I've been reviewing anthropological texts on rite-of-passage rituals for the past two weeks, now that the focus is on shamanic magic in pre-literate cultures. He also has me keeping a dream journal, to better remember my dreams and look for symbolic messages, and to get accustomed to working with my dream states so that I might attempt familiarizing myself with the Underworld via lucid dreaming.
On top of that, he has me reading the Epic of Gilgamesh in conjunction with related myths surrounding Inanna's descent into the realm of death, along with the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Orphic hymns, and articles on the greater and lesser rites at Eleusis. My complaints about the second-degree and third-degree rituals of Gardnerian Wicca appear to have inspired him to direct me to Gerald Gardner's original source material.
He's also assigned me more Joseph Campbell, more Jung, more Eliade, and both the Tibetan and Egyptian iterations of the Book of the Dead.
As if all that isn't enough, in addition to my occult readings, he's picked now, of all times, to have me commence a study of erotica beyond what I've already read in Yellow Silk. He wants me to be familiar with the classics. The short stories of Anais Nin; The Story of O; Justine. He wants this done now, despite my lack of a personal time machine to help me stay on top of my studies.
The latter text was underwhelming, and would have been underwhelming even if I'd done more than just skim it to get it read in time to write my weekly essay.
"Sade has a nicely vicious sense of ironic humor," I complain, "but otherwise, yuck. It's like reading Ayn Rand, only with more sex, and the sex scenes aren't even written well. And comparing Sade to Ayn Rand is no compliment, whether you're talking about his philosophical outlook or otherwise. Libertine, libertarian, whatever, they're both just sociopaths who glorify predators, think might makes right, and can't edit to save their lives. Juliette was about a thousand pages too long. Was Sade being paid by the word?"
"Truly ironic, when you consider that in most of his work, he advocates a sort of radical communism that relies on the abolition of privacy and private property. Not very libertarian, that."
"What?"
"Reread the material, please. And yes. He was paid by the word. He had debts to pay. Lots of them... He is considered a classic writer, for all his many faults. The French made him part of their literary canon."
"Why? For heaven's sake, why?"
"I don't know. It might be that they ignore his pornographic works and concentrate on the larger body of literary criticism, historical research, and philosophical discourse that he left behind - most of which has yet to be translated from French into English - but given how writers like Georges Bataille and publishers like Maurice Girodias and Jacques Pauvert were clearly more influenced by the pornography than by the non-pornographic writings, I find it unlikely. That's an interesting question. I don't have an answer for it, though."
"Maybe the French are more perverted than the rest of us?"
"Hah! No, I don't think that's it. Actually, if any world civilization could be awarded a distinction as being more perverse than others, I'd give the prize to Japan, or maybe to India. Remind me to show you some of my art history books sometime. Anyway, something you may want to consider when you reread Justine is the theme of violating conventional ideas of virtue. When Sade wrote his books, libertinage was reviled not just because murder, rape, theft, et cetera were objectively bad things, but also because these crimes were a violation of Christian morality, as was atheism, as was the radical free-thinking that was part of the libertine philosophy. Left-hand path tantra likewise requires its adherents to deliberately violate cultural norms. Radical independence combined with the shock of committing taboo acts is a path to transcendence and enlightenment. It's not an end unto itself. What we two do here is consensual, and therefore, in my opinion, not a wrongness, but it does violate convention. To certain sectors of society, we who fly in the face of sexual convention are monstrous. You know this from personal experience. Consider the power that can come from monstrosity. It can release you."
To be honest, I haven't exactly been overwhelmed by the Story of O, either. It's certainly got an artistic beauty to it, and parts of it made me shudder from arousal just because of the subject matter and the imagery, but there isn't a single likable character in the entire book, except maybe for a couple of minor characters in the section on Samois. There are some religious overtones to the work that make the protagonist's sexual submission and gradual metamorphosis seem at times like spiritual asceticism, rather than just like the sexual martyrdom that it is, which is interesting, but the further the plot moves, the more selfish and callous O appears. I can't identify with her, although I can't exactly find myself cheering when she gets violated by the men she loves, either. I almost wonder if Pauline Reage partly wrote the book to say that men are jerks, women like jerks, and meanwhile, women are bitches who deserve what they get. That's not exactly erotic, as far as themes go.
Certain passages are not only beautifully written, but are also intense to the point of bordering on terrifying; I'll give the author that much. She knew her craft. It is inherently scary to see O utterly lose herself in her submission, to see her body and her very life taken over without her so much as protesting, let alone resisting. Something about the inevitable march of events in her story makes the "I don't want to live without you" ending seem horrible and real, rather than cliched. A lesser writer could probably not have pulled that off.
Still, this is supposedly the best erotic novel ever written? Who decides these things?
And why am I being given an extra study load of erotica as assigned reading now, of all times?
"Magister? What have the erotic stories you've been assigning me as reading to do with Greek mythology, and with shamanic initiation rituals and traditional rites of passage?" I ask in confusion.
"Two things," he replies. "First has more to do with your sexually charged personal energy than with tribal initiation rituals, although some shamanic rituals, as you will have seen in your readings, do have a sexual element, especially if the initiate's future duties will have much to do with blessing a hunt, or with encouraging the growth of plants. Your power has a raw current of sex to it, even when put to completely nonsexual purposes; I've never seen anything quite like it. You're unusual. I think any kind of initiation for you would have to incorporate that and honor it somehow. The second reason is that the stories you've been reading haven't just been about sex. They've also been about death. In case you hadn't noticed, in most of the readings I've assigned, the protagonist dies or comes very near to dying. You want to do this the traditional way? Well, then. Somehow or other, death is going to have to be involved."
I look at him, wide-eyed.
"No, it does not have to be a literal, physical death. But a part of you is going to die. I've been doing some research on tribal rituals, too, because I don't want to make a total hash of this, and the materials I've read have been clear on that matter. You need to be prepared for it. Initiation is a sort of rebirth, and to be reborn, the initiate must first die. Before recreation comes the necessary destruction. The initiation rituals of the various Western esoteric traditions likewise involve death somehow, as well as a certain amount of symbolic suffering - you've seen that in your readings - but it's considerably more obvious when you study the more primitive initiations and rites of passage. Civilization takes the edge off. If you want to go directly to the source of magickal initiations, we'll need to put the sharp edge back. The ordeal needs to be genuine."
Oh.
What have I got myself into?
"Are you sure you want to go through with it?" he asks gently.
I nod.
"There's still plenty of time to back out, if you change your mind and decide to try another path. Assuming you want to time the ritual with Halloween, Samhain, or whatever you like to call the traditional day of the dead that's coming up, we have several weeks to go."
I go back to reading.
He takes his earplugs out and looks up from the sheet of paper he's been working on. It's the first time this morning that I've seen his face; whatever he's been writing has kept him preoccupied. I'm glad to see him surface. He's been spending so much time in his reading that it's almost like he's not there, except during the times that have been formally blocked out for instructing me. I'm even starting to get jealous of his books and projects because they see more of him than I do now, which is ridiculous of me. It's not like I'm not buried in books and projects of my own, as deeply as he is if not even more so.
"This is important," he tells me as he walks across the room to me, his voice quietly intense. "We still haven't had a formal discussion about limits. So far, I've taken the view that if you didn't like what I was doing and wanted me to stop, you'd use your safeword, and that would be an end of it, aside from discussing the matter later to hammer down what to avoid doing in the future, or to see if maybe a different approach would work better. Now I actually need to know, exactly and specifically, what is acceptable to do to you, and what is absolutely unacceptable. I've been working on a ritual outline. For the duration of your initiation, your safeword is going to be temporarily suspended, so I'm going to have to assume that anything you do not inform me of in advance as forbidden is something you are willing to tolerate if not necessarily enjoy. And it will be unpleasant."
Um.
He hands me a spare pen from his pocket, along with a blank sheet of paper. "Get to work," he says.
My mind is as blank as the paper before me, but I start thinking anyway.