A warm September sun streams through the kitchen window. It's finally cool enough that we can turn off the air conditioning without broiling ourselves alive, so we have the windows open. Of course, the weather this time of year is fickle, so tomorrow we might well be broiling again. Alternatively, we might get a hard frost and wake up shivering.

   I'm in the middle of one of my essay assignments. My books and papers take up a large part of the kitchen table – basically, whatever part of the table is not already occupied by food. Stacking the spare notebook paper, folders, pens, and other miscellaneous supplies in a wooden garden carry-all I found stuffed in the back of the coat closet helped to tame my mess somewhat, but the books still have a tendency to sprawl when I write, because I'm cross-referencing them, and it's a pain to keep them in a neat little stack if I have to be constantly pulling them out to look for quotes.

   This time, he has me reading Campbell's writings on the Hero's Journey, a pop psychology book by someone called Maureen Murdock, some of Jung's writings on the Shadow archetype, and Gerald Gardner.

   What a combination.

   I have to take some responsibility for the selection – he has me reading the authors to come up with background material for a new initiation ritual. Ritual magick hasn't been something I've taken to. I found out the hard way when trying to conduct a ritual that while I make a decent temple assistant when he needs help boosting his concentration and power, my own talents are not so inclined. I work better on a path without much ritual at all, feeling delicate awareness of currents around me, while spontaneously focusing my power to push those currents around. That's how I clean a sacred space. Focusing on actual ascent is even more chaotic, and it only happens when I meditate.

   Except when sometimes, now, it doesn't.

   We were hoping ritual would give me enough structure that my search for gnosis would use a path for regular enlightenments, but unfortunately, the details become too interesting in themselves for me to remember what it was that I was trying to accomplish in the first place.

   In keeping with this, he suggested creating an initiation ritual of the "make it up as you go along" variety, rather than something scripted in his esoteric tradition.

   "Of course, it's not working for you," he mused. "My tradition is fraternal. There are women in it, but Florence Farr and Mina Bergson and goddess imagery notwithstanding, the rituals were still written in the nineteenth century by men, and mostly for other men. You're not a man. Dig hard enough and you'll find some criticism of the rituals, saying that they're oversimplified and sexist whenever feminine energy is concerned. Too polarized, in all the wrong ways. The women who find them useful and do well in the tradition probably have more polarized extremes of masculine and feminine energy than you do, and all of it conventional. Your animus and anima are differently shaped. Might as well ask you to fit a Procrustean bed."

   It made more sense, he said, to devise a home-brewed initiation ritual that I would find more personally meaningful and more suited to the raw and chaotic way I work energy, and I agreed. It's only common sense. If his tradition doesn't suit me well, why use its established rituals?

   Everything points to the necessity of my finding, or blazing, my own path.

   Everything also points to the need for an initiation of some kind. It can only be an initiation. Initiations are not just once-in-a-lifetime occurrences; they're ways to acknowledge transitions, achieve purification, and clear away obstacles.

   That's exactly what I need at this moment. I have been searching for my higher Self, that part of me that goes beyond my petty short-term awareness and connects to, and embodies, a wisdom that is divine. I lose my attention often when meditating, though, something that never used to be a problem, and when I try to work with energy currents, things feel sluggish, for lack of a better description. It feels like there is a barrier in my way that I need to break through if I'm going to continue in my studies. I just can't break it using the scripts that are available, because they mean nothing to me personally. There wouldn't be any point.

   Hence the research and the increased workload.

   Unfortunately, not all of the new material seems relevant to my needs.

   "None of the myths Gardner's second-degree initiation ritual borrows from have anything remotely resembling a romance in them," I gripe. "And if they had, we'd call it pathological, given the dynamics. Inanna and Ereshkigal? Incest is the least of the problems with that pairing. Hades and Kore? Don't even get me started. The idea of making Kore fall in love with the Lord of the Dead as part of becoming Persephone is just ridiculous. That would never happen in real life. If the legend was based on the typical marriage transactions of Bronze Age Greece, the kidnapping probably mimicked the aftermath of an arranged marriage between a teenage bride and someone three times her age. Depending on what part of the Hellenic world inspired the legend, there might even have been a mock kidnapping as part of the ceremony. Or a real abduction. Bridal consent utterly optional. I doubt whatever Hades was feeling for Kore could remotely be called love, for that matter. People who are in love don't kidnap and rape their loved ones. They send them flowers, maybe sing romantic ballads outside their windows, or compose poetry to them. Kore and Hades are just not a romantic pairing. So why do the parts played by the High Priest and High Priestess have to be so schmoopy? It doesn't come across as romantic; it comes across as fake. The realm of the dead is no place for schmoopiness. If Gardner wrote this himself, he's not much of a writer. 'I feel the pangs of love.' No, doofus, you feel the pangs of a flogger hitting you on the back, or you would, anyway, if your High Priest was hitting you with any kind of force, which he isn't. Why not just have a whip made of bunny fur, if you and your co-celebrant are in it for a little mild titillation before enacting the Great Rite? Also, why is it so important for the High Priestess of a coven to be young? I can see why it would be important for the purposes of this specific ritual – Death and the Maiden, and all that. But saying the coven head needs to step down when she reaches some kind of age-linked expiration date, as if she was a carton of milk about to spoil? That's not very nice to crones, now, is it? Funny, there's no such requirement for the High Priest that he be young, either. Gardner's being ageist and sexist. Heterosexist, too, for that matter. Charming. No, don't worry, I won't write that into the essay."

   He raises an eyebrow.

   "Well, probably not."

   I put down the book I'm citing and gather up the dishes from dinner. He says I don't have to do the washing-up – it's his apartment, not mine – but I feel like doing it as a favor. It's a small act I can perform for him. If I've been spending so much time over here, now, that I habitually leave my homework on his kitchen table rather than doing the assignments at home or in the university library from where many of the books come, then I might as well contribute a little more to the upkeep of the place.

   I've been re-reading some of the anthropological papers compiled in my old Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion textbook (the textbook that gave the class I took its name). I started doing it on my own. Purely my own idea. It wasn't on my weekly assigned book list.

   Call it a hunch, or call it a nagging suspicion based on half-remembered classroom discussions from years ago. Probably both would fit.

   "I know part of why none of the initiation rituals of the Western esoteric traditions move me," I say. "They're not hard enough."

   "How so?"

   "Shamanic initiation rituals and tribal rite-of-passage rituals – initiations in cultures that see the world of the spirit as crucial to human survival, not just as something mystical to dabble in – are life and death struggles. They're terrifying. The initiate never chooses to be a shaman, according to Mircea Eliade, any more than the initiate chooses to be an adult. Life chooses the initiate. It forces itself. To ignore the spirit realm is to doom oneself. People with shamanic potential often have unbearable migraines, or seizure disorders, or come down with an illness that threatens to kill them, and I think if it wasn't for that unbearable stimulus, they would not choose to become shamans at all. Why? Because the initiation rite is so brutal. They know, at least in a general sort of way, that the becoming will be terrible. Nobody wants it. Nobody sane could ever want it.

   "And the initiate actually has to fight to get something of worth: his or her membership in the tribe, communion with the spirit world, whatever. The stakes are higher, too. Failure doesn't just generally mean go back and study some more; it means death or banishment – and banishment is practically the same thing as a death sentence, in a harsh climate like Siberia – or it means loss of sanity. No offense to your tradition," I add hastily, "you're obviously not a rich dilettante like so many of the Symbolists and Decadents in the Golden Dawn were, or Crowley's disciples for that matter, but I'm pretty sure a man of the upper classes in nineteenth or early twentieth century London would have approached an esoteric initiation a little differently from the way a Siberian mystic would have done it. Or the way a young Masai warrior would have approached initiation into his tribe. The perspective would simply not be the same."

   "You feel you have more in common with a member of an aboriginal tribe?"

   "Yes. I have no idea why. I know my background would give me far more in common with an Edwardian dandy, but I just can't work within their systems."

   "Shamanic magic is a bit rawer and more intuitive – instinct-based," he muses, "which would certainly be compatible with your instinct toward the more chaotic forms of energy work. It also deals more directly with the underworld, including the world of dreaming. Do you feel called to dreams?"

   "More like they call to me."

He gets a thoughtful look on his face.

   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.

   We're doing Greek tonight because that's what he felt like preparing. Feta cheese, sliced cherry tomatoes, chopped salad greens, and kalamata olives, sprinkled with ladolemono dressing; spanakopitas; chilled dolmathes; moussaka, the sweet tomato sauce used in its preparation leaving an aftertaste of basil and cinnamon; baklava for dessert. Accompanying this is white wine, a dry, crisp Moscofilero from the Peloponnese (according to the label that I read, since I am not a wine expert enough to be able to identify wine by taste alone). He's made everything from scratch except for the phyllo dough used in the spanakopitas and the baklava; he bought the sheets of dough pre-made in the frozen food aisle of the local grocery store. This is his idea of being lazy. The grape leaves came from wild vines that grew by the banks of a local stream. I helped him gather them.

   I love it when he cooks.

   "I think I might have overcooked a little," he says at last, "but that's all right, it just means there will be leftovers. Here, have some more moussaka. You're staring at it as if it's the Holy Grail. Are you sure you're getting enough to eat at home?"

   "Yes," I lie, and go back to attacking my food.

   Some time later I feel his eyes watching me and look up from the second helping of baklava I've been nibbling at.

   "Yes, Magister?"

   "I'm ready for dessert."

   "It was very good baklava. Wait, I thought you already had some."

   "I wasn't referring to the baklava," he says with a smile. "Come to bed."

   I shiver with anticipation.

   Brahms' First Symphony plays on the portable CD player as, legs splayed and shackled to the futon frame, I strain underneath Magister. Every time he bites me on the neck, I shudder, and pull at the manacles that pin my wrists together above my head. When he comes up to devour my mouth, his kiss tastes like wine and spice.

   We're not doing lessons or magickal work tonight, so I have my voice back.

   "Can you please reposition my wrists?" I ask. "I want to be able to hold you."

   "Later. I'd like to keep you fully stretched, for the time being."

   He gets up from the futon to rummage in the dresser drawer, eventually pulling up a silvery-looking chain with little black things on the ends of it.

   "What's that?"

   "Something I hadn't got around to trying out on you yet."

   He drapes the chain across my chest and starts fiddling with one of the ends of the chain. I feel it slide onto my left nipple; then he tightens it. He proceeds to do the same thing to my right nipple.

   "These are, as you can see, adjustable. They're also a relatively innocuous iteration, as far as nipple clamps go. They have to be screwed manually to be tightened. There's a Japanese style, called clover clamps, that start out tight and get increasingly tighter every time the chain is tugged. Those can be quite nasty. There's also a form of clamps that look like a pair of hairpins that drape over the nipples and are adjusted by sliding an ornament up and down their length; those are very pretty, and they look like easy enough jewelry to wear, but they're tighter than they appear."

   "Let me guess. You have a pair of those, too."

   I catch him smirking. "I have one of everything. Now then. Let's see how you handle these ones."

   He pulls gently. It feels odd; I can't tell if it hurts, feels good, or just feels like pressure. I squint down at them.

   "Not much of a response. Hmm. I think these could be tightened somewhat."

   This time, after he twists the little adjusters, it hurts, making me gasp and wince.

   "Ah. You noticed that. I think we'll go with that setting. Other side, then..."

   He bends down to resume ravishing my mouth with his. Although he's supported himself on his arms, his bare chest brushes lightly against mine anyway. I cringe. The music picks that precise moment to hit a crescendo, one of many, and bizarrely, I feel the sound vibrate through the chain. It's beautiful. It hurts. It's some of the most painful beauty I've ever heard.

   "Well," he says after he surfaces, "that's interesting. Your chain seems to be resonating with a certain note in the music... The look on your face is quite charming. I wonder what you'll look like if I use something else to make the chain vibrate."

   This time, when he returns after fishing through the dresser drawer, he has something I recognize and am familiar with. It's vaguely phallic-shaped, made of plastic, and runs on batteries. The high setting is loud enough, and strong enough, to wake the dead. I am told that this is unusual for this type of vibrator, so the vibrator is a curiosity of sorts. When it's inside me at just the right angle, it gets me off within minutes. When it's placed externally, it either tickles me unpleasantly or makes me grimace in pain and shrink away reflexively, depending on the location.

   He almost never uses the low setting, since he has other vibrators for that.

   I look at him, aghast. I feel myself going bug-eyed. Oh, no. Please, no. That's just evil. Don't do that.

   "No? Have I reached a limit?"

   I gulp.

   "This is the first time I've put clamps on you. Maybe I should save vibration play using the clamps for another night. You seem anxious."

   I'm so glad he doesn't put it on the chain. I don't think I could handle that. He's wearing an amused look. Surely that's enough for me to endure, without the additional torment of wildly vibrating clamps. I have yet to get used to his grin. For the most part, I find his presence profoundly comforting, a source of absolute security and peace, even when I am burning up with arousal and need, even when I am trying not to cringe from blows he gives me with his hands or his horsewhip or a cane or some other implement of destruction, but that smile of his is unsettling. Sometimes I wonder if he practices it in front of a mirror to make sure it achieves maximum effect.

   The vibrator plunges into me, a hard plastic presence; I cry out, trying to work it in deeper. Its loud hum blends with the sound of the music coming from the CD player.

   The chain, and its clamps, still oscillate in time with the music.

   Around my gasps, moans, and grunts, I hear him say, "I should warn you, they hurt more coming off than they did getting put on, when your circulation comes back."

   The clamps are off. My nipples are giant, throbbing bruises. My nether regions are a giant, throbbing plain of orgasm from his plowing me. My throat is throbbing, because I have been screaming around a rag he stuffed in my mouth to muffle me, when it became obvious that I was going to make enough noise to disturb the neighbors. I so seldom get to scream like that. It feels positively luxurious to scream, now.

   The gag is out. I'm done screaming. I think.

   "I want to hold you in my arms, now," I rasp. "Could you reposition me? Please?"

   "I think I can manage something," he says as he unhooks the manacles from the eyebolt.

   I wrap myself around him, and find his mouth and take it in mine. I want to memorize his lips. I want to devour them. I want to keep them on me forever, if this moment can last forever. I want to always taste his wine-and-cinnamon breath. I want to feel the warmth of his skin under my arms forever, the swollen hardness of his cock forever, as I rock my hips under him. I want this now to be forever mine. Even the soreness in my nipples, and between my legs, even that soreness is something I want to keep. I thrust myself against him, struggling, needing another release.

   Eventually, he pulls away to undo my ankle restraints one by one.

   "Roll over," he says.

   Soon I feel his fingers massage the lubricating oil inside me, and then I feel him enter me from behind, slowly and carefully, and we begin to rock back and forth together, and I am on fire, moaning my need into the bed coverings. But I have managed to grab his forearms. I am still holding him.

   The light of the setting sun falling on his freshly washed, naked flesh makes him glow golden. His repose is a breathtakingly beautiful thing. He looks like an ancient and forgotten god, the futon mattress we lie on his altar; I have a sudden irrational desire to wind garlands of ivy and grapes around his head and along his body in tribute, to worship him. I reach out my hand and gently stroke his cheek, his hair, tracing the black and silver strands with my fingertips.

   He opens his eyes and smiles sleepily at me.

   "May I have your wrist for a minute?" I ask.

   Silently, he hands out his wrist.

   I untie the scarf that I've been wearing around my wrist for weeks and re-wrap it, this time securing it around both our wrists. "This is how I want to sleep. I want to be bound to you. Do you mind?"

   He smiles again, kisses my wrist where it is bound to his, and reaches for me with his free arm. I slide up against him as if we could somehow melt together, and listen to his breathing as it becomes slow and heavy.

   "I love you," I whisper, surprised at my words, but realizing the absolute truth of them as I utter them. "I love you. I love you..."

PLEASE NOTE: 

Joseph Campbell and Mircea Eliade are both extremely problematic, due to their Nazism, but Ancilla is set in the early 1990's and "Magister" would not have been aware of that fact - it was not widely known then. (Thanks, internet and online social media). Therefore, I did not cut those writers from my protagonist's assignments. I will also admit to having used the Hero's Journey to structure the plot arc of my Magnum Opus trilogy. I wrote the rough draft of Ancilla in 2013, and did not learn about Campbell until many years later.