A wonderful article by ChrisM - Original HERE
"A knight should
be bold, fair, courteous and well-mannered, generous and loyal, not
foolish or rash, and should speak fairly without discourtesy. A
knight should be all this, and also proud and fierce to his enemies,
and kind to his friends." -Durmart
Let's begin our
discussion of SM spirituality on something of a tangent: the people
you have surely met at community functions who claim to have been
"trained" in some sort of "ancient order." Some
say they are "old guard" which actually means something.
Others claim to be "the old school" or in "Classic
style" which means nothing, or, more accurately, means whatever
you want it to mean. Some describe Roissy-like training academies in
Europe, Japan, or other exotic locales, and often stress secrecy and
exclusivity in their lengthy, impromptu descriptions.
So far as I know, none
of these ancient domination training academies really exist. No
historical literature, no websites, no consistency in the stories
told by "graduates" are ever provided. No pictorials in
"Shiny" or "Skin Two" whose lifeblood is
publicizing all things fetish. None of my gay brothers, who have a
longer continuous heritage than us hets, has evidence of ancient SM
academies (though some do find it a hot fantasy). Its true that in
recent years, SM training academies like Butchmans in Las Vegas, have
opened their doors to students. And For the past ten years, GMSMA has
been teaching a fifteen session tops school for its members. The
training of couples have long been part of the dominitrix's trade.
And there have always been, clusters and communities where sex and
sado-erotic activities were shared. Pompeii has frescoes testifying
to this. Even our venerable Ben Franklin was a member of London's
infamous hellfire club, an exclusive SM brothel, catering to the well
heeled and exotic of taste. But if Knightly Orders of SM do exist,
they do a good job of pretending they do not. Still I meet two or
three people a year who give varying claims of having been through
them. These purported students often speak in a hodgepodge of martial
arts lingo, Gor Novels, and Jedi-knighthood which itself was a 1970's
hodgepodge of Tolkein, King Arthur, and John Wayne Westerns. This
sense of pomp carries over into the moody elevator music like
"Enigma" so ubiquitous at SM functions, and use of
prenominals like "Sir" which, in times past, signified
knighthood. You see it in their solemn, deportment and in the
Halloween-like outfits worn without a shred of humor or irony.