strikes a dominatrix pose in the “fire room” – one of many thematic rooms in the temple.

In a 1944 Supreme Court case that turned, in part, on whether the defendant’s claims as a faith healer were true, Justice William O. Douglas wrote: “The miracles of the New Testament, the Divinity of Christ, life after death, the power of prayer are deep in the religious convictions of many. If one could be sent to jail because a jury in a hostile environment found those teachings to be false, little indeed would be left of religious freedom.”

Bray, who’s spent the last nine years working vice, paints a decidedly grim, scared-straight picture of prostitution – one that’s full of coercion, violence, substance abuse and desperation.

“I have yet to meet one of these women who woke up one morning and said, ‘This is what I want to do,’” he says.

“Tell him to come to the temple. He’ll meet about 20 of them,” says Goddess Grace, who, like most of the six goddesses interviewed for this story, adamantly defends her “self-sovereign” choice to be at the temple but does not want her real name used. A former therapist with an MBA and an advanced degree in human sexuality, Grace says she eventually became convinced through her counseling experience that it wasn’t enough simply to tell men how to have better, more spiritually fulfilling sex – they had to be shown. “You can’t learn to golf by reading a book about it,” she says.

“Of all the careers I’ve had, I do this because it gives me the greatest sense of personal satisfaction,” she says. “I’ve been stopped on the street and told, ‘Thank you so much. You saved my marriage.’”

It’s a common refrain among other goddesses as well. Most claim they always felt a calling to this kind of work, but before the temple, they didn’t know how to answer it.

Goddess Serena says that, at 15, she remembers telling a friend, “‘I know I don’t want to be a prostitute,’ because I had all these ideas in my head about the kind of life they lived, and I didn’t want to be forced to do things I didn’t want to do, but I can remember saying, ‘but something like that.’ I knew that’s what I wanted to do.”

Now 21, Serena is one of the youngest goddesses at the temple, where the average age is around 45 (but often advertised as younger), and she’s one of the few with prior experience in the sex industry – in her case, a three-month stint at a strip club. (“There was no spiritual energy there,” she says with a laugh.) The rest come from diverse backgrounds: There’s a former accountant, paralegal, nurse, even a bank CFO, along with what Elise describes as at least three “runaway housewives.”

Goddess Isis, a former accountant, is one of the temple’s most popular practitioners. “Every time somebody walks into my chamber, I make a connection with them, spiritually, emotionally, physically,” she says.

Most of the goddesses say that, at the core, what distinguishes their “practice” from common sex work is the matter of their intention. Despite the triple-digit size of the suggested donation, it’s not about making money, they contend, but about “healing.”

They use this word almost without exception, whether it’s about dealing with one man’s erectile dysfunction or, as one goddess puts it, “healing the rift between men and women so we can heal the world.”

Yet a few, like Serena, acknowledge that the seekers themselves aren’t always with the program. “I might ask a guy if he’s interested in, say, restorative energy, and he’ll say, ‘Sure, yeah.’ So then I’ll explain, ‘When you feel yourself getting ready to orgasm, just don’t; try to redirect that energy inward,’ and at that point, he’s like, ‘Um, no, that’s OK.’”

Except for the wine at the end of the table, the celebration of the autumnal equinox at the temple – “a high holy day,” according to Elise – starts off looking like any other church potluck. There’s a plastic tray of crudités, some lukewarm casseroles, and at the dessert end, a hodgepodge of the elaborately homemade (strawberry shortcake) and the extemporaneous (a plate of Hostess donettes). Although some of the women appear dressed to raise eyebrows (four-inch Lucite heels, backless blouses), most in the group of 40 or so – both goddesses and congregants alike – wouldn’t elicit a second glance at the local mall.

The ceremony itself, however, feels almost like a parody. We gather into a circle, Goddess Brigid holds a dagger aloft and invokes the four elements, and then we pass crystals around while an older bleach-blonde woman delivers a rambling monologue about science, spirit, the universe and beautiful people.

But if the writings of religious scholars boil down to anything, it is that if one person’s unsalted cracker can be another’s blessed sacrament, then what looks to one person like a bunch of people passing around rocks can be, for another, the gateway to transcendence.

A few weeks later, a seeker who had attended the ceremony talked about what brought him to the temple.

A former PAC-10 football player now in his mid-fifties, he owns what he would only describe as a multimillion-dollar investment strategy and consulting business, a claim that seemed to be confirmed, at least, by an incessantly ringing BlackBerry. After his seven-year relationship ended in 2008 and was followed by the death of his father, Gary (not his real name) says he became a wreck, smoking two packs of cigarettes a day and taking massive amounts of prescription medication for pain resulting from old football injuries and a serious accident in his twenties.

“I didn’t have any passion; I didn’t want to work,” he says. “And I had all these people relying on me.”

Although Tracy says she wants to expand awareness of her temple, some of the women involved are still reluctant to speak publicly or reveal their identities.

A psychologist friend told him he needed to learn to love himself and referred him to the temple’s Website (phoenixgoddesstemple.org). There, Gary discovered Goddess Isis – tattooed, olive-skinned, with haunting green eyes. In the five weeks since he started seeing her, he says he’s stopped smoking, lost 20 pounds and no longer needs his meds.

He says that before their first session, Isis was leading him to the chamber when she turned to him. “She asked me if she could give me a hug,” he says. His voice breaks. There are tears in his eyes. “And it was something I really needed.”

This isn’t rare, says Janet, a former restaurant manager and daycare operator who does not practice as a goddess but works full-time as the temple’s administrative assistant.

“I cry a lot when I hear the women’s stories,” she says. “Every one of these women has had the experience of a man breaking down and the two of them just spending the whole hour holding each other.”

For her own part, Elise is spending more time outside the temple’s chambers, trying to spread her message of spiritual and sexual awakening.

Anyone who thought she was trying to hide by moving into a nondescript office building would think again to see her toting around a marked copy of Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Church, a veritable how-to manual for evangelists.

Last fall, the temple received a blanket invitation to attend Maricopa Medical Center’s first-annual Spiritual Diversity Fair, organized by the hospital’s chaplains to acquaint health care providers with various faiths in the community.

Elise is clearly excited, and nervous, the morning of the fair.

She sends a group of goddesses ahead to set up the temple’s booth while she changes outfits twice and explains through an open door her two-pronged strategy: to introduce the temple not only to the hospital staff but to the other churches attending as well, to see if they might find ways to “work together.”

In the car on the way to the hospital, Goddess Deva – a former escort with long, multicolored cornrow braids – is in the back seat fielding a call from a seeker responding to an ad she had posted that morning headlined “TRIPLE unshaven Goddess FANTASY” – “all late 30s, all hot MILFs, all for $450 TODAY.”

“I’m not selling sex, and I’m not selling my body,” says Goddess Freya, who has been practicing at the temple for about six months. “I’m helping people transform themselves in a Tantric way.”

“And have you seen a provider before?” she asks the caller, her voice low and confidential.

When she hangs up, Elise turns in her seat. “Look, for the next two hours I don’t want you taking calls from seekers. You need to let it go to voicemail,” she says. “I can’t have you talking about ‘providers’ and ‘MILFs’ with all these churches around.”

Deva protests: “But I’m in the car.”

“I know, and normally I wouldn’t care,” Elise says. “But today is very important to me; it’s about how do we integrate ourselves with these people, these churches. Remember, we don’t have ‘clients,’ we have ‘seekers’; we’re ‘practitioners,’ not ‘providers.’”

But the fair is a bust. Only three other faith-based groups show up – the Gideons, a homeless-outreach ministry, and a pair of sisters hawking gospel CDs – while a scheduling oversight has put the event in direct competition with the hospital’s lunchtime Halloween costume contest.

Elise is disappointed; she ran off 250 fliers that morning, touting next month’s offerings of temple seminars, including “Releasing the Ambrosia Orgasm” for women and “Masturbation into Mastery: Overcoming Porn Addiction” for men.

She contents herself with an apple, one of several dozen the goddesses brought to give away, and says with the optimism of a true believer, “It’s like planting a seed. We’ve planted a seed here today, and big things grow from seeds.”