The alchemy of kink and magic

Eleven Greenstones

Guest contributor Eleven Greenstones (she/they) explores the beautiful between kink and witchcraft, weaving together ritual, intention and power to show how BDSM can be a form of living alchemy.

My practices of BDSM and witchcraft have become an exploding Venn diagram of arrows, footnotes, porous edges and roots that burrow into Dion Fortune’s guidance that magic is “the art of changing consciousness at will.”

Both my spiritual tradition and my playstyle are creative and ecstatic – by which I mean they have the potential to be intensely beautiful, experimental, responsive, embodied and evolving.  Both involve sacred ritual, altered states and deep connection: to my desires, to other people and possibly between us and our godds. I’ve shared a state of awe with someone after play that’s felt as full of wonder as meeting the divine in nature or death. As with magic, in BDSM, I pay attention to my intention. What is it that I’m about in this moment? What am I shaping and becoming? How will we raise and hold the energy? What are our roles in this collaboration?

On the important question of alignment: I exercise my will by inspiring consent, or not at all. Both kink and magic explore trust, surrender and responsibility in relation to power and rest squarely on ethical frameworks for how it’s held, shared or transferred. I receive someone’s submission to my power or provide them with an opportunity for service using what erotic writer Sinclair Sexsmith calls a “Palette of Permission”. I have the information I need to know what colours are on my artists palette on any given occasion and then I mix and layer, daub and brush my canvas. I illicit consent early and often, because why waste an opportunity to reconnect to our shared desires for the pain, pleasure, power, catharsis, transformation or other magic between us?

The tools and equipment I use are imbued with power and symbolism because we are meaning makers, but whether it’s a chain or a chalice in my hand, it’s the energy flowing thru it that creates the magick, the marks, the moments. Objects become more than themselves - they carry intention and energy. Myself, I’m one for harnessing elemental forces – air, earth, fire, water - and these bring a lot of what feels sacred and powerful to my play. I also like to bring into the room all those subversive, liberated deviants that carved the paths I walk - known and unknown, seen and unseen - acknowledging that those lineages offer me more power than I can hold in my hands alone.

I ponder whether kink is a kind of living alchemy, turning pain into pleasure, vulnerability into power and ritual into transformation. What tools, protocols and rituals support your kink practices? Objects, outfits, postures? The music I’m listening to can instantly change my energy and don’t get me started on the smell of leather. Are there ways you might become more intentional with these allies which could bring greater depth to your practice and your connection to your desires? Can you expand your range? Narrow it and go deep into one for a time? I hope if you start or continue to weave kink and magical practice together, that it changes you in empowering ways and if you do, please let me know how it goes.