In my early teens when I began to explore the nature of witchcraft I was drawn to the use of blood in my workings. Blood represented a transaction in pain, a sense of marking, both emotionally and figuratively a moment of key importance in my magickal workings. My blood was also uniquely me, a linking of my very DNA to the magickal operation. To this day, three decades later I still have the scars, the markings on my body of those early magickal practices.

The blood of a partner too became important as my learning brought me into contact with sexual magick with a focus on the bodily fluids, the OV as Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth called one combination. I realised that as well as being a marker, or genetic link to the magickal operation, the blood, semen and other bodily fluids could become the substance of magick itself, a source of spiritual sustenance, or the body of a talisman. Blood and the stuff of our bodies could also be the basis of a servitor or egregore. The blood, vaginal fluids, semen, urine, saliva, faeces, hair, nails, the very presence of our physical reality in the world can be the result of a magickal action, like the outcome of an alchemical process.

Consuming something from an alchemical process and then taking blood, the result of the change, a magickal blood, born of a magickal or alchemical transformation. The feces that is formed from the cakes of light can become transformed from something usually associated with ‘waste’, into something that forms the basis of enlivening the earth in a magickal way. The psychological process of realising and experiencing that can be a transgressive act in the sense of the Left Hand Path and opposite doing also. Simply placing a magickal spice or root into the mouth, take Galangal root (Kether/Mulkuth – Alpha/Omega) for example, one of the ingredients in Crowley’s version of Abramelin Oil can result in more saliva, again made magickal by an act upon the body.

So far I have focused more on the outcome of an act, the blood, saliva etc. But the act itself can be transformative and healing. Fakir Musafar, the father of the Modern Primitive movement, first shared this view with me. I first encountered the work of Fakir Musafar in the early 90s, around the time that body piercing was beginning to become an accepted aspect of youth culture. Over the years I kept up with his work and in the 2010s I corresponded with him before he died. Fakir saw the act of piercing certain areas of the body as of vast healing power. I have seen a lot of truth to this. Even the studies within the scientific arena have shown acupuncture to be the most affective of the complimentary therapies. According to the research it’s not important where the needle is placed, more the action of making a physical literal intervention in the body.

In my own work with needles this sense of an intervention can be taken one step further via a magickal understanding. The act of piercing the skin, becomes an action to alter consciousness, as well as the body. To change our experience of the body, and to release chemicals like serotonin and histamine, creating a natural alchemy within the body. Pain also signals to the body that healing is needed. The act of causing pain in a ritualised way becomes a communication to the inner landscape of the body, a call for change.

In time the pain and act of changing the body leads to a timeless flow-like state, often referred to in the BDSM community as subspace. This kind of state is very similar to the depth states experienced in prolonged ritual, or altered states of consciousness and transcendent experiences. Thus the simple act of piercing the skin becomes an avenue to a deeply important form of magick that operates both via an act of Will, and the resulting alchemy.