This is a page about interdisciplinary thoughts,
comparisons and discoveries about that scene.
In my studies I discovered that some people like to do certain bondage and self- bondage variants without any sadist person or such roleplays involved in it, just because they enjoy to feel their body this way (by stretching elastic bands over the body etc.). I never cared about any self- bondage interests in the orbit of the sado- maso scene, but when I now, blessed with the virtues of open eyes and open mind and without any prejudices regard the more extreme assanas (body postures) of our holy doctrines of yoga, then it can certainly not be denied that they also have in some ways a bit bondage- like sensual aspects, and I definitely know that I like their special feelings and the states of mind achievable by them. (The sanskrit term "bandha", meaning something like "bondage" (or "immobilization/ seal by contraction"), is even part of the name of many classical yoga exercises.) As a psychedelics researcher I could well imagine, that in both kinds of experiences quite similar physiological effects play important roles (e.g. intensifying and synchronizing the perception of bodily vibrations, influencing breathe and blood circulation etc. etc.).
Another very strange device used by certain sexual latex fetishists etc. in so-called "bondage" contexts are latex hoods with an inflatable mouth gag. The gag is a bladder of strong latex rubber which can be inserted into the mouth and then manually inflated through a hose with a small bulb pump. By inflation this gag can be expanded like a balloon until it fills out the entire mouth. To enable breathing in this state the gag is designed in a way that a stiff metal or plastic pipe in its center lets air flow through it. The main effect of such an inflatable gag is that it squeezes at all sides against the walls of the mouth.
I find this device too accident prone and rather
disgusting, and I personally would never come in mind to insert anything
like this into my mouth. But by the view of psychedelics research it is
very interesting to notice that a very similar working principle is widely
applied in yoga to induce ecstatic states and to eventually reach enlightenment.
The yoga exercise I talk about is the "khecari mudra", in which the yogi
presses his tongue against the rear, soft area of his palate and visualizes
a flame- like energy radiating upward from there to activate his ajna chakra
(between the eyes). During this he carefully contracts his kundalinih exciter
muscle at the muladhara chakra (between anus and genitals) in combination
with certain breathe rhythms to make the kundalinih
ascend. Neurologically the ajna chakra corresponds to the pituitary gland
(at the base of the brain), which gets stimulated by the pressure against
the soft palate in combination with the other conditions. (During enlightenment
also the pineal gland (in the brain's center) gets activated in a complex
resonance process, which is accompanied by sensations of light, sounds
and various other well documented effects.) When we now look at the fact
that inflatable mouth gags are often used in combination with breathe control
and some kind of sexual stimulation (which activates the muladhara chakra
and near orgasm tends to contract the kundalinih exciter muscle), then
this combination can be indeed regarded as a crude approximation of the
khecari mudra - likely not precise enough to enlighten, but certainly sufficient
to generate some altered states of mind.
apropos "bodybag":
Mr.Blowup
wrote on his site that he particularly likes the feeling of getting bodily
completely immobilized by putting himself into an inflatable bodybag.
I personally can only remember that as a baby I was wrapped by my parents
into a sort of cloth sleeping bag in which I couldn't move my legs (and
also my arms??). It would be psychologically very interesting to know if
people those like such bodybags also were treated similarly in their first
childhood. I remember that at the time of my early childhood I definitely
disliked it to involuntarily sweat around in such a bag. But intentionally
putting oneself into an inflatable bodybag is certainly a very different
condition, and though I don't know if I could be possibly capable to like
it.
Law tip against unfair use of "bondage pornography" laws:
Mr.Blowup wrote on his site, that he got sometimes trouble with his bodybag pictures, because publishers frightened to violate anti- bondage- pornography laws by showing them.
It could very well be argued here with the psychedelic
main purpose of such inflatable equipment when some stubborn magazines,
internet providers or similar refuse to publish such pictures by referring
to some vague "bondage pornography" laws. These laws were intended to prohibit
to publically show or spread pictures those might be suited to glorify
and potentially encourage the sexual rape of helpless individuals by presenting
people in rape- like situations (which is basically a very reasonable law
intention). But his bodybag pictures show nothing resembling in any way
to typical rape situations - they not even feature nudity or forms of sexual
intercourse - though it would be definitely against the spirit of such
laws to compare these pictures with something suited to encourage raping
people sexually. IMO the pictures of Mr.Blowup show rather some bizarre
fantasies of SF (science fiction) than SM (sado- maso); a disguised, fully
dressed Klingon women from Star Trek would be similarly "pornographic".
;-)
Though by explaining that this is equipment for making psychedelic experiences
(and keeping stupid terms like "pervy" away) nobody should ever be capable
to seriously complain again that this would show anything "pornographic".
Showing pictures of a (perhaps even semi- naked) drumming shamen shows
also situations from a deep psychedelic experience, but nobody would ever
come in mind to attempt to forbid it by regarding it as "pornography".
increase of sado- masochism - a modern replacement for transition rites?!:
A theory says that a major subconscious motivation for the increasing number of people those nowadays want to realize painful sado- maso games is the lack of genuine transition rites in our modern society.
Nearly all cultures before the actual one had as part of their spirituality official initiation rituals to accompany the transition from childhood to puberty and from puberty to adulthood etc. to pass crises situations by psychologically firmly marking that a new stage of life has begun. Such classical rituals in ancient cultures often contained courage tests (featuring bearing strong pains etc.) and exposing the initiated person to unusual and unpleasant situations those were often designed to be realized by it as a serious danger for life (often performed in quite brutalitary ways by intentionally injuring/ tormenting the person) to symbolically manifest all the persons fears against the new life stage and though accelerate the process of overcoming these fears by making the initiant realize in the controlled situation of the ritual that he finally overcomes the danger and then perceives a great feeling of liberation. This feeling gets typically intensified by the performer of the ritual by comforting and praising the initiant and often by celebrating a joyful party after he has gone through it. An important element in such forms of rituals is that the person being initiated realizes to be capable to entirely trust into its master/ leader of the ritual (shamen, guru etc.) when he sets it into the dangerous appearing situation and though always can keep in mind that the master will safe it from all the danger later.
Exactly the same ritualized basical structure of first annoying/ punishing a person, followed by later giving console and reward to it can be typically found in today's ritualized sado- maso domina roleplay games, and also the element of realizing to entirely trust into a master is present here. For me as a plastic shamen it is therefore nearly blatantly obvious that certain forms of of these games are an (at least subconsciously) yearning attempt of members of the modern, materialistic culture to replace the function of the missing transition rites. (Like in classical spiritual transition rites, even ritual costumes are used here to mark the archetypal roles of the participants.)
But a general, serious problem with subconsciously performed replacement rituals (like the known, stupidly done dangerous courage tests just for demonstrating to be "a real man") is that rituals can only have the desired transformatorical effect (e.g. of overcoming real life's fears or of realizing to be an adult now and though bear responsibility) when a meaning is assigned to them. Only to imitate the outer form of a ritual without giving it an appropriate meaning is not enough to make it work - meaningless courage tests therefore rather tend to end in the wheelchair or coffin than to be capable to make childish self- doubts or other crisises situations disappear. A crucial part for the effect of genuine rituals is therefore that all deeds must symbolize something important for the situation to be processed to direct the conscious awareness of the participants correctly to process the problem the ritual shall solve. Rituals must guide the mind; consciousness is what works - not the outer form. (Rituals therefore often include psychedelic elements - that rubberist technology that sometimes is used in context of domina roleplaying therefore makes here absolutely no exception.)
Rituals are an important tool for organizing life. Societies of human beings need rituals to function, and the controlling power of rituals therefore must not be ignored or denied; when a society doesn't get equipped with good rituals, it will sooner or later spontaneously choose any own ones, and these will possibly be very bad and socially harmful ones.
(As a plastic shamen and consciousness researcher I know too well about the effects of rituals; I am therefore strictly against performing any painful, bodily injuring, cruelty applying, totally exhausting or extremest death- panic inducing forms of transition rites like described above. Rituals of such structure use phobical programmings, i.e. they (in simplified terms) work by psychologically traumatizing people. Due to traumas hinder people from sovereignous holistical thinking, I consider such rituals in general to be brainwash, which eventually just stupidizes the human race and prevents its further spiritual development.
When ever people despite wish to do any such forms
of rituals (no matter if in sado- maso or other contexts), it is therefore
absolutely crucial that all participants do everything by free will, that
they are entirely aware of what they are doing and that nobody gets forced
to do anything he doesn't want; everything else is a crime against humanity.)
Q: Origin of "Pump it up!" - where comes this tekkno saying from?
Various pieces of tekkno music contain in their refrain "pump it up", "pump up the jam/ the volume" or other things with "pumping". Where comes this saying from? Is this just an allusion to the use of drug syringes by junkies (similarly like shouting "ecstasy!"), or simply alludes to the heart beat, or did composers of such tekkno indeed have connections to the rubberist/ inflatable fetish scene? I only know from TV reports, that the dancers of the very first (often illegal) hardcore tekkno parties often wore gasmasks (sometimes containing menthol or also worse substances for inhaling), and reporters said that this originated from "the sado- maso scene", though the association with "pump it up" appears quite logical. (I only apply tekkno musics of low volume for meditation; I don't ruin my ears with tekkno parties.)
Only about the similarly widespread music term
"blow up" I found out that in 1960 there was a hippy movie of this name
and a phono record label (with a hot air balloon on its logo), and in 1960
there existed a beat musics club "Blow-Up" (with very interesting psychedelic
style wall paintings) in the German city Munich. About the latter in 1968
even a German movie "Das Gogo Girl vom Blow-Up" (i.e. "The gogo girl of
the Blow-Up") was produced.
Latex - more durable than synthetic rubber?? (polyurethane)
Latex rubber is commonly claimed to be less durable than today's synthetic rubber sorts. At least with elastic bands in (cloth) garments I made the exactly opposite experience.
Nowadays elastic bands and such threads for clothes are almost always made from polyurethane (also called elasthane). This synthetic elastomer was introduced by the industry with the claim to be more resistant against washing agents and UV light than latex (but less against chlorine?) and it even should be resistant against oils and deodorants.
In spite of these claims I have repeatedly noticed that in many of my socks and underpants the elasthane bands and threads have lost their strength or even disintegrated to brownish dust. Typically already after ca. 3 years such underpants elastic bands (washed at 40°C with mild washing agents and tumbled dry) tend to lose their strength very noticeable (steepness and hysteresis increase a lot). With long times not worn socks the bizarre thing is that of 2 socks stuffed into each other it is always the inner one which elastic threads crumble away to brown dust, while the outer one remains intact. (My theory is that apparently of the inner one the residues of humidity from washing (despite tumbling) need too long to evaporate and though can disintegrate the elasthane. But due to this only happens to seldom worn socks those already lie around in the wardrobe for months, the humidity of the inner sock must evaporate tremendously slowly to make this phenomenon possible.)
In my pyjama I have replaced the disintegrated elasthane elastic band with one of my favourite magical material :-) (latex rubber), and this one seems to make none of such problems. While the lousy elasthane things get weaker and weaker each time I take them out of the tumble dryer, that one of the good old material latex not only nicely withstands the washing, but even feels stronger and energized again each time after taking it out of the warm dryer. Though the dryer's heat not only doesn't damage it much, but even seems to help it to recreate well from the accumulated hysteresis of a week of wearing to gain its force back for another week.
Generally polyurethane seems to be an inferior material. Its chemical production residues are said to be capable to cause cancer, and also that awful kind of cheap foam rubber that everybody learns to hate from those terrible headphone paddings or cheap sofas and mattresses those begin to crumble apart already after 3 to 6 years is nothing else than polyurethane. Latex foam mattresses in opposite to this are quality products and don't tend to dissolve fast.
Therefore I am convinced that the wonderful, non-
toxic, natural material latex is definitely not the least durable
elastomer. The chemical polyurethane seems to be considerable worse.
eroticism & inflatables - a very natural phenomenon...
On the internet can be found many descriptions that certain people (e.g. so-called sexual balloon fetishists/ inflatable fetish people) feel eroticized by watching inflating objects. Possibly this is nothing else than an odd activation of a very natural, archaic reflex.
In the world of animals swelling or inflating special body parts are often used to signal to be looking for a sexual partner; I don't talk here about genitals, but about much more visible, dedicated organs. Blood operated swell- organs for signalling sexual readiness are many known.
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Of air inflating ones e.g. the transparent vocal sacs of frogs and toads are a well known example. |
| One of the most spectacular cases of this kind are certainly the frigate birds of the Galapagos islands. When they look for a partner, the male bird sits on a tree and inflates a bright red, balloon- like pouch under his neck to attract the females. This pouch unfolds and stretches to ca. half of his body's size when fully inflated, and the process of inflating takes him more than 20 minutes. When a female flies over, he spreads his wings, shakes his feathers and squawks to call her. |  |
Therefore when a human being reacts with the reflex of feeling eroticized by watching inflating objects, he basically just feels the same like the frigate birds, and though likely has either an archprogram of certain archaic genes from our early animal ancestors activated or stands in morphic resonance with a morphic field pattern of such animals.
In shamanism there is a belief that all human beings have a mystical
connection to a personal guardian animal, which is an immaterial spirit
being that (like a guardian angle) accompanies us in our life and that
can be found and contacted by meditation or dreams. The species of guardian
animal a person has, typically reflects aspects of the person's own personality
or habits. Regarded in a classic shamanical view, the phenomenon of erotic
fascination for watching inflating objects could therefore be interpreted
as that such people have a guardian animal of a species like those described
above.
latex smell - a pheromone?
Regarding the relatively widespread erotical application of latex on this planet, it is interesting to notice that very pure and noble natural latex rubber sorts can smell somewhat sperm- like. Also in the Aztec culture there was for sperm and latex the same word. It would be interesting to research on whether the smell of fresh latex may work in a kind of pheromone- like way and though may have a subconsciously eroticizing effect or at least one that makes people diffusely feel better (like human pheromones also do).
(E.g. also truffle mushrooms are instinctively searched and dug out
by male pigs due to their particular smell resembles the female pig's pheromone.)
balloon fetishism vs. tantra visualization:
I read on the internet that certain sexual toy balloon fetishists enjoy to have the fantasy to be an inflating latex toy balloon or latex doll that grows bigger and bigger.
In tantra yoga there is a meditation exercise in which the adept visualizes himself as sitting or lying as a tiny human being inside a giant, translucent, immaterial body of a Hindu deity or Buddha; during the meditation the adept visualizes how with each inhaling his tiny (immaterial, translucent?) body grows larger and larger until it finally completely reaches and fills out the size of the deity's body. Purpose of this exercise is to energize and extend ones aura and to gather more and more spiritual force from that deity or Buddha visualized in it to realize the divine nature within oneself.
This kind of visualization concepts therefore
appears to be a quite global phenomenon, which is possibly an archetype
and much older than the common profane use of latex toy balloons. (Unfortunately
I don't remember anymore in which book the tantra visualization exercise
was described.)
air swallowing and yoga:
I read on the internet that some sado- maso(?) people like it to swallow air. This is funny, because things like this are nothing new, but already known since ancient times in the yoga; it is called there the vatassara dhauti (= "air flush") and seems to be intended as a kind of purification exercise. In this exercise the yogi shall "drink" the air very slowly and force it out of the anus again by the movement of his belly muscles.
In historical yoga texts this is claimed to help
against diseases and improve digestion. Yogi- Raj Boris Sacharow wrote
in a book that this (not that pleasant) exercise wouldn't be really worth
to be performed. By my experience the exercise rather tends to disturb
the flow of the kundalinih energy (by blocking the autonomous nervous system)
than to aid its rising, therefore also I don't find it recommendable. The
only useful purpose I could imagine for it is to learn to perceive and
become aware of the movement of ones own guts (e.g. to bring them under
conscious control), though I regard this rather as a pure body awareness
learning exercise for beginners than as anything that could make sense
to be performed regularly for improving health or aiding spiritual development.
(When performed with too high intensity, the exercise may lead to exhaustion
and therefore might be suited for (rather flatlinerish)
psychedelic experiments, but due to it disturbs the kundalinih, I can't
imagine that it is capable to lead to anything useful.)
the very first latex fetishists:
Rubber is today mostly used for tyres and many technical or banal things, while that particular use of rubber that today is commonly known under the term "latex/ rubber fetishism" is something that is rather publically quite despised and drawn into ridiculosity.
Otherwise when we look for the historical origins of rubber, then it can basically be said that even the first known users of latex in human history already were "latex fetishists". Latex was first used already more than 3000 years ago in the Olmec culture, and at least from the Aztecs it is well known that there it had an important sacred meaning. When we regard the genuine meaning of the term "fetishist" (namely a basically mystical worshipper of special kinds of (typically inanimate) objects), then the shamanic priests of these cultures could be regarded indeed as nothing else then the world first "latex fetishists". (The word "Olmec" means in Aztec language nothing else than "inhabitants of the country of rubber".) Also Charles Goodyear, the inventor of the modern form of vulcanization (and strong churchian believer), had totally devoted all his life and money in such an intense way to his fascination for natural rubber and finding applications for it, that also he in the best meaning of the word could be well described as one of the very first "latex fetishists". (Goodyear even enjoyed to wear a man's suit entirely made of his favourite material...)
About the first occurrence of the modern, sexual
form of latex fetishism I have no informations yet. (Does anybody know
more about its history?)
shamanism and inflatable latex suits:
By the way, standing upright while holding the arms in a vertically spreaded position very similar to that one caused by the inflatable latex suit visible on Mr.Blowup's picture "x109.jpg" forms a classical shamanic trance posture, which is known to be used by shamens since aeons to create ecstatic visions for remote- viewing. Also completely body enclosing ritual costumes with face masks are well- known in shamanism, and like with your equipment they have not only symbolic purposes, but scientifically measurable psychedelic effects by influencing body temperature, breathing (e.g. by re-inhaling a fraction of the CO2 by the mask) and certainly also by some sensory insulating effects. Therefore these inflatable latex suits with all their aspects are indeed nothing else than a modern, elaborated, high tech optimized version of a psychedelic shamen suit - dedicated for creating altered states of the mind.
It is also known that native cultures like the Aztecs* were capable to make ponchos from natural latex rubber. It would be extremely fascinating to know if these were only used as ordinary rain coats, or if they possibly were even applied in the context of shamanic sweat rituals.
(*to remember: Latex was at least in the Aztec culture something holy, though I can't imagine well that such native cultures only used them for a profane purpose. Unfortunately such entirely natural latex rubber decays nearly as easy as the buried mortal bodies of their shamens itself, though it is little likely that any fragile things of latex will ever be dug out by archeologists; the only things archeologists can still easily find in identifiable state are the simple, heavy solid rubber balls of such cultures, those often remained conserved in swamps. It is known that swamps can transform the skin of sunken corpses into leather, but latex is something very different and I don't know how well they can conserve it. The knowledge about what interesting things else ever may have been created in ancient times of this magical material therefore likely got destroyed forever when the westian conquerors exterminated these cultures.)
Interdisciplinary cooperation can be an astonishingly interesting, funny and exciting thing... isn't it?! :)
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