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  • History of Magick in the West

    Buckle up I’m about to ride the timeline of Western Sex Magick. Don’t worry, I’ll keep it fast, and mostly factually accurate according to my sources Modern Sex Magick by Donald Michael Kraig.

    Evidence suggests early Hebrews practiced sex-based fertility rites 70 CE: Destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. Mystical knowledge (including Kabbalah & sex magick) begins to disseminate

    1118 CE: Knights Templar founded. Accused of heresy and magick, possibly learned sex magick from Sufis, who were influenced by Tantric India.

    1312: The Templars are suppressed; survivors carry secret knowledge underground.

    Hasidim (1700s): Orthodox Jewish mystics focused on meditative Kabbalah there were like were like, “No more sexy rituals, suppressing older techniques. bodies + ecstasy = divine contact.

    Paschal Beverly Randolph (1815–1875):Enter the Black occult daddy himself. Created new sex magick systems and founded the Eulis Brotherhood. Crowley copied his homework later, but make it racist and chaotic.

    Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772): Explored spiritual sexuality through trances and automatic writing.

    Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815): Developed animal magnetism—trance states through sexual energy, laying groundwork for hypnotic and energetic healing traditions.

    William Blake (1757–1827): Poet, artist, and Freemason; merged Swedenborgian, Druidic, and Kabbalistic ideas into visionary art with sexual undercurrents.

    Golden Dawn (1888): Founded in London. Secret rituals hinted at sex magick. Members included Moina & MacGregor Mathers, Aleister Crowley, Dion Fortune

    Aleister Crowley (1875–1947): Overtly practiced and popularized sex magick through the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) and Thelemic doctrine.(He’s like: “All of this? Mine now. Add sex. Add drugs. Add a goat.”
    He took Randolph’s notes, put a British accent on them, and boom)

    Austin Osman Spare: Developed automatic drawing and sigil-based sex magick; which became the foundation for Chaos Magick.

    Surrealist artists (1920s–30s) like Salvador Dalí and André Breton used sexual and dream states to channel unconscious energies, echoing occult sex-magickal principles.

    Gerald Gardner & Wicca: Introduced the Great Rite, a symbolic (sometimes literal) sex magick rite within Neopaganism.

    this history ignores the wider reality of sex magic namely it didnt state in the west (taoist, vajrayana, shinto, kemetic, ifa and orisha, to name a few), and this also implies sex magic remained unchanged over the last 2000 years it did not. any way now You carry the bones of a people who prayed with their hips. Sex magick is old. You’re the latest in a long, sweaty line of sluts keeping the flame alive.

  • Finished The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm Review

    A Masterclass in Emotional and Intellectual Dragging. Let me tell you something: this book hit. Hard. I picked up The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm thinking I was about to get some soft, philosophical musings on romance and relationships. What I got instead was a complete philosophical takedown of society, ego, capitalism, and our inability to connect. Fromm doesn’t just explain love — he dissects it, deconstructs it, demands better from us. And he does it all with the most elegant, intellectual side-eye I’ve ever read.

    The tone? Everything.

    It’s like watching someone set up dominoes — precise, methodical — and then knock them down one by one until suddenly you’re left staring at the last one, trembling. And that last domino is you.

    Fromm builds to this absolutely chilling indictment of modern society:

    “Our society is run by a managerial bureaucracy… man is an automaton—well fed, well clad, but without any ultimate concern for that which is his peculiarly human quality and function… If it is true… that love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence, then any society which excludes… the development of love, must in the long run perish of its own contradiction.”

    Read that again. That’s not a quote, that’s A warning.

    Fromm breaks down why love is missing in the modern world — how we’ve confused love with consumerism, performance, control. He talks about why we don’t know how to love, how it all got tangled up in the machinery of profit and productivity, and why learning to love is not just cute or noble — it’s essential to our very humanity.

    And the way he says it? Impeccable.
    There is shade in every sentence. It’s not preachy — it’s precise. It’s like being read for filth by someone in a velvet smoking jacket, sipping wine, quoting Hegel, and daring you to catch up. It’s the politest, nastiest intellectual takedown I’ve ever read. A masterclass in soft-spoken audacity.

    The tone is calm but cutting. Thoughtful but brutal. High-key shade on every page. There’s a scoff baked into every sentence. I swear, I could hear the arched eyebrow.

    And yet… underneath all of it is this beautiful, radical, sincere hope. A belief that love can be cultivated. That we can unlearn this disconnection. That society can be reshaped in the image of true love — not the romanticized fluff we’re sold, but the real, difficult, honest kind rooted in care, discipline, humility, and commitment.

    I took so many notes. My notes are chaos. My brain is cooked.

    And let’s talk about that last chapter — the one I will be re-reading every month until further notice. It cracked me wide open. If you talk to me anytime soon, be warned: I will be quoting this book like scripture. I see why bell hooks cited it in All About Love.

    10/10, no notes. Except, you know, the entire notebook I filled.

  • Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg Review

    seriously this book is casting out spirits disguised as a communication manual.

    Marshall Rosenberg didn’t just hand me a tool, he handed me a mirror, and a scalpel. and said get to work.

    This book is not about how to “communicate better.” It’s about how to stop speaking like a colonizer. and how to stop letting the colonizer speak through you.

    This was a wake up call to how much of our everyday speech is laced with violence, shame, and guilt. This book really pulled back the veil of socially acceptable manipulation and all the ways we’ve learned to control, manipulate, and people.

    Most of what we call “communication” is a poorly disguised threat without even realizing it.

    Judgement, blame and guilt are expressions of our own unmet needs.””survival stragtegies” we us to avoid facing fact we dont know what we need and hoping someone else can figure it out for us.

    The book said “All criticism, attack, and insult vanish when we listen for feelings and needs.”

    How everytime you hear the word “should” or “I have to,” you’re handing your agency to the abyss. and saying Fuck it. you’re outsourcing your power. you’re kicking your inner child on your way out the door…. again

    When you been taught to that sacrifice = love, when actually… your just neglecting your needs and Wearing your pain like it’s a badge of honor.

    What sucked and was heard to swallow was “Nobody makes you feel anything.” The way I interpret what someone says or does is on me. “Anger isn’t about anyone else. It’s about your unmet needs.” see that one i need a minute ….

    “The difference between a request and a demand is what happens when someone says no.” Ouch. you see what i mean?

    This man said : “Depression is your reward, for being good.” like wtf!!!!!!!

    That we are taught to be good, be obedient, be productive, and above all be quiet your actual needs.

    What the real struggle is: Don’t label. Don’t judge. Just say what’s happening, say what you feel, say what you need, and clearly, concisly, ask. Language is a spell to liberate, not to control. Guilt, shame, blame? Just masks to avoid your needs.

    This book is not gentle. But it will help you grow.

    Rosenberg is calling for a revolution dismantling the internalized systems of domination that keep us distant from ourselves and each other. He teaches you how to get real and get in touch with your needs. He’s asking us to speak in a language of life. A language of need. A language of choice.

    And honestly? That shit slaps.
    Highly recommend

  • Review: The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem by Nathaniel Branden

    Before I get into the review, I want to lay some groundwork. I don’t choose books at random. Every book I pick, I do so with the hope that it will crucible for me—not just as a person, but as a mage, a prophet, and a healer.

    My background is… strange. I’m a former preacher, a former school teacher, and now a former research scientist. So I come to magick from three angles: as a member of a congregation, as a student, and as a research topic or research area.

    Here, my lab, my equipment, and my facilities is myself. In Existential Kink by Carolyn Elliott, she states, “The truth is sensational.” Truth resonates—it has a feeling associated with it. That is my metric, those are my notes for further examination, and that is what I’m going to share with you.

    But also, while I will share that with you, I will also talk about two things: association and recollection. As the student, these are essential for my understanding, and I will bring up other books, other quotes, other authors, and other notes to help bring my point into focus.

    And finally, as an area of research and study, let me share my methodology for evaluation. Unlike Western culture, which calls for “scientific” backing to split reason from emotion, and reality is understood perceived and organized, in linear sequential relationships.

    I will use Marimba Ani’s Yurugu definition for study: knowing a subject involves knowing the surroundings. Knowledge involves immersion, and through sympathetic participation, meaning is revealed and understood as Symbols—these symbols—are the words I will share with you.

    I don’t usually talk about this, but because this book is something I’ve newly finished, I wanted to reinforce my ideas, beliefs, and practices with you.

    So let’s begin.

    Branden defines self-esteem as “the immune system of consciousness.” That stuck with me. He breaks it down into six practices: Living consciously, Self-acceptance, Self-responsibility, Self-assertiveness, Living purposefully. Personal integrity

    What came to mind in reading that was: your self-esteem is a credit card with unlimited funds, but that bitch will decline

    And while the tone of the book is undeniably Western—individualistic, capitalist, and sometimes awkwardly obsessed with Ayn Rand—I was surprised at how much of it aligned with magical theorems and esoteric principles. what came to mind as I read were these theorems:

    Theorem 1: All action is magickal.

    Theorem 2: Magick is not something you do; it’s something you are.

    Theorem 4: Creation on the spiritual plane leads to creation on the physical plane.

    Theorem 6: Let go—and let the magick work.

    Theorem 8: Magick is both a science and an art.

    Theorem 9: Magick is synergistic.

    Theorem 16: The sexual trance opens many doors.

    There’s a strong resonance between Branden’s core idea—that self-esteem is the backbone of conscious, embodied living—and the magical premise that alignment between mind, body, and spirit (or soma) is the first step in unlocking your true power.

    Branden writes that self-esteem is made up of two parts:

    Confidence in your ability handle challenge. AND Confidence in our right succeed.

    This reminded me of something else: Magick requires neither your understanding nor your consent. Like self-esteem, it simply does what you ask of it—whether consciously or unconsciously. And as Jung said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it Fate.” or “As above, so below; as within, so without.”

    This is the first step, we must take: walk in one accord—mind, body, and soul: not rejecting or fragmenting any part of ourselves. That is the real beginning of a magical practice. That shit is hard believe me

    which lead into this quote “Self-acceptance is my refusal to be in an adversarial relationship with myself.” That is the first pillar of self esteem and bring to mind what is talked about it in the body keeps the score “feeling free to know what you know and to feel what you feel without becoming overwhelmed, enraged, ashamed, or collapsed.”
    But this is where the work begins he says that “Without self-acceptance, self-esteem is impossible.”, impossible not hard, not unlikely … impossible. Let that sit for a second. This fundemental key force to life is impossible to achieve without acceptance.

    Then he goes on to say self-acceptance is what an effective psychotherapist strives to awaken in a person this mirrors what The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk who says “Psychological problems occur when our internal signals don’t work, when our maps don’t lead us where we need to go, when we are too paralyzed to move, when our actions do not correspond to our needs, or when our relationships break down.” in other words ” realities we cannot avoid. Regardless of what we do or do not admit, we cannot be indifferent to our own self-evaluation. That our actions shape our self-esteem, and our self-esteem shapes our actions. That is magical causality. That is the “as within, so without.” Causation flows in both directions.

    Where I pushed back was the overemphasis on productivity, efficiency, and efficacy, The Western lens of radical individualism

    As a practitioner, my goal is to live congruently—body, mind, and spirit aligned in desire, and in purpose. Reading this book reminded me that esteem is not just a quality. It’s a magickal potential.

    I recommend this book—not as gospel, but as a tool. Take what resonates. Burn the rest.

    I’d love to hear what you’re thinking about it.

  • On time

    Magick is all about mythoform and mythology—the deep stories we tell that shape how we see and move through the world.

    One of the core myths we’ve inherited?
    That ever-present sinking feeling that we’re “wasting time.”
    I still feel trapped by it. Caught in an antagonistic system that breeds confusion, anxiety, and fear.
    That’s not an accident—it’s a built-in feature.

    “Where do these white people run to every morning? To their workplaces, of course. Why do they have to run to something that is not running away from them? They do not have time.”

    I had to say this word in French because there is no equivalent in the local language. The conversation came to a halt when the elder had to ask what this “time” is.
    (Malidoma Somé, Ritual: Power, Healing, and Community)

    Let that sink in.

    This isn’t just a philosophical take—this is about how myth (yes, even modern, “rational” cultures have them) is silently scripting our lives.
    Because “time” we’re so afraid of wasting—it doesn’t exist the way we were told.

    This is my second time coming across this.

    In Yurugu by Marimba Ani:

    “Time” in this view moves ceaselessly towards some point never reached in the “future.” This sense of telos (Greek for “end,” “purpose,” or “goal”) is an important aspect of European mythology—the stories a culture uses to explain the world, its origins, and the fundamental aspects of human existence.

    It gives meaning to European life.

    Yet the “future” creates more problems than it resolves. Ironically, this “future” is approached by the ever-present line of time through which the European seeks fulfillment, but at the same time assures her/him of never being fulfilled.

    The “future” represents unattainable perfection.
    It is an abstraction that is unreachable and, therefore, unknowable.
    And what is unknowable for the European causes anxiety.

    The European psyche needs the illusion of a rationally ordered universe in which everything can be known.

    A future that never comes.
    A perfection you never reach.
    A loop of anxiety, fear, and shame dressed up in suits, clocks, and productivity.

    And the gag is—this was all by design.

    European mythoform—the unconscious structural pattern shaping its worldview—creates an unknown and unknowable future whose only relationship to the past and present is that it determines them, but cannot be determined by them. This antagonistic situation causes emotional confusion, anxiety, and fear for the European.

    Yet this oppressive future cannot be avoided,
    Because the clock moves them toward it at an uncontrollable pace—
    Which seems to move faster and faster.

    All of this is an effect of the limitations of lineal, secular time.
    It is neither phenomenal nor sacred nor spiritual.
    Participants in the culture have only one recourse against the fear: Science (Purchasing of “insurance” a attempt to escape the fear.)

    They seek to relieve their anxiety by gaining control over what controls them. Failing, in the end, to find fulfillment. Because the European conception of science is above all secular, alienating, literate, rationalistic, and linear.

    This abstract and oppressive future continues to threaten, to intimidate, to frighten. They move inexorably toward it, a movement that imparts value (“progress”), and yet the perceived destiny is fear-producing.

    The European worldview doesn’t just teach this logic—
    It hides it beneath the illusion of being “universal.”
    Then turns around and sells that illusion to the rest of the world back to US

    The culture teaches its logic. It hands you its worldview.
    You absorb it, bury it, act on it—and forget it’s not truth, it’s programming.

    “Experts” dig that logic back up, slap a label on it, and sell it as universal truth.

    They present it with such authority—it can only be the only valid way to think.
    But what they’re really pushing is their assumed reality, dressed up as logic and objectivity.

    And because of the way it’s delivered, It gets imposed. Globalized.

    Meanwhile, its roots—Christian morality, Western value systems, white fear, capitalist logic—stay camouflaged under this fake-ass pseudouniversalism.

    It’s clever.
    It’s violent.
    And it keeps us divided.

    In a magickal practice, we don’t work with those stories—we create new ones.
    We bend time.
    Pause it.
    Let it circle back.
    Let it disappear.

    We can reclaim time, redefine time, and name our own rhythms.
    We can create moments that are timeless.
    This is the beauty of the path.

    The further I go, the more I realize this isn’t just about rope, or candles, or chants.
    It’s about epistemology.
    It’s about which stories get believed—and why.
    It’s about what we can do once we stop believing the lies.

    Because the mythoform of the dominant culture is designed to make you chase something you can never catch.
    It tells you time is linear, scarce, and slipping away.
    That if you’re not productive, you’re not valuable.
    That rest is lazy.
    That pleasure is dangerous.

    But we know better.
    This requires deep consideration of all the bullshit that’s been assumed.
    We remember who the fuck we are.
    We strip it.
    Burn it.
    Build Anew.

  • I was thinking about queerness in magick and community

    I wanted to share this quote about queerness from spirit of intimacy by Some Sobonfu the wife of Malidoma Patrice Somé who is the author of ritual the current book im reading she says:
    ” The words “gay” and “lesbian” do not exist in
    the village, but there is the word “gatekeeper.” Gatekeepers
    are people who live a life at the edge between two worlds
    the world of the village and the world of spirit. What
    they do, they dont like to communicate to anyone. It is
    their right to keep what they do to themselves. Every
    body in the village respects that because without
    gatekeepers, there is no access to other worlds.

    The gatekeepers stand on the threshold of the gender
    line. They are mediators between the two genders. They
    make sure that there is peace and balance between women
    and men. If the two genders are in conflict and the whole
    village is caught in it, the gatekeepers are the ones to bring
    peace. Gatekeepers do not take sides. They simply play
    the role of “the sword of truth and integrity.””

    Just thought that was interesting queersness just a few more things i thought was interesting.

    • gatekeepers have “one foot in all the other worlds and the other foot here,” and the “vibration of their body is totally different from others”.
    • “Now as to their sexual orientation, nobody cares about this question, they care only about their performance as gatekeepers.”
    • gatekeepers are not perceived as “the other” and are not compelled to form a separate community to survive. Instead, they are encouraged to fulfill their inherent role and contribute their gifts to the community’s benefit.
    • They possess insight into both genders, allowing them to help men and women understand each other more effectively in daily life. For instance, a group of women might consult a male gatekeeper for village issues, and a female gatekeeper might join a men’s circle for similar purposes.
    • This perspective on homosexuality different from the West, because all sexuality in the village is considered “spiritually-based”.
    • Gatekeepers are crucial for maintaining “alignment between the spirit world and the world ” as they are “the keepers of the keys to other dimensions” and without them, “the gates to the other world would be shut”.
    • Their knowledge differs from that of mentors and elders because gatekeepers have access to all dimensions and can open any gate, often being called upon by elders for assistance in understanding the spirit world or opening specific gateways.
    • Some states that gay and lesbian individuals in the West are often very spiritual but disconnected from their spiritual role, which might lead them to seek other ways of self-definition and to appear as if they do not have a unique purpose.
    • Some also mention that gatekeeping is part of one’s life purpose, declared before birth, and is developed through rigorous training to prevent the misuse of its power. It is not a role sought for power or sexual orientation, and a true gatekeeper is responsible for the entire village and tribe.

  •  Intentional Kink Modalities For Healing?

    “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it fate.” — Carl Jung

    Jung’s words ring especially true in the realm of sacred kink. Our unconscious desires—especially the taboo ones—shape our reality, even if we don’t recognize them as “ours.” These disowned parts of ourselves, the ones we repress or ignore, still manage to fulfill themselves. And because we’re disconnected from them, we often misread their arrival in our lives as tragedy rather than fulfillment.

    But what if we could see them? What if we could meet those desires in ritual, in sensation, in play? That’s the heart of intentional kink—a sacred, embodied practice of conscious transformation.

    Seven Axioms of Sacred Kink

    To begin practicing sacred kink intentionally, we start with these seven axioms—guiding truths that reframe sensation, shame, and desire:

    1. Having is evidence of wanting.
    2. We have a choice as to whether we experience sensation as pleasure or pain.
    3. Every happening in life is a “stroke”—and we can get off on all of it.
    4. The degree to which we’re turned on or off is shaped by approval.
    5. Desire evolves through fulfillment—not repression.
    6. Shame is the magic killer.
    7. The truth is sensational.

    These axioms challenge us to stop resisting life, to stop pathologizing desire. They ask us to lean into the body, the breath, the truth of what’s happening right now.

    Intentional kink teaches that our thoughts, like our desires, are tools of creation. The mystical and the neurological meet here. As Urban Tantra reminds us:

    “Every thought you think is creating your future… With self-acceptance and self-love, you can create or change anything in your life.”

    This echoes the neuroscience laid out in The Body Keeps the Score: the only way to access and change the emotional brain is through self-awareness—through interoception, or looking inward. When we engage in kink consciously, we activate this internal gaze. We stop outsourcing our lives and begin witnessing ourselves again

    There’s a darker truth, too. For many, trauma and pleasure have become entangled. As Bessel van der Kolk notes, “fear and aversion can be transformed into pleasure.” Trauma lives in the body and builds patterns that repeat until we interrupt them—through ritual, through embodiment, through sacred play. This is where kink becomes alchemical: it transforms the pain of the past into the power of the present.

    At its deepest, sacred kink is about radical, soul-deep acceptance. When we surrender to what is—when we stop resisting our fears, our shame, our desires—we reclaim the “alarm system” of the body and restore it to its sacred function. The body knows how to care for us. Through intentional kink, it remembers.

    As Dossie Easton describes in The New Topping Book:

    “Play directed to the purpose of attaining altered states of consciousness… becomes a quest for vision, guidance, personal truth, or spiritual communion.”

    Kink becomes a ritual container for trance, surrender, and revelation. It isn’t just play—it’s pilgrimage.

    There are many ways into this sacred terrain. Here are eight powerful modalities—erotic gateways into transformation:

    1. Rhythm – Dance and movement as portals into ecstasy.
    2. Ordeal – Challenge and intensity (rope, balance, endurance) to confront fear and awaken strength.
    3. Flesh – Pain as revelation, skin as scripture.
    4. Ritual – Daily devotion, service, worship, and structure as spiritual discipline.
    5. Breath – Erotic breathwork, connecting energy circuits and expanding presence.
    6. Horse – Roleplay and possession, invoking archetypes and the divine.
    7. Asceticism – Erotic monasticism, obedience, simplicity, and quietude.
    8. Sacred Plants – Entheogenic tools to expand consciousness and dismantle ego.

    Each path opens a different door in the psyche—offering catharsis, communion, clarity, or collapse. And each one, when practiced with intention, brings us home to ourselves.

    Here’s the truth: we are always doing magic, whether we know it or not. Intentional kink simply teaches us how to do it well. When we repress our truth, when we deny what we feel, we don’t stop creating—we just create chaos. As Erich Fromm warns:

    “Avoid the company of zombies—people whose soul is dead although their body is alive.”

    To dissociate is to disappear. But to feel fully—to accept and embody desire, sensation, pain, pleasure—is to come alive again. Magic works either way. Sacred kink lets us choose how.

    To truly heal, we must also confront the stories we live inside. Our ideologies, our fantasies, our inherited myths—these shape our consciousness just as much as our actions do. Until we understand what divides us—internally and culturally—we cannot complete the alchemical journey. This final step, often referred to as “meeting Yurugu,” is the confrontation with the colonial, fragmenting force within us and our society.

    But that’s a whole blog post on its own.

    Sacred kink is not about performance or preference—it’s about presence. It’s about confronting ourselves in the mirror of eroticism and asking: what do I really want? What is my truth? What am I ready to feel, love, and integrate?

    If you’re practicing kink without intention, you’re still doing magic—but you’re blindfolded, spellbound, and chasing shadows. Sacred kink removes the blindfold and hands you the wand.

    The work is deep. The stakes are real. But so is the transformation.

    Welcome to the path.

  • Nihilomancy: “divination from nothingness”

    I’ve been reviewing some old material for an upcoming class on bondage as a tool toward spiritual release. This book is one of my hard-to-find treasures: Earthly Bondage by Brigett Harrington. https://www.passionandsoul.com/blog/soul/earthly-bondage

    I’ll be teaching this class with Goddess Dior and the House of Diamond, About the Many Path Of Earthly Bondage and one of the core paths we’ll be diving into is the art of Nihilomancy: divination through nothingness.

    “I call upon thee, wisdom in darkness…”

    From that invocation, the chapter plunges us into a world where silence, restraint, and the absence of external stimuli become gateways to the divine.

    The practice of Niihilomancy dark and sensuyal exploration of how sensory deprivation can be used not just for kink, but for deep inner work, divination, and astral travel. It walks a fine edge between mysticism and embodiment, showing how blindfolds, hoods, vows of silence, bondage, and mummification are not only tools of restraint, but instruments of revelation.

    By removing outside distractions (sight, sound, movement), the body and mind enter an altered state where messages can rise from deep within the soul, and from the spirit world.

    It’s where the world is stripped away until only the question remains:

    • Where do I go from here?
    • What choice is mine to make?
    • What truths lie beyond the body?

    Their is a ritual to preparing for this; laying out sacred items and calling upon spiritual forces before entering the sensory void. With each layer :rope, hood, scent, silence. you get closer to the inner realm where wisdom lives.

    What stands out most is the gravity of ritual. Each object whether rope, oil, or spandex becomes charged with intentionality. There is a rhythm to the preparation, an architecture to the ritual that feels devotional, erotic, and sacred all at once. The ritual explores both the somatic and the spiritual experience of sensory deprivation as a threshold art: the portal.

    Think less “nothingness” in the empty sense, and more the void, the liminal space, the fertile dark.

    Whether through fasting, purging, or embedding sigils within the wrappings and around your ritual space, it evokes/invoke something powerful. Death lingering in the margins: the surrender of control, ego, movement, consciousness. But instead of despair, it offers a promise… answers.

    while doing this ritual it describes you’ll feel the shadows settle around you. You’ll hear the call to your own dark silence.

    what is clear the path is laid in layers:
    Fasting or purging .
    Setting the ritual space
    Laying out tools.
    Invoking spirits guides or ancestors.
    Embedding sigils.

    With every layer, with every sense denied, a different kind of awareness opens.
    Sometimes, that leads to wisdom from self.
    Sometimes, it leads to channeling a presence.
    Sometimes, it leads to delicious dissolution.

    Let’s be clear:
    This is erotic mysticism: raw, reverent, and real.

    For those in our coven of kinky mystics and sensual scholars, that aren’t afraid to talk about getting ridden by godforms.

    Because even in darkness, we need witnesses.

    If you’ve ever longed to use your body as a spell, your silence as a question, and your restraints as a roadmap to spirit
    this one’s for you.

  • Romance, Brought to You by Late-Stage Capitalism: Fromm, Freud, and the Marketplace

    Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving critiques several prevailing—yet deeply flawed—conceptions of love in contemporary Western society, often presenting them in a satirical or critical light by contrasting them with the idea of genuine love.

    He argues that these modern understandings actually represent a “disintegration of love.”

    He writes:

    “No objective observer of our Western life can doubt that love is rare, and that its place is taken by a number of forms of pseudo-love, which are in reality are many forms of the disintegration of love.”

    He says we often treat love like a commodity, focusing only on two things: being loved and being lovable

    This leads men to chase success, power, and wealth, while women cultivate attractiveness. But these are STRATEGIES!!!!!! (I’m going to write about strategies one day)

    Fromm sharply points out how capitalism has influences our character:

    The owner of capital can buy labor and command it.
    The owner of labor must sell it or starve.

    He says this mindset is tied to the idea that finding love is simple—that the hard part is finding the right OBJECT
    He argues our entire culture is built on capitalism, and our idea of love follows it. We emphasize the importance of the OBJECT against the importance of the function. Our culture revolves around mutually favorable exchange.

    Happiness?
    Fromm says it lies in the thrill of looking for the best and buying all that you can afford. In dating, this translates to a neatly packaged “attractive” set of qualities sought after on the personality market. And what makes a person attractive? That depends entirely on the fashion of the time both physically and mentally.

    In the 20s, a drinking, smoking, tough, and sexy woman was attractive.
    Today? The fashion demands domestic coyness.
    At the turn of the 20th century, a man had to be aggressive and ambitious.
    Today? Social and tolerant.

    But either way, the sense of “falling in love” is just people feeling like they’ve found the best object available on the market, given the limitations of their own exchange value.

    We’re out here marketing ourselves. And the OBJECT must be desirable, socially valuable, complete with hidden assets and future potential.

    This was written in 1956. My grandmother was 4. My grandfather was 6. And yet it feels like he could have written this yesterday. We’re still following the same tired pattern of exchange that governs the commodity and labor market—and we’re still calling it love.

    Then Fromm drags another contradiction:
    The idea that love is just a spontaneous feeling or an “irresistible emotion,” especially when it’s mixed with sexual attraction. He says this mindset completely neglects the importance of WILL.

    Love, he insists, is a decision, a judgment, a promise.
    If love were only a feeling, then loving someone forever would be impossible.
    The only forever is an ACT.

    Love is an act of will. A commitment.
    And fundamentally? It does not matter to who.

    Let me bring up another contradiction that caught me:
    Fromm breaks down different kinds of love—Love of God, Mother, Father, Brother, Erotic Love.

    What stopped me in my tracks was his take on Mother Love vs Father Love:

    • Mother Love is unconditional love. Love for the helpless.
    • Father Love is earned. Conditional. Merit-based.

    He even shows this in how religious systems reflect it.
    Matriarchal religion? That’s Mother Love: all-protective, all-enveloping, unconditional. We are all equal before Mother Earth.
    Patriarchal religion? Father Love: making demands, setting rules, establishing laws.

    Then he speaks on Brotherly Love—love among equals. He writes:

    “If I love my brother, I love all my brothers; if I love my child, I love all my children; no, beyond that, I love all children.”

    Each kind of love is different, but by their very nature, they aren’t meant to be limited to one person.

    Erotic love, though? That’s the craving for complete fusion with ONE other person. It’s exclusive—not universal. Why?

    Fromm directly challenges the belief that love is just the byproduct of sexual pleasure. He says just because two people learn to sexually satisfy each other doesn’t mean they love each other. Sexual desire is often mistaken for love. People think they love someone when really, they just want other.

    But fusion isn’t just physical.
    He says love is not the result of good sex—what we’re really seeking is relief from the painful tension and anxiety of separateness.

    Without love, physical union never leads to true connection. It remains orgiastic and transitory, leaving two people “as far apart as they were before.” So we keep chasing the high with a new person. A new stranger. Over and over again. Because closeness, like novelty, fades.

    Yo!!! Like… are you feeling that in your chest too?
    I damn near cried.

    Then Fromm goes in on Freud. Freud claimed:

    “Man, having found that genital love offered him his greatest gratification, made it the central point of his life.”

    That idea was revolutionary in the 1890s—but Fromm calls it conformist. It completely misses the mystical essence of love: the root of intense union with another person—the feeling of fusion, of oneness—the “oceanic feeling.”(im definitely going to write about the oceanic feeling or the sea of orgasmic bliss)

    To Freud, love was irrational. And the thinkers of the time?
    They were busy trying to prove capitalism matched the natural state of man:

    • That we are naturally competitive, insatiable, hostile.
    • That we’re driven by limitless desire for sexual conquest.
    • And that only society prevents us from going full feral. ( and they have the nerve to call anyone savage)

    So love, hate, ambition, jealousy?
    Freud chalked them all up to variations of the sexual instinct.

    Sound familiar?
    I’ve been trying to tell y’all—you only think the way you think because you live here, and some old fuck told you to.
    This brings me back to Yurugu (which I will write about one day).

    Freud didn’t see that the key to understanding life is not the body, or hunger, or sex, or possessions—it’s the totality of human existence. That’s a very Eastern thought, one that echoes in the Tao and ATR.

    Fromm ties this all together and says:

    Our character (in capitalism) is shaped by the need to exchange, to barter, to consume.
    Everything—material and spiritual—becomes an object of exchange.

    We are automatons with personality packages who have forgotten how to love. We seek security in the herd—and in not being different: not in thought, not in feeling, not in action. Everyone tries to remain as same as possible while remaining utterly alone—racked by insecurity, anxiety, and guilt.

    Our palliatives? A strict routine of bureaucratized, mechanical work—where you remain unaware of your desires, unaware of transcendence, unaware of unity. You overcome your unconscious despair with the routine of amusement, passive consumption, and the hollow satisfaction of buying new things—then exchanging them for others. You are sedated, compliant, obedient—and you like it. Hoping for a fair bargain.

    This shows up nowhere more clearly than in marriage—a union structured like a corporate team.

    In the Victorian age and in many other cultures: love was not a spontaneous personal experience that might lead to marriage. Marriage was contracted by convention, and love was expected to follow after the paperwork was signed. This is the background of what we call marriage: a contract to exchange objects.

    The ideal partner is well-functioning employee: independent, cooperative, and tolerant, and yet ambitious, and aggressive. Intimacy is but as a refuge from unbearable loneliness. We enhance “collaboration,” by adjusting our behaviors for mutual satisfaction, pooling common interests, and teaming up against a hostile world.

    But this, Fromm argues, is pseudo-love.

    It’s the disintegration of love. True love, he says, is an art—one that requires discipline, concentration, patience, care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge.

    And it is completely incompatible with the consumerist, market-driven, alienated society we live in.

  • favorite rope sources

    These are my favorite rope sources:
    🖤 Twisted Monk
    🖤 R&W Rope
    🖤 Agreeable Agony
    🖤 DeGiotto Rope
    🖤 Kinbaku Studio
    🖤 Damn Good Rope Co.
    🖤 Knothead Nylon
    🖤 Kolker Rope
    🖤 ChromaKnotz
    🖤 DyeAddictRope

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