CW: cursory descriptions of body modification, needles/hooks
This past weekend, I executed the fourth flesh hook energy pull I’ve done in my life. If you don’t know what that is, the internets have excellent demonstration videos that you absolutely SHOULD NOT VIEW if needles and/or blood squick you.
TL;DV: You put large hooks through your body, use them to tether yourself to something/someone you can pull against, and dance like that for hours.
The ritual calls for one support person per dancer (that is, per person taking hooks). The support person’s job is super important. They hold your hand (or your intention, or your worry) through the piercing act. They check in to make sure you’re not quietly going into shock. They help secure the tethers to whatever it is you want to pull against, un-clip and re-clip you to different objects. Make sure you have what you need to keep dancing – keep you hydrated, keep the earth below your feet, keep you functional enough to sustain the high.
Seems like something nearly any close friend could do, right? But they also have to be respectful of religious practice, not be squicked by blood and needles, and not get in the way energetically with their own presence. Turns out, that’s a rare bird.
I was extremely fortunate to have a friend able to fulfill that role for me in the eleventh hour, after all my previous arrangements fell through. He had never done this before, nor seen it done. I tried to explain what it was going to be like, and … mostly failed I think, because he talked later about having had different expectations than what actually ended up happening.
Part way through the pull, he said to me, “Um … this … looks a lot like sex.”
“You have your metaphor the wrong way around,” I said. “Sex looks a lot like this, if you’re doing it right,” which got a laugh. It seemed to make sense to him I think.
But this exchange highlighted a disconnect I often have when talking to friends and family about my spiritual practices. Most of them can’t understand why I do this. I thought it was mostly a failure of our vocabularies/terminologies to shake hands, but I think there’s a Chomsky-esque chicken-and-egg problem too. We can’t talk productively about it, because they don’t have the concepts in their heads to map my words to in the first place and my attempts at trying to explain why one would want to go through such an ordeal don’t seem to get the concepts through.
“Doesn’t that hurt?” they ask.
“Yes,” I say, “that is kind of the point.”
“Why not just stub your toe really bad?” they ask.
“It has to be couched in ritual,” I say.
“But I thought you were a Christian!” they say.
“I am,” I say, “My religious tradition has a long and glorious history of body trauma for the sake of the soul. This is in no wise incompatible.”
…and they shake their heads.
“What is it like?” They ask.
“It’s hard to describe,” I say.
But here’s an attempt, anyway:
Continue reading “Pull” →
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