A pagan camp

It’s been a bit quiet on this blog recently because we’ve been away. To a small pagan camp, with people we’ve mostly known for several years and to a place Velvet’s known for well over a decade.

For the uninitiated, ‘pagan’ doesn’t mean ‘wiccan’. Sure, a few of the people there were and are wiccans, but others have a range of beliefs that essentially revolve around the idea of ‘do as you will and harm none’, a respect for the earth and the environment, and a sense that imagination is a useful tool.

Also for the uninitiated, if you want to be initiated we can probably sort you out with an appropriate fetish themed initiation ceremony. Alternatively you could read Raven Kaldera’s book Dark Moon Rising: Pagan BDSM and the Ordeal Path (also on Amazon.co.uk), which sets out ideas for how such things could be done and is still the best source for such material we’ve come across.

That’s ‘come across’ as in ‘discovered’. If you didn’t get the double entrendre, you don’t have a filthy enough mind.

So what happened on the ‘pagan’ camp included the following: discussions of runes, drinking, making flutes, drinking, standing around bonfires drinking, and playing the odd drum or two. Oh yeah, and some drinking. Apart from that there was the naked orgy on the last night in the middle of the stone circle that’s on the site. Oh, wait, that was just in my imagination…

So seeing as this was a camp and most people were in tents (we have a campervan, though), this is what the camp looked like. In microcosm, and taken on Fulani’s mobile.

Pagan camp, decorations outside a tent

And here’s a shot of something that really did happen on the last night of the camp: Fulani playing with fire.

Fulani playing with fire: cracking a fire whip

The pic may over-dramatise the amount of flame: the shot was a 2-second exposure at f4, ISO400. It was still pretty hot though.

So now we’re back, Fulani’s hammering away at a paranormal novella and Velvet’s doing some practical magic (aka planting vegetables in the back garden). We’ll give you updates on both in due course.

Meanwhile: pagan/supernatural stuff we’ve written and that you might like to look at includes:

– Fulani’s story ‘The Incubus Candle’, in the Xcite Spirit Lovers collection (the first Spirit Lovers volume, not the second; also at Amazon.co.uk and direct from Xcite).

– Velvet Tripp’s story ‘Go Find Yourself’ (with a lesbian theme) in two Xcite collections, Wanton Women and Submission in Silk (also available via Amazon).

Naked Delirium – coming soon

Naked Delirium cover (Sweetmeats Press)

Out soon, expected mid-August: Naked Delirium, a collection of five novellas from Sweetmeats Press. An illustrated anthology of sex in altered states. Did you get that word illustrated? Stories by Kristina Wright, Sommer Marsden, Vanessa de Sade – also by Fulani and Velvet Tripp.

Fulani’s story ‘Smoking Hot’ deals with the unintended consequences of hypnosis to stop smoking, via the unlocking of repressed desires. Velvet Tripp’s novella deals with events at a pagan camp in which someone becomes literally possessed. We’ll maybe throw up some teasers closer to publication date, and there may be teasers of the illustrations as well.

It’s not the first time we’ve had ‘his and hers’ stories in the same collection, but it’s the first time we’ve had novellas published together (if you’re interested, it happened previously in Xcite’s Lust Bites collection, available direct from the publisher or on Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk).

Heads-up on similar stories:

– Velvet Tripp’s ‘Go Find Yourself’ also has a pagan theme (but is lesbian-based) and is in Xcite’s 20-story collection Wanton Women and also the five-story collection Submission in Silk (these are Amazon.com links, it’s on the UK site as well and available direct from the publisher – see the ‘Our Publications’ page on this blog).

– Fulani’s Secret Circus of Pain and Degradation starts, more or less, with the heroine being hypnotized (or, in keeping with the period it’s set in, mesmerized) while attending a circus and sort-of abducted to become a circus performer. That’s an Amazon.com link, and a bunch of others are over on the ‘Our Publications’ page.

What we did on our holiday

We’re back.

We spent some time a week or so ago at one of the few contemporary stone circles in the UK – it was a pagan gathering at a circle Velvet helped build, about 10 years ago. Those present included quite a few of the others who helped built it and some of our friends. Here’s a picture of the circle, and the roundhouse also on the site:

Various pagan-type things happened at the gathering – drinking, mainly (the ‘temple drink’ that made its way repeatedly around the group was a potent vodka/blackcurrant mix) but also drumming in the roundhouse, making flutes (we didn’t), supurb guitarwork, sitting around fires, a couple getting handfasted, and just hanging out and talking about stuff. And drinking. Beyond that, we discovered various little-known provisions of English law, such as that you can legally bury up to two bodies in your back garden – it’s only a third body that makes it technically a cemetary, which requires a licence.

Various other things that you read in some upcoming fiction might or might not have happened. Professional writers do employ a certain amount of creative licence.

The other thing that happened was fire. The previous post showed you the implements of fire. Here are some of the results. Below is what you can do with six feet of kelvar rope:

This was on a time exposure, obviously, but it was still quite hot. That’s Fulani spinning it. And also him with a fire-flogger, about to beat some poor victim with an ass hanging out invitingly…

The pics (while much reduced) are courtesy of a professional photographer who was there, Chris Cafferkey, who has some of our previous fire art available in much higher resolution in the fire gallery on her website.

There are some other pics of the firewhip and suchlike but they’re on Fulani’s other blog, Fulanismut – along with Part II of a completely unrelated story about sexual encounters in the course of a music festival. Yes, the point is to make you check out the other blog as well. But go with it, the Fulanismut blog has some interesting weirdness on it.

Playing with fire, a post by Fulani

Eye of the fire

Yes, we enjoy playing with fire. Literally. And we don’t really do small fires, because usually we’re out at a pagan camp in the middle of a field somewhere, so there’s room to do stuff like fire-flogging and the kind of thing that Fulani describes as ‘flinging fire around’.

Fire has many attractions beyond fetish and bdsm, because it stirs our primal and primitive senses. But it can be incorporated into bdsm play in a wide range of ways. Our ways tend to be big and crude, require some preparation due to safety issues, and there’s a lot of safety information in this post. But even if you’re just playing with a couple of candles, take care, because setting fire to your bedroom lampshade causes a whole lot of hassle – and setting fire to your bedsheets is only fun if it’s a metaphorical fire and not a real one.

To digress for a moment, Velvet Tripp is pagan through-and-through, while Fulani just thinks the credo of ‘Do as ye will an’ harm ye none’ is a good basic moral code. Not that that’s important, except to explain that this is the kind of thing we do in front of an audience, and a long way from anything (cars, houses, tents and so on) that might catch fire. Unless you have at least an acre of garden DO NOT DO THIS AT HOME!

Fire flogging

Anyway… fire flogging is quite spectacular. However, and obviously, it can also be dangerous, and requires a lot of care and attention if it is to be done with any reasonable degree of safety.

In particular, you need to ensure:

– the person being flogged either has very short hair or has it tucked well away from any flames.
– the person being flogged is naked, or at least any clothing is well out of the way. Clothes can catch fire.
– there are fire extinguishers instantly available. Water may be an option but be aware that burning paraffin can just float on it. CO2 extinguishers are better.
– spare paraffin containers and other burnables need to be well out of harm’s way. This also means preventing the risk of them being knocked over by spectators or set fire to by a careless smoker.
– those being flogged, doing the flogging, and anyone else involved have not been drinking or doing anything else that might make them lose concentration.
– the audience is well out of harm’s way, if necessary behind a safety barrier of some kind.
– since it’s usually done at night, so the flames are easily seen, those involved should have checked and set up the area earlier, during daylight. Check there are no obstructions on the ground, etc. etc. Also make sure a torch is available.
– what’s the ground like? Dry grass, especially long grass, will burn. Make sure you’re not going to set fire to the area you’re performing on. If necessary, hose down the ground!
– if restraints are involved there needs to be extra consideration for safety. Who’s going to deal with the situation if the person doing the flogging has managed to set themselves and their victim on fire? Can the victim be released quickly (as in, within a few seconds)? Is any stock of paraffin far enough away not to pose a threat? What’s the safeword? And so on.

The flogger we use is extremely home-made – about 8 strands of wicking secured to a couple of feet of old broom handle with a jubilee clip. Soaked in paraffin for a couple of minutes it makes a big, scary flame – and if you’re holding it, remember it’s got to be kept spinning all the time it’s burning. Otherwise the strands hang down and the flame will take all the skin off your hand.

The victim: I wipe down Velvet’s back with a damp cloth. A thin layer of water is a reasonable extra precaution to prevent burns. ONLY the back/buttocks, and only with the victim standing or bent at the waist; trying to flog someone’s front risks facial burns, scorched pubic hair (unless shaved of course) and other nasties.

The flogging relies on speed. It looks spectacular but the ends of the flogger strands are only in contact with skin for a tiny fraction of a second. So the victim does get a certain amount of heat, but the main effects are the roar of the flames as the flogger spins and what looks to an audience like a circle of flame consuming someone.

Don’t go for a ‘hit’ every time the flogger swings. Give skin time to cool a bit: maybe a couple of quick brushes on someone’s back with the end of the flogger, then move away for several seconds before doing it again. And if someone has a hairy back, have them shave it first!

We don’t have any usable pics of Velvet being fire-flogged, so the one above is him flogging someone else.

The pic at the head of this post, by the way, comes from Fulani swinging six feet of burning kevlar rope around. The rope is attached to a short chain and this links to a handle made from an 18-inch length of broom handle. While six feet of one-inch diameter rope is surprisingly heavy, it can be swung at speed to create the effect you see in the pic.

All the previous warnings apply. Fire doesn’t have favourites and you don’t have a ‘relationship’ with it. If you’re going to try this out, take all the safety precautions mentioned above and try it out with an unlit rope until you have enough skill not to wrap it around yourself. Burns clinics are not fun places.

Fireplay is, it has to be said, a primal and satisfying thing. There are plenty of people who enjoy it, and even an annual festival of fire – we think called the Fire Gathering – you can find out more about from firetoys.co.uk who also sell fireplay equipment and, crucially, have a forum that includes safety topics. Neither the site nor the advice is fetish oriented, but the equipment and advice is the same whatever you’re planning. Just remember that like many fun activities, from rock-climbing to motor racing, observing safety precautions is an absolute must.

Fire drumming

We do other things with fire as well. Fulani has a fire drum, basically a metal tray on a firm support, onto which a thin layer of paraffin can be poured. Hit it quickly with a firestick and the paraffin that jumps into the air will catch fire while what stays in the tray won’t. It’s an add-on to some of the other stuff we do.

Now for the sales pitch. Fulani’s playing with fire has not only been captured on camera, but the photographer has released the images on a range of products – mugs, posters, mouse pads etc. – on her Zazzle store. Fulani on a mouse pad? Who’d have believed it? If you look at the image below and the Fulani logo used on this site, actually, you’ll see the logo is a cropped version of the mousepad pic…

Too hot to handle (mouse pad etc!)

Would we benefit financially if you buy stuff there? Frankly, yes. But equally frankly, it would take an awful lot of mouse pads even to make enough pennies to buy the next couple of litres of paraffin and make one or two other firetoys…

Skull iphone case

Finally, just to show what else is available, here’s a skull on an iPhone case that the same photographer has on Zazzle. She’s nothing if not versatile.

***

Wait – no mention of books and fiction? Well, Fulani’s Secret Circus novel does have a fireplay scene towards the end. But then it’s got a lot of other scenes in it as well, including the steam-powered fucking machine… Time’s a little tight at the moment but when he has time, he’ll do a fire story for the blog.