"Finally, all the consciousness I had left was in the center of my head. It was like a little light, and finally it went click. . . . And what I saw with this was my body lashed to the wall, about ten feet away."
"Fakir Musafar, a performance artist and pioneer of body modification who in 1979 coined the term "Modern Primitive" to describe himself and his community of like-minded followers. As Angelo Madsen's chimerical documentary on the kinky guru, A Body to Live In (2025), reveals, this network extended from readers of the Bay Area punk zine RE/SEARCH to patrons of the Gauntlet, a legendary West Hollywood body piercing studio, and Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey."
"In his intuitive fusion of esoteric spiritualism and subversive hedonism, Musafar's metaphysical philosophy braids many strands of what is still hazily referred to as the New Age movement. Piercing, deprivation-induced trances, and group BDSM acts were, for Musafar, all ways of "get[ting] out of [one's] physical condition.""
Roland Loomis, known as Fakir Musafar, began experimenting with body play at seventeen through fasting, self-bondage, and sensory deprivation in his mother's fruit cellar, documenting his experiences photographically. He later became a performance artist and pioneer of body modification, coining the term "Modern Primitive" in 1979 to describe himself and his community. Musafar's network included punk zine readers, body piercing studio patrons, and figures like Anton LaVey. His philosophy combined esoteric spiritualism with subversive hedonism, viewing piercing, deprivation-induced trances, and group BDSM as methods for transcending physical limitations and achieving spiritual awareness beyond the flesh.
#body-modification #modern-primitive-movement #spiritual-transcendence #performance-art #fakir-musafar
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