I got inspired to share this after a couple of conversations I’ve had recently and after reading a great article from Charlotte Grey’s blog about free content that you can read here.
-The Following is taken from my upcoming guide, How to Produce Erotic Hypnosis for Profit–
Last time, we took a look at the nature of myth and metaphor in broad strokes. We used that base to explore the history and context of the Siren and some of the ways the mythological creature became an archetype and why it has persevered
You don’t have to read any of that to read this, I promise.
I was talking with a friend the other day, and we were talking about where this fetish comes from and what her origin story was.
It was different than mine, different than a lot of ours, but it was similar to some stories I had heard from other dominant women.
In the conversation we talked about fetishes in general and how we get them.
Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially when my hyppos [hypochondria] get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off – then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.
This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.
Herman Melville: Moby Dick
The ocean is singularly greater than all of us.
We can challenge it, we can cross it, we can ride its waves and plunge into its depths, we can even poison it and pollute it, but it is greater than us.
We are drawn to it, to stand in its surf and stare out into the unknown, to listen to its waves, and we know its enormity so fully and inherently that we turn to it as a metaphor for anything with a depth that we feel is greater to fathom.
In Erotic Hypnosis, like in all art, there’s a never-ending dialoged about what constitutes real and valid.
As the scene continues to grow and change, this conversation becomes more complicated and people become progressively more invested in the outcome.
In short and for some people, the conversation comes down to who is real and who is fake. This is a conversation akin to rockists in music, and other similar subsets of fandom that value what is genuine in process and creation as much as what the end result is.
This article is in no way, shape, or form, a value judgment about what you enjoy or the people that create it.
Seriously, I’m not talking shit and I’m not throwing anyone under the bus. This is an effort to try and examine and define a term and the desire for that term to exist.
Now, the answer to the real/fake question matters because it either validate or invalidate that particular fan type’s fantasies as well as the time, money, and emotional investment they’ve spent to experience them.
Just because it’s not 100% “real” it doesn’t mean it’s actually fake.
“You can’t con an honest man.” – Con Artist’s Proverb
“You want them to go: I know the rest of it’s fake but that part, THAT was real”
– Pro Wrestler’s Proverb
“All hypnosis is self-hypnosis” – Hypnotist’s Proverb
There is no business more similar to that of being an Erotic Hypnotist than that of being a Professional Wrestler.
Your job in both is to create a simulated experience where the audience forgets themselves and falls into a world beyond the scope of every day life.
You might think doing this is the same as being an actor, and in many ways and for both professions it is (because they both involve acting), but actors take a bow after the show and we see their names in the credits.
For actors, the character ends with the show.
For the Erotic Hypnotist and the Pro Wrestler (less so today than historically), they have to keep in character whenever they interact with their fans to continue to sell the fantasy their entertainment provides.
What we think about when we think about the Erotic Hypnosis and the alluring female hypnotist is a strange sort of cocktail of pop culture, and the occult.
Since we often find ourselves introduced to this fetish through our culture, and of course our means of cultural transmission be it movies/TV/books etc., it means our ideas of what hypnosis and the role of the female hypnotist are is inherited.
Assembled below are a list of podcast episodes that explore the history of hypnosis, sex magic, the femme fatal, and much much more.
(Spoiler Alert: There’s always been a sexual component, if not implied then simply overt, in the history of hypnotism. Anton Mesmer is widely believed to have been kind of a scum bag.)
