The Eightfold Paths of BDSM and Beyond

by Lee Harrington

  “Are you truly ready for this work?”

  “I have never been more ready in my life.”

  “Do you trust me to take you on this journey?”

  “I don’t know why, but yes. Yes.”

  “Do you trust yourself to undergo this ordeal?”

  She breathed in deeply and sat for a moment with her thoughts, twisting a strand of her raven hair in her fingers. Finally, she sat up straight. She was proud and yet deeply honest in her expression.

  “I have to.”

  “Then go into the dungeon, and know that when I enter, our work will begin. I will not be there as your friend. I will not be there as your lover. I will push you and I will not be kind. You can stop the working at any time. I am not your enemy. This will be about you against yourself and your own fears I am but a tool for that struggle. Do you understand?”

  “I do.”

  She went, and I gathered my wits, gathered my tools, and prayed I could be what she needed. I then followed her into the space.

  The Ordeal Path

  AlsThe Ordeal Path is that which shakes you out of your comfort zone. By using purposeful and intentional pain, suffering, challenges or endurance, an individual is pushed past or through their perceived limits. Whether the ordeal is mental, physical, spiritual or psychological, you come out of the working changed or transformed, opened up to a world beyond those limits.

  Anything can be an ordeal. Yes, there are images that call to us in media and kink as being iconic ordeals. Hanging on flesh hooks. Fire walking. But this is only the tip of the iceberg.

  An ordeal is any severe trial or experience where we come out changed afterwards. For some individuals, standing in front of an audience to speak, or engaging in BDSM publicly, is an ordeal. For others, those activities are a day at the office or an opportunity to engage in exhibitionism desires. Ordeals are in the eye of the beholders. If it pushes your boundaries, challenges you, or leaves a lasting impression, it is an ordeal. Otherwise, even if it is a profound experience, I would argue that it is not an ordeal, but instead is an embrace along the Path of the Flesh (chapter 5). Ordeals are not just the flashy stuff.

  Within the kink communities there are some common ordeals that the universe or our life journey hand many of us. For example, coming out as being queer, kinky, or different in some ways can be an ordeal for many of us. Sometimes our steps along the Ordeal Path are not designed by our mortal minds, but occur in our life to challenge us, shake us, break us, and have us rise from the ashes stronger than we ever were before. But wait—doesn’t following the Ordeal Path require that it be intentional pain, suffering, challenge or endurance? Yes. And yet, whose intention? If we believe in any way that there is a higher plan, this becomes a muddy issue indeed. We will explore this issue of design and consent later in this chapter.

  For many of us, a single ordeal can transform our lives and we have no interest in pursuing ordeals ever again. Others are called to constantly dance the edge of emotional, physical, and energetic comfort, dangling over the cliff edge and coming back only to find their cliff edge pushed back again and their capacity for challenge having grown.

  Do not confuse Ordeal Path work with being attracted to edge play. Edge play involves dancing at that personal edge of comfort and safety again and again. Ordeal walks to the cliff’s edge, steps off, and comes back changed. If you engage in erotic strangulation because it is terrifying and a sexual turn on, it is edge play. If you engage in erotic strangulation and afterwards are humbled by still being alive, forever changed and vowing to embrace each day as a gift, it was more in the realm of a transformational ordeal.

  No, not all ordeals are life-changing. Some people don’t learn their lessons. And some lessons are cumulative. Sometimes the ordeal comes not during the experience itself, but in the processing afterwards. The bulk of ordeals push, challenge, transform…and don’t just get your rocks off.

  Traditional Tools

  The term ordeal, in classical definitions, refers to a painful or difficult experience, especially one that tests your endurance or character. Its literal definition from Old English means a verdict or judgment. In our history (and still in some locations worldwide), ordeals also refer to a “trial by ordeal.” An individual is tested to have the divine prove their innocence or guilt (not always by living through it). Ordeals have also been seen as a tool for coming-of-age rites and other rites of passage. What can constitute an ordeal can vary widely from culture to culture, as well as individual to individual.

  The list below is not inclusive of all traditional tools for ordeals worldwide. Humans have been and continue to be incredibly creative. However, as you examine the list, you may see a lot of crossover to tools that have been incorporated by the kink community because the taboo of pain and suffering can be intoxicating. There is a reason our community calls the places we gather for exploring our desires “dungeons.” Dungeons can often be places of endurance and change. For the western mind dungeons are loaded with cultural baggage involving oppression, politics, and cultural conflict. They have become an unconscious icon for subversion, much as the pink triangle has been embraced as an icon for queer and gay pride, having historically been a symbol of past trauma. We are modern witches, political and sexual rebels choosing to enter and leave the dungeon on our own terms.

  Body Piercing

  Though most body piercings are for ornamental, cultural, religious, or personal reasons, some body piercing has been historically done as a form of ordeal or transformative ritual. In India, Malaysia, and Kuala Lampur, the festival Thaipusam is celebrated by devotees practicing Kavadi Attam, also known simply as Kavadi, a ceremony dedicated to Murugan, the Tamil God of War. The kavadi-bearer prepared by observing celibacy and engaging in a partial fast while thinking of God. Though some Kavadi (literally translated as “burden”) involves simply carrying a pot of milk on the head for a long ritual walk, when most westerners refer to Kavadi they are speaking of having their cheeks or tongues punctured with vel skewers, or inserting hooks into the back to pull altars uphill by one’s own endurance. Other Kavadi involves complex frames that bear hundreds of metal rods whose sharp tips rest against the bearer’s skin and challenge them with every step, pushing them into an altered state.

  Other body piercing ordeals dot our consciousness as well. Ball dancing is a term, coined by Fakir Musafar and Cleo Dubois, to describe the multi-cultural phenomenon of piercing or suturing objects to the skin and then dancing as the objects hit the skin with each twist and turn. Some sects of Sufism have engaged not only in their well-known work as whirling dervishes, but also as pierced Seekers of the divine puncturing their flesh with metal or hanging heavy weights from their piercings. In Phuket, Thailand, the nine day Vegetarian Festival involves individuals who pierce their cheeks and then insert objects reflecting their careers, callings, families or other items through the holes to call for blessings. This is simple enough if one is a writer and inserting a pen, but seeing a man with oversized leeks or half of a bicycle inserted through their face is an intense experience for everyone involved.

  Hook Suspension

  In North America, the Mandan tribe developed a suspension ritual called the O-Kee-Pa as a tool for coming-of-age ceremonies, as well as for shamans to seek out visions. Two piercings were sunk into the chest and two more in the back, and under the guidance of a Ka-See-Ka (an older man who had taken the journey before), a person would be suspended by either set of piercings from the roof of a lodge after days of fasting and other ordeals. During their time in the air, communing with the Great White Spirit, their Ka-See-Ka would help them journey back. The neighboring Minnetaree and Arikara tribes developed more extreme versions of the rite.

  The Lakota, Oglala, Teton and Yellow Hand Sioux also developed their own shamanic piercing rituals.. In the Sun Dance, a pledge has piercings placed in their chest and those piercings are tethered to a pole or tree until the flesh is ripped open. This could take anywhere from a few hours to a few day
s depending on how deep the piercings were and how skilled and determined the piercer and the pledge were. Meanwhile, in South India, the Chidi Mari Festival developed a hook suspension ritual with its own distinct twist. After hooks were pierced into the back, a devotee climbs into a high tower where they are lifted into the air by a horizontal rotating pole. Modern interpretations of hook pulls and suspensions will be examined in the Kink Tools section.

  Flagellation

  Whether as a tool for punishment at sea, a tool for penance in Catholicism, or as a ritual tool for endurance tests in some branches of Wicca, flogging has been used the world over for ordeals. This can range from ceremonial whipping in some Masonic houses where no actual harm is done, to tests in the middle ages where individuals would be whipped for a set period of time… and only if they were still standing were they deemed innocent of what they were accused.

  Warrior Ordeals

  The modern concept of fraternity hazing is nothing new. The idea of challenges that test one’s manhood or appropriateness for joining a group go back into time immemorial. Masai warriors endure a hunting ordeal of having to kill a lion with nothing but a spear. In other cultures young men are sent out into the wilderness with either a single blade or with nothing at all, and only if they come back with a vision or a kill for the tribe are they allowed to rejoin their community. In various military cultures, instead of being sent out into the wild, a young person is tested by running a gauntlet of warriors or elders on each side trying to push them down or beat them, providing proof one can survive.

  Giving Birth

  Nature has historically provided one of the most intense ordeals devised: giving birth. In an age before anesthesia and modern medicine, doulas and midwives were challenged with each new life brought into the world, trying to save the life not only of the child, but of the mother. In many patriarchal cultures a woman did not have true value until she had provided a male child.

  Burial/Isolation

  Being buried alive and literally digging your way back to the surface is one of the more intense ordeals in recorded history. But there are varying degrees of isolation and burial amongst traditional ordeal tools. Isolation tanks, living alone or in a cave, or being kept in dark rooms with no light, may be seen by many as tools of Asceticism and living a minimalistic life, but for many they can be full of terror and challenge. Thus, for some individuals, a monastic life or even spending a day apart from society is an ordeal rather than an opportunity for contemplation. This can also include sleep deprivation, fasting, food limitation, or the opposite extreme of sensory isolation: sensory overload.

  Academic Ordeals

  In modern Judaism, Bar (and sometimes Bat) Mitzvah, a ceremony noting that the individual is one “to whom the commandments apply,” often involves public reading from the Torah as part of the coming of age ritual. Spelling bees are another childhood academic ordeal. In the United States the SATs are often referred to as an ordeal, but compared to the English University system, it pales in comparison. After years of studies, you are not able to graduate until you pass your final exams, days to weeks of intense testing. The Oxford and Cambridge final exam week has been known for high suicidal ideation rates and for huge celebrations for those who survive the tests. In other cultures worldwide, your standing as a worker or as an academic is determined in year 9 or 10 (freshman/sophomore in high school), and depending on how you do, will determine your career for life.

  Firewalking

  The power of mind over matter is often best expressed through the art of walking on coals. By moving calmly and coating the bare foot with ash by doing so, firewalking can be an extraordinary ordeal of will. However, trials by fire have been done which require walking over red-hot ploughshares, or being forced to hold a hot metal iron. Innocence was proved by lack of injury or complete healing after three days.

  Tattoos, Scarification and Branding

  Body modifications can be both an ordeal in and of themselves, and proof of having undergone that ordeal. Whether it is Maori warriors holding perfectly still while having their facial tattoos (Ta Moko) hand-poked into their face, or a female priestess of Hathor 4,000 years ago covering her body with patterns of fertility, tattoos have long been part of our history. In some cultures, the scarification, branding or tattooing is the ordeal itself—if you move, they will stop the modification half way through the work to show your test to have failed. Every culture has its own body marking history, and thus there are a wide variety of techniques out there, ancient and modern.

  In Samoa, tattooing, known as Tatau, is known as “the making of a magic mark.” When sailors brought this ritual back to Europe, reawakening an art form that had been practiced as far back as the Ice Age, but which had fallen out of fashion, they brought the technology and the concept of marking journeys and ordeals, but not the richness of ritual. Meanwhile, in a variety of African tribes such as the Karo, Nuba and Kaleri, amongst many others across the continent, scarification ordeals have been used to mark transformations in the role an individual serves within the tribe, to indicate the tribe they belong to, and more.

  Drowning/Submersion

  Traceable back to the code of Hammurabi, individuals accused of sorcery would be acquitted only if they survived being submerged in a stream. The trend of ordeals by water has continued throughout history: poachers submerged in barrels, millstones tied around the neck, and witch trials that suggested that witches float because they denounced baptism. Water-boarding, Chinese water torture, and dunking are torture and interrogation tools that have also proven to be powerful ordeal experiences for everyone involved. This is because not only is a tortured individual transformed in experiences like waterboarding, but so is the person who performs that torture. In some military subcultures, showing that a person can torture another individual creates a different place in the social rank system while their psyche is transformed in turn.

  Balance

  Martial arts schools have used ordeals of balance as a way to focus the body and sharpen the mind for ages. However, the ordeal by cross is one of the more creative uses of a balance ordeal in recorded history. Used now as a summer camp game, this judicial duel was developed in the Early Middle Ages to pit accuser against accused. Each stand on either side of a cross and stretch out their arms horizontally. The first one to lower their arms was deemed to be in the wrong. I’m sure that such challenges can be easily converted by the creative into Sacred Kink ordeal work.

  Kink Tools

  For many outsiders, all forms of kink look like ordeals. Advanced tools and techniques are not necessary for the average individual; the simple glimpse of a St. Andrew’s Cross or a flogger is enough to send many people into a state of frenzy. However, there are tools in the arsenal of erotic exploration that are perfectly suited as amazing opportunities for ordeal of all sorts.

  The list of traditional tools can be perverted, but this list can provide opportunities for creating a challenge perfectly matched to the individual involved. Remember that each person is different. A life-changing journey for one individual is a walk in the park for another. Do not assume you know what will be an ordeal for the individuals you are working with. And if the techniques below get you all hot and bothered, consider looking at it through the lens of the Path of Flesh.

  Non-Rhythmic Pain

  With most repetitive rhythmic pain, zoning out can be easily achieved. Even the most intense sensations can be “lived with” as long as they are slow and steady, or it is sometimes possible to go out of body. However, when they change on a moment’s notice, it goes from something easy to resolve in our neurological network to being a challenge that pushes us into suffering. It forces us into being present to the sensations that come at us. To change the average sensation scene into something that pushes limits, remove the rhythm and add surprises to the mix.

  Signal and Bull Whips

  Known also as single tails, this category of whips delivers force to a very small area of the body. This can
be harder to trance out during than when being flogged. However, because it can be an intense sensation, some people dissociate when experiencing these sorts of extreme experiences. Pain is not an ordeal if you never “showed up” in the first place. There are also individuals who think single tails are the best thing ever, and also like related tools such as Dragon’s Tongues and quirts. Learning how to use these whips can also be experienced by some as an ordeal, given the long hours it takes to perfect the craft, and how often those tails can whip back at high speed cutting into the flesh of the Top early in the learning process.

  Humiliation and Erotic Embarrassment

  Torn down to the ground and spat on. Being called nasty names by a crew of angry gay men. Being used as nothing but a hole with your identity stripped away. Gently telling someone that you are disappointed in them. What it takes to embarrass or humiliate someone varies as much as all of the people this tool can be used on.

  But be forewarned that this tool can be very volatile. Using it within relationships can lead to misunderstandings of the line between role and actual belief. A trigger may not rise from being called “fat” or “whore,” but “stupid” might lead to core identity damage. For some, objectification might be what rips them out of their comfort zone, while for others the act of humbling them might be better suited for their needs. Others might find degradation by tapping into cultural baggage or personal life history. But some people cannot do these things at all without hitting a wall or destroying the ego. Tread with caution.