July 5th, 2012 at 11:35PM

A pervert’s pilgrimage

Yesterday I took a journey to pay tribute to someone who I feel is a spiritual ancestor in the whole business of decadent, perverted, pleasures.

Having a day with nothing to do I tried an experiment. I decided to drive out of London on a motorway until I got bored, then veer off and start heading into small towns until I found one that looked interesting and worth exploring. One of the great things about living in England is the high number of pleasant, pretty, and interesting towns and villages which are worth at least an hour or two to wander around - poking about in shops, and finding out something about the local history.

Yesterday I wasn’t far from London when I left the motorway, passed through a couple of dull looking villages, and then realised I had found what I was looking for (although I didn’t until that moment realise I was searching). A sign said, simply, “The Hellfire Caves”.

I first came across the Hellfire club in my youth when reading a book entertainingly entitled “The book of heroic sexual failures”, or something similar - a spin off from the heroic failure books, it concentrated on the more lurid, perverted, and idiotic forms of sexual catastrophe which had befallen individuals down the ages.  It contained within it a quote that has stayed with me ever since (although I have no idea how accurate or genuine it is). Sir Frances Dashwood, founder of the Hellfire club, evidently once wrote in a personal journal “There is no finer pleasure in life than fucking a mallard, held by one’s manservant, whilst its throat is slit.”

And there’s me taking pride in my perversity.

But really, no finer pleasure? Than fucking a duck? Had the man never tried the two girl, deep throat blow-job, rim-job, combination?

Well, perhaps he was just fond of ducks. Or really angry at them.

At the risk of missing out on an otherwise unimagined delight, ducks will remain, for me, on the dining table with hoisin sauce, rather than journeying to my bedroom.

However, despite my scepticism at the pleasure of this particular brand of beastiaility, I was non-the-less delighted to discover an organisation had once existed dedicated to plumming the depths of perversity and sexuality, with seemingly a side order of blasphemy. For those who aren’t familiar with the name, the Hellfire club was a private club whose membership was drawn from the great and the good of British society and aristocracy in the mid 18th century.  They would meet at the Hellfire Caves for… well, no one seems completely sure what exactly, but it is generally believed to have featured feasting, sexual exploration, and possibly a certain amount of occult endeavour. The rumoured decadent perversity of their exploits have given them a notoriety - and many imitators - down through the ages. 

There aren’t many sites that we perverts can hold dear as representing a grand tradition of exploration and depravity, but I think the Hellfire caves qualify.  So I naturally took the chance to go and explore.
The caves are presented as a fairly basic tourist attractive, a part of the rather picturesque village of West Wickham. The owners (still the Dashwood family) don’t seem to entirely know how to present them, and their mixed attempts create a rather schizophrenic character for the place. Admission is £5, paid to a nice young lady in a tacky gift shop; there are turnstiles; there are information signs on the walls… So far, so typical tourist trap.
In terms of the information given, foremost comes the historical details - the caves are man made, Dashwood employed local men to mine chalk in order to rebuild a local road as a ‘work creation’ scheme after two years of bad harvest (there is, perhaps, a point here about how wealthy people would, once upon a time, see that the local economy was in trouble and simply invest their money in making something worthwhile happen whilst simultaneously creating jobs for those in need). The caves, therefore, take the form of essentially a very long, dimly lit, white corridor, with occasional chambers along the length. Very long indeed - around a quarter of a mile.  Which is really rather impressive when you consider that’s a quarter of a mile into the side of a hill.  
Some of the historical details were, however, rather interesting - I had no idea that Benjamin Franklin was a good friend of Dashwood, and visited him on a number of occasions, including exploring the caves.  Whether he was known to attend the Hellfire club itself was sadly not mentioned.

By way of ‘atmosphere’ the caves, as a tourist attraction, tend to lean on the ‘isn’t it spooky?’ aspect. There are stories of ghosts that have been seen, of deaths associated with the caves.  Plastic skulls are occasionally placed in the rather cheap looking dioramas that have been set up to illustrate the past.  Details of the club and it’s doings - my reason for visiting - are rather sparse, and the full nature of its activities are downplayed. However, even a very pedestrian treatment of it can’t help but allow some startling details to slip through.

The membership of the club was male, mostly aristocratic and influential. Women were able to attend the club, but had to be masked, and wore a badge with a motto that meant “Fraternity and friendship” - it’s heavily implied that most of these women where whores for the entertainment of the members (‘monks holes’ - small chambers - were carved into the walls of the main banqueting hall, and were covered with curtains, so that members could withdraw into them with their ‘guests’ for some privacy). There were ‘outer’ and ‘inner’ members of the club - the outer members were not allowed deeper into the caves than the banqueting hall. The inner members, who wore robes modelled after monks, passed through deeper into the caves, through a triangular section which was ‘believed to represent female genitalia’, over a (small) underground  lake which was called ‘The river Styx’ (implying, perhaps, that ritually, at least, they were entering the underworld) to a final inner temple, the deepest part of the caves (and some 400 metres beneath a church on the hill above). 

Again, most of the information signs were factual about membership, dates and locations. But still you came across a lovely fact now and again “At the end of the feasting the leader would propose a toast to Satan and then the inner members would withdraw to the inner temple.” A toast to Satan? I’m impressed. Whilst in this day and age a toast to Satan is the kind of thing that you can buy on a t-shirt if you want to upset your parents, in the 18th century that was pretty damn hardcore. If you were looking for a transgressive act, you couldn’t go much further than publicly toasting Satan. 

It’s fairly clear that the Hellfire club had occult and pagan leanings, as well as lending itself to debauchery. But I found myself wondering what the intent behind their activities were.  Where they, basically, just having fun? Were they doing their dressing up, whoring, feasting, and transgressing, in pseudo-occult structures to make it all so much more radical and daring, or were some, or all, of the membership trying to achieve something? Were they trying to push back the boundaries of there personalities? Were they trying to release themselves from societal conditioning to experience the freedom beyond? Did they have a spiritual quest? Were they trying to discover their true selves through blasphemy, transgression and ecstasy? Or were they having laugh and trying to get off?

Personally, I have no idea - and a trip to the caves themselves didn’t give me any new clues.  As can be seen in these pages, whilst I do very much like to get off, I do think there is something deeper, more important, more powerful to be found in transgressive, perverted and pleasurable acts. There is the chance to escape the bounds of society (and the bounds of one’s own personality and habits) and see who we really are. I find various occult practices aid with this process considerably - in conjunction with these acts, or operating entirely separately.  So naturally I want to believe that Dashwood and co were also heroic perverts discovering a greater truth about themselves. I want to believe they are part of my heritage. I want to believe that the Hellfire caves are a site that should be sacred to perverts everywhere.
But, sadly, I don’t know.  For now, however, I’ll assume it is. 

Sadly, you wouldn’t know it from the rather pedestrian information boards, nor the dull waxworks, or the families who are wandering around the caves because… well, because they are caves. But I like to think there is something there - some history of exploration, of discovery, of bravely breaking the rules to see what lies beyond. We don’t have many places to call our own - even if the local tourist trade caters more to a family outings than a sophisticated pervert’s love of transgression, exploration, and filthy sex.

But perhaps there is at least one hint that *someone* there gets what the caves are about.  Without any explanation or context there is one information board deep in the caves that contains a filthy poem. Filthy in an 18th century way, but filthy none the less.  It’s called “A Nun’s Poem”, and verses include:
Now whether in Sapho ‘twas passion or whim
She amused herself better with me than with him,
So we struck up a bargain that pleased us all three
And I stuck to the friar and she stuck to me

Jen played on the flute with her fingers so white
And twinkled her eyes and kept time very right
Then he served up his cousin, a delicate blade,
And old Bridget his aunt for the sake of her maid.

Sounds like my kind of girl.

If anyone else has any ideas for destinations of pilgrimage to celebrate the perverted arts, I’d be interested to hear…

  1. templeofbabalon posted this
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