People practising Wicca and Paganism are more likely to use BDSM and kink to enhance their spiritual practice than New Age followers. BDSM and Pagans share the use of ritual, performance, ecstasy and sometimes pain to achieve changes in states of consciousness. While Paganism is open to alternative sexualities it was slow to drop heteronormative sexualities and BDSM filled the gap. Wicca, at its inception, was open to pain as a means of initiation and purification and its materialist understanding of the world leads Pagans to be able to use bodily sensations to connect with the divine who is immanent in the world.

Summary

‘All acts of love and pleasure are Her rituals’ chants the ‘Charge of the Goddess’ by Doreen Valiente but does that apply to kink and more specifically to BDSM practices as well? Stay tuned to learn more about BDSM, Magick, altered states and Paganism.

Hello everyone, I’m Dr Angela Puca and welcome to my Symposium. I’m a PhD and a University Lecturer and this is your online resource for the academic study of Magic, Paganism, Shamanism, Esotericism and all things occult.

BDSM is an acronym, variously interpreted around concepts such as Bondage, Domination, Submission, Sadism and Masochism. It can be described as consensual power play, often yet not necessarily sexual.

We have already covered BDSM as sacred kink in a previous episode and discussed it as a form of religion in an interview with Dr Alison Robertson. So make sure to check those out in the infobox and in the cards in case you are interested and want to have some background information on the topic.

In this episode, we will focus more specifically on the relation between BDSM and Paganism.

It is indeed interesting to notice that a few studies have shown a statistically relevant difference between people practising so-called ‘New Age spirituality’ and people practising Paganism and Wicca (Jensen and Thompson 2008). It appears that those into New Age spirituality have much less in common with the BDSM subculture than do Pagans.

The Pagan belief system that sees the divine imbued in nature and its sensual experiences to the point where “all acts of love and pleasure” may honour the Goddess has fostered a subculture that is generally accepting of different “alternative sexualities”, including BDSM. Pagans are more – we would say now – ‘sex positive’ and open or often personally engaged in various non-normative ways of experiencing sexuality and romantic relationships (Fennell, 2018).

While researchers have explored spiritual aspects of sadomasochism across religious affiliations, there exists a hub within the contemporary Pagan movement. As contemporary Pagans have espoused alternative sexual practices such as BDSM, polyamory, homosexuality, bisexuality, pansexuality and all forms of non-normative sexuality as sacred practices.(Mueller, 2018, p.40)

However, public Pagan rituals almost never include sexual practices, yet they often employ deliberate sexual symbols and vocabulary to ritualistically express a religious engagement that celebrates, as sacred, the carnal aspects of life. Interesting to notice that, despite its ideological support for alternative sexualities, Paganism was actually quite slow to drop many ritual and ideological trappings of heteronormativity. As a result, there was a tension between that more conservative strand of sexual practice and a broad dogmatic support for all kinds of sexuality. This tension has created a gap in the Pagan community that the BDSM subculture has started to fill (Fennell, 2018).

As Mueller explains, Pagan feminism has shown diverging reactions to BDSM. From pro-kink, (Pat Califia and Carol Queen), anti-kink (Dianic priestess Ruth Barrett), and ambivalent on the matter (Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart and Starhawk). Feminist objections to BDSM have employed similar critiques to the ones often moved to pornography. Barrett, Starhawk, and Zell-Ravenheart suggested that BDSM eroticises violence and therefore is, or maybe, a symptom of patriarchal misogyny. Others (Queen and Califia) have held that kink may be a woman’s choice and that kinky women should have the freedom to pursue their own sexual fantasies and desires without admonishment from the pagan religious community. For the latter, “all acts of love and pleasure” most certainly include consensual BDSM (Mueller, 2018, p.42).

In Wicca, submission to pain is explored as an initiatory ordeal, purification, and opportunity for transcendence as well as arousal, sensation, and energy generation. The use of the scourge in Wicca is one of the traditional eight paths of power, the eight ways of performing magick and represents “religious, spiritual, and magical use of the body that introduces pain as arousal and transcendence. The body is here elevated to a site of spiritual experience and countered through intense ritual Praxis within a wider ritual context.” The scourge is also used by Wiccans to encounter their shadow-selves, to face fears, pain and the forces of primordial chaos. As scholar Jo Pearson highlights, “the traces that the scourge leaves behind on the body are marks both of an encounter with the infinite and of an experience of self-transformation”.

Jack Rinella – Congregational Church pastor, and sacred kink educator – explains that true spirituality needs to be holistic, a spirituality of the body as well as of the soul. BDSM works in this context as embodied, lived religion.

BDSM scenes, therefore, act as rituals, sometimes unintentionally and sometimes intentionally structured as a religious practice. BDSM is also seen here as a spiritual expression because it taps into three of the most primal, human forces: pain, power and – often – sex. “Religious” ecstasy and sexual orgasm present, in fact, similarities. Rinella teaches that “understanding the physical aspects of ecstasy is the first step in understanding the emotional, spiritual, and theological aspects of the same, albeit differently-labelled, experience.” (Rinella, 2006, p. 20).

Pain unmakes the profane world with its physical attachments and leads the mystic away from the body to experience self-transcendence. Alicia Charles D’Avalon continues to illustrate what practitioners report, tackling how Raven Kaldera articulates pain as a magical or ritual technique.

It can be indeed seen as such through a few categories:”
(a) Pain to achieve an altered state, via brain chemistry, in which one can connect with the universe;
(b) pain to create energy for the top to work with;
(c) pain to bring people back in touch with their bodies;
(d) pain as a sacrifice, usually to a divine power who appreciates such things;
(e) pain as strength ordeal, to build courage and self-worth by enduring agonizing things; and
(f) pain as emotional catharsis, in order to tap into deep negative feelings to expunge them.”

Charles D’Avalon also proposes an analysis of BDSM scenes as rituals using Frederick Bird’s characteristic features of ritual.

Bird posits two main features of ritual: ritual as drama, and ritual as a medium of communication. Both of these features are found in BDSM practices as well as in Paganism or pagan rituals.

When ritual is lived as drama the person acts ritually, using oral or written scripts that detail what to say, the gestures and positions to play the roles of the characters required by their scripts. Sometimes these rituals are a form of re-enactment of historical or mythical events. A ritual, indeed, involves make-believe as during rituals people pretend to be the characters required by the mythological enactment. For the time being, they suspend the set of beliefs that direct non-ritual behaviour. Doing this repeatedly will reinforce and make real the beliefs that correspond to these acts, whether they appeal to a deity, an archetype, or an idealized objective such as enlightenment or salvation. (Bird, 1995, p. 27)

Sexuality researcher Dulcinea Pitagora says that there are two main themes regarding how individuals may choose to give meaning to their BDSM scenes, including: “the administration of pain in order to achieve a transcendent or altered state of consciousness; and an effort towards developing self-awareness via the forming and enacting of sexual Scripts.” (Pitagora 2017, pg 48). Sexual scripts become a method for achieving an altered state of consciousness to bring about a heightened awareness of the Self. The process of verbal formation and ensuing enacting of sexual scripts is also a means for accessing ‘subspace’ or ‘topspace’ by “encouraging a heightened awareness of the self that could, in turn, further an expansion and evolution of an individual’s identity.” (Pitagora 2017, pg 51).
(Charles D’Avalon, 2020)

To conclude, Paganism is a religious movement that, seeing the divine as immanent – meaning existing and permeating the material world. As a consequence, the body and the physical sensations are sacred and can help the practitioner to connect with the divine. Differently from other religions that see the body as a source of sin and in opposition to spiritual endeavours, Paganism celebrated and re-enchants the spiritual power carried by our bodies. This results in seeing all strong bodily sensations as potentially conducive to some form of spiritual purpose, whether it be entering an altered state of consciousness or lessening the grasp of the “ego” or contacting the divine in one of its forms. BDSM is potentially quite useful in this respect as it explores the avenues whereby bodily sensations can lead someone – through total immersion in the body – beyond the body. As well as teaching how to – perhaps “alchemically” – how to transmute the pain and sorrows, unavoidable in life, into ecstatic pleasure and spiritual bliss.

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REFERENCES

SECONDARY SOURCES (Academic texts)
Bird. F. 1995. Ritual as Communicative Action, Ritual and Ethnic Identity. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press, pp. 23-24.
Charles D’Avalon, A. 2020. Pain and Power: BDSM as Spiritual Expression. Inquiries Journal. 12(11).
Fennell, J. 2018. “It’s All About the Journey”: Skepticism and Spirituality in the BDSM Subculture. Sociological Forum. 33(4), pp.1045–1067.
Mueller, M. 2018. If all acts of love and pleasure are Her rituals, what about BDSM? Feminist culture wars in contemporary Paganism. Theology & Sexuality. 24(1), pp.39–52.
Pitagora, D. 2017. No Pain, No Gain? Therapeutic and Relational Benefits of Subspace in BDSM Contexts. Journal of Positive Sexuality 3, pp. 44 54.
Pearson, J. 2011. Embracing the Lash: Pain and Ritual as Spiritual Tools. Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis, 23 (1).
PRIMARY SOURCES (Authored by practitioners)
Kaldera, R. 2006. Dark Moon Rising: Pagan BDSM and the Ordeal Path. Hubbardston: Asphodel Press.
Rinella, J. 2006. Philosophy in the Dungeon: The Magic of Sex & Spirit. Chicago, IL: Rinella Editorial Services.

First uploaded 18 Feb 2020