featuring a Lilith-inspired self portrait by the talented model/artist/writer Katelan Foisy
2009—the year of completion—has come and gone. Heading into a new decade, a heightened sense of transformation seems to accompany the general sense of new beginnings. In nearly all aspects of my life, I feel myself standing at the beginning of a path: intrigued, excited, somewhat intimidated. But it’s a good place to be.
Looking through my Google Reader at all the blogs I follow, the digital aspect of life does not seem immune from a sense of change. Everyone seems to be axing a blog, renaming it, moving it, changing focus. For many reasons, this site languished a bit in the fall: I began a new mundane job, I had major spiritual event after event, and I held myself to publishing only essay-length entries here.
Unable to change the first two obstacles, I’ve decided to change the third. In the coming year, I won’t wait until I’ve composed a long meditation on a subject. Look for shorter entries, perhaps in a series on a single topic.
First, in honor of the New Year, here’s a tradition I started a few years ago: a three rune pull as a forecast for the year to come. It gives a hint as to the general flavor of the year, the shape of things to come.
Today, I pulled Wunjo, Perthro, and Fehu.
As I grow in my relationship with the runes, I feel as if I’m unwrapping layers upon layers of meaning. I won’t go into every meaning I considered here (which would still only scratch the surface), but here are some overall impressions of what’s to come:
- Self-awareness, self-valuation, and self-management
- The pleasures and challenges of divine union, partnerships, and networking
- Exploration, divination, and mastering skills
Since I’ve read tarot for 14 years, I also drew a Card of the Year: Two of Wands. This feels right to me. I’m beginning a lot of new creative projects, but I’m still at the early stages and am not quite sure how they’ll materialize. Time will tell.
What does your divination say about 2010?
I promise a real update soon! In the meantime, take a look…
NOTE: Deadline has been extended to December 18. Some people are still getting things to me, and I won’t be able to look at the materials until then anyway.
This project aims to honor Lilith by recognizing Her many facets and faces, both historically and in modern practice. She is the untamed feminine, the wise counselor, the grieving mother, the shifting hermaphrodite, the first woman, and the sacred dominatrix. Perhaps because of Her complexity, it seems that She is making her presence known to more and more unsuspecting folk in recent years.
The first chapter of the book will attempt to collect and organize references to Lilith in various cultural lore and practice (Mesopotamia, Sumeria, Judaism, Kabbalah, folk tradition, and modern Western occultism).The majority of the book, however, will consist of devotional material and reflections from those who have experienced Her.
I am currently accepting rituals, poems, essays, songs, and other original material for this volume. The book already has a publisher (Knickerbocker Circus Press) and should be available in the early part of 2010. Please email questions and submissions to anyakless@gmail.com
The first installment in this series examined the reasoning behind being broken, what exactly being broken might mean, and some of the spiritual goals one might expect. In this installment, I will move from the theoretical to the practical. I’ll start with a bit on how I came to ordeal work then move on to what I think are some helpful guidelines I try to follow myself when someone needs to be broken.
NOTE: I want to stress that not all ordeal work involves breaking AND that not all breaking takes place within an ordeal. However, the two seem to overlap on a regular basis in a Venn diagram kind of way. Please do not misconstrue my intent here. I don’t believe in absolutes that involve words like ALWAYS, NEVER, and ONLY. I find the gods are not nearly as interested in putting things in neat boxes as we humans are.
I. Becoming an Agent
To begin, I’m going to call upon a crappy, pop culture reference. Bear with me.
In the movie xXx (2002), master thespian Vin Diesel plays Xander Cage, an extreme sports athlete who is content to simply enjoy the adrenaline rush and personal gain of his various stunts. Because of his unique skill set, however, Xander is soon snatched up by the government to be trained as an undercover agent. He’s given only a crash course in special ops before being thrown into serious situations where his life and the lives of others are on the line. One might ask, “How could the government have so much faith in this maverick asshole?” First, they’re desperately short on agents. Second, this guy’s actually been doing the work for years – he’s just always seen it as play.
This is roughly how I see my entrance into ordeal work. It’s not something I sought out or even wanted. In fact, I was pretty sure my spiritual path would focus on divination and meditation.
Wrong.
I was snatched up by Them because I already had the disposition and the training – and They’re desperately short on agents.
Being told by multiple diviners (and the gods Themselves) that I was not only on the ordeal path but would be doing ordeal work for others caused me to re-evaluate my involvement in BDSM. Despite my own mistakes and the imperfections of my human partners, I already knew BDSM to be more than just getting your rocks off. As a submissive, I had used it to open parts of myself to love, to grieving, to owning what it is I really desired. When my first great mentor slowly died from cancer, it was my Dom who gave me the space to release that pain and loss. I had locked my emotions so tightly that no one else could have pried me open and let that out. As I stripped down layers of myself, I paradoxically came to understand myself as a multifaceted, complex human rather than the masks I wore for the world.
When I later began training as a Domme, I helped others explore their own dark places. It took months for my longtime submissive partner, a successful businessman, to trust me enough to share what he really needed from me. He had been badly bullied as a teenager and needed to face those ingrained feelings of humiliation. He needed to confront what had happened to him and not only survive it but have someone see him in that position…and love him regardless. BDSM, because of the nature of the encounter, relies on a firm foundation of trust and exposes where that trust is lacking. One of my friends had fantasies of being tied up, but was scared that once she was, her partner would just walk out the door. She couldn’t trust that a person would want to stay with her, given a chance to leave.
Even though I did not view this as spiritual work at the time, regardless of the role I played, I became familiar with the therapeutic nature of kink (this does not necessarily mean that it should take the place of professional therapy. It is not, however, mutually exclusive from it. There is a growing list of Kink Aware Professionals, including a variety of mental health practitioners). I knew not only how to wield a toy but also how to craft a scene. I learned the intimate ways of negotiating a body as well as the emotional, mental, and psychological terrain of the recipient. Moreover, I knew what it felt like to be that recipient: where I fought, where I found insight, where I flew. I just wasn’t doing it for the gods. Yet.
Looking back, I understand (as many of us do) that those earlier experiences were training for the work to come. I also understand the huge difference between work and play, but I am proud of where I learned many of my skills.
II. When You Can’t Get There Alone
Now that we’re done with the All About Me, you might wonder why breaking sometimes requires another person to be involved at all. If the gods want me broken, surely They can just do it Themselves? This is a valid question.
In my view, the ordeal worker can fill at least four different roles in a scene. This is by no means an exhaustive list, nor are these things exclusive of each other:
1. An extra pair of hands. This is the simplest – you simply can’t do to yourself what the gods require because of human mechanics.
2. A technician. The worker has a certain skill that you don’t, similar to a tattoo artist. Would it be amazingly personal if you did your own tattoo? Sure. Would it come out better if someone who had been trained in this art did it for you? You know it. Does that make the end product less meaningful? Hardly. Even tattoo artists go to other artists for work, just like I go to other ordeal workers.
3. A shaman/priest. The worker has a spiritual skill, can consecrate the work, or use their own relationship to certain deities to assist in the work.
4. A power cord. The worker helps to channel certain energies into the scene, whether it’s the energy of a certain deity, elemental energy, or healing energy.
The purpose of the ritual can vary: it could be cathartic, an offering, a rite of initiation, or a moment of intimacy between you and your gods (in the last case, it doesn’t matter if anyone else happens to be present. Trust me). During the breaking, the ordeal worker is no curing you, fixing you, or doing anything for you: they are opening you up and pulling things to the surface. You must tackle those things yourself.
For more on types of ordeals and where to start if you think you need one, see Kaldera’s Dark Moon Rising, Ellwood and Lupa’s Kink Magic, and my own page “So You Want an Ordeal,” tabbed on the right column of this website.
III. Cruelty and Abuse
In a recent conversation with a Norse practitioner, she admitted her difficulty with ordeal work. “It looks too much like cruelty,” she told me. I can understand this reaction, and the word “breaking” in particular can sound like abuse. It was interesting for me to consider this objection, especially since being wired for BDSM as long as I can remember had given me a much different perspective. However, I think there are a few different misconceptions at play here.
The first point to be raised is that breaking someone can look like cruelty because it may use the same props or tools. The best explanation I have found on this is, again, from Kink Magic:
“Any tool can be used for constructive or destructive purposes. Humans have long misused pain and punishment to further their own bad conditioning by turning them on other humans for purposes of destruction. Rather than being used to rehabilitate people and teach them the effects of their destructive actions, punishment and pain have been used in the abuse of power with rehabilitation as an excuse. Our purpose here is to explore the constructive rather than destructive uses.” (116)
An individual tool cannot be called cruel or abusive – the intent of the person wielding it can be. Ellwood and Lupa also raise another point in this paragraph, something very difficult for modern people to grasp: pain itself is neutral. It has no inherent negative or positive charge. Yes, it hurts, but it is also a tool to be used. For the authors of Kink Magic, they differentiate between the two types of pain by the words hurting vs. harming (107). While a process of breaking someone may be hurting them, it is not doing harm to them. To the contrary – it is helping them accomplish something. Some might see this as semantics, but it recognizes the constructive value of a painful experience, physical or emotional.
Finally, there is the issue of consent. All parties give their consent to ritual to be performed, and nothing proceeds without the sanction of the gods. Furthermore, I’ve found that, rather than pain or power hungry fiends, all the ordeal workers I know need to be actively persuaded to take up a job. We invest a lot in each working to make it as effective as possible. No one takes the responsibility of “breaking” someone lightly, which brings me to the health and safety aspects of this essay.
IV. Educate Yourself
If you’ve read my site already, you’ll know that in addition to years of training in the BDSM community, I am also Red Cross certified in Emergency First Aid and CPR/AED use. I believe educating yourself is one of the best ways to be more useful to the gods. By getting as good as I can at my job, I honor my deities and make my work more effective. This means seeking out teachers, having experiences, and practicing.
Seeking out:
Let’s face it – unless you’re in a mainstream religious community, there aren’t a lot of other people like you around. If you’re lucky enough to know some who have the skill you want, they are probably beyond busy just carrying their own caseload. This is another point where the BDSM community comes in handy. Most major cities have a BDSM group, and most of those groups teach classes. Take advantage of them. If you can, go to play spaces. If someone is using a skill you’d like to learn, wait until they’re free and respectfully engage them in conversation about it. They might just offer to teach you, or know someone who will. Just because you’re not learning it in a spiritual context doesn’t mean you can’t use it that way. We need to be just as opportunistic as our gods. Even if you’re good at being self-taught, there is no replacement for a human teacher, especially for the more dangerous tools like single tails, needles, or fire play. For everyone’s sake – seek out a master. Your gods would have wanted it that way (and did it themselves).
Having experiences:
In my personal opinion, I think you should never do to someone else what you haven’t had done to yourself. If you’ve never been caned, you have no idea what that feels like. Ditto for having anything penetrate your ass. Most skills take finesse, and you’ll have a lot more appreciation for that if you’ve been there. If you don’t have a skilled human partner or friend, many in the BDSM community are willing to do scenes on an NSA basis (no strings attached).
Practicing:
A skilled shaman once told me that one could not be considered needle proficient until doing over 100 needles. I didn’t consider myself a strap-on master until I’d used one regularly for at least six months (luckily I had a very willing, submissive guinea pig). You cannot pick up a toy, read something online, and expect to use it well. Practice glove safety on yourself. Practice on willing kinksters: the fact that they might be getting off on it does not “dirty” the fact that you’re using it for spiritual training – they should be getting something out of this too, right? I don’t think a lack of opportunity is any excuse. Maybe it’s just my friend set, but I’ve had more offers for guinea pigs than I’ve been able to take advance of! Likewise, if we’re friendly and you need to practice something, let me know. I’ll have to run it past the Old Man, but it’s worth asking.
V: Gathering Info
I’ll admit – I’m anal retentive. I like things organized, I like going into situations with my eyes open. The gods like to throw curveballs – we’ve all been there. There always seems to be some little (or big) surprise before a ritual happens. This is inevitable; however, there are some things you can do to minimize these moments. One of them is gathering as much relevant information as possible on the person to be broken.
Before I did my first ordeal, I put together a 14-page questionnaire called the Kink Ordeal Checklist. It is separated into the following sections, and all questions have the caveat of “as much as you’re comfortable sharing”:
• Basic Info (preferred name and pronoun, height, weight)
• Medical Conditions and History (current ailments, medications, allergies, phobias, and past injuries)
• Partner Status (does your partner know about this? can they provide your aftercare?)
• Spiritual Status (who’s human are you? what limits have they given you?)
• Kink / Sexual Status (can you orgasm? have you ever had a traumatic sexual experience?)
• Physical Mobility Checklist (which of these positions can you handle, and for how long?)
• Kink Checklist (which of these acts can you handle, where, and how do you feel about them?)
For some, this might seem like overkill. You might think that if there’s anything you need to know, the person will tell you. You might also think that if something comes up, the presence of the gods will protect you both.
In my opinion, both of these are false assumptions.
People forget to mention things, even major things like the fact that they have a heart condition (I’ve seen it happen). Sometimes they don’t think it’s relevant, other times they are too focused on aspects of the ritual to think clearly. They might not know what you’ll be doing or all the tools you’ll be using. If you are the one facilitating the ordeal, particularly one in which some kind of breaking is happening, it is your job to procure this information. To fail to do so is negligent and dangerous. If you show up to a ritual and realize the person you’re meant to penetrate in some way has a chemical intolerance to all commercial lube, you’re the one who’s fucked. If the gods can’t get what they want because you didn’t do your homework, that’s on your head. Being prepared means more than just showing up with the right tools.
I will admit that at times I cut and paste from the questionnaire, rather than distributing the whole thing. The document is adjustable depending on the act and how much information you already know about the person. If you do this sort of work and would like to take a look at my KOC (hehe), let me know and I’d be happy to send you a PDF (and take suggestions on improvements).
Now a short break from one type of submission to the other!
I have decided to compile a devotional for Lilith, a goddess who has done incredible things for me and has always stood by as a wise teacher. Please feel free to pass this prompt along.
This project aims to honor Lilith by recognizing Her many facets and faces, both historically and in modern practice. She is the untamed feminine, the wise counselor, the grieving mother, the shifting hermaphrodite, the first woman, and the sacred dominatrix. Perhaps because of Her complexity, it seems that She is making her presence known to more and more unsuspecting folk in recent years.
The first chapter of the book will attempt to collect and organize references to Lilith in various cultural lore and practice (Mesopotamia, Sumeria, Judaism, Kabbalah, folk tradition, and modern Western occultism).The majority of the book, however, will consist of devotional material and reflections from those who have experienced Her.
I am currently accepting rituals, poems, essays, songs, and other original material for this volume. The book already has a publisher and should be available in the early part of 2010. Please email questions and submissions to anyakless@gmail.com
Submission Deadline: December 1st
Thank you!
-Anya
First, my apologies for another delay. Traveling recently took over my life yet again, and while I’m grateful for the opportunity, it’s nice to be home again. I promise to be better in the future, and I thank those of you who good-naturedly nagged me to post.
Second, a request. If you choose to cut and paste from the following essay (or any of my essays), I would ask a simple courtesy. Please provide a link so that your readers may read the piece in its entirety, as it was intended. After all, taking someone’s words out of context is irresponsible and just plain lazy.
Third, feel free to comment on this blog, even if you disagree with me. While comments are filtered for spam, I will never neglect to post a comment just because I don’t like what the author says. Where are we as a community without open dialogue?
So, without further ado, I bring you….Breaking: Part I.
————————————
This essay will have two installments. The first will be largely theoretical, explaining what exactly I mean by breaking and what I believe is being broken. My definitions stem both from personal experience (spiritual and non-spiritual) and research in philosophy, psychoanalysis, and kinky spirituality. The second half of this essay, which will follow shortly, will speak more concretely on my experiences breaking and being broken, as well as considerations of ethics and safety.
So, without further preamble, I want to begin with a definition of “breaking” found in Kink Magic (2007) by Taylor Ellwood and Lupa. Although this book pulls from the authors’ combination of BDSM and magical practices over a number of years, it tends to rely on the structure and language of a traditional BDSM scene: a working between two human partners in which a top does something to a bottom. Nonetheless, I believe the definition they give can be adapted more widely to speak to the relationship between some humans and their Gods. (Note: Ellwood and Lupa use “hir” as a nongendered pronoun):
Breaking is a form of psychological edgeplay (a.k.a. “mindfuck”) in which the bottom is swiftly and violently reduced to a point of extreme vulnerability. Breaking may involve physical bondage and discipline, mental triggers, and even energy work to shatter the bottom’s shields and completely bend hir will to the top. Obviously, this is not a practice to be taken lightly, but it can be a highly effective way of reprogramming unwanted, deeply-ingrained behavior patterns and conditioning. (81-2)
From this definition, I can pull several key aspects that apply to the “god bothered,” kinky or not. First, the human is brought in line with the will of the God. As our relationship with Them develops, we desire to do what They will. When that process is not moving quickly enough, a ritual can sometimes yank us into line (or even tell us more clearly what They want in the first place). As I will explore below, however, this hardly means that we are reduced to mindless robots. Second, breaking tends to be psychological in nature, even for those on the ordeal path. From personal experience, I can say that when something painful or scary is happening to you, it isn’t the pain or the fear that breaks you—it’s your own emotions and dark places brought to the surface. This brings me to the third point of this passage: being broken allows us to shed or purge negative behaviors or patterns that have infiltrated our lives. This can include everything from excess pride to worrying about what others think to feelings of worthlessness. Anything that controls us or cripples us must be exposed and released. There is a strong element of catharsis, a letting go that allows us to emerge from our breaking process a stronger, better person. Nothing can rule us—not pride, not fear, not addiction—but our Gods.
But what about all that stuff in the passage about bondage, triggers, and energy work? These are tools, like pain, like humiliation, like tests of endurance. They are not goals. When I underwent my corset piercing ordeal, it wasn’t the needles that were important: it was that they opened me up emotionally, allowing me to feel how much I needed and loved my God. Through that ritual I overcame a large obstacle I’d always had in my life: never quite feeling sure that I loved someone. The way my heart throbbed for Him that day made it pretty undeniable. Why these tools and not others? In a recent conversation with another Northern Tradition practitioner who did not practice ordeal work, I tried to explain it in this way: Each of us has a lock that must be opened in order to serve the Gods. Ordeal happens to be the key that fits my lock. I do not claim that it opens all locks or that it is a superior key. However, I cannot control the shape of my lock. Nor will I be made to feel dirty or ashamed of it. To feel such a thing would be an insult to my divine locksmith.
* * * * *
In my experience, there seem to be two main metaphors for breaking. Like all language, these metaphors are approximations, a grasping after indescribable experience with imperfect language. I don’t think these are necessarily exclusive, but they can help us conceptualize the work that breaking does. In each scenario, what exactly is being broken is somewhat different.
- Training
In this scenario, breaking really means “breaking in”, or domesticating. Over centuries, a range of methods have been used by our ancestors to train animals and make them compatible with human beings. Obviously, there are humane and not so humane ways of breaking— the ethics of which I will explore in my next post. When our Gods are the breakers in, They will tailor our experience to Their knowledge of our psychology and the work we’re being trained to do. Some may find themselves broken in through grueling service to others, intense visions, or ecstatic dance. For others, it may be isolation, losing a job, losing family, or losing health. For those who find themselves on the ordeal path, it may also include needles, rope, or tests of endurance. They will use whatever gets us there, docile and wide open to them. However, as anyone who has effectively trained an animal can tell you, breaking it in does not involve breaking its spirit. Quite to the contrary, a good trainer will allow the animal to maintain its personality and shape it into the best it can be. The Gods are not interested in empty, mindless shells of human form.
- City walls
Just as the training metaphor preserves the spirit, so does the image of the city wall. In this scenario, it is our boundaries and blocks They dismantle, crash through, or wear down over time. For my piercing ordeal, the needles physically and energetically penetrated the boundaries I had cultivated around myself, keeping others out. For my relationship with Odin to grow, these walls were a hindrance to Him. I simply could not love and serve my God at arms length.
Why do we have these walls in the first place? For most of us, it’s our last line of self defense. If we’ve been abused in the past, those walls may be covered in brambles, thick vines, and big signs that scream “STAY OUT!” It may be difficult for us to trust anyone, human or divine, with the scarred or hurting self hidden behind our tough veneer. If the walls were to disappear, we’d face the possibility of being hurt again, being rejected, or being ultimately disappointing and not worth the effort.
As a wise woman once told me, a necessary part of love is trust. We cannot love the Gods without placing ourselves in Their hands. Just as in human relationships, the price of intimacy is vulnerability. This does not mean, however, that the self is annihilated. Instead, it’s dug out of the muck of our emotional garbage, carefully polished, and made to shine. On a utilitarian level, this makes us more useful spirit workers, more effective partners and tools of the divine. While I’m wary of those who solely use spirituality as a form of self-help, I do see strong possibilities for self-betterment and healing in building a relationship with the Gods. Ironically, one of the most difficult things myself and others have been asked to is, “Take care of yourself. Stop self-destructing behaviors. Nurture your mind and your body.” It is fascinating to me that, above all else, this is the demand that we tend to fight. I have seen people walk away from their path rather than care for themselves.
* * * * *
While certainly not the ONLY paths to this end (I cannot stress this enough), the breaking accomplished in ordeal rituals can create a space to accomplish the work needed in either of these models: breaking us in or tearing down walls. In Kink Magic, Ellwood and Lupa discuss the profound healing and self-knowledge found in these encounters:
One of the beauties of kink magic is that it can open you up to parts of yourself you never even knew were there, and give you a context in which to explore them in a controlled environment. The things we push away hold pieces of ourselves that terrify us, but which control us in silent ways nonetheless. Embracing that which is Other can allow us to pull the veils from our fear, look it in the eye, and realized that we no longer need to give it power. And that is true liberation. (221)
Writing as a literary theorist, Marianne Noble compares this sense of psychological liberation to the Romantic idea of the Sublime. The sense of being acted on by the Other (in our case, our Gods) and being in communion with Them causes “the dismantling of the self, opening the self up to a euphoric though frightening experience of oneness with totality” (36). This sensation of oneness associated with divine encounters is certainly not new. In Civilization and its Discontents, even Freud (the ultimate secularist) ponders the roots and implications of an “oceanic feeling” felt by a friend during a religious experience. According to Freud, the feeling is what “he would like to call a sensation of ‘eternity’, a feeling as of something limitless, unbounded—as it were, ‘oceanic’” (11).
In my own academic studies, I’ve come to realize how many philosophers, psychoanalysts, and social theorists raise this concept of “oneness” as a foundation for any interpersonal relationship. The concept of intersubjectivity originates in the social theory of Jurgen Habermas, who explored “the intersubjectivity of mutual understanding” in contrast to the individualist theories of Hegel. While Hegel proposed that the self uses others only as a vehicle for his own self-definition, Habermas imagined a more inquisitive relationship between the self and his social domain (Benjamin 22). In the realm of spirituality, I think this inquisitiveness becomes conversation, the give and take between the human and the divine. For those working with the Norse gods, it is the embodiment of the Gebo rune: sacred exchange, a Self speaking with a Self.
In all cases, in order to form an intersubjective relationship, we must make the barriers around the Self permeable. Postcolonial critic Amit Rai has remarked that “some sort of dissolution of boundaries, a blurring of self and Other, is necessary in order not simply to achieve knowledge and understanding of another, but actually, somehow, to experience the Other” (20). To experience the Gods, we must open our own boundaries. In Bonds of Love, feminist psychoanalyst Jessica Benjamin notes that this blurring serves as the foundation for mature erotic unions. In these relationships, two selves undergo “the fundamental experience of attunement—that separate individuals can share the same feeling” (74). Even Freud must admit that this early experience lays the foundation for arguably the most important adult relationship: romantic love. “Against all the evidence of his senses,” Freud marvels, “a man who is in love declares that ‘I’ and ‘you’ are one, and is prepared to behave as if it were a fact” (12-3). While humorously characterized by Freud as “admittedly an unusual state,” love causes the boundaries of the ego to once again become permeable.
We have the Victorians to thank for our resistance to the idea of our personal boundaries becoming fluid. Their core values—which we largely inherited—included the primacy of individuality, rationality, and rigid social and personal boundaries. Allowing the Gods in, however, and our own boundaries to become permeable, does not spell our own self-dissolution. As Benjamin notes, sameness and difference must exist simultaneously in moments of mutual recognition between two selves. “Experiences of ‘being with’ are predicated on a continually evolving awareness of difference,” she writes, “on a sense of intimacy felt as occurring between ‘the two of us’” (47). Again, this is not a loss of identity; it is entering into an intimate conversation.
Stay tuned for Part 2….
Works Cited
Benjamin, Jessica. Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Problem of Domination. New York: Pantheon Books, 1988.
Ellwood, Taylor and Lupa. Kink Magic: Sex Magic Beyond Vanilla. Megalithica Books, 2007.
Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents. Trans. and ed. James Strachey. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1961.
Noble, Marianne. The Masochistic Pleasures of Sentimental Literature. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.
Rai, Amit. Rule of Sympathy: Sentiment, Race, and Power, 1750-1850. New York: Palgrave, 2002.
On Language: A Prologue
In the groundbreaking interview series The Power of Myth, Jungian therapist and writer Joseph Campbell was asked about the biggest mistake people make when they read the Bible. Campbell considered it for a less than a minute before smiling and replying, “They read it as prose rather than poetry.”
He explained that by reading the Bible as a collection of facts, individuals tend to miss the beauty of the language, as well as the metaphorical and allegorical depth of the stories and symbols contained within. By approaching language with a fundamentalist rather than a poetic mindset, we miss the layers of multiple meanings and connotation. For example, the great flood can be read as a lot of water that covered the earth and killed most of its inhabitants. Additionally, it is the beginning of a new covenant between Yahweh and humanity, an image of divine judgment, as well as the possibility that perhaps He had some false starts and was experimenting with this whole human thing. This is where the work of interpretation begins, and it is a necessary step in reading that many of us do unconsciously. Realizing that the work of interpretation has taken place however, is also to admit that reading—even works of nonfiction—is a subjective act.
You may ask what theories of reading have to do with the semantics of spiritual practice. First, I’ve found that many people carry around a fundamentalist approach to language as a whole. My uncle, a successful computer programmer, once asked me how it was possible to study literature. In his earnest way, he pressed, “I mean, you read the book and figure out what it’s about — and that’s it, right?” (This was before I even started my PhD, so I can only imagine what he thinks I’ve been doing the past eight years.) For many, texts—not to mention words—have a singular, simple meaning, and once you’ve decided on the “right” one, nothing remains to be done.
I’ve also found that words inevitably carry the burden of the discourses in which they’ve participated (by discourse I mean a set vocabulary associated with a certain profession or field of study). “Submission,” to use the keyword of this article, carries the burden of its use in BDSM. However, it also has figured prominently in theories of gender, evolution, psychology, and religious doctrine. Even within these individual (yet sometimes overlapping) fields of usage, a single, clear-cut definition can be debated at length. Read any number of discussion boards or books on BDSM and the word “submissive,” what it means to “submit,” and whether it is a question of nurture or nature is guaranteed to appear. The best members of a community can accomplish is to agree on a proximate cluster of ideas that create a rather broad category.
By this time it should be apparent that language is a messy, imperfect business. Heaped on top of the historical and discursive meanings of terms are the individual connotations we inevitably associate with them. A colleague and I experienced a clash of connotations just yesterday when the words “hierarchy” and “protocol” arose in conversation. Because of her military past and traditional spiritual training, she has very positive associations with these words and understands their utility. Conversely, I have profoundly negative associations, stemming from my liberal arts education (in which I became a “fuck the patriarchy” radical feminist) and my own spiritual history (egalitarian circles of independent women, learning experientially and intuitively). I have always eyed these terms with suspicion as masculinized tools of bureaucracy and oppression. She sees them as effective tools that get the job done. Despite approaching these concepts from opposite ends of the spectrum, however, we can find common ground and appreciate each other’s perspectives. Moreover, her training in rigid discipline and mine in subversive fluidity are also perfectly suited to our individual spiritual paths, even though we share many of the same gods.
There have been a lot of skirmishes around words and naming amongst those who work with the Norse gods. Of course, this is not a unique phenomenon even amongst spiritual communities. As someone raised Catholic while surrounded by Southern Baptists, I know this firsthand. I once had to defend myself against the charge that Catholics worshipped Mary more than Jesus, which became quite funny in retrospect when I became involved in actual goddess worship.
For me, these tensions testify to two things. First, it demonstrates our investment in language—our flawed, yet essential tool in attempting to grasp the divine. Second, it demonstrates the presence and clash of multiple meanings. As a writer, scholar, and reader of language, I do not see this multiplicity as a failure but the sign of an engaged community actively involved in the art of interpretation. The problem, however, occurs when judgments as to the “rightness” or superiority of certain terms have been made. In invalidating someone else’s vocabulary because it does not match our own, we lose sight of our commonality and inevitably descend into petty squabbles.
In writing this series of articles, one of my goals is to reflect on these questions: What is it that I mean when I say X? What might someone else mean when they say X? Is it possible that we mean two different things? Alternately, when I call myself X and they call themselves Y, are those two things really as different as they might seem? Considering that Odin Himself had over one hundred names and roles, is it really so surprising that He may have just as many names and roles for those that serve Him?
Keeping these in mind, I turn to a term I have struggled with for years, yet somehow always find strewn across my path…
On Submission
So what comes to mind when you think of submission? What images, feelings, related words? What does it mean to submit? To be submissive? To, as some say, give the gift of submission?
For some, submission is a dirty word – it certainly was for me for a long period of time. As a strong, independent woman immersed in the lessons of Second Wave feminism (aka the Women’s Movement, aka “fuck the patriarchy”), I associated submission with weakness, mindlessness, and resignation. Basically, submission equaled becoming a Stepford Wife. To submit to someone else meant giving your power away and seeing yourself as less than human. Submission meant surrender, failure, and losing.
When I became involved in the BDSM community, I found populations of both women and men who labeled themselves “submissives” or “subs” for short. (For the purposes of this article, I’m avoiding the sub vs. slave question, as well as spiritual uses of the word slave. Perhaps in a later article…) As I began speaking with them and reading their writing, I found intelligent, strong-willed people from all walks of life who used words like “liberating” and “healing” to describe their experiences. Of course, there was also the sexual appeal which many felt were innate in their being. To deny the desire to submit and the ecstasy it brought would be to deny a crucial part of themselves.
Since much has already been written on the psychology of dominance and submission, I will not detail my own lengthy process of exploring BDSM relationships. I fought, I was broken, I grew. Today I know that if I were to put myself in a box, it would be as a Switch, someone who plays with both the dominant and submissive sides of their nature. I learned that when entered into with mutual respect and trust, D/s relationships can be beautiful and fulfilling partnerships. Rather than pathological or perverted, these can be spaces of healing, self-exploration, and more open communication than what many ‘vanilla’ couples experience. Does this mean that D/s relationships are superior, or for everyone? Of course not. Neither is polyamory or homosexuality. But it does exist, and it is a valid form of love, one of many.
What I would like to take from the BDSM community in this discussion, however, is their understanding of healthy power exchange. They understand that the dominant and submissive partners in a relationship give up certain forms of power for others. Rather than one person being solely “in charge,” there is negotiation and a sense that each person is bringing a vital energy and ability to the dyad. In Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Problem of Domination, Jessica Benjamin notes that while Freudian ego psychology tends to view submission as a failure, many modern analysts have reframed submission as a desire for self-discovery in a space provided and kept safe by another. Thus, in Benjamin’s words, the submissive’s wish to be “reached, penetrated, found, released—a wish that can be expressed in the metaphor of violence as well as in metaphors of redemption—is the other side of the dominant’s wish to discover the other.” The sub’s wish to “experience his authentic, inner reality in the company of an other” parallels the Dom’s wish to “get outside the self into a shared reality.”[1]
That’s nice, you might be saying, but this isn’t BDSM. It’s spirituality, and I’ll thank you to keep your perverted ideas off my Gods. While some may sneer at the association of those two worlds, I have yet to find a spiritual person who sees their relationship with their god(s) as one of equal power. If you believe that you have the same amount of power as your god, I do not envy the day you’re disillusioned of that! In ways that vary in each relationship, we submit to Them in aspects ranging from where we live to our sexual partners. Does this mean that you have to imagine your god as a big, bad Daddy Dom in black leather chaps who gets off on your pain? Hell no. That is a stereotype, just like imagining all Norse practitioners as breastplate wearing, spear hurling opera singers in blond braids. It’s a shallow fantasy that denies any kind of complexity or value.
Necessarily, the relationship between human and divine involves power exchange—we have certain power in the relationship, They have other power. It is a relationship of mutual respect, conversation, give and take. In my experience, it is the essence of the Gebo rune.
For me, one of the most beautiful images of spiritual submission comes from the first text cited in this article: the Bible. When Mary is informed by the angel of the Lord that she will bear His son, she replies, “I am the handmaiden of the Lord. Let it be done unto me as He wills.” The first position a submissive learns in high protocol BDSM expresses the same sentiment. She sits on her knees, head straight, eyes lowered with respect. Her hands lie palms up on her thighs, showing acceptance and willingness. Her body says: I love and trust you; I know that I am valued and respected by you; let it be done unto me as you will. I sit in this position before Odin’s altar almost daily — praying, speaking, and listening.
I submit to Odin. I practice this submission actively, cultivating myself to more effectively learn from Him and serve in the ways He dictates to me. Yet I am not a passive, mindless drone. Like all good Masters, Odin only chooses strong women to serve Him, not doormats. It is my submission to Him that gives me my greatest strength, a paradox that I continue to contemplate.
In my next article, I will tackle a word related to both mutuality and submission: breaking.
[1] Jessica Benjamin, Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Problem of Domination (Pantheon Books: New York, 1988) 73.
I’m starting a new series of articles on this blog about the dirty words in my spiritual discourse. By “dirty” I mean those words that are bantered about, villainized, and generally misunderstood. As someone who has devoted her life to exploring and unpacking language, I’m fascinated by the electrical charge around these words. My personal experiences, spiritual and otherwise, also give me a unique perspective on the multiple meanings embedded within them.
First up? Submission.
Next? Breaking.
The first post should be up in the next few days.
Perhaps because I was born under a sign ruled by Mercury, I have always done things faster than most people. I walk faster, read faster, learn faster. In elementary school I used to race other students—who most likely could have cared less—to finish whatever workbook page or test we were doing. I didn’t matter if it was my best (my best was rarely required of me until grad school), as long as it was fast. I used to time myself to see how quickly I could do something—like drive home from my high school boyfriend’s house in 5 minutes to beat curfew, even though he lived 10 minutes away. I like the challenge. This might be another reason I resonate so well with city energy—we both like moving at the speed of light.
It’s not surprising, therefore, that I hate waiting. Moving quickly seems efficient to me, while moving slowly seems wasteful. As grueling as it was juggling two jobs, schooling, family, friends, and spiritual obligations, part of me relished the constant motion. Now that things have relaxed a little, I find myself having to learn the second lesson of the everyday: after finding the balance between human and divine worlds, I must find a balance between human and divine time.
This balance is not as straightforward as it might seem. In some moments, divine time seems to slow to a crawl. I wait to receive an answer to a prayer. I wait to be given information about my path, what I should be learning, and what They want from me. In other moments, it’s human time that creeps along. I wait for my skills to match Their requests of me. I wait for my body to be able to accommodate Their energies more effectively. I wait for my tattoo artist to return from vacation. I wait for other spirit workers to have a free moment in their own overbooked schedules so an ordeal or teaching session can happen.
Waiting is also tied to trust. Whenever I wait, it’s because something is out of my hands. There’s nothing I can do to make it go faster, or happen at all. I have to let go of control and trust that if it is meant to take place, it will. I have to believe that They are working behind the scenes, even if it’s hidden from my eyes.
After my regular Sunday dinner with my ancestors this week, I meditated with them on the act of waiting. I met the three women who normally speak with me near a bonfire and asked, What should we do while we wait? They replied, in their no nonsense way, that I needed to adjust my view of time. In their own lives, centuries ago, everything happened slowly: growing crops from seed, making a meal, traveling from one place to another. Much of their lives were spent engaged in tasks that took a long time and could yield uncertain results.
After a while, each woman gave me an object, holding a lesson about time.
The middle-aged woman, wise in the ways of crafts and the home, gave me a lump of bread dough. Starter dough holds the activating cultures, the keys to making certain homemade breads like sourdough and rye. For my ancestors, the act of making bread was a regular, cyclical occurrence, and the use of the same starter, sometimes sustained for years, would have linked this weekly, habitual action with longer stretches of time. It formed a bridge between the everyday and the timeless.
Literally, I should start making my own bread. As I engage in this practice, however, I should remain mindful of the way habitual actions create connections across time. Additionally, making bread is a time consuming process. While making bread—or any other food from scratch—is good, productive work, it is also a luxury to have that time. In rethinking waiting, I should understand the joy of investing care and attention into tasks that take time.
The youngest woman, wise in the ways of love and beauty, gave me a bouquet of blue, purple, and white flowers. While my back garden has been predominated by herbs and vegetables in the past, this year it is filled with flowers. One of my closest ancestors—my mother—was the culprit, arriving at my door with crates of flowers one day. She had already given me several packets of vegetable seeds, and as the flowers filled my small outdoor space, I realized there would be no room for veggies this year. Part of me looked at the flowers and saw them as wastes of space—unproductive, lazy plants who would not yield anything useful. In the last few days, however, I have started to reappraise their value. Because of all the rain we’ve had, they’ve continued to bloom and bring beauty. In a world that can be harsh and gray, beauty should never be taken for granted.
Another task to do while waiting, therefore, is to cultivate beauty. Literally, she would like me to take up needlepoint again, something my mother taught me as a girl. She showed me images of intricate floral designs and conveyed how pleased she would be if they covered my ancestor altar. From my limited experience, I know it to be demanding work, requiring precise attention to detail and patience. Yet it can also be deeply contemplative, giving your mind space to unravel intricate problems or reach moments of perfect calm and serenity. Cultivating beauty is devotional work, an act of making oneself into the flower. Even though she had not given me sunflowers, it reminded me of an old hymn I used to sing in church as a child:
Like a sunflower
That follows every movement of the sun
So I turn toward you
And follow you
My God
The oldest woman, wise in the ways of life’s mysteries, gave me a dark stone the size of a fist. It was heavier than I expected, and as she wrapped my fingers around it with her wrinkled hands, I knew it represented endurance. The ability to endure is the final lesson of waiting, the last thing we can do when nothing else is possible. As water flows over the stones in the river, they become smoother and more perfect. As time wears away at us, we endure and grow stronger.
Unlike the others, she spoke to me directly:
“We have endured unspeakable things. Our blood runs through your veins. In the hardest times, when you have nothing left, our strength is with you.”
She showed me a vision of myself in the future, whether literal or metaphorical was impossible to determine. I was naked, covered in dirt, blood, and tears. I was on my knees in mud, nearly broken. In that moment, I remembered her words. I raised my head, gritted my teeth, and began to rise defiantly.
Tears slid down my cheeks as she held the rock in my hands, entrusting it to me. I was overwhelmed by their generosity and felt that no test could ever defeat me. I left carrying their gifts in my hands, in my mind, and in my heart.
While this blog has been dormant for nearly a month, my life has overflowed with activity. I finally finished my doctorate degree, graduated, and completed my tenure at a job I thoroughly enjoyed. I traveled to a wedding in a far off land, helped plan another one, and celebrated my birthday with my family. These past few weeks I’ve been taking care of odds and ends at job #2 so I can go on hiatus for a while.
As per usual, things have also been rather unceasing on the spiritual front. I had the tattoo honoring my path and my patrons finished, and I could not be happier with the result. I am helping a friend overcome his fears of being a “freak” and love himself. I have seen a new side to Lilith as she helps another of my friends through a period of intense mourning and rebuilding. I encountered two other deities—Loki and Hela—in the guise of human flesh, one in conversation and the other while assisting at an ordeal. Both taught me profound lessons about service, humility, and the sacredness of the human body. Both have offered themselves as allies to my future work, which is appropriate since the body in all its forms and stages is something in which they have a vested interest.
Looking back at my schedule, I wonder how I managed to survive the past month. The weight of divine and mundane obligations often wore me to the point of exhaustion, yet I feel that I’ve emerged from a testing process. I walked with one foot squarely in each world and survived. In fact, it is the relationship between these two things—the spiritual and the everyday—that I’d like to use this entry to explore.
For many people, myself included, the everyday world can represent that which prevents the spiritual from taking place. If only we lived in a hut in the woods, we’d be independent of all the mundane things demanding our time. Nature is traditionally the way we see divinity on earth—in flowers, sunsets, trees, majestic landscapes. I can understand this, although it’s never quite been my angle. Perhaps its because I’ve lived in a major city for eight years, where becoming one with Nature usually requires a day trip or losing yourself deep within a park. At the same time, I am lucky enough to have a back garden nearly half the size of my apartment. Sure, I can hear the train rattle by as I throw down mulch and trim back my neighbor’s invading honeysuckle vine. Nonetheless I have my own little patch of Nature in the middle of a city.
Growing green things, however, are not the sum of the everyday. The everyday is the sea of faces on the train, each with its own story. It’s walking through a market bursting with pedestrians, or walking home while kids chase each other down the street.
The everyday is human. It has a vibrancy and a vitality that divinity, for all its overwhelming glory, cannot replicate. Nothing brings this throbbing life into the open like summer in the city, a place that tolerates diversity of race, class, and freakishness. A clear sign of warm weather here? All the tattoos come out, marking lost children, proud service, and obscure symbols whose meaning the casual eye can only guess. For some, city energy can be difficult to handle because of their wiring or a lack of exposure. It can overwhelm in its embrace—it is so much, all the time. For me, someone who never thought she’d live in a city, it roots me to life. I draw upon its energy like a fountain and give back in offerings and the way I treat its people.
This connection to everyday life—humanity—has been vital in times I’ve felt a strong deity presence around me. This feeling can become isolating, even when one has a supportive spiritual community. It’s easy to be nostalgic about a normalcy you never really had to begin with, and one you naively assume those around you on the train that day have.
There are moments, however, when the spiritual and the human work in harmony to accomplish a goal. I experienced this firsthand assisting in an ordeal for Hela this past month. I had been charged by Hela to attend to the physical needs of her beloved human, the young man undergoing the ordeal. I took this charge seriously yet joyfully, buying local, organic food, making meals from scratch, preparing altars, providing a warm bed and a warm shower, giving aftercare. I now know why this role is referred to as being “ground crew”—in caring for the body and its needs, you become the anchor that ties the devotee to life, to the everyday, to the human.
In a recent reading, I was told something I already suspected. My spiritual path is not concerned with traveling across spiritual realms or working with other worlds. My work is here, in the human world. Of course, this world rests against and is infused with the divine. In working with the sacredness of the flesh, however, I also acknowledge and love its natural habitat, especially in places that have been overrun and shaped so profoundly by humans. Cities are polluted, flawed places, but the crush of the human here is unmistakable and alive.
In the next entry, I’ll consider another aspect of the everyday: time…and waiting.
