CHAP II. IN POSSESSION OF MY INNER HEAVEN. A sacred reality of the self and the surrounding world

You must drink the water of pain

and stoke the fire of love with the wood of virtues;

then you will dwell in the true desert.

Mechthild von Magdeburg, Das fließende Licht der Gottheit.​​

À chacun su rythme d'affliction.

 Roland Barthes, Journal de deuil.

Je ne cherche pas l'évidence,

je fuis l'évidence pour éclaircir l'obscurité

Antonin Artaud.

   At midday, my night begins. And at night, before I sleep, my fear of mechanical repetition and meaningless performativity surfaces. When I dream, I am set free and inhabit a space where random elements, animals, churches and strange situations interplay. On the threshold of my night and my dream, repetition expresses the inexpressible, helping me to understand and find relief from the tedium that casts a shadow over my thoughts, resonating like an echo in the abyss of my fracture, revealing the awareness of my pain.

Fear of becoming myself, of dwelling on consecrated ground, of clearing the gates of perception, without yet having any inkling of what lies behind this liberation, of what I do, my decisions, where I direct the focus of my attention. Seeking the divine in the depths of my being and not in the outside world, releasing the chains of mere instinct to bring the opposites into consciousness. Understanding the mysterious darkness of the Eastern spirit that dwells within me like a serpent and seeks to awaken my deep psychic powers by subjecting me to the spiritual.

Synchronicity reminds me that I am part of something greater that guides me towards encounters that transform me, a dance between my outer and inner worlds. Yet repetitive synchronicity overwhelms me. I feel within me the words drawn out with sorrow by Paul Celan in Todesfuge (Fugue of Death). The weariness of the message remains in my chest; out of sheer tedium, I repeat the emptiness, I grow exasperated, I go into the forest, I seek answers, I find some, I return to repetition; sometimes I surprise myself, so much so that I must return to the forest with this new perspective; I theorise it, I am afraid, I cling to nothing, I ritualise with fire and ashes, despair suffocates me. And now the repetition, with a little more meaning, becomes a sacred structure that helps me understand certain points I had put forward based on intuition. A black velvet kimono, blindfolded, hands tied behind my back, the request not to listen to your breathing, the command to focus your attention on the point between your eyes, the punishment. I move forward and have new answers.

Frater meus, the sob of your vulnerability, dilated pupils and the lightness of your body make me understand this journey where the feeling of nothingness fragments what was apparently united. Little by little I understand what is no longer stone nor water, but the sacredness of an encounter where the ecstatic experience reveals the divine and singular aspect of the rite. Synchronicity and repetition seem less tedious to me when, in my moments of darkness, some Submissives communicate and their words become a beacon guiding me home. I am not alone in this.

In the radical separation between the sacred as internal and the profane as external, the dungeon presents itself on a plane distinct from the ordinary. And this physical plane ceases to be homogeneous, splitting to form a Centre, in which I present the physical body as an altar, thus establishing a fixed, particular and unique point upon which to found the world and begin to truly live. No new world could be born from the homogeneity of space. In the balance between Chaos and Cosmos and my quest for the multiplication of meaning, I discovered that the sacred is equivalent to Spinoza’s potentia. My nourishment, my sexuality and my dreams ceased long ago to be merely an organic process, but rather places where I allow myself to attain a certain transcendence through the communion I generate with the objects consecrated in my private universe, where I establish a boundary that distinguishes the ordinary from what may be extraordinary. I regained my insolent freedom; in my thirst to be, and in the face of the terror that the thought of nothingness provokes in me, I decided to face another beginning, one more among the many lives I have already lived. I refuse to accept a merely human condition; I split myself into a malleable object open to synchronicity, to the manifestation of the sacred, and I unite intimately with the mysterious Eastern spirit, which allows me to freely unleash my psychic power; my neurosis was merely a reflection of my complex and intense depth. In light of this, my comings and goings to the forest have been the path to my own healing. I see my soul, and I am no longer frightened by the abyss or the self-sacrifice of my Being.

I wonder how many times I will have to seek refuge in the forest. My sensitivity, war, misery and terror, the unbearable and the inconceivable nature of our historical reality subjugate me to the need for my growing religiosity. I find it hard to understand the Cosmos in its destructive aspect as a hierophanic edge, the crushing submission before my Nova maiestas.

I chose a territory and began to let roots grow, taking on the creation of my world that seemed to have no past. A return from the diaspora because I need answers; I return to my centre to recognise the gods of my ancestors. A DNA test, like a virtual rhizome, reveals me to be Iberian, Arab and Native American; my wide eyes finally have factual answers. I begin my journey of reconnection with the East. My visits to Morocco awakened in me a deep and sublime longing for belonging; I began to dream of mosques and deserts. The first words I learnt in Arabic are undoubtedly words that contain me – Dunya, Mreyte, Leyla, Sama, Fawda, Ahmar, Kabir, Qawm – (Earth, Mirror, Night, Sky, Chaos, Red, Great, Resist). My victory here lies in recognising the unknown, facing different presences as a mirror, accepting reverence, and enjoying the constant exchange of roles where there is neither object nor subject, because we both share a common third entity. To step out of hierarchical tyranny and return to presence. If I am no longer alone, then neither are you. Now, as a geometric space, I wish to erect a sacred-religious, rebellious and emancipatory theory, where repetition becomes a necessity to establish a rite of passage, a threshold towards a deep unconscious, to look face to face at the Anima and the Animus, because without the soul the spirit is as dead as matter. I am capable of connecting with multiple ruptures; your pain and mine share roots from the same matrix.

On 22 November, it will be a year since my first session in a dungeon as a Dominatrix, the very day the Sun passes through my natal Lilith at 0 degrees of Sagittarius, the day on which I accepted and gave thanks for the will of my longing that sought the path to liberation. On the threshold of my night, I learnt to trust my shadow.