Bewitched (#1) Rituals with a Femdom Witch

A ritual of this nature takes a hold on me for days before it even begins. Cold little worms of anxiety hatch in my amygdala and wriggle their way over to the prefrontal cortex, making each day a little muddier until I can begin. My thoughts on a loop: do I have the balances right? Are my intentions set? What if it all goes wrong and I hurt him? What if his head explodes?! Being an anxious and OCD-suffering witch is a funny one. It’s needing a candle for a ritual and then wondering if said candle will burn the whole building down, murdering everyone inside (despite taking a photo of the extinguished wick). It’s a flooding mental image of my devotee frothing at the mouth and violently vomiting lime-green bile while his wife and child watch in horror - the headlines: MAN KILLED BY DEMONIC DOMINATRIX BITCH.  But it’s also a brain that has deep roots in personal ritual and magical thinking, which is perfect for, well… magic. From the moment I wake up on ritual day, there is a heaviness in my head and an irritation with everything. My skin feels too hot, my coffee tastes grainy, every noise from my window is aggressively loud, and the humming of my own brain is even louder. My annoyance tells me that I’m on the border now; between real life and ritual, and I stay there until it begins.

I arrive at the dungeon at 2.30pm, exactly 30 minutes before my devotee. I close my eyes and deeply inhale the familiar scent of smoke, sweat, leather and poppers; the strange brew that begins to untangle the knot in my stomach. With a piece of chalk I draw a rough pentagram on the rubber floor mats, enveloping the bondage bench within the circle. The humming in my head transitions to a loud roar. I get changed, set up my altar and tools. And then I wait for the knock on the door. Sometimes those ten minutes between prep and play feel stretched out and warped. My skin is on fire and my brain screams so loudly that I’m surprised no one else can hear it. Then the knock, reaching to open the door with jelly arms. As soon as it swings open I see myself through the eyes of my devotee and the world goes quiet. I am here, I am alive, I am so powerful. Back in my body I drink in his nervousness, his eyes darting, pits sweating, hands wringing. I am nourished. 

I tell him to go to the bathroom and take his clothes off, “And when you come back out I don’t want to hear a single word from your mouth, do you understand?” Speaking is not free in my space and it has to be earned. While he changes, I take the seat furthest away from the bathroom. I can feel the downy hairs standing up on my arms, my pupils dilating, thick warmth flowing out from my centre to all my limbs. When he comes back out I tell him to crawl across the room to me on all fours, going around the pentagram anticlockwise. When he’s kneeled at my feet I take his chin gently in my hand and then jerk it up so that we’re eye to eye. I gaze into his eyes for some time, psychically pushing in an intention: be mine, be mine, be mine. I direct him to stand up and wait, eyes closed. On my altar there is a heavy bowl with a mixture of white clay, I add to it my pulverised calamus and licorice root; herbs to dominate and command. I add a little water and use the paste to draw the sigil for rebirth all over the body of my devotee. I take my time with each anticlockwise swirl, pressing into the skin, making it mine. I let my breath be heavy in his ear and I know that this simple gift will make his pathetic cock rise. I anoint his erection with the sigil - because it belongs to me too - and it pulses with every delicate touch. 

I lead him, eyes still closed, over to the bondage bench. I secure his entire body with nine belts, tightly wrapped to the bench. As I buckle each one I allow him to speak: 

“Who do you belong to?”

“You, Mummy”, he answers. Repeated nine times.

Then he is gagged, his eyes covered with a mask and his hearing muffled with headphones. As his senses are deprived, I put on a pair of elbow-length satin gloves in a pale pink and light candles; one on each point of the pentagram star and four on the altar. I snake my soft, gloved hands all over his body, swirling around the sigils. Straddling him, I take some strands of his hair between my fingers and reach for the ceremonial dagger on the altar - in a flash, I cut the strands off at the root. I feel him shifting and squirming beneath me so I drag the dagger gently from his chin to his chest: stop moving. The dagger traces the sigils and on the inner forearm I press a little harder at the centre of the swirl to draw blood, swiftly grabbing a vial to collect it in. This time he stays very still; “What a good boy”, I purr into his muffled ear. I place the hair, the dagger and the blood back on the altar. I remove the headphones and leave everything else intact, I want him unnerved by the clanging sounds of chains as I hoist something above him so that it dangles just above his face. I wrap more belts around him until man and bondage bench become one leather cocoon. I cover all of him, except a slit for the eyes, a slit for the mouth and a slit for his cock. I blow out all the candles, turn off the lamp light and push the blindfold down into the cocoon. “Open your eyes”. I see through my devotee’s gaze once more as he stares up into the face of a little doll with a clay head and a cloth body, suspended in the darkness and lit by a spotlight. “Look into your eyes,” I whisper. The doll, a poppet, is a miniature of my devotee. Dark brown hair and startlingly blue eyes. I slide my satin hand up and down his cock as I repeat a mantra and my devotee stares into his own little eyes. 

“Be one, be mine,” I chant over and over. “Be one, be mine”. 

I pick up my shamanic drum from the altar and use the wooden beater to conjure a rhythm with the mantra, deepening the trance and strengthening the magic. After some time, my devotee’s breathing, blinking and pulsing cock all move in time to the drum and I feel his energy being cajoled out into the penetrating eyes of the poppet. He breathes faster and faster and the drumming speeds up too; until at last his body reaches its crescendo. I feel his climax reverberate around the room, the poppet swings a little on his chains. His cock shudders and releases all over the leather, slithering its way back into the cocoon. I pull the blindfold back over his eyes and leave him to steady his breath. I unchain the poppet, placing it delicately on the altar. It feels warm and alive in my hands and I have to resist the temptation to cradle it like a newborn baby. But that’s for later and there’s still important work to be done here. I wipe down the cocoon and slowly remove each belt, my devotee’s body appearing again, fleshy and limp. Energy can be transferred but energy must also be restored and right now every action must be precise. I take a damp cloth and tenderly wash the pale body of my devotee. I can see tiny tears escaping from beneath the eye mask. “Don’t be afraid, we’re almost there”, I whisper into his ear. 

I take time setting up my tattooing station; the machine, needles, black ink in a plastic pot, green soap, kitchen roll, the glide balm, a razor. I sit for a moment and think about my intention, what it means to me to mark my devotee with my sigil, what it means for us. I don’t use a stencil; I see my sigil every time I close my eyes, I could draw it in my sleep. I shave and wash a little bit of skin on the back of his right ankle. I turn on the machine, the whirring “Mmmmmmzzzzz,” of it relaxing my body and tensing his. I channel myself into his body as soon as the needles hit the skin:

“Mmmmmmzzzz you are mine. Mmmmzzzz I will keep you. Mmmmmmzzz I will protect you. Mmmmmmmzzzz I will guide you. Mmmmmmzzzz come back into your body. Mmmmmzzzz come back to me. Mmmmmmzzzz you are mine.”

The small sigil is etched forever onto my devotee’s skin in just five minutes. I wash and cover it, then move quickly over to the altar. I dip the same needles into the vial of my devotee’s blood and tattoo the same sigil onto the soft centre of the poppet before collaring the doll with the lock of my devotee’s hair. I place the poppet into a perfectly sized jar and seal it; and now I feel tears prick my own eyes. I quickly wipe them away and remove my devotee’s eye mask. I ask him to slowly, slowly, open his eyes and sit up on the bench. I make him a tea of holy basil to ease anxiety and ginger to bring him back to his senses. We sit quietly as he sips his tea. Before he leaves I hug him to me closely and feel him melt into my embrace. I tell him to go straight home, eat a healthy dinner and get an early night.

As soon as the door shuts I fall to my knees in uncontrollable, hysterical tears and laughter. I lay on the rubber mat, eyes closed, overwhelmed by all my senses. Bright colours swirl around the inside of my eyelids making the shapes of people that I recognise but have never met. They’re smiling at me, long translucent fingers reaching deep inside me and comforting me from within. In my head I call them the inside people but I know they’re my ancestors. If I do the rituals just right, they let me be with them for a bit. I’m brought to by a knock on the door, the next person to use the dungeon. In a haze I clean up, pack away and get a taxi home. At home I carefully unpack my new poppet, placing him in the jar on my desk. I put a hand on either side of the warm glass and the remnants of the inside people dance around on the edges of my vision like fireworks. After the last one has disappeared, I open my wardrobe and in the bottom left corner a sea of little faces look up at me; 17 little faces, to be precise. I kiss the jar over his face and add number 18 to the collection, Goodnight R.