Fakir Musafar (1930-2018) was a key figure in the body modification scene. He presented himself to the world as a shaman, artist, piercing master and modifier. And no doubt he was.
Harry Potter of South Dakota
He was born in South Dakota, America. His story is a bit reminiscent of Harry Potter. At least that passage with a shelter under the stairs. Fakir, then Roland Loomis, had a similar sewing room. He set up in his basement as a teenage boy. It served as a darkroom for his photographic experiments and for his first experiments with his body. He had it figured out cleverly. After all, even parents don't crash into the darkroom without knocking to keep the movies on.
Modifications and BDSM
Religious parents would certainly not praise their son's experiments with his own body. He began piercing his mother's sewing needles at the age of twelve. A year later, he dared to pierce his own foreskin. He stretched his neck, tying his waist more and more tightly until the iconic photo of The Perfect Gentleman posed with an elegantly dressed Musafar with glasses and a cigarette and a waist circumference of 48 cm could be created. He was interested not only in the transformation of the body by piecing, tattooing and forming. He was attracted by sensory deprivation, bondage, pain and unusual manipulation with the body even in the area of sexuality. In his person, he connected the world of body modification and BDSM.
Hook hanging
Because he lived on the territory of the Indian reservation and was fascinated by the wisdom and customs of the Indians, he also discovered the bloody ritual of o-keepa. In 1966 or 1967, he also hung himself on hooks for the first time. The chest hanger appealed to him so much that he wanted to hang himself again and again. Therefore, he succeeded in the unprecedented. He healed the hook holes in his chest so that holes remained behind and he could hang himself at any time. It's a really incredible thing – we tried to do it in Hell, but without success.
When the sexual revolution came in the seventies, it brought relaxation to Musafar as well. Until almost his fiftieth birthday, he held his unusual penchant for privacy. In 1977, he made his first public appearance at a convention in Reno, Nevada. He pierced his body, lay on beds of nails, and the audience could not watch.
Modern primitivism
Fakir Musafar formulated the idea of modern primitivism. Simply put, it describes the fact that manipulation with the body, i.e. its piercing, tattooing, hanging on hooks, etc., is associated not only with physical sensations, but also with psychological experiences and spirituality. In short, it is not only about what a piercing or tattoo looks like (that is what we are mainly interested in today), but also about what we experience during the procedure itself.
Fakir Musafar has written several books, is cited in the literature, appears in documentaries, and founded the first piercing school in the U.S. – the School for Professional Body Piercing. Until a late age, he attended lectures and held body modificatoon rituals. He also devoted his whole life to the photographic immortalization of body modifications.
Míla Bugtcher, founder of Hell
Fakir felt in himself what drives us to do what we do. This thing is not easy to name, he summarized it under the term Modern Primitives, which is a name that I like to use for myself with pride. He discovered and named it long before we were born. Although he lived in an environment that did not favor experiments with the body, he pursued his goal. He showed the "civilized" world that important aspect of culture that has been driving Hell since its inception. If it weren't for Fakir, Hell might never have stood up. It was my big dream to meet him in person, which unfortunately I am no longer lucky. But Hell will continue what Fakir Musafar started many years ago.
Shemon, hell boss
Although I am not close to the spiritual approach to body modification and ritual that Fakir promoted, he represented (and still is) one of the most important personalities in the field of body modification for me. For me, he is above all an initiator – someone who, thanks to his exceptional sensitivity and sensitivity to his own body and the surrounding world, who, thanks to his enthusiasm, openness and friendliness, made the development of piercings possible in the last third of the 20th century. In Fakir's conception, piercings and related practices were a means of human self-knowledge. Today, few people attach a deeper meaning to body modifications. But at the same time, there are still people for whom modifications mean something "more". I believe that each of them owes this in some way to Fakir.
Mirka, piercer in Hell
Fakir mi bol veľmi blízky, a to z viacerých dôvodov. Nemôžem hneď nespomenúť, ako sympathetically pôsobil a vystoupil. His work was a huge kuzlo. It is the forefather of modifikácií a rituálov ako ich pozne v súčasnosti. On his photos with a narrow belt, a pierced chest or pegs clicked on the skin som pozerala with knocked out breath. Čítať jeho skúsenosti pri samozavesení sa na háky bolo ohromujúce, napriek tomu, že sa naše pohľady na Boha a podobné duchovno veľmi líšia. To, čo priniesol do sveta piercingu, a to hlavne genitalneho, je neoceniteľné. Today, all the available information is not even a predstaviť, čo tomu predchádzalo. Fakir bol na začiatku všetkého. And we are his proud followers.
Https://archive.org/details/FakirMusafarPhotosCollection Pictures
