The pyre has burned itself out and the Quiet Crisis drew to a close, followed a period of spiritual isolation and recovery. With the pandemic still a thing, this entailed some physical isolation as well, but I have returned to exploring my spiritual and sexual self.
The Gatekeepers
Over the Summer of 2021, while dealing with the Quiet Crisis, I cast out for spiritual information and a way to both quell my addictive impulses . I landed on a Grimoire through a site I had frequented a while back: BecomeALivingGod.com. The site has a robust forum and offers books and services for hire.
From this site, I purchase The Nine Demonic Gatekeepers, by E.A. Koetting, which detail his work treating with Belial, Lucifer, Azazel, Abaddon, Lucifugre, Beelzebub, Baal, Asmodeus, and Satan. Of course, I had great aspirations of reading the grimoire and studying it at a quick rate, becoming a Master Magician in a number of months and building pacts with demons along the way.
The rise and fall of the Quiet Crisis prevent this, of course, but I began studying the chapter on Belial. In the grimoire, Belial is known as “Masterless” and the “Worthless One,” both of which hit my kink sensibilities when it comes to my submissive tendencies and my pervading issues of self-worth.
For months, I had been working on dealing with childhood issues related to my issues with my father and the conservative political, social, and religious culture in which I grew up. So, I recited Belial’s enn and incorporated exaltations to him into my ritual practices, but even so, the going was slow. Couple with my on-again/off-again stuttering practice, I didn’t get much beyond the beginning of Belial’s grimoire.
Even so, progress was made. I began to have visions and images in my meditation practice, most of which didn’t make immediate sense. But, answers come to those who seek them and realization of the images comes when you’re ready to receive the answer.
Gay slave Academy
Like any addict who struggles with their subtances, as the Quiet Crisis ebbed and flowed, my own self-esteem rose and fell in tandem. I would cycle from feeling empowered to feeling powerless, playing out the roles of intellectual and spirit rebel, and total worthless abomination. This is a cycle that has played out in life many times, on different timelines and to different extremes of highs and lows.
When it comes to BDSM and power exchange relationships, I identify as a Switch, meaning I can move from Dom to sub as needed in a relationship or a scene. Well, that’s the theory. In practice, this means that I am often “pressed into” the role of Dom despite having strong sub tendencies.
I use “pressed into” within the quotes because usually, my being Dom happens one of two ways. As a high-functioning individual and something of an alpha in my day-to-day life, I have been told that I give off definite Dom vibes and subs respond to that energy by referring to me as a Dom and acting as if I am dominant in a scene. I also tend to be a “service-Dom,” dominating subs in a scene to teach skills and give subs new experiences.
Either way it happens, I am not exclusively a Dom and have a not-very secret ambition to become a boy/sub or a power-exchange slave. For many years, I sought out a Master and found none that were into my body type, my age, or who seemed higher-functioning than myself (it’s hard to submit to an alpha man whose life is a train wreck). I look for ways to be submissive in scenes, but I have not met anyone who both wanted me to give them my power by enslaving me or whom I respected enough to offer my power.
I ran across the Gay slave Academy Website from a retweet on my feed from their Gay slave Academy Twitter Account. Thinking it an interesting way to acquire training, practice a principle fetish around erotic hypnosis, and maybe even find a Master or Masters to serve in real time, I signed up and started listening to their introductory hypno track several times a day for a few weeks.
I’ll say that the hypno track definitely has effects. I know that the fetish/fantasy of hypno held by most is that it immediately has a profound effect, but my experience is more subtle, a slow, persistent guidance toward expressing new habits, new mindsets, revealing oneself to oneself. These tracks were just that and I found myself becoming more obedient to my husband, more thoughtful about what he needs, and a general mindset of placing him before myself.
Likewise, I sought out opportunities in my local community to serve, in one case acting as a “rope bottom” for a monthly session of Atlanta Men In Ropes, a shibari/bondage class local to me.
Bones of the House
When I meditated on Belial, exalted him, and invoked his energy, I had a recurring vision of a body of land floating amid a flat, black space with no horizon. On this body of level land was a craftsman-style, two-story house. This image resonated with truth to me, but even so, I could not connect how Belial’s teachings of being “masterless” and “worthless” applied to it.
As part of their ongoing training, the Gay slave Academy sends its enrollees written word meditations on topics that read like hypno scripts and are meant to provoke modes of thought in the reader. I received a meditation, “Entranced to let go of control,” and reading it connected with my readings from Belial’s grimoire and sparked understanding.
Here’s what I wrote back to the Master who had sent me the meditation:
This meditation is amazing, SIR. For some months, I have been studying a grimoire on the demon Belial and the visions I have had while meditating show me my own identity cast as the metaphor of a house. As I look at the house, the walls and furnishings are stripped away, leaving only the framework, the bones of the house. These boards are composed of interconnected lies told to me by the conservative social, political, and religious culture in which I was forcibly raised. These ideas about who I am (faggot), what I am worth (useless), and what I could be became (forever alone and unloved) are the structures on which I built my identity. Belial has taught me to throw those boards away and see what is left, what is actually present, and to BE that, much as you describe in the meditation.
Belial says I should become “worthless” because the measure by which I strove to measure my worth — the yardstick itself — was a corrupt lie designed as a system of control to keep me in a place I did not belong and discourage acts of intellectual freedom and authenticity. Becoming a slave, becoming what others in their ignorance would consider “worthless” is indeed a freedom from their viewpoints, their expectations, and their strictures.
Becoming a slave is an act of defiance of not only the “normal roles” of a relationship, but also against those cultural forces who feel they can force us into roles of their choosing, rather than just accepting and allowing individuals to be individual.
Being “masterless” means to throw off the yoke of one’s culture and decide for oneself to what and/or whom you will bend. Being “worthless” means to throw away the style of measurement by which you are judged and decide for yourself what or whom have worth in your eyes, including yourself.
