Today on Foreplay and Fangs, we welcome a very special guest:
Rayne Hall, author of The World-Loss Diet, Writing
About Villains, and many, many other books across several fantastic genres! Today, Rayne shares with us one of her previously published articles, Writing About Sex Magic. With my short story, Equinox, soon to appear in the Ravaged anthology by Breathless Press, this was a subject I was eager to learn more about!
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STORIES ABOUT SEX MAGIC
by Rayne Hall
Any magician - female
or male, good or evil, witch or shaman, theurgist or Enochian - may use sex
magic. Although I'm using the male pronoun, everything applies equally to
females.
Before casting a spell,
a magician needs to create an intense flow of energy to fuel the magic. Most do
this with chanting, drumming or dancing. The magician in your story may do it
with sex.
The power raised
through sexual arousal can be phenomenal and serve to super-charges a spell. If
your protagonist is a magician, you can use this for a plot-relevant erotic
scene.
Here's how it works.
1. The magician decides
the desired outcome. Examples: make the crops grow, stop the flood, protect the
traveller on a dangerous journey.
2. He plans and
prepares the ritual. Examples: composing the words for the spell, assembling
the ingredients, casting a circle around the area where the ritual will take
place.
3. He gets into a state
of sexual arousal - in any way which suits your story's plot.
4. Since the power is
strongest immediately before orgasm, the magician tries to stretch out that
phase for as long as possible.
5. In this state of
intense arousal, he casts the spell. Example: he chants the words of the spell
repeatedly. He concludes the spell with an assertion that this is his will.
Example: a Wiccan witch may say 'So mote it be.'
6. Once the spell is
cast, the ritual is over. To ground himself in reality again, he climaxes. For
further grounding, he may eat or drink something.
7. He sleeps, exhausted
by the combination of mental and physical exertion.
Sex magic has
drawbacks, complications and conflicts, which can make the story even more
exciting.
- Magic works through
the mind and requires enormous concentration, which is difficult to achieve in
a state of high arousal.
- When two magicians
join for sex magic, they can raise an enormous amount of power, but this
requires them to synchronise their levels of arousal as well as their thoughts.
This is unlikely to work for a couple who are not already established lovers.
However, you can use
this near-impossibility to create tension: Perhaps the only way to save the
world is through the kind of magic which requires intense power, and the only
way to achieve so much power is for two magicians to work sex magic together.
Will the heroine set aside her dislike of the hero and join him in the act?
Unfamiliar with each other's bodies, can they coordinate their levels arousal?
The fictional possibilities are delicious.
If you're writing
erotic fiction, you could also use this for a BDSM scenario: a submissive
person serves the dominant magician by arousing him to the desired level
without causing distraction.
In a ménage scene,
perhaps two magicians are an established team who have worked sex magic
together on many occasions. A desperate situation requires additional energy,
so they include a third person in their
ritual. Will the new partner be able to synchronise his level of arousal
with theirs? Excited by the presence of the new person, will the team be able
to concentrate on the task?
Of course, solo sex
magic with masturbation would be more practical, but it has less plot
potential.
- In a state of
arousal, judgement is impaired. A responsible magician never works magic on the
spur of the moment while aroused, because he might be tempted to do something
which is morally reprehensible or against his ethics.
For example, a male
magician may fancy a woman like crazy, and the sight of her arouses him. In
this state, he wants the woman - and he uses his arousal to cast a spell which
will make her desire him with equal passion. By the time he comes to his
senses, it's too late, and he may not be able to undo the spell. Terrible
results happen. Maybe the woman divorces her loyal husband because she can no
longer love him, or maybe the obsessed woman stalks the magician for the rest
of his life.
Of course, in fiction
it is interesting if a character makes a bad choice and has to deal with the
consequences.
- Sex magic leaves the
magician tired, drained, and helpless. An enemy may use this vulnerable phase
to attack the magician.
ABOUT RAYNE HALL
Rayne Hall has published more than
forty books under different pen names with different publishers in different
genres, mostly fantasy, horror and non-fiction. Recent books include Storm
Dancer (dark epic fantasy novel), 13 British Horror Stories, Six Scary
Tales Vol. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5(creepy horror stories), Thirty Scary Tales, Six Historical Tales Vol. 1 and 2
(short stories), Six Quirky Tales (humorous fantasy stories), The Colour of Dishonour: Stories from the
Storm Dancer World, Writing Fight Scenes, The World-Loss Diet, Writing About
Villains, Writing About Magic and Writing Scary Scenes (practical
guides for authors).
She holds a college degree in
publishing management and a masters degree in creative writing. Currently, she
edits the Ten Tales series of multi-author short story anthologies:
Bites: Ten Tales of Vampires, Haunted: Ten Tales of Ghosts, Scared: Ten Tales
of Horror, Cutlass: Ten Tales of Pirates, Beltane: Ten Tales of Witchcraft,
Spells: Ten Tales of Magic, Undead: Ten Tales of Zombies, Seers: Ten Tales of
Clairvoyance and more.
Rayne has
lived in Germany, China, Mongolia and Nepal and
has now settled in a small dilapidated town of former Victorian grandeur
on the south coast of England.
Amazon’s Rayne Hall page: http://www.amazon.com/Rayne-Hall/e/B006BSJ5BK/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1
A very BIG thank you to Rayne, for sharing her wisdom and works with us. A huge part of the writing journey is that we should never stop learning more about our craft, and so we appreciate Rayne and authors like her taking the time to help us improve.
Decadent Kane is a very special colleague of mine and I'm elated to have her on the blog today. Traces of Poppy is a book I've long awaited, and as a special bonus, I had the honor of creating the cover art for this wonderful addition to Kane's Trouble With Elves. A woman I consistently find myself pitching ideas with, bouncing plot bunnies back and forth, Decadent's an indie paranormal romance
author with a pen name taken from a burlesque name generator and began her
career on a dare.
