– XIV –

Does religion have any bearing on your Dominance or the way you expect your partner/s to submit? If not, are you familiar with religious based submission and do you view it as similar to other types of submission or dissimilar?

Sometime during my enlistment, I entered a spiritual “crisis”; I say “crisis” but that’s what it felt like at the time. Following the fall of the Towers in 2001, then Afghanistan, then Iraq, I’D become witness to the horrors we, humans, do to one another in the name of the divine. How we remix words and ideas from and of the Divine to serve our purposes and fortify our stances. Copies of copies of copies of texts that no longer resemble the real Word, whatever that is. I remember sitting in a church off-base and not feeling what I was told I should be feeling in a “house of God.” There was no Divinity in that pew, the church a room decorated to make it feel holy and sacred. I needed something from Him, comfort and clarity, but there was none to be found even after years of devotion. After overlooking the fallibility of church leaders for their mortal transgressions of pride, greed, and lust. After struggling to reconcile the Holy’s hatred for who I was becoming: a gay man. After all the belief and tithing and bowing and scraping for a scratch at salvation, why was there no help when I needed it? “God helps those that help themselves” and all that.

I left that box of relics and sat in my car, numb and lost. I didn’t pray, I’d done enough of that. My thoughts were not “Why hast thou forsaken me?” but how did I, after giving so much belief and devotion, become a target of His indifference? It felt like a black hole had pulled itself open inside me and I was overcome with a crushing loneliness.

Then, from somewhere inside me, there came three words that would change everything. A voice, gentle and matter-of-fact, said: I am everywhere.

In those three words, I found a release. The permission to give myself a break and to pursue curiosities, desires, and other ways of belief and devotion. I could learn about the Magdalene and speak to Asdzáá Naadleehi (Changing Woman) while waving to Amaterasu and having coffee with Inanna while attending a seminar from Sophia. I could read about Baba Yaga and Persephone and dip into the apocryphal and the gnostic, revel in absurdism and have a fling with nihilism. Then take a trip back to the church without feeling fear or failure.

Does religion have any bearing on my Dominance? No, but the path I’VE taken from religion does because every thread I’VE pulled from every Loom I’VE come across has formed the gyre of Who and What I am today. I am familiar with forms of religion-based submission because I was a part of it for many, many years. At its base, it is similar to other forms of submission but mainly because it’s a form of submission and that there are allowances for belief and devotion.

Ultimately, I believe religion has its place within Dominance but it depends on the degree a Dominant allows it to influence administration.

“I am the light that is over all things. I am all: from me all came forth, and to me all attained.

“Split a piece of wood; I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there.“

– Gospel of Saint Thomas –

Yours In Leather,
SIR Aaron Wolf