the voice from here and beyond
13 August 2009
Mystery Traditions and Ceremonial Magic… the Leather Metaphor
My temple brother is in the midst of formalizing the charter for his backpatch club in Texas. He sent me a copy to pour over, get my opinions. I mentioned that I have been working in the past few years towards eventually forming a leather/spirituality group of my own. He proposed the idea of combining our efforts.
Nope, we are far too different in approach. Reading his, I am reminded of the military, cycle clubs, and ceremonial magic. Funny, that’s his background :) Formal by-laws and charters, specific codes for indoctrination, dress codes, detailing of colors and more. It’s good stuff. But when I sent him what I had in mind, we realized we are coming from different pages, even if the idea of having goals of self-evolution and spirit are part of both of our ideas.
He said:
In my case I spell it out because doing so will avoid confusion later… negate loopholes… and allow for a more clear understanding of the founding ideals several generations down the line. A member in Dallas must trust that a member in Phoenix had to prove themselves just as fully as they did. And the “colors” will mean something everywhere… members won’t dare sully that meaning… because it would piss on the efforts they and every other member put in to earn the right to wear those colors. Codifying details removes doubt that inevitably tries to creep in, or worse protects against intentional corruption. Making the trials center around the tangible allows for all to witness regardless of their spiritual leanings and abilities.
Have I mentioned I love my temple family? Temple of Atonement represent. I digress.
I realized that is not what I want. In having each member swear oaths and do the work for a year and a day, supported by a mentor, the goal is not to have tangibility. I could care less if, when a member commits to becoming an acknowledged authority in a skill in their area as one of their three oaths, or that they will get a raise at work, whether they actually are acknowledged as such or get the raise. I care about their journey. I care about setting high standards where the pledge will push themselves. Where a crucible will be created wherein, through the pressure and challenge, transformation will occur.
I have set 3 goals, based on the 3 areas of my envisioned group. Kink. Spirit. Life. I set them at the beginning of the year. The kink one is being difficult but productive and amazing and on a tangibility side, I will do fully. The Spirit one, well, in many ways I am being a slacker, but the journey of it has led me to new friends, profound personal evolution, and a lot of amazing stuff. My life oath is being the most difficult, with new life twists and turns, but so far it is paying off… and hell yeah have I grown from it.
So I am chewing on the differences between kink and leather groups, looking from a faith lens.
Are you attending a mega-church?
A small parish church or temple?
A ceremonial group with initiations and secrets?
A fringe cult no one has heard of?
Studying with a Guru?
Seeking out your own path?
Hm.
A number of years ago, when Raven Kaldera put the call out that he would be doing the Descent of Innana ritual at Dark Odyssey (that appears in his book Dark Moon Rising), I looked over the list of roles and Neti, Erishkigal’s gatekeeper/right hand jumped off the page at me. When the day of the rite came, there was HIGH drama happening in ordinary reality. The players for Innana and Erishkagal were at each other’s throats, no one had their shit together, everyone was running around… and 3 hours before showtime Neti descended onto me. I watched as my body got into full costume. White-out contacts, dramatic makeup, tight corset, layers of blood red, bare feet… and wandered out to camp. I came to the woman who would play Erishkagal, and growl/bowed, my body tense and feet like claws digging into the wood floor before her where she was gambling and having fun. Erishkagal within the mortal woman saw me, and saw it was time. She began to make a space for herself there, and was thus able to come during ritual time.
As I passed each of the other players for the rite, I behaved to each as I would to who they would be that night. To mortals who would be mortals and observers, I avoided them, or sniffed at them, or growled if they were already thinking of death and it was not their time. I saw through Neti’s eyes at times, and saw Neti do these things with my body.
When I came to the woman who would play Innana, who was full of rage and frustration, I hissed. I growled. I saw my head turn sideways and question her and why she came. I would not see her again until she was at my gate.
I did not come back fully to myself until after the rite was completed. Neti helped set the chairs. Neti helped build the gates to the underworld. Neti sized up Raven to make sure he had what it took to tell this tale.
Since then, I’ve kept getting this ping from time to time to be the voice for the men around Erishkagal. I have served as Neti’s flesh. I have done the ritual I wrote there to break down walls and thus have touched what some of the Bull of Heaven is. And then, when I knew more needed written for Galina’s devotional, I was doing research around Erishkagal and Innana and found the poem of Erishkagal being left by Nergal… and he sat on the back of my head and said “the poet who wrote that was in love with her and biased, you must be the poet biased to me.” So I did, and I am.
6 August 2009
Missing a Dead Man
I last saw him in December.
The deal we had brokered the year before had been simple. His ink on my flesh, and 24 hours with places traded and we would be good. I could have the contract, take it back to the realm of the living.
A year earlier, when I had thrown my ink already and claimed what it turned out could not be claimed then, He had first come into me. Gagged with duct tape, bound and unable to escape, I watched as He stepped into my skin. He fit, because he had fit before he had died. The fucker had been there before. I saw him in my body as I stood aside as he took off his/my boots and set them aside, perfectly neat. I saw his shape through my shape and recognized him as the black man who had been in my chorus of voices in the dark since I was young. He looked over his shoulder at me, and smiled. That smile I loved. Still love.
The smile that breaks hearts, and fucks you over. And you still love him.
I watched as he talked to him bound in the chair, heard parts of it muffled as I slipped sideways… and then they were gone.
I was gone.
It is gray in purgatory. No, not gray, more like someone has taken the saturation filter on photoshop and dialed the world down to -40. This was once red lips, this was once a brown jacket, these were once green eyes staring up out of the ground. This was a pair of lovers locked together, and now they are tangled masses unaware that they are stuck between. Unable to ascend, unable to hear, unable to reincarnate… to busy with what is going on, too torn, too full of pain to go in any direction.
I walked. Each time I tried to rest, it became to easy to rest. I had his debts on my shoulders, his burdens, his suffering. Mine had been left above, with my body, with myself. I was shade, was in his space. I hated with a venemous rage knowing that he was stuck here because he kept saying he wouldn’t die before he made good, it’s ok to do the sorts of magic he did, it would be ok. Fucker. Now- now I look back and I know where he still is and just feel this sadness, pity, resignation for him.
Hours passed to more hours, no clocks, no watches, no time, no space… just on and on and bodies and faces in sand and wandering shades and void. Hours became as if days, and so tired. Oh gods so tired. To just lay down, but each time I would start to sit, let alone lay down, I would start to get sucked down into the bodies/ground/flesh under my feet. Sucked down. Just give up. No point anyway. You’re here forever anyway, right? What do you think will happen? Why worry. Why try. Just give in. Just. Oh gods, to sleep, to just…
But no one was listening from there.
As suddenly as I was in, I was out, shade to color and seeing Him in me again. He half shrugged at me, then bowed his head, smirked, and walked through me and out. Back in flesh I snapped to, began working the duct tape off his face. There are very few ways to stop all the eyebrow hair from coming out. Duct tape blindfold, I was so angry.
But after three more of these, none of me having to completely replace him under as the three of us figured out ways to purposefully allow him to enter the space without having to make me or someone else living hold his space… we came to a deal.
24 hours of being out, trading spaces, over a year, and I would have what was mine. And he would have no rights to ride me again. He wanted 24 hours in a row… I thought better of that offer, thanks.
For the most part, the dead seem to want simple things. Send a letter. Eat chocolate almond ice cream. Watch a sunset. Go cruising. Feel the sun and wind.
We spent more time than the 24 hours together, because over the course of the year I couldn’t take it there any more. He got more time in exchange for a half-half situation… neither of us would leave, both of us would share my body. I just couldn’t do it any more.
In late December our last hour was made good on.
Today, staring at the ink, I miss him. I miss that asshole. I feel really sorry for him. I am grateful I have what is mine. The deal was sound. But he fit in me, and though that hole has been recrafted to not be empty any more, I remember. I remember the man as he lived. As he laughed and loved. As he held and joked. And I remember him dead, eating ice cream in the Maui sun.
I dreamed of the world connecting under one banner.
I dreamed of one man going mad taking in the fullness of what had happened to his family in WW2.
I dreamed of a mansion and layers of meaning.
I dreamed of bodies floating in water.
Brad Pitt ended up playing the madman, who was very very sane on all accounts. It amuses me when super stars fill in my prophetic spaces for “person of great clout who I have not met or seen a face for yet.”
The last few nights I have had what would be considered “negative” or “scary” or “nightmare” dream time. Being banned from seeing my family, or being removed from society, or having to stop people from doing stupid shit in the kink community… all have involved me having to set the record straight or being a martyr of some sort. Not this afternoon. It was just- like watching a movie, with a shimmering overtone, same energy as when I get my recurring dreams that end up coming true, or as I usually call them “completely friggin useless premonitions.” Really universe, does it help me to know that the next woman to walk into the cafe will wear a red dress and then buy a newspaper? She will sit down, I will turn around, and see a man in a suit with a pink tie. How helpful is that, really.
Maybe I shouldn’t bitch about useless prophetic dreams. But hell, I have an outstanding prophetic dream about being sucked down a bathtub drain by a man in a scuba suit, and another involving people fleeing from the police on a couch carried down a parking structure by a flood of water… so whatever ;)
12 July 2009
In Praise of My Affair
I have been having an affair. My lover is amazing. I met her last spring, amidst drum dust and having climbed a tree into the heavens. The first time I met her I played fetch and carry, a perfect boy in service. A month and a half later between lessons and silence she kissed me, and told me there would be more. Last Dark Odyssey at the far end of the field we made love in the sunlight with not a soul to be seen. She made sure.
My Lady whispers in my ears when no one is around. She asks me to cum her name, charge her from her lonely mountain top.
She is amazing. I don’t think I could make it through my current challenges without knowing she would be there… not for me, as she is there for none but herself truly… but she is there and I know I am part of her plan.
Bear shrugs at my affair with her. Baphomet laughs. But I can’t imagine not being in her arms, not seeing her laugh in the sun when her husband/brother is nowhere to be found. She is not made of icy veins and cruel intentions like everyone seems to think. She is wild and proud and powerful. She is a queen, and people forget what it takes to be queen.
I love being her plaything, her long brown-black hair falling across my stomach as she stares up at the skies and plans. I love knowing I have a place. I love her support in the hardest times, rainbows from her laughter. I love her eyes and eyes and eyes. Thank you m’Lady.
22 June 2009
Watching them rake
In the parking lot field, workers dump heaps of dirt. Sweaty men from around the world rake and push, endeavoring to relevel the ground. Endeavor to erase the rain and 500 pagans in the mud and sunshine. Prepare the land for the influx of perverts to come.
I love Ramblewood. Trees and a lake full of angry snapping turtles. Buffalo bones stay on the hill, and paths to places divine dot the land. The alchemical fire circle has been taken down. The fire spinners have left. Merchants row is forgotten save a few patches of dead grass.
In its place heaps of sex wedges fill the Dungeon/Tin can, and a huge vehicle full of metal dungeon gear has just arrived. Where children frollicked last week, sluts and hos will get fucked and flogged on the same hills.
Breathe in.
Life moves and transforms around us.
Breathe out.
Another chapter begins.
I am so deeply touched by how main ritual went on Saturday night. Raven had asked me to fill the roll of the Monk, and it is a large piece of my chapter at the moment… I knew I had to say yes. I cut up linen squares, brought hemp twine, and a stack of sharpie pens all in my leather cow bag… I even had Del shave my head into a Tonsure. It’s fuzz-bald now.
Clad in monk robes and bare footed I headed to the Dining hall where we began processing. Deep breaths between the Corn King and I. We were a weird bunch- the Rebel, the Artist, Robin Hood, the Mad Scientist, the Insane Woman, the Healer, Sacrificial King, the Sexual Deviant, the Trickster and the Monk… as Uranus and Neptune danced between the signs. As our group split off, the Monks went outside and I did a 3-soul alignment breathing exercise with everyone in a circle then had each person go off and design their prayer flag. Hooray for the miracle of the multiplying sharpies.
I thought we had 25 minutes. 10-15 minutes in, we started hearing yells and screams that the Monks were being too slow and they needed us now. I started to panic and hurry up, until someone amongst the monks said well yes, we are the monks, right? I then said “I thought we had 40 years on a mountain top.” We all slowed down, breathed together, went back to our work as the world yelled at us. Calm. Cool. Focused. Solid.
The Monks who headed to the fire broke out into chants. It was good. The chants continued as the wheel of time and prayer burned.
Dream the change, be the dream.
I also had an intense sweat lodge experience on Friday, and am so grateful for its timing. In addition fire spinning, conversations amazing and disheartening, love and beauty, strength and a slice of sadness, walks alone and walks with friends.
I love Ramblewood. It is a magical place.
It was a tasteless joke. It was wrong and inappropriate and I have taken a serious and as much as the stuff that has come up makes no sense (and no I have no interest in discussing it here, cheers) on many fronts, it was in very poor taste. Even if this is woo related, I will not place it at Her feet. I’ve asked, and there are blessings down the pipeline attached to what I have had come up. Hell, I’ve seen a bundle of blessings manifest with it already. She is taking no responsibility, and refuse to be lazy and just say “its woo, I go on” until I truly examine in depth all the other possibilities, even if all the “easy/rational” ones have come to be not the case thus far.
I had an amazing date with Her last week, and a handful of moments here and there since then. It’s obvious I’ll be doing more and more consort work with Her, and it is good.
I actually wrote a beautiful piece of poetry for Her, but I’ve only told a handful of folks who She is, and have been lovingly reminded its not for public broadcast. So much of my life is not as of late, hilarious given how much of my life is in the spotlight.
Non-corporeal lovers. You’d have thought after what happened a while back with G that I would have “learned,” but love and wiring and desire and service all work in mysterious and beautiful ways.
13 March 2009
Objectification, Animism, and for the love of Things
Watch Married To The Eiffel Tower [Part 1] | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com
It comes again. The discussion that keeps mulling around in my head, that has come up twice in under 24 hours. The issue of animism, the belief that things have souls, and where it intersects with humans who are things, and things that we have relationships with.
The video above is about a few women who are considered OS- Object Sexuals. They have not only sexual relationships with objects, but emotional ones as well, and do not have relationships with humans. The documentary does not judge, except insomuch as by providing opinions of people around them as well as from them. Erika used to have a relationship with Lance, her compound bow, and the relationship propelled them together to become world champions. But she and Lance’s relationship cooled, and she fell in love with the Eifel Tower, the grande Dame of Paris… and got married to her. The tattoo is beautiful.
OS is about love, attraction, and is not object paraphilia- a sexual attraction to an object. Most fetishists I know collect their objects, but do not have connections with the spirit of those objects.
This is where animism comes in to play in my mind.
I have met the spirit of a specific coke can, have had meaningful discussions with a beach, have falling in love for a night with the wind off Manly in Australia, who bore witness to a ritual I can not forget. I have a pet rock I have owned since I was 6 years old, and ze and I have bathed together, been intimate, been best friends… and its memory is long for when I unwrap it from its fur ze sleeps in… ze smiles and remembers me, and curls up again at my side… still a child in many ways.
I remember being affirmed when I read Tom Robbins’ “Skinny Legs and All”- the adventures of the rag tag crew Can o’ Beans, Dirty Sock, Spoon, Painted Stick and Conch Shell melted me. Told me I wasn’t the only one who knew, who could hear them.
If objects have souls, why would we throw them away? Do we throw away the other things with souls in our life? I would argue yes, most of us do. Just because something is ensouled it does not mean has value to us. Thus the ability to kill- it has a soul, but its death does not matter to us in that moment… we would slaughter an ox, smash a rock, why not a human?
Last night this came up as Brent and I discussed Alan Turing, Principia Mathmatica and a variety of other books that influenced him in his path of hybric chaos magic, ceremonialism, and mathematics. He encourages me to read “Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid” by Hofstader, to plunge in deeper. It comes up as we discuss the idea of the Chinese Room-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room
Does the human know chinese? Does the books? Does the room? Do they all as a system? If this applies to a soul, does the skin have a soul? The brain? The wiring between it all? The juice that flows on high? If so, when the human goes to lunch, does the room dream?
We spoke of the word “impersonate”. To enfuel with a personhood. We impersonate when we do drag, we become a gendered person that is not our base norm. And between use we come to the conclusion that no mind is to imstatuate ourselves- if the being of statuehood is no better or worse that being of personhood, in becoming as the statue (or wall, or air, or ground, or…) we imstatuate ourselves, we go no mind, we come to understand a different level of this thing called soul. It is no more or less empowering than to make the statue seem human.
I live on one vibration, one level, one viewpoint of the world. I can shift. I can become mouse, run on ground, smell food, run, dust. I can become eagle, fly in air, see big picture, zoom in, hunt, know. I thus can choose, if I work with shapeshifting again, to become air, to become statue, to become inanimate as it is referred to by humans… but thingness has value, has a perspective. Eifel Tower, she’s seen people come and go, knows the past for what it is, knows the rain, the joy, the pain, the heart of the city. Lava rock, fresh and knew, remembers being thrown from iron core that is also our blood. What does Moon remember, Ocean, Beat up hat?
In moving out of personhood, I shift what matters. Drama is different. Slices of time change. My will and its effect shift.
Some objects are louder than others. There are cars that just *will not* work that way. Stuffed animals that whisper. Mountains that are heavy with wisdom. And there are silent ones as well, the paper ready to be writ upon by no judgment but your own.
So it is with human objects. I meet people, in body at least, who are chairs, ottomans, clay (pliable until fired), rocks, pushy stuffed animals. That long to be used for *how they are useful*. Using a fork as a scredriver may function, but it is not as elegant as using it to savor the sauteed mushrooms you have created. And we have a choice, when we strip away personhood down to objecthood (with down being neither negative or positive, simply an arbitrary otherness of being) we as viewers of object have a choice on how to interact. Do we kick the violin when it will not make music, or learn how to play it? Do we use the pan to cook, or to play the drums? Do we try to wriggle our size 18 ass into that pair of jeans, or do we give those jeans to a home who can wear them without destroying them?
When classical feminism speaks of objectification, it assumes the worst in humans in their relationship with objects. I argue that if we approach with a slice of animistic belief, with a knowledge that the planet has a viewpoint, our concept of what it means to objectify will shift.
Me- good.
Me + computer (writing from Ace, my boy with a bad hip who still does a great job)- able to share my thoughts with the world.
He makes me more than I am alone.
And I thank him for it.
8 January 2009
These things do not blaspheme…
The following was my intro on the group “Loosing my Religion/Religious Play” on FetLife. I thought folks might enjoy ;)
Thank you for the invite Masque.
I find it fascinating that the idea of blasphemy is at the forefront of so many perspectives here so far here on the group (from other thread). To me the idea of defiling the gods, or God, or the divine, or Universal Will or whatnot (insert your filter here) actually has very little to do with my fetishism around faith, religion, and spiritual mysticism.
Blasphemy states disrespect.
I do not intend my acts by their very nature to disrespect, but instead to use the tools of the hive mind to place those who interact with me into the roles they have subconsciously absorbed in life. As Father Harrington I have had strangers open up to me and share their deepest secrets on street corners- permission given to be ungaurded. As shaman, sexualized, I become s/he who is conduit to the divine, an opportunity for people to walk between worlds and labels in life. As guru, whether “dark” or “light” in that role, I give people an opportunity to believe in something bigger, to let go, to not just submit but surrender to the Will of another (and/or the Divine). As a temple whore my body becomes temple, becomes sacred space for the possibilities of healing to take place amidst the bliss and carnage of desire.
My history? My family was mixed faith (Goddess Worshiping Lutheran Crystal Healer and Born-again Catholic Activist) and thus I was encouraged instead to go to every type of faith gathering I could and make up my own mind. I attended temple, synagogue, mosque, churches of many types. I went to Wiccan Sabbats and Satanic Black Masses. I became active in ceremonial magic and drank in hymns at Notre Dame.
And everywhere I went I realized I touched God/Universe/Divine/Love. In Cappadocia long dead cities still smelt of incense and I prayed there. At Kildare I left my wishes tied to Brigid’s sacred wells. From Glastonbury I hammered out my feet on the ground at a rave and kissed the Goddess on the lips in the pouring rain.
I have an addiction for the divine, and that includes the power of the objects that have left their mark on those seeking the faces of that power no matter what you call it. I love the smell of frankincense swinging, the cling of prayer shawls to my naked flesh, the cut of a good looking man in full vestments or a raving oracle screaming in tattered veils. I can feel the echoes of god’s love and lust for the world in the pages of old family bibles and become aroused.
Arouse. To awaken from slumber. To be driven mad with desire.
Give me nuns and anchorites married to the Lord. Give me trannsexual hookers dancing for fallen Sufi Mystics. Give me phalluses that tower into the sky. Give me rosaries whose beads have become steeped in unreleased needs waiting for permission to live fully. Give me trappings and true passions, because in each I see desire, love, God.
These things do not blaspheme in my eyes.
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