Weird Cults, BDSM and Vintage Sci-Fi (aka Of Brundage and Bondage)

Once again, ptupper72 at Beauty In Darkness is intriguing me... This time with Ancient Mystery Cults.

This is from Part One:

A mystery cult or mystery religion is what might be called a boutique religion. Instead of being a total institution one is born into, people are voluntarily and optionally initiated into them. It was also possible to be a member or even an officiant of multiple cults.

Mystery cults have initiation rituals, and initiation seems to be the main point of them, for their own sake. Victor Turner distinguished between liminal rituals, which result in significant and permanent changes in status (e.g. weddings, graduations), and liminoid rituals, which don't have a permanent change in status (e.g. BDSM scenes, in my opinion).

And this is a quote from Ancient Mystery Cults by Walter Burkert, as quoted in Ancient Mystery Cults Part Two, on the subject of flagellation as (possibly) depicted in the mural at the Villa of the Mysteries:

A kneeling girl, keeping her head in the lap of a seated woman and shutting her eyes, the seated woman grasping her hands and drawing back the garment from the kneeling girl's bare back, while a sinister-looking female behind is raising a rod -- these are all quite realistic details of caning. But the threatening figure wielding the rode has black wings; she is not from this world but rather an allegorical personality.

Image of Weird Tales via Gloria Brame, and one of her readers comments, "The cover illustration is by Margret Brundage, who did most of the vintage Weird Tales covers of the 'thirties. Her covers often featured naked or nearly nude women in bondage."

For more on Margaret Brundage, see this interview with her in 1973.