Thursday, August 23, 2012

Code d' Odalisque

In my quest to figure out what my role is in the BDSM world, my journey brought me to thinking about where my submissive fantasies lie. I tend to be sexually submissive and I am creative in my submission, but I am without desires for domestic types of service. Through this path, I started to think about women who submit and serve men in the genres of the erotic arts and a whole world opened up to me.  My mind has been filled with images of geishas, courtesans, concubines, muses, harems, and pleasure slaves. Through this, I stumbled upon a document called the Code d' Odalisque.  It is basically a manual for the training of a contemporary pleasure slave, called an odalisque.  It is a code with all the documents for role play consensual slavery. From my first bit of research, it looked interesting in concept, so I downloaded the document and read it in its entirety during our recent road trip.

This document is a compilation of the original Code, which was written around the 1990s, started by a group of people in Australia. It is a little hard to read, as it is compiled from various appendixes and sources and it badly needs some editing, as it is very repetitive. Conceptually, the Code d' Ode appears to be a bit of a reaction to the harshness of other BDSM genres such as Gor and more traditional Old Guard D/s and M/s relations. It removes most of the pain and sadomasochism from the role play, and focuses more on sex. It is very elegant system of rules, protocols, and etiquette for the cultivation of a cock worshipping slave who is skilled in all things erotic and who is treated like a luxury.

 I became immediately fascinated with this Code as I started to learn about it.  Other than the absence of impact and pain (which I do enjoy in some amount) I was really drawn to almost every other aspect of it.  While I have had a very mild interest in Gor, it has turned me away pretty quickly in its aesthetics and severe approach.  The things I like most about Gor: the structure, protocol, and positions, are also evident in Code d' Ode, but with a different twist. I started reading about the Code positions, and the first is a variation on the Venus on the Half Shell by Botticelli.  For this artist and art history nerd, I was instantly in love.  In fact, much of the Code seems to focus on art and refined eroticism, which is very appealing.  I have been studying the Artist/Muse relationship as a form of power exchange, so it plays into that as well. The focus is on submissive females engaging in cock worship and sexuality as an art form, set around themes of Ancient Turkish and Oriental harems with a proper Victorian style and some French refinements.

I feel a deep connection to the odalisque role and have been spending a lot of time lately thinking about how to incorporate this Code into my life... both my kink life and my art life. I have felt the need to bring these aspects of my life together somehow, but I haven't been able to figure out how to do this until this discovery.

The really fun thing has been discovering how much of this Code I have already been actively doing, fantasizing about, and wanting.  Particularly in playing with Mr. Toy.  Now we are learning about it together and it's super exciting (and a little scary).  I have been taking notes as I have been reading and I will try to organize them into a more detailed blog post outlining some of the parts of the Code that interest me in particular.  Until then, I have been told to learn the positions, as we will start to incorporate those very soon in our social gatherings and play!  Squee!

2 comments:

  1. You can read the official Third Edition here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/106837225/Code-d-Odalisque-Third-Edition

    There's an unofficial fifth edition which is being promoted using an invented history, which I've blogged about here: http://www.tanos.org.uk/blog/337978/

    :T:

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    1. Thank you for your links, I will look into them. I am enjoying this research, and my Keeper and I have incorporated some of the Code elements into outer dynamic.

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