The Intersection of Gnosis and Kink
Alice Scarlet Death
Many ceremonial magick authors suggest practicing yoga so as to control your mind, and to be in a constant state of meditation. It helps you to create the psychodrama. The idea in general is that you want to be in some sort of trance while performing. However, there are various forms of gnosis.
Peter J. Carroll writes in Liber Null about inhibitory gnosis and excitatory gnosis. The former is generally seen as muscle relaxation, sleeplessness, or slow breathing techniques. That is probably what is most widely used outside of chaos magick circles. The second is intense emotions, sexual stimulation, dance, sensory overload, and other things of a stimulating nature.
As an example of excitatory gnosis: I once fornicated with myself while listening to C.C.C.C’s track Loud Sounds Dopa while astrally performing the Middle Pillar ritual.
One of the things I remember most from Liber Null was its implication on how laughter was the ultimate excitatory gnosis technique since it has no opposite, and it only banishes.
After reading further, I noticed he mentioned flagellation as a method of achieving gnosis. This sparked my creative juices. I’ve been active in the kink and fetish community for about as long as I’ve been involved in ceremonial magick.
There are all sorts of avenues you can utilize kink in a ritualistic setting, and it doesn’t all have to be physical stuff either. Not everyone is into impact play!
I am trying to think of creative new ways to experience gnosis in a kink setting. I have seen a number of “spiritual kink” panels and books but the image I get from them is that they are somewhat fluffy. I am looking for a more direct approach. A lot of it simply expounds about how being kinky helps put them in touch with the divine.
They are not wrong. Exploring kink can be a great way to get in touch with the divine. Yet, I am an occultist not necessarily a pagan. I aim to create more tangible methods by which we can utilize kink to achieve gnosis and come in contact with our divine selves through dramatic ritual and ceremonial magick.
While I aim to create dramatic rituals focused around aspects of kink culture, BDSM sessions in themselves (scenes) are often already ritualized without intention. You generally have warmup, action, cool down, and then aftercare. It’s just like any other ritual. However, I would like to add more symbol to make these dramatic rituals even more powerful and meaningful. You know, like making the amount of spankings your bottom gets Qabbalistically significant.
I wrote a collaring ritual several years that I have since lost. It was essentially a Daleth ritual, with the Dominant representing Chokmah and the submissive representing Binah. D/s is a power exchange not necessarily one person “in charge” of the other person like popular media would have you believe.
In my further writings I hope to appeal to people who engage in Dominance/submission, Daddy-Dom/little girl, and primal role play. I will also endeavor to create ritualistic scenarios for impact scenes, service-oriented submissives, and high protocol dinners.
