Uncategorized | The Blog of Baphomet

I say ‘yes’ to the sensation.

I’m standing in a nice warm workshop space in East London. I’m wearing a blind-fold and can feel someone pinching my arm. The touch moves from the strange, to the uncomfortable and eventually to the painful. I stay with the pain for a few moments and them say aloud ‘no’. The pinching stops. Two gentle taps on my chest indicate that they person pinching me has heard me, and are thanking me for my feedback. Next I feel sharp nails on my nipples, again pinching me. This time I say ‘yes’ with greater enthusiasm. I have no idea who is doing this to me.

This exercise was one tiny moment from a Conscious Kink workshop, led by Seani Fool, ably assisted by Claire. Attracting people from the neo-tantra, bodywork and pagan communities this small gathering was a fascinating space. With a group of some fifteen of us there was a little time spent discussing the territory of BDSM/Kink exploration, especially in the context of spiritual development. They key messages are that it’s about respect, communication and playfulness.

Liberation through bondage

Most of the rest of the workshop was spent in what might seem like challenging physical explorations with partners (some of who may be strangers) but by making everyone feel safe and sure in setting boundaries it’ was far from a distressing experience. In fact a few people reported that the communication that opened up in these spaces was a very powerful and indeed healing experience for them. The afternoon-long workshop gradually built up a range of experiences and repertoire for participants towards a deeper ‘journey’ using pain/pleasure, working with a partner (at this deeper stage the couples in the room chose to work together but need not have done so).

This is practical tantra which works at a pretty deep level but in which you can keep your clothes on if you like. It’s a space in which emotions are welcomed without being unduly gushy and a space which is sexual without being creepy. I came away from the workshop with a few nice new bodywork techniques, a good insight into how this style of highly charged material can be delivered in a really accessible and engaging workshop, and a just a few delightful scratch marks around my nipple.

Worth every penny and the small amount of bruising…

More details please visit seanifool.net

The wheel of the year turns another click onward, and one of the many new years we can choose to celebrate these days has arrived. Chaos magicians can choose to move the exact date (which is handy) so I shall be ‘doing’ Samhain in a week or so, while today is reserved for a nice secular witchy style evening with friends, tarot cards, and beer.

Annual party occasions give us regular markers in our lives, the Christian names (having taken over for a while) now reclaimed by other more pagan sounding titles (e.g. Christmas – Saturnalia/solstice, Easter – Eostre, Hallowe’en – Samhain). As each one rolls around, as our planet rolls around the sun, we recollect what we did last year and imagine what we might do next time round.

This circular notion of time, is ages old. A day is obviously circular, we can see the sunlight moving overhead; the year then must surely follow a similar shape. And what type of things do we do on these auspicious (or dangerously liminal) days? We do what humans have done for thousands of years at any excuse. We dress up, we eat, drink, and we meet with our friends, our tribes. We might even listen to repetitive beats.

These anchor points of parties and known shapes to particular days and evenings give us a sense of continuity, in the otherwise formless day by day sameness. Fictional as they may be, like the days of the week, they provide us with a progressive narrative, punctuations in the stories of our lives. Yet as with all Life, the yin-yang balance of the feast days means that no two are ever the same. What costume shall I wear to Halloween this year? What present shall I buy for my love to unwrap on Christmas day? Comforted by the familiar we can express our agency through the versions of themes allowed.

But this year, this year is different. It is 2012; this could be the last time we celebrate these festivals. While we know for sure in our rational minds that the world will keep turning long after December the 21^st, a part of us wonders, checks, before settling on that sensible conclusion. Here, in this moment of uncertainty, we can see a blank slate. For as certain as we are that death and taxes await us in the New Year of 2013, we know with equal surety that the calendar we use is arbitrary. 365 days in a year, yes, but… hang on isn’t that not quite right itself?! As for the number of the year, the names of months and the days, the way we divide up that year: So much depends upon the place and time we took our first breath, the culture of our parents.

And so for a split second we wonder, What if?

A shopping mall, yesterday (Library image)

This gives us a kireji moment, a cut between two contrasting actions. The intrinsic sameness and differentness of each feast, the simultaneous looking forward and backward as symbolised so perfectly by Janus god of doorways, as we pass through the signposts of one year to the next, an opportunity for change or continuing arises.

Whether you celebrate tonight with a traditional turnip lantern and a surfeit of Soul cakes, or in a traditional zombie blood spattered outfit at a massive party, or dress your children as traditional pumpkins and go out to collect sweets, I wish you a safe journey through this space of esoteric choices, practising for the times we face choices in those ordinary, mundane days between times which make spooky ghouls and vampires look like a picnic in comparison… to change, or not to change, that is the question.