Spring Equinox + New Moon: A crucifixion

It's Friday, and night and day are equal. Hello.

I don't know exactly how much time I can spare for this post, because I've had holiday tasks on my plate and this is simultaneously a lesser holiday than some. I will at least spare you most prologue, because it isn't strictly necessary.

As a small Ostara offering, I am going to tell you about a kink scene I have had in mind but not yet performed: a crucifixion. Bear in mind there will be some decidedly salacious discussion in the process, but while I would normally save reflections on personal fantasies for an Occult post, I promise that what's here is as tame as I can make it — relatively speaking.

Ostara vs. Easter, reviewed

More than once, I've found myself using this newsletter's Ostara installment to both critique and play with the misconstrued etymology of Ôstara > Ēostre > Easter. In light of this repeating theme, I suggest reading the following old posts if you haven't in the past:

"Regrowth from decay" - This delves fully into how the modern neopagan holiday of Ostara (which I do observe by this name) takes its name from the speculative Old High German form of an Old English[1] goddess, Ēostre, about whom very, very little mythology has truly survived — but who seems to have given her name to the Old English month semi-equivalent to April, and thus also transferred her name to the Christian holiday of Easter given typical timing. Beyond this apparent fact and the likely etymology of her name from an older root about the dawn, it is unlikely that the transfer was deliberately planned by the Church to "replace" a former spring equinox holiday, and we do not know enough about Ēostre to guess whether some potentially pre-Christian Germanic seasonal traditions around eggs and hares had anything to do with that specific goddess.

"The sacrificial lamb" - This goes a step beyond my insistent historical-linguistic pedantry, instead allowing for some engagement with the mythology of Christianity itself as it relates to Easter and the spring equinox season, since I already periodically come back to my bizarre, fragmented relationship with Catholicism, and since Eastertide seems like an apt framing for it.

Since sharing those earlier thoughts, I remain no less conflicted about how to relate to my brief but serious anarcho-Catholic life — always returning to the dilemma of a) how that faith was abused and manipulated out of me before I even had a chance to maturely develop it, yet b) how willingly re-adopting it would clash with my deepened opposition to entities like Church and Pope, and would even feel antithetical to my satanic principles. But the Wheel has spun around again to Ostara, and so for better or worse among my actual witchcraft's holiday observances I also feel sensitive to the season at the heart of the Catholic liturgy.

And this year, I do have some new developments in my mind and heart, as I have started to interface with Catholicism through an increasingly deliberate but previously rejected avenue: sacrilegious kink.

Explorations of sacrilege

In some ways I have not surprised myself, and in other ways I very much have. Of course a satanist might enjoy blaspheming through the most erotic methods available, but since I myself was never directly traumatized by the Church, I have never had any trauma-processing motive to incorporate naughty nuns, seduced (or seducing) priests, or biblical events into my kink activities. Many of the people I've met who enjoy such things have had the sort of upbringing where it might feel liberating or purgative to conduct a kink scene where the same priest railing in a sermon against homosexuality suddenly enjoys bending over for the archangel Michael, or what have you[1] — and I had no such upbringing. My grievances with the Church are generational, and I became a Catholic (in my own idiosyncratic but still very much baptized and confirmed way) of my own free will.

On top of this, I never found most Catholic religious apparel very sexy, so I couldn't understand why anyone else would enjoy wearing a nun's habit or looking at nuns. The aesthetics and pageantry of the Church had certainly been one factor that originally drew me to Catholicism, but eroticizing various dimensions of it felt counterintuitive at best, and tacky at worst.

I think the real issue, though, was that until a few years ago I had only been exposed to sacrilegious kink in very abstract ways, with scenes spoken of very vaguely and fetishes like "nun/priest play" written as a decontextualized tag on FetLife. During the pandemic, by contrast, I found myself idly sitting through a digital workshop on sacrilegious kink[2], and in that single hour I learned much, much more about the myriad scene concepts that such kinksters can invent, to the point where I kept thinking about my own sudden ideas; in the following months I also kept straying into what there's no better term for than pornographic research.

I didn't develop an insatiable craving right on the spot, but in these subsequent years I have found myself frequently preoccupied by sacrilegious imagery I've absorbed or privately envisioned — interweaving my prior attachment to all things infernal and diabolic with new threads of nuns' lesbian explorations, a priest blackmailing me during confession, me dominating a priest to corrupt him from celibacy, visitations by horrific fiery angels, blasphemous iterations of the virgin birth, and Christ's suffering as sadomasochistic celebration. It's as if once I thought more about what the possibilities could be, I abruptly embraced these trickster energies as a satanist and also felt like I had at least some avenue for revisiting something that had been stolen from me.

Since such a revelation, no pun intended, I have only explored a little bit because it also took me a while to admit just how profoundly curious I was. But recently I've at least roleplayed a convent's novice who managed to get very, very, very corrupted instead of taking her vows; I think this naïvely lustful young woman may have another outing or two in future scenes. And I have grown particularly invested in undergoing an ordeal scene that arguably had intrigued me even before the workshop that opened my eyes; I want to be crucified, whether on my own or alongside others.

Crucifixion mechanics

Crucifixion as practiced by the Roman Empire did not generally involve nailing someone to a cross, and instead "only" tying them to a cross and leaving them outdoors to die. If any stories told about the crucifixion of Jesus are based in a real event, then the nails through his hands and feet would have been an exceptionally cruel touch. The regular method would already feel terrible enough.

As I have alluded to on at least one occasion, historians and physicians alike do not altogether concur on why crucifixion was both torturous and lethal, but I think the real answer comes from several overlapping factors. First of all, depending on the time of year and the local geography, being tied up outdoors in minimal clothing could kill someone through heat stroke or hypothermia, and if these things did not kill then sunburn or frostbite could still become agonizing before other causes of death set in. Secondly, the victim might die of dehydration or starvation, either of which are extremely painful both physically and psychologically. And lastly, the position held by a crucified body is at minimum a stress position that nobody will feel comfortable in for very long; and based on some evidence that being restrained and suspended in an upright pose can cause vasovagal syncope or limit diaphragm movement, the crucifixion victim eventually may pass out or asphyxiate and thus die from ensuing damage to the brain.

If I were to personally be crucified, my scene partner(s) and I could control for some of the lethality risks by never leaving me unattended, crucifying me indoors or during safe weather conditions, and of course not leaving me on the cross for literal days — not even for hours. But in my kink sphere I have been made anecdotally aware that crucifixion remains a high risk activity because of the fainting/asphyxiating possibility and the consideration for the prospective bottom's arm muscles and shoulder joints, which could be injured. Compared to frisky nuns, this is absolutely not a scene to enter lightly.[3]

Therefore, while I do not yet have a comprehensive safety checklist — and should not get crucified until that point — I know that it will at least need to include the following considerations:

• Planning to leave me up for no more than 20 minutes, and being prepared to take me down sooner than that
• Using rope appropriately rated for a "subtle" suspension of this kind, and made of material that would adequately grip the cross without cinching too tight, with similar thought given to whichever knots or hitches were used
• Doing some serious, prolonged engineering research for how to construct the cross such that it wouldn't topple over from having a human attached to one side of it, especially if it couldn't be staked deep into the earth
• Creating a communication system for how to signal things like my safeword with my restrained hands if I find myself having difficulty vocalizing (this would probably be an ideal use case for a nonverbal emergency failsafe where the bottom holds a small object in their hand that will be noticed if it falls, should they grow too weak or unconscious to maintain their grip)
• Making sure that any additional torture techniques heaped on top of the crucifixion would not significantly compound the risks I was already facing or create too many new risks, erring perhaps toward sensory deprivation, audiovisual overload, or other psychological approaches instead of physical ones
• Having my normal aftercare supplies of water, sugar, and blanket immediately on-site rather than needing to be fetched from anywhere else

I have practiced just enough other edgeplay of certain flavors that I am not too concerned about handling some of the above items, whereas I think the bondage strategy and cross engineering would take far more time to reliably figure out.

Despite needing to account for the "how" of it like this, though, I suspect the real obstacles to my hypothetical crucifixion are the "when" and "where." I'm far from settling on what day of the year would be the best — maybe some Good Friday, but I can also see an argument for Calan Gaeaf or various alternatives, depending on what the scene was meant to depict and accomplish. And I could not possibly tell you what venue I could use to attempt such a scene, since I have plausible access to more realistic spaces than you might expect but the access could still be very timing-contingent and logistically transporting a cross there might grow rather complicated.

But still, it might happen one day.

Back to the why

The "why" of it is at least known. But if I haven't made it clear enough yet, I will try to finish today's missive with that.

Of all possible sacrilegious kink scenes that might be dreamt of in our philosophy, why would I particularly like to be crucified?

It is not about taking on the sins of the world, nor any other sort of martyr imagery beyond the basic way in which any masochist becomes a temporary martyr, a temporary sacrifice, as they bottom for pain and torment.

It is not about pushing myself to do something notably extreme — although I do enjoy the occasional push.

It is not even about the queer blasphemy in portraying Jesus, the so-called son of god, through the body of someone who is habitually perceived as a woman — although I can certainly imagine incorporating some playfulness on this point.

At the end of the day, my crucifixion fantasy instead comes down to fucking with Christian hegemony through the most central image of Christianity itself, taking it for myself and my co-conspirators to use as we please. I see power in desacralizing the cross, in recalling it as an instrument of imperial execution for thousands upon thousands of humans who did not have a cult form around them. I see a crucifixion scene as commentary upon not only the Church, but also the state. I have not yet uncovered the scene-specific language or sequence of events necessary for attaining this purpose, but I want to offer my body toward this end and perhaps — though I can only hope — give it in some way to my ancestors who were colonized by the Roman Empire and then by the Church that supplanted it.

But now, in any case, Easter is still a few weeks away. Ostara is now. My owner and I have some eggs to cook for our holiday meal.

[1] There are of course also plenty of people with Christian upbringings, Catholic or otherwise, who understandably do not want any of those trappings anywhere near their sex lives.

[2] Since I have used the phrase several times now, I will take this opportunity to clarify — as the workshop presenter did — that sacrilegious kink naturally does not have to be restricted to engagement with Christianity, meaning we could also be more specific by saying "sacrilegious Christian kink." But as she brought up in the same conversation, for anyone raised exclusively amid cultural Christian hegemony, committing sacrilege with Christianity is the ethically safest approach. It is remotely not our place to engage with Judaism, Islam, the dharmic religions, etc. in such a fashion.

[3] All sacrilegious kink does qualify as a kind of edgeplay, mostly in a psychological manner because conducting blasphemy can have a more pronounced effect than some people expect it to. But we can still grade the overall risk on a curve that factors in physical challenges.

Thank you for reading, and may your equinox be blissful.

Please be advised that as we enter this new zodiac year, given my economic circumstances I am officially choosing to reduce the number of posts that I write free for the public. Previously I was paywalling three Friday posts for each of the four common seasons, averaging out to one Friday post per month; going forward, I will be paywalling four of these posts per season. I may increase this further come summer, but we'll see. Either way, while I will never gatekeep knowledge or insight entirely, I can no longer justify putting out as much free material as I've written in the past.

On that note, next week's post on sedentary vs. nomadic land stewardship will still be public, but the following week's post on Nordic mythology will be for paid subscribers only.