Devotion, as I see it.

　Devotion, a simple word heard a lot. But what does it mean? Well for starters, the various dictionary meanings are as follows:

So, to sum it all up, I am devoted to my Mistress for She has given me the freedom in chains that I so truly needed in order to balance all of me and be able to continue upon my own spiritual growth.

I'll tell you how. Because I am also a healer, I have died and come back (literally, had a near-death experience, a series of divine visitations, and some serious gender issues short of a sex change, and that's about as severe as a rebirth gets in our modern culture) and everything I do must be channeled towards the sacred. She is as much as slave as I am, and my our Mistress, Our dominatrix, She Who Owns Our Asses, is Hel, the goddess of Death. And she is one mean fucking top. If we don't do what she wants, she will kick our asses from here to Niflheim. Isis, is another Goddess that we are beholden to. And they make sure that we stay ethical, and in spiritual service to our people and our tribe. (Who are our tribe? They are many and scattered. They are our family and our religious group. They are our transgendered brothers and sisters. They are our queer and perverted brothers and sisters. They are whatever pagans come to us and need our help. I am one of the few healers who serve these groups with a whole heart.)

I'll try to break it down... I've found that spiritual BDSM can be broken down into three major areas. We work with all three. They are:

1) Using carefully applied pain in a specific ritual context in order to bring the bottom into an altered state by using their own endorphins, and thus bring them closer to Spirit. Human beings have been doing this for eons. Traditional examples of this are the Lakota Sun Dance, the Hindu Kavandi ceremony and ball dances, the Catholic flagellatory orders, and so on. It's the Ordeal Path, one of the Eightfold Path of altered states, and it's easier than doing drugs. To give someone this experience, the top has to be skilled, knowledgeable, respectful, and compassionate, and really love making someone hurt real bad. It's the Initiator path. I know it well, and I do it for people - sometimes as a service, sometimes (with my own lovers) because I choose to take them down that road for their good and mine. As a sexual sadist, I crave hurting people. To do this work makes it not only ethical (through consent) but sacred, and gives them a gift of an intense ordeal that they will not forget, and that will help them work with their own limits around pain and fear and endurance.

2) Using intense psychological theater in a ritual context to create a personally-tailored emotional ordeal for the bottom, whereby they travel to the dark places in themselves and come out safely, and having learned useful things in the process. This is the archetypal Journey To The Underworld, and the top has to be both the psychopomp who gets them in and out, and the stand- in for the implacable Death Gods who inhabit that dark place. To do this job, the top has to be perceptive, good at reading people, dramatic, good at creating intensely moving ritual structure, and utterly ruthless. We have to channel the Underworld forces through ourselves, and we cannot chicken out or we cheat the seeker. Whether it's the rape or molestation victim who needs to reenact her issue to get a better handle on it, or the phobic person who needs to face a fear head- on, or the grieving one who needs to be forced to cry....it is our sacred task as priest/esses of the Underworld to take them all the way in, and get them back out alive and better than they were. As a psychic vampire, I crave fear and pain and anger and sex, yes we do blood as well. This is the way I've found to get it that is not only merely ethical - which is a zero-sum game - but is sacred as well, doing far more good than harm.

3) Using full-time serious D/s as a spiritual path. This is rare even among perverts. My Mistress and I practice an extremely serious level of dominance-submission work (We don't call it play, because there is nothing playful about the way we think of this) which means, in essence, that I has sworn my life to serve her. To me, it is a path of sacred service that is very much like being a monk or nun; I have referred to being owned as "the monasticism of BDSM". Neo-paganism rejects monasticism and spiritual discipline, which I think is a big mistake. On her part, She has always had a strong psychological need to own someone completely, and I have  always had a similar need to be completely owned this I have recently discovered was there in me, and have embraced it fully. This has gotten us both in trouble with unsuitable partners, before we could quite figure out what it was that we needed. In that the ownership is actually two ways…She owns me, but I own her as well.

At any rate, for me this amazing gift of my service is a test that will last the rest of Her life, a lesson in using power ethically and wisely. She has great power over another human being, of the sort that most people are convinced will inevitably result in corruption and abuse....and yet She don't have the option of being less than rigidly ethical about it. She can't abuse me, or Hel will come down with her spiked boots and kick my ass. Using power wisely is a lesson that is to be driven home to me in this lifetime, and She can neither screw up nor refuse the gift.. She must respect and aid my spiritual path of service, which means she has to get it right.

I would say that the theme of the point where my sexuality and my spirituality cross is one of redemption. The monster in my psychic basement is awesome. Turning his every tainted desire and drive and need into something useful, something that serves others, something that serves the Spirit, and yet gets that monster's needs met adequately, that's the challenge that drives and structures my entire life, not just my sex life. I live by spiritual discipline, because it's the only safe choice - for myself and for others. Somehow, Hel needs a sick fuck vampire sadist to get this job done. She finds me useful as I am. I'm not arguing with her. She also has recently determined that I have to have My Mistress Renae as a guide. I am simply not going to argue with Her.

The main ethical rede of the neo-pagan community is "An it harm none, do as thou wilt." How, people ask, can it be anything but harm when someone stumbles out of a scene with bruises and welts? When their blood runs in trails down their body? When they weep and scream and are trodden under someone's heavy boot? When they sign their life over to someone else that they will call Sir or Ma'am for however long their agreement lasts? Or, alternately, when they put themselves in a place where they could become a tyrant, a monster, a serial killer? Where one slip could start them down the slippery slope that ends with bodies being buried in the back yard?

Look into our eyes. By our desires ye shall know us. We who are changelings of the Dark Moon, whose wiring is built for this sort of thing, we are not happy with the fruit-and-flowers sex of the upper world and its sunny gods. We are like Inanna, who walked willingly into the realm of Death, who was stripped of her name and her power, who was hung on a hook over the throne of the Queen of Death, who had to be ransomed back by those who turn gender on its head and who are willing to weep. She did it because there was no other way to touch the deep wisdom that she sought, no way but to stumble along dark paths to the katabasis point, and trust in all the wisdom of the Underworld that you may one day emerge triumphant.

Look into our eyes. When we return with those bruises, do we walk taller and stronger? When we touch our cuts, are we more serene? When we give up our power, do we grow more sure of ourselves? When we accept power over another, do we learn more compassion? Do we return from the Underworld better for the journey? That's how you know, those of you who are worried, whether we're doing it right.

Look into our eyes. If you see darkness reflected there, is it the darkness of roots, of ocean depths, of the night sky and the sickle moon, of the graves of the Ancestors? Is it sacred darkness? Does it smell of Herne's thick woods, of Kali's cremation ground, of the hem of the robe of the Crone? Is it the burning ground of resurrection and rebirth? Does it frighten you? It doesn't frighten us. We've been there. Its ashes are smeared on our foreheads. Come follow us down, even a little way.

They say that once people had walked into the cave of the Eleusinian Mysteries, had seen the sacred rites of which nothing true can be spoken, that they no longer feared Death. We are struggling to recreate our own versions of those mysteries, and the one thing we know better than all others is that they cannot be easy. There is nothing easy about the Ordeal Path, but then again, nothing worthwhile ever turned out to be easy anyway.

Take the roses into your hands, and squeeze the thorns until your hands bleed, even as you smell the scent of Aphrodite. When you can understand why there is no contradiction there, the first step of the path will be open to you.