The Eightfold Paths of BDSM and Beyond

by Lee Harrington

  If you explore astral shape change, practice is of incredible importance. Unless you want to risk permanent change to your energetic pattern, it is important to practice not just shifting to the new shape, but shifting back as well. Oftentimes, it is useful to find a teacher to do this work with you, but there are some individuals who have innate talent. Teachers can include a friend with experience who can walk you through a guided visualization, tapes from authors who have scripts for doing this work, a Guru or teacher on this plane, or find astral mentors. Once the astral form has been changed, the individual can either embark on adventures (hopefully with a Guide of some sort if new) to explore what life is like as a dragon or palm tree, or return to the physical realm, imbued with this new energetic shape and traits.

  Beyond getting “stuck” in a shape, there are other concerns to be aware of in shape changing. The first is having it become a habit. Why do you keep running away from you? I have seen shapeshifting a form of addiction, a form of avoidance, and a form of self-hatred. Secondly, if we obsessively return to one shape over and over again that is not our base self, the traits of that creature can spill over into our day-to-day life. It might sound lovely to have the energy of Pan in our day-to-day life, playful and full of passion. But Pan is also a womanizer whose knees bend the wrong way, leading to knee issues and relationship drama on the mortal plane.

  The next point to consider is the idea of spotlights on the astral plane. If we, in our desire to be sexier to our big furry gay male lovers, keep calling on bear energy as a form of perfume, we may end up calling on the actual deity or totem Bear who thinks we are calling looking for a patron. This can be awkward if you were not, in fact, looking for a patron.

  If you continuously return to the same shape, take in mind all the traits of that shape. Pop culture aficionados may find value in calling upon Worf, son of Mogh, Klingon Warrior from the Star Trek universe. Strong, powerful, gets all the women, lives one of the longest lives in the series, goes onto greatness, right? Seems like a fantastic character to shift our astral resonance into for perusing our dominance. He also never keeps the girl, rarely sees his son, and constantly is plagued with the ghosts of his past and his journey as a child between cultures. Don’t be surprised if in working with Worf over and over again you end up having to deal with the whole story.

  One of the fascinating things about any level of shapeshifting is that it can change the shapes of the people around us in a sort of ripple effect. When one person in a room comes in excited, it has a viral effect. Their excitement carries to the next, and so on. The same applies for depressive states. If we come in as wolf, it is not uncommon to start seeing wolf, rabbit, and hunter start to come out in others around us. Pack mates fall in around us in our territory, other packs mark their space, and the prey flee. This happens in public kink play spaces all the time—one big scene with volume and passion leads to a ripple where others start playing bigger and more passionately as well.

  If we realize we are in a wolf-packs-fighting-for-territory situation, we can choose to step out of the viral shifting of the space, and, if we have the power or clout, change the entire scenario. More often, however, we only have the energy to change ourselves. We can step out of wolf-space, if it is not working for us, and take on human with gun, bear, evergreen tree, or river energy. We can become something other than rival or prey. Change the energy, diffuse the tension.

  With each shape we take on, we gain new perspective. When was the last time you came into the community from the position of a new-to-the-scene pervert? Where would you go if you wore the energy of a different gender for an evening? What insights do you gain exploring your own home as a bird, observing the world from above?

  Another variant on shapeshifting, incredibly helpful in both kink and spiritual work, is emotion shifting. By practicing the art of changing our emotions, we gain the ability to have fewer times that completely cripple us, we set the tone for a scene, transform how we walk through the world, create viral emotion shifts, and decide for ourselves whether we want to cancel a ritual just because we had a “bad day.”

  Every single emotion we experience has an energy and a body response that goes with it. By changing our body experience and energy, we can change our moods. Let’s give it a try!

  Imagine your favorite dessert. You love this dessert. It is made exactly how you like it. It is so tasty. If it is a strawberry, imagine biting down into it and having the cold liquid slide down your throat as you chew. If it is a hot fudge sundae, feel the sweet flavors combine as hot and frozen mingle in your mouth.

  What is your body doing right now?

  Is your mouth watering? Are you excited? Is your heart racing? Are you sitting forward? Perhaps your foot is tapping? Is the corner of your lip turned up? Are your shoulders down? Whatever the reaction is, record it in your mind.

  Now, let’s think about something else:

  Imagine the last time you were really stressed. Work was dicking you over or the car broke down on the way to the game. You were so frustrated, bordering on angry.

  Feel the frustration in every pore of your body. If it’s the day at work, remember staring at the workload and wanting to scream. If it is the car break down, remember calculating the cost of repairs and the feeling of being on hold, again, with the insurance representative.

  What is your body doing right now?

  Are your shoulders up? Hands balled up? Face scrunched? Chest tight? Perhaps your thighs aching? Lip hurts from being chewed on? Whatever your reaction was, record it in your mind.

  Now, let’s try this one:

  Remember how good it felt to think about that dessert, made exactly how you like it. Your shoulders were relaxed and your face was starting to smile.

  Lower your shoulders into a relaxed pose and start to smile at the corners of your lips. Let your mouth water. Have all the bodily reactions you did when you were imagining the desert the first time.

  What are you feeling right now?

  These sorts of exercises are a form of emotional shapeshifting. Practice going into sexy space. Fear space. Pure happy joy space. What does your body do in each one? Now look at each again. How does the energy feel in your body with each one? Does it have a smell, a taste, a sound, a look? Is sexy silky? Fear prickly? Happy smells like blueberries? Whatever it is, chronicle it. Note it. For those with a strong astral sense, bottle and store it.

  Try these again with loving, angry, blissful, and powerful emotions. What about sensual, submissive, dominant, turned-on, suffering? By knowing what these feelings literally feel like in advance, we can become aware of a few different things. We become aware earlier on if we are experiencing an emotion before we do something stupid just because we are angry or lustful. We can change our mood by changing our body posture, facial reactions, or pulling one of those bottles of emotion off the shelf.

  We can also repeat these exercises with our partner, with their permission. Watch your partner as you describe bliss to them. Suffering to them. Take notes. Now pay attention the next time you are doing a scene involving intense sensations that are not supposed to be suffering. Is their body saying bliss, or suffering? If it says suffering, consider, in combination with sensation, coaching them back into bliss by changing their body posture, reminding them of the color and scent of bliss, and creating positive associations between the activity and the concept of bliss.

  When we pull an emotion out of ourselves, it is referred to as evocation. To evoke, to call out. When we have not yet experienced something, or need to call upon what it feels like from outside ourselves, it is referred to invocation. To invoke, to bring in. Both are useful for emotional shapeshifting.

  If we engage in role-play, mind fucks, terror scenes, or romantic scenes, we can go into our catalog of emotions and pull out the one we need, or invoke one that we think would add to the scene. Before you do so, take stock in advance, neither if the emotion you are considering is a good idea for you, your play partner, or the ritual par
tners you have. If we are already feeling emotionally unbalanced, pulling anger out may turn into an unplanned actual occurrence of anger.

  The amazing thing about this skill is that we can also help our partners, and ourselves, in times of trouble. Knowing what courage feels like in advance, even if we have never actually needed to be courageous, can allow us to step up to the plate in a time of need. Courage and fearlessness are not interchangeable. Courage is the ability to know fear but do what needs to be done anyway. If our partner passes out, we can call up courage and call for medical help. If we get angry that our partner hit us in the ear with a single tail, we can breathe, remember the emotion “calm,” and inform them clearly and lovingly what has happened instead of getting off the St. Andrew’s cross and punching them in the face. If you practice in advance, you can become consciously malleable and do these shifts quickly.

  Whatever form of archetype or shapeshifting work we choose to engage in, remember that each of us has a wide variety of different faces, tales and sides to our being. Awareness of the shapeshifting habits of all humans allows us to pause and ask which part of me (or my friend, or co-worker, or lover) is showing up right now. We can see reflections of ourselves from different angles as different personas and emotions pass through our being. Each one has something to teach us about what it means to be us, whether it is during our kinky fun or in the world at large.

  Working with Spirits and Deities

  There are a number of folks who believe that all spirits and deities are a manifestation of personal and cultural desire, a construct of the mind to help us deal with fear, loss, grief, desire, and the unknown. There are others who say that deities, spirits, ghosts, ascended masters, angelic beings and the like are all actual entities who get upset when written off as being make believe. Some think it is somewhere between, that deities are real but the different names we give them are simply cultural filters. So be it. These parties don’t have to agree on what deities and spirits are.

  I will be speaking throughout this section from the voice that spirits are real, and can be interacted with, and have meaning to us. If you are of the belief that by “real” I must mean “useful” as an understanding of cultural and personal need and desire,” please translate for yourself accordingly.

  Working with spirits and deities comes up from time to time in some schools and practices of Sacred Kink. You may find yourself at a pagan gathering and lose a chunk of memory, only to find out that during your black out time you danced around a bonfire cracking a single tail. Your patron may ask to partially manifest inside you to experience what this activity is like. Your Slave may state they feel like they have a demon inside them and need to have it exorcised. It may not come up regularly or at all, but different degrees of spirit manifestation and possession do take place in the world of kink, and different degrees of kink do take place in the world of spirit manifestation and possession.

  There are a wide variety of spirits out there. Included in the list are deities (a.k.a. Gods, Goddesses and Orisha), nature spirits, the unborn, the dead (a.k.a. ghosts or gede), ascended masters (also known as the mighty dead, secret chiefs or dwellers of Shambhala), angelic and daemonic beings (a.k.a. angels and demons), animal spirits (sometimes totems, sometimes spirits of specific animals), Loa (including timeste, a.k.a. little Loa), and more. When speaking of invoking beings into a person, the discussion usually includes deities, spirits, unseen beings, ghosts, and angels or demons, but can also include archetypes, past lives, or future lives. When speaking of evoking beings out from inside someone, this usually involves emotions, personalities, universal love or grace (God in each of us), angels or demons, and sometimes past lives as well.

  Some people can see the dead but believe the rest of this is nonsense. Some can do totem work. Some have personally felt the grace of Jesus descend, and can feel angels and demons, but know the rest to be blasphemy. Some can work with the Norse pantheon but get really baffled by all the people dancing around in white clothing making joyous offerings to various Loa. We are each tuned into different realms. This is not so different from how people are wired in their sexuality.

  Not everyone is called to the Path of the Horse, just as not everyone is called to the Path of Sacred Plants or the Path of Ritual. It’s okay. And within the Path of the Horse, not everyone is equally suited for actually serving as a Horse or Vessel. As spirituality author and educator Ivo Dominguez Jr. once said, “Not everyone is suited for this work, but everyone can receive guidance from it. Not everyone is suited for being a gymnast, but everyone is helped by flexibility and stretching.” Horsing takes extraordinary flexibility of the spirit, and just as some of us are born with a bone structure that make it not possible to touch our elbows behind our back, some of us are, and others can train for it.

  There are also a variety of traditions that do possession work. Terms used that you may encounter include: assumption, aspecting, being ridden, blending, channeling, conscious channeling, divine inspiration, divine possession, drawing down, being filled with the Holy Spirit, full body channeling, horsing, intuition, involuntary possession, necromancy, overshadowing, shapeshifting, spiritualism, theosophy, and voluntary possession. Some have been completely blown out of proportion by various forms of media. If this is a topic of interest to you, these terms are a great place to start your own research, including some of the resources in Appendix 4.

  There seems to be an interesting cultural difference between Afro-Caribbean possession traditions and Western/European traditions. Most possession traditions from Africa (except Egypt, who was heavily influenced by the West, having been held by Greece and Rome), Central America, South America, and the Caribbean seem to be very intense and short. Anyone in the room who shows up seems fair game to be grabbed, as attending an event is implied consent for the beings invited to manifest should they so desire. Multiple possessions often happen at once, even from one deity, and rarely is only one person possessed. Song, merriment, dance and joy abound, whether the hungry dead or Gods are in attendance.

  This is in stark contrast to the West. When most western deities or spirits manifest, for the most part they seem to prefer royal or courtly energy, where they are happy to stay only if they are the center of attention. This even applies to restless spirits—they keep acting up only if they get attention, and thus energy (whether fear or adoration), from people. This is not so different from living individuals, who cause problems or joy for the same purposes.

  Specific spirits might ask that they need the person to be possessed to be prepared in a certain way (bathing, food consumption, anointed in oils), or props of the deity (specific clothing, makeup, food, incense, items or holy days) must be used to draw them down. They often demand entertainment of some sort, or that they be able to make proclamations and give information to everyone in attendance (often whether they want it or not). In short, while there are exceptions, white gods don’t boogie.

  Note that not all spirits are helpful. Nor are all malicious. Just because a spirit is disincarnating and wants to talk does not mean it has anything useful to say. Some people are just as witless dead as they were alive, and some deities have agendas.

  If you do think you are experiencing something, think of your body, mind and spirit as your home. As T. Thorn Coyle attributed to Victor Anderson, “Turn on the porch light and see who’s there; Don’t just let anyone in.” If it were the middle of the night, and you weren’t expecting anyone, you would not open your front door, let that stranger into the house, have sex with them, worship and adore them and let them move in. So it should be in your work if anything like this ever arrives. If this is not honored, this is a violation of consent. But make sure to tap into your own intuition, wisdom, and personal truth, no matter what they might offer, barter or say.

  This applies not just for actual spirits and deities, but un-negotiated role-playing. If you agreed to play with a grown man, and his vulnerable little abused boy persona comes forward, you get to make a choice. Y
ou did not negotiate to play with that character or persona. Check your intuition, your comfort level, and make choices as an adult, including accepting reasonable consequences involved with your decision.

  Even if it is Zeus descending from Mount Olympus to take over your body to expose the wisdom of the world, it’s not unreasonable to ask him if he could have sent you a notice in advance, or if he could come back when it’s a good time. If you are in the middle of a scene and your partner totally freezes up, then starts talking in a different voice, behaving in unusual ways, or performing feats they never were capable of before, even if it is Zeus and they declare it to be so, does not mean you can’t safeword out.

  Top, Bottom, or otherwise, it doesn’t matter. You agreed to play with your partner, not Zeus. If Zeus wants you to play with them, you can choose to make a date or not. The same goes for any roles and non-spirit personas that arise. If they want it, share with love that they need to make a time where this can be explored with honor and love, at a different time than right now. And if it is Zeus, the King of the Gods will understand that you want to prepare a feast for the senses in his honor, and it weeds out if it is some other spirit named Zeus going on astral body walkabout trying to get into the sack with your partner.

  Some may see this as a form of hubris, for how dare we deny the Gods? I personally expect excellence from the divine just as I expect excellence from my partners. This is true whether it comes screaming loudly to my attention or when striking out on a quest to find a spirit that is a good fit. By slowly building up relationships and trust, a deeper and more thriving long term connection can be established. Just like in kinky sex, there is always going to be a percentage of the population that chooses high-risk anonymous hookups. However, you deserve a choice that includes what you gain and risk in such choices, not having anything forced upon you.