The Manusmriti (or “Institutions of Manu”) is the foundational work for Hindu la

w, laws that India still runs on today. It also contains the first known descri
ption of hypnosis. The infirm and sick of the village would be taken to “sleep
temples”, where they would enter what Manu described as a “dream-sleep” state be
fore being subject to various hypnotic suggestions. Unfortunately for the villa
gers, these suggestions mainly consisted of having their coughs and runny noses
cured. If they had more imagination, they could have been turned into servile s
ubmissives, conditioned to orgasm on command, forced into homosexuality, or be m
ade to shit themselves and enjoy it on hearing a certain trigger word. Nowadays
, we don't need the Manusmriti. We have hypnofetishism.
Hypnofetishism, erotic hypnosis, sexual mind control... whatever name it goes un
der, it all comes down to the same thing: a more nefarious use of Franz Mesmer's
finest hour than simply curing some schmuck of their fear of snakes, or getting
them to cluck like a chicken at the office Christmas party.
The length of breadth of hypnofetishism is pretty stunning. Some are turned on
by the actual sight of a woman being inducted into trance itself, and horde vide
o footage of what is effectively some pretty young thing slowly falling asleep.
Others trade screen captures from stage hypnosis shows, enraptured at the site
of suggestible co-eds believing themselves to be Britney Spears or Shakira on he
aring a certain piece of music. There's the gay hypno scene: plenty of hypnotiz
ed collegiate American footballers being “coerced” into man-love. There's roman
tic hypnosis for couples. There's hypno-dominatrices, who eschew the thrash of
the paddle for a few well chosen words and a pocket watch. And there's even hyp
no-porn, featuring pretty little things being (or at least pretending to be) tra
nced before the usual XXX antics occur.
One of the more impressive CVs when it comes to the hypno-erotica side of things
is held by Aaron Glotfelter. As well as touring live shows under the sobriquet
The Hypnotist Pornographer, he's also the man behind three paid membership hypn
o-porn sites (one for videos, one for photos, and one for those who enjoy BDSM a
s well), the moderator of a hypnofetish community site, and has embarked on a qu
est to giver 1,000 women hypnotic orgasms, as blogged about on the inventively e
ntitled thousandorgasms.com (“A jealous boyfriend hates the hypnotist who causes
his girlfriend to have the best orgasm of her life because it's easier than it
is for him to consider that his girlfriend has given the hypnotist the power to
do this”)
Having first become interested in dovetailing hypnosis with sexuality whilst sti
ll at school (“ I got the idea into my head that hypnosis might be a good way t
o see women naked”), Glotfelter originally got his break in vanilla pornography,
before one day deciding to chance his arm and put his long-time fetish online,
using one of the models from his normal sessions. “I decided that I might as we
ll take a chance, and take the most personal, secret, and intimate detail of my
life, and bring it out for the entire world to see”.
The most personal, secret, and intimate details of his life tend to manifest the
mselves as the video sessions downloaded from his website in their droves. A st
andard one last between one and two hours, featuring around fifteen minutes of t
he woman being entranced, with the rest of the time taken up with suggestions.
Whilst the majority of them are quite obvious (orgasming on command, turned into
a stripper, being made to find the hypnotist sexually irresistible), some of th
em do find their way into the camera scope from left-field. One model finds her
self being fucked to the point of passing out by a group of fairies. Another br
eastfeeds a Winnie the Pooh doll. Then there's the raven-haired participant who
has, as a double-whammy, her political views changed from left to right wing, b
efore being told she can only discuss politics whilst barking like a dog.
Glotfelter notes that the latter suggestions are for a certain type of hypnofeti
shist. “There's two types of people who are into erotic hypnosis. The first ar
e into it for its own sake, and the second are into it as a means to facilitate
what they are really into”. Indeed, his work also touches upon sexual tickling,
dollplay, robotification, and plenty of linger sockless shots for the foot feti
shist.
Other hypnofetishists though, other fetishes to be partnered with the swinging w
atch and the “I will obey you master”. The company Warp My Mind offers a wide r
ange of MP3s for download, so that the trainee submissive can have himself progr
ammed via iPod. Files currently available include “LR Housecat”, which turns yo
u into a small grey tabby for a quarter of an hour; “Night Diapers Curse”, which
promises to cause both loss of bladder control and to make the listener sexuall
y aroused by viewing nappy adverts on TV; and “Train Humiliation 2”, a slightly
over-egged concoction delivering the “need for humiliation/degradation, public e
xposure, writing cunt, whore, etc on self, masturbation where people can hear, d
esire to be covered with cum, craving of debasement, obscene photos”. The site
also offers a feature where long-time customers can suggest the files they'd lik
e to see on the site in the future. Current popular suggestions include one tha
t would cause orgasms through the application of fake tanning products, one that
would force the listener to talk in a full-blown New Jersey (Noi Joisey) accent
, and the following proposal, which really does deserve to have its blurb printe
d in full:
“This file will force you to pop your collar (wear it up) on polo shirts. If you
go longer than 10 minutes with your collar down, you will begin to dribble pee,
this will continue until you pop it. Each time you fail to pop your collar the
dribbling will get stronger & stronger”
Lady Christine, billing herself as a “hypnotic mistress” is one of the queens of
the scene. A qualified Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist, she'd already had a
12-year career as a stage hypnotist before she got into the erotic side of hypno
sis, quite by accident. “I noticed what search terms people were using to get t
o my website,” she says, “and what photos of mine they were stealing and puttin
g up on their own fetish sites. Then men started writing to me, sharing their f
antasies, and asking about “other” kinds of hypnosis... I started experimenting
with hypnotic domination, and discovered I had an innate talent for it.”
Her client list features some pretty heavy hitters: CEOs, doctors, lawyers, and
business entrepreneurs, but she sees her slaves as a different breed to the norm
al bondage sub. “Most men who fantasize about hypnosis have no experience with
BDSM and have not even made the connection with the idea of “submission” or “dom
ination””. And if these men wish to take their fantasies to the next level, the
y have their work cut out for them. When someone comes to me, interested in ex
periencing my world, I insist that they train first. I am not a McMistress, mil
lions served. I have a series of hypnosub MP3s that they buy, download, and beg
in using ever day. This gets them conditioned to respond to my hypnotic command
s.”
And what's in store for these submissives after they've been sufficiently traine
d by Christine? “. The most common requests amongst hypnofetishists are everyd
ay scenarios with women exerting power over them: the powerful and sexy female
exec who lulls them into a trance and then puts them to work, the witch who cast
s a spell, the wicked dominatrix encased in black leather. Some men are into o
rgasm control: either make them have one on command, or never let them have one
at all. That's fun.”
Mistress Sensual Desire is another active hypnodomme. Charging $150 for a “cust
om torture and training” session, she first became involved with hypnosis after
being treated with it by one of her therapists. Starting off as a hypnosubmissi
ve, she graduate to dommedom two years ago, and now runs the Desire's Dungeon si
te.
“I was floored by how many people shared my kink. When I found out how many peo
ple use hypnosis in a dom/sub context, it was just too yummy to pass by. People
use hypnosis to get where they want to be in the dom/sub power continuum. They
like to be seduced by the trance, surrendering control”.
“I think the biggest thing that surprised me were the number of people willing t
o give over control to a total stranger”. It's a control she uses for the power
s of good, however. Desire combines enforced servitude with positive messages o
f reinforcement, and claims to have lowered the blood pressure of many of her su
bs through hypnotic conditioning. Christine, on the other hand, list a number o
f inappropriate requests from her clients: “One asked me to sneeze at him over
the phone whilst he was hypnotized and paying me by the minute. I said no becau
se it's not good for my voice. Another wanted me to hypnotize him into craving
cigarettes. I get a lot from people who want me to help them hypnotize their wi
fe secretly as well”.
So, for the purposes of this article, Sensual Desire agreed to engage me in a “g
uided erotic hypnosis” session. It's pretty safe to say that until you've woken
up, dazed, with your own skeet dripping out of your hand and no recollection wh
y, you've not loved.
The actual process starts a week earlier, with the domme asking me about turn-on
s, turn-offs, sexual history et al. Offering her free reign to inflict whatever
upon me in the name of journalism, I end up hypnotized, over the phone, one Mon
day morning. It starts off with directed breathing, of the kind you encourage p
eople in the midst of a panic attack to perform.
So far, so Svengali, but when my face suddenly develops pins and needles numbnes
s, I get that momentary “Oh shit” feeling one has the second before your car hit
s the embankment at 70 mph as I realise this is actually working. (Side note: t
he only one thing that nearly aroused me from my slumber was Desire mentioning t
hat she'd googled my name, and could tell from my music writing that I was a man
who believe in chi and auras. The first result for my name is a music website
that reveals my love of those well-known hippy buddhist patchouli oil beat combo
s, MOP and Lynyrd Skynyrd).
The sensation of being hypnotized varies from person to person, but to me it was
like the room Mike Teevee gets shrunk in, all stunning white and odd angles. W
hilst my mind sees brilliant white, my subconsciousness gets poked, prodded, and
generally coaxed into submission by Desire.
She starts off with raising my arousal levels, a sensation that starts off in th
e spine, vaguely reminiscent of the feeling one gets sitting on above the engine
on the bus, but it's undeniably working. My mind's far too woozy to appreciate
it fully though, it's like being woken up by being fellated except staying in t
hat pre-awake state for the duration. And then she instructs my hands to “play
with myself”.
So I'm half-asleep and engaging in a self-abusive take on The Hands of Orlac. L
iterally, I had no control over my mitts as they set about jerking myself off wi
th a vigour that would shame most 15 year olds. But at the time it just felt li
ke one of those things, nothing to be distraught or concerned about: hands regul
arly develop their own will and bring their owner off.
And then, almost inevitably, it progresses to hypnosex. The words she said are
lost to my memory, but what I can recall is the unmistakable smell of female aro
usal wafting through the room, and bucking back in my chair whilst attempting to
suck on an ersatz nipple. At one level you can argue that the whole experience
was nothing more than high-level phone sex, but those are the words of an unbel
iever. The whole thing was as real as can be in my mind, and the fact that I'd
left my curtain open didn't even occur to me until I was slowly raised out of tr
ance by the Mistress a few minutes later...