Tuesday, June 12, 2007

And, canes

The black and blue marks are still working their ways out of my butt and thighs.

Why yes, I do switch, thankyouverymuch. And gods I've missed the dirty end of a cane. Nasty things, those.

Nope, that radio silence has not been do to a lack of play. No, ma'am.

Knives

One of the things I love most about my D/s relationships are the ways they suffuse the rest of my life. When I admire the sparkling floor, or look down at my hennaed feet, I get something more out of them than their inherent pleasure. They also function as forms of connection.

My girl has taken on keeping my knives sharp as a piece of her Work, as of the last time she was here. There was a bit of sneakiness involved, I'll admit. I was planning to get her a set of good knives for her birthday, and wanted her to take on maintaining them as sacred work. And, of course, it gives her something to do while I make dinner.

I still can't get over the pleasure I feel every time I take those knives to garden-fresh produce, and effortlessly slice them through.

And so I find myself looking very carefully at the homework I give her, and give my service submissive. On the one hand, it seems a waste to do something too prosaic. But there's something else, too. Reportedly, someone once criticized Feri witch Cora Anderson for cutting an apple with her athame, and she replied that she wasn't desecrating the knife, she was consecrating the apple. And that's how it feels to choose this work.

Even mopping the floors is sacred Work, if you make it so.

Friday, June 1, 2007

Floors and Foundations

Or, Witch/apprentice as the new D/s paradigm?

So, I've recently returned to a kabbalistic project of mine, poring through medieval and modern texts on kabbalah, cabala and qabala to learn as broad a perspective as I can, using the sephirot as a structure. Having recently returned to this, I'm starting over at the bottom, reviewing and researching the bottom two spheres of Malkuth (Kingdom) and Yesod (Foundation), as well as adding to the pile new books that I hadn't covered in my previous research. So, that was my planned magickal work of the evening during my service session.

Coincidentally or not, I decided that yesterday's session would be about my floors. I hate doing floors. Hate, hate, hate sweeping them. Hate, hate, hate mopping them. I probably would have chosen that service regardless, but the magickal parallelism was too great to ignore.

And so it was that I opened my session again this week by talking about the magickal work I had planned for the night, and how my submissive's work would feed into that. I gave him just a very rough overview of the work, and asked him to pay special attention to the floors in three spots in my house, and then set him to work.

Other magickal stuff uncovered itself, as it will. In order to clean the kitchen floor, he had to move the coins and offerings I had to Legba behind the door. As he was putting things to rights again, I asked where the coins had gone and briefly explained why they'd been there, and why he had to be the one to put them back and how to do so. I explained that he can, in making those offerings, ask for assistance at any crossroads in his life.

Later, when we were having our chat at the end of the session, he mentioned that he is at a lot of metaphoric crossroads right now, and seemed amazed that I had keyed into this for him. "Well, darling, that's what happens when you choose a witch for your dom." We talked a bit about how Legba might be able to help with his choices, and about how to build that relationship. I added extra attention at real and metaphoric crossroads to the between-class homework, and we made plans for our weekend session.

I'm very pleased at the direction this is taking.

Unsurprisingly, I got to my email afterward to find that the Pyrate Lass, who knows next to nothing about the kabbalistic work I'm doing, had sent me a painting she worked on last night. It is completely filled with colors, symbols and objects that I associate with Malkuth and Yesod. Life is very funny that way sometimes.