"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
The Spiritual Dimension Of S/M
COURTESY OF: ChrisM of SubBondage.net
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.
