Chronicles of a Gorean Master II – How did I become Gorean

Tal everyone,

If I had to list the question that I’m asked more frequently in the Gorean realm , that would most likely be “How did you become a Gorean”?

Although it seems a quite simple question, I truly struggled to find an appropriate answer, until I finally realized I hadn’t “become” a Gorean, but rather been “discovered/recognized” as such.

In order to better understand this, let me first start by sharing my background and upbringing.

I was raised in an “extremelly conservative” (I try to avoid the word fanatic whenever possible) familly and a very reclusive community environment. Just to give you a glimpse, the “dogmas” included believing that oral and anal sex or even touching oneself with “impure thoughts” (I’m not even talking about actual masturbation) were mortal sins, so I reached the early years of adolescence (and natural raging hormones) primed for inner conflict, emotional turmoil and utmost disaster.

Effectively, the already turbulent process of being a teenager proved to be an emotional rollercoaster of epic proportions. Most time was spent oscilating between a fervorous and devout commitment and effort to conform to the social rules and expectations imposed by the community and the “crash and burn” effect of “sucumbing” to one’s nature, only to be overwhelmed with regret and condemning thoughts and end up “doubling down” on the efforts to conform to the “righteous” way of life (a typical vicious cycle).

In my early 20’s I ended up marrying within the community, somehow believing that would fix all the problems and “settle down” my instincts and thoughts but as you most surely have already guessed, it didn’t!

To worsen things, we’re talking about a community where divorce is not possible and where leaving or being “disfellowshipped” means that you are outcast and even direct familly (parents, children, etc) can no loger have absolutely any type of contact with you, making you an absolute outcast.

With a newborn son and in a marriage that could only be broken by the death of one of the spouses, there seemed to be absolutely no viable solution, until I reached the limits of my ability to fight my nature, decided to listen to my inner instincts and gradually started cutting ties and discovering my true nature (that whole process is a very long story and I’ll leave it for it’s own chronicle).

This process of discovery was a very bumpy road, as I never truly feelt I belonged anywhere or was fully realized with any practice, but always felt incomplete as if something was missing, and loosing all contact with the entire family and everyone I had ever considered a friend didn’t help.

There was a long tortuous path bouncing from “Vanilla” lifestyle to BDSM practices and lifestyle, with several different flavours of power exchange types of relationship until someone told be “you are a Gorean Master”…

I had never heard of Gor, had no idea of what a kajira or a homestone were (or any other component of the Gorean saga), so I didn’t actually pay much attention to the comment, but my “sub” kept insisting that the quotes she was reading from the “Books of Gor” were very similar to the way I thought about things, that I decided to do some investigation on the topic.

After reading several of the quotes (that in fact peaked my interest on the subject) and doing some investigation on the available forums about the topic, I decided to follow the advice of several people and started reading the books of the Gorean Saga in the order they were published.

The more I read, the more I identified with the Philosophy and the Lifestyle, becoming more and more envolved in the story, in the process of self-discovery that the main character, “Carl Tabot” went through. I can truly say that in several cases, I saw for the first time in words what had always been feelings that I found no way of describing.

As a result of that process, we started identifying ourselves as Goreans, practicing the “Gorean Lifestyle” and striving to studying the books and the Philosophy in order to support us in our own self-discovery process, so that we could more easily find the path of self-fulfillment by living in accordance with the Natural Order.

Of course, considering the society we live in and all the limitations imposed by it, this process of intensifying our commitment to living in accordance with the Natural Order was not without troubles and stumbling, but I’ll write about that in more detail in one of my next posts.

I wish you well,

©2023 -Written by Azrael Phoenix

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