The Eightfold Paths of BDSM and Beyond

by Lee Harrington

  Body Actions

  Five times a day lay your rug out facing Mecca and pray with the whole of your spirit. Go through the rounds of the Salutation of the Sun. Take off your shoes before entering a Japanese home. Call to each of the directions while casting your circle under the full moon. Make a cross over your chest before an icon of Christ. Hold your hands just so in a mudra of spirit invocation. Put on your yarmulke before entering the Synagogue. Every one of us has specific body poses that we do that have become laden with meaning due to the rituals using those body poses.

  After doing these same motions over and over again, if we try to do the motions in any other way or at any other time, things may feel wrong. Thus, we have the ability in kink to take some of these rituals and pervert them; having a Catholic Slave kneel in prayer when polishing his leathers for example. Other rituals are profoundly wired into some individuals’ identity, and “playing with” those rituals can lead to emotional pain and trauma. If considering using body actions from an established tradition, find out what meaning that action has for everyone involved. Sometimes those involved include the viewers from the outside. Choosing to corrupt a spiritual practice for your own use is one thing; doing it because it seemed hot and then being upset when those who use that action for its culturally intended purpose confront you or talk about it behind your back is another.

  Art

  Repetitive and thoughtful art has been being used as a form of ritual by spiritual and secular groups, as well as by individuals of all stripes, since early cave painting. Rituals involving art include how the supplies are prepared, the specific meanings of the icons featured in the work, and how the artist does the work itself. Examples include mandalas, Catholic icons, Russian Orthodox paintings, calligraphic art across the globe, repeating geometric shapes in Islamic art, Central American and Middle Eastern animal themes, and artists like Andy Warhol who have taken American cultural icons and repeated them to repeat meanings of modernity. If you have a personal meaning behind an image that echoes in your work, or always do your art as a form of prayer, or prepare your supplies the same way each time, or dedicate your artwork to a specific cause, your art is a form of ritual.

  Martial Practices

  Combat, sports, martial arts and weapon care might start in necessity, but can become something more. Cleaning your gun can be an amazing tool for entering an altered state. It is frequently discussed in sports how long someone should abstain from sex, or the lucky item or activity someone uses to keep a winning streak going? Combatants often enter into a trance state by putting on their armor or digging their trenches, preparing both their body and their spirit for the battle ahead.

  Celebrating Holy Days

  Merry Yule. Happy Easter. May your Ramadan bring you insight and blessings. Let Diwali light up your spirit. Happy Birthday to you. Whatever the day of celebration or contemplation is, by partaking in it with similar festivities year after year, it takes on extra meaning. This is especially true if there are many generations of a specific tradition (trees lit with lights, presents, cakes, feasting, fasting, prayer, practical jokes, going to a center of prayer), or many people who engage in those traditions. Even if only you and those you care about engage in a specific holy day, that day of the year, or month, or week, takes on special meaning.

  Ritual Garb

  Dressing for the occasion can set the mood for everyone in attendance. Priests donning sacred headwear, shamans wearing masks, druids wrapping cloaks around their forms, all act as a cue for altered states. If the Orthodox Jewish prayer leader is wearing his kittel instead of casual clothes, we know it is a holy day. On the secular side, casual Fridays change the mood, as does attending prom dressed in finery instead of street clothes.

  Group Rituals

  Doing rituals alone can be incredibly lonely for humans, who for the most part, are pack animals. Going to church each week, attending spiral dances comprised of thousands of dancers and pagan participants, or doing work in a group, can be hugely empowering for many people. Some individuals will only have profound experiences of faith and awakening in group settings.

  Group rituals can be as simple as two or three friends praying together at the same time, or be high pageantry affairs that take years to coordinate. Doing work with others can create a sense of community and group identity, as well as pride in having been there when the rite took place.

  Ritualized Spontaneity

  The lack of ritual can be a ritual of its own. “Spontaneous” improvisation, speaking in tongues, and uncontrolled “movement of the spirit” are all integral parts of the ritual experience– the part of us that cannot be contained rebelling against the order and structure being imposed. Ritual serves as a container, channeling energy and desire into a specific structure. The tighter the control, the more powerful the release. For others, such as within the Discordian tradition, consciously choosing to disregard a traditional ritual, requiring chaos and disorder within their sacred working can be as equally powerful for them as following proscribed rituals.

  Kink Tools

  Every group has the ability to develop or use specific protocols or rituals that have special meaning to their community or tribe. This has been especially true of the kink communities. Some of the concepts below can be traced back within various non-kink cultural groups, some have been modified to fit our special needs, and others have been created by our community. Whether you choose to follow new or old traditions, or develop your own, this list may help come up with ideas for your own personal collection of rituals. Traditional tools can all also be modified for a kink setting.

  Tool Preparation

  For Top and Bottom alike, having consistent or evocative styles of laying out the equipment to be used can be a powerful method for setting mood and creating drama. In some relationships, the Bottom lays out the tools. By doing so, they have the opportunity to remember what each toy feels like, struggle with themselves about whether they can take the sensation, and focus on the experience to come. In other arrangements, the Top lays out the gear. This is an opportunity for meditation and grounding for the Top, to evoke personal power and become focused on the work to come, and to do it as fast or as slow as they want the scene to unfold. I have also seen some players choose to lay out tools only when it will be a punishment scene of some sort, and others choose to lay out tools that they know their partner will be challenged with as a form of mind-fuck.

  Counting

  One Sir, thank you Sir! Two Sir, thank you Sir! Classical forms of punishment and erotic pain play alike pull heavily from corporal punishment traditions from around the globe. Using the rituals surrounding corporal punishment, such as counting down, counting up, and counting followed by use of honorifics (and starting over if they lose track of how many have been done) is an amazing way of formalizing scenes and helping a Bottom focus through sensation.

  Honorifics

  These power words and titles are ways of giving power, praise, respect and honor to the person of whom they are being said. These include such iconic language as Sir, Ma’am, Lord, Lady, God, Goddess, Master, Mistress, Madame, Daddy, Mommy, and a lot more. The flip side to honorifics is diminutives, words that encourage a head space of submission or service, but in being special and not used everywhere, can also carry respect and honor within kink. There is a difference between calling everyone you meet “Honey,” and calling the person in service to you “Pet.” Slave, Slut, Boy, Girl, and many more diminutives are common in our community.

  The terms you choose to use in your scenes and in your relationships are a form of personalized ritual language. When a partner changes from calling their partner “Sir” to “Daddy” in person or on email, their partner can tell they need a different sort of interaction and energy. Just like diminutive terminology, if a word is reserved for special occasions or certain individuals, a given word can take on special meaning and become a ritualized building block for interpersonal connections towards a deeper relationship.

&
nbsp; Dressing Up

  Just as priests changing garb will set a mood for their parishioners, having everyone engaging in a scene dress for that scene will set the mood as well. Our play wardrobe becomes our ritual garb. When heading out to a Munch or other casual community gathering, this may be as simple as choosing to wear clothes that fit well: a black tee shirt, jeans and boots for some, or heels, stockings, and an elegant dress for others. Calming our mind and focusing on becoming sexy and our fullest and most authentic casual kink self while dressing lead to attracting partners or friends who are on the same wavelength.

  Sometimes it is choosing clothes that is the ritual. A Slave boy always setting out his Master’s clothes when they are at an event, or a Mommy laying out frilly dresses for her Girl to wear to the dungeon that night. Other times it is about helping dress our partners, such as a Wrangler helping get their Pony into tack and hoof boots in the play space. Dressing at the same time and watching each other slip on their fetish wear or favorite tank top might also be a great way to get in the mood for the magic you will be doing together in the next few hours.

  Body Positions

  Kneel. Bow. Stand on one foot while reciting Hamlet. Whatever body positions you are called to in your play, these poses can become powerful body mudras and ways to evoke energy in your scene. My favorite rituals for body positions include ways that someone should greet me, how to wait for a scene to start, how they should hold themselves to let me look at them, and ways to show their love and dedication. I have seen greeting rites like crawling to enter a space, prostrate on the ground, standing at attention, waiting with something for their partner to drink, and much more. For love and dedication, some kiss their partner’s boot, bare their neck, spread their legs, trot with a wink into the bedroom, kiss their lover on the cheek, walk at their side, walk two steps back, or offer them massages each evening. Every relationship is different, thus developing body poses that serve your relationship make more sense than memorizing a stock list of Slave poses on the Internet—unless it turns on everyone involved.

  Earned Leathers

  As discussed in the Ordeal Path, earning leathers can be a form of initiation. Developing community standards or even leather family or personal ways to celebrate those who deserve it can create rituals that lift up those who have done well and bring everyone involved together in celebrating these achievements. In earning our colors, we feel connection with the next person who earns our club colors as well, for they engaged in the same rituals to receive theirs. This applies to far more than vests and caps. Rituals can be developed around hankies, collars, someone’s first whip, titles/honorifics, or fetish wear. Casual or highly elaborate, rituals of celebration or honoring create pride and enforce the roles of the celebrants in community.

  Leather Titles

  The leather community tradition of leather titles has started to be taken up by other parts of the kink community. Originally, these titles were used as a way to have someone at a local club or in a city be lifted up as an example of what was sexually hot, or a standard for behavior, or a good representative to other groups or cities of what that community stood for. This has grown now to include those who represent whole swathes of population such as International Ms. Leather or International Mr. Rubber, those who have a platform to make a less known group more visible such as the Deaf Leather Contest and the Master/Slave Titles, and a place to have community activism or education actively praised including Olympus Leather.

  In some instances, leather titles are about who is prettiest—a beauty pageant for kinky folks. But when these titles are taken as something more, rituals empower the community to raise up and be proud of who they are. At some events like South West Leather Conference, a full parade of club colors and community banners introduces every single club and leather family in attendance to those watching. It is tribal representation at its finest, a truce called and sacred space created where factions and differences in belief are set aside and we work together as one. In these places, bestowing of leather titles is done with the whole of the community looking on.

  Boot Blacking

  Taking care of clothes and leather has been part of formal service relationships throughout recorded history. Pages cared for their Knight’s armor while Ladies-in-Waiting cared for the corsets and brocade of the Mistress of the Manor. Within the leather community, this tradition was raised to an eroticized art form, due to a notion that that care of one’s leathers showed the degree of care for themselves and those they were in relationship with. Pride in appearance translates to pride in self and identity. Now, the bootblack has been raised from the person on the street corner who polished your shoes on the way to the office to being the person who helps me become my best possible self.

  By developing rituals of caring for your own boots and other leathers, you create opportunities for taking care of yourself as a whole. A Submissive caring for his Madame’s heels becomes an act of helping her become the most powerful woman she can possibly be, or being allowed into the intimacy of her essence, gifted with the opportunity to help her shine. A Master taking care of his own leathers can be a statement of learning how to polish himself and the objects he cares for before he can help polish the spirit of the girls he has been gifted with.

  Date Nights

  By creating a night that is sacred, the opportunity to worship in each other’s presence and maintain connection and communication in a relationship is held as a priority in life instead of letting it slip through the cracks. Going to a local dungeon once a month can be a way to step away from day-to-day life and become fully ourselves, or can be a way to reintegrate into our tribe on a regular basis. These acts of setting aside time are our holy days. In turn, as these become more and more regular in our community, high holy days have evolved as well. Leather title competitions, kink conferences, BDSM campouts, hedonistic street fairs and pride parades have all developed a place in our collective unconscious. We celebrate our erotic identities together, or show to the world at large that we are not a tiny fringe group to be ignored. We have power, and we are not going away.

  Collaring Ceremonies

  There are a wide variety of ways we formalize relationships in the kink community. Contract signing, gifting of jewelry or collars, granting the use of a specific honorific or title, moving in together, or crafting elaborate rituals that mark the day of transformation are all common. Some engage in legal ceremonies as well, but it is not as common as it is in our culture at large. For some, a collaring is a one-time rite: the item goes on, and is expected never to come off as long as the relationship lasts. Others take it off (or have their partners take it off for them) every night before bed, so that each morning when it is placed back on, vows made can be reinforced and consented to on a daily basis. This is not just for Slaves and submissive partners. Each time I place my Master’s cap on my head, I remind myself that I must be worthy of that title and not take it for granted. I must live up to the fullness of all that title means each time I even consider wearing it.

  Layering of Meaning

  When I wake in the morning, each morning, I have work to do for my Goddess, my Mistress, my Lady. She has bid me to lay out all of my clothes for the day ahead and take a picture for her, and send it by email so that in the future she can decide if it is not the look she wants me presenting to the world. Still nude, I lay myself prostrate before the image of her I keep on my altar. Flat before her I intone her holy names—Goddess, beloved, sacred inspiration, Mistress, Ma’am, Lady, keeper, wise woman.

  I lift myself up, and as I collect my collar from the altar where it sits when I am not wearing it—my holy item, given to me by my Mistress in a private ceremony between us—I hold it in my hands and breathe deep, truly taking in its weight in my life and in my hands. I am her Slave, her thing, her beast, her property, her service man. She has told me that I may leave at any time, by returning her image and collar, by coming to her and handing them back in person, no questions asked. Or, should somet
hing befall me, she has also made me put its return in my will.

  At first I thought it to be a morbid thing, but she is wise and worries about me, about the power in this item, in its ties to her. Should something befall her she has said I may continue to serve her should I choose, by going into service for charitable groups. I also may bury the collar under the sapling of a sacred tree and when it grows to five feet in height I may go and serve another. She is wise in the ways of mourning, and I am blessed to have been taken into her world.

  I hold the collar and weigh all it means. I lift it onto my neck, lock it on, and look at myself in the mirror next to her image. Her face and mine, side by side in this journey. I lower my eyes, and give thanks. I lift them again, and seeing myself in her collar, knowing I am in her collar, I begin to touch myself as she has commanded. I touch myself moaning her names, feel the weight of her service in my life, and think on all she has trained me to be. Attentive, loving, honest, loyal, powerful, hers. I cum in her honor, cum for her honor, and in the space between tension and release I catch myself in the mirror.

  This is truth. This is a glimpse of the divine. This is who I am.