Interview with Jack Donovan and Nathan F. Miller, Authors of Blood-Brotherhood and Other Rites of Male Alliance.

First, why did you write a book about “Blood Rituals”?

Jack Donovan:  Well, my co-author Nathan Miller and I wrote a book about blood-brotherhood because Mr. Miller originally suggested it to me as an alternative to the ideal of “marriage” which carries too much heterosexual cultural baggage to create an innately masculine bond between two men.

But the book really isn’t about same sex-marriage. It’s about rites between men who were predominantly straight. It’s about male bonding and things that men—specifically men—have done to ritualize their friendships and alliances. Very few books have ever handled this topic, and ours is the only one to pull together so much information from so many diverse sources. In our research, we found blood-brotherhood bonds of various kinds in the recorded practices, literature, folklore and mythology of cultures from all over the world, throughout history.

Instead of making the book a mere summary of what we found, we wanted to put together a real sourcebook, what we’ve called a “toolbox for the imagination.” We retold or reprinted stories that can be read as standalone examples of blood-brotherhood. The book contains original translations of blood-brotherhood rites from Wagner and Karl May’s Winnetou. Examples from Celtic and Norse mythology are featured. But we also have these really engaging little folktales Mr. Miller found and retold from African and Asian mythology. There’s basically a tale or a practice in the book that a man from almost any background should be able to identify with. Also, a lot of the rites are so primal and gory that the book is entertaining on that level as well.

Nathan F. Miller:  I had the idea of applying blood-brotherhood instead of marriage to male couples around 2000, but it was Mr. Donovan who first suggested that there could be a book in the topic. With the research it really took off, turning into a much broader and entertaining subject than either of us had anticipated. In the end, it’s not even a homo book but a general men’s interest book, with
heroics, adventure, and quite a bit of gruesomeness.

Regardless of race, blood rituals tie men together and create a bond. Why is this?

Nathan F. Miller:  It’s very interesting, because similar rituals have been performed by men of Africa, aboriginal Australia, and South America — populations that had been separated from each other for tens of thousands of years!  Anthropological study of the
blood-brother phenomenon shows certain logics that could apply to men anywhere.  One reason is the rituals were meant to create a physical connection in a way that imitated natural biological relationships, but allowing the men to control the bond.  Another logic was involved in the idea that the blood of a person was their very life or soul, so for two or more men to mingle their lives together was to create the most sacred bond possible.  Yet another idea that often went into blood-bond ceremonies was that blood was such a magical substance that “conditional curses” could be placed on the blood, and the potential oath-breakers.  Interestingly, instances of blood brother rituals could show all three logics simultaneously;  the men involved would be considered to have become actual brothers, yet also something even more sacred than brothers, and have curse-backed promises tied into the agreement as well.

That’s from the standard anthropology, but my co-author and I have also added some conjectures of our own, in trying to answer the question “why men?”  Although there have been what could be call “blood-sisterhood” rites in some cultures and parallel things between
men and women, these have happened far more rarely.  We are both interested in the theories of Lionel Tiger, who actually coined the
term “male bonding,” seeing it as arising from early man’s role as hunters and defenders.  To us, this meant that the male bond
originated in “bloody business,” tasks where blood had to risked, spilled, handled.  So it would only make sense that men would have more interest in using blood in formalized bonds.

The suicide of writer Yukio Mishima was a ceremony that spilled blood. How do Asians view what is called ‘Hara-kiri”, was his act of suicide creating a bond with the men who made up his private army?

Jack Donovan:  I’ve read from several sources that there’s something in the language of “belly-cuttting,” which is a rough translation of
hara-kiri that also implies a demonstration of intent. A close English comparison is the idea of a “gut feeling.” You’re showing everyone what you’re made of, what’s in your guts. Sometimes samurai were ordered to commit hara-kiri (or more formally, seppuku, but Mishima preferred hara-kiri). But other times, and this seems to be what fascinated Mishima, a samurai would perform hara-kiri of his own accord to demonstrate intent, to show loyalty, to make amends for an error, to preserve his own honor, or sometimes in protest. Westerners see suicide as a sad, pathetic act associated with failure and depression and sometimes they look at Mishima’s suicide through that lens. But Mishima orchestrated his suicide and rehearsed it on film several times. I wouldn’t consider it a bond, though the men who were there will be powerfully connected to Mishima until they die, and the young man who committed hara-kiri after him obviously had a strong bond with his mentor.

However, if Mishima’s suicide finalized a bond between him and anyone or anything, it was a bond with Japan-or Japan as he envisioned it, a Japan that was committing cultural suicide. The Japan he loved in some sense died after WWII, and I think a part of him secretly wished he had died with it. Suicide was also his poetic ideal, so his suicide was also a work of art. It was also a protest, but I doubt he truly believed his death would change the course of history. People who call his suicide a failure because it failed to start a revolution underestimate his intelligence. I don’t think he was insane and he obviously wasn’t stupid.

Mishima did actually make a blood pact with the members of the Tatenokai a few years prior to his suicide, and that story is recounted in our book.

Could you tell us about a few modern day blood rituals that bond men together?

Jack Donovan: Well, blood-brotherhood still happens in the world. Blood oaths have often been employed to bond men engaged in acts of rebellion, war or criminal conspiracy. In a recent case, Texan financier Allen Stanford and the chief banking regulator for Antigua
and Barbuda made a blood pact to conceal fraud together. It all came out in the court proceedings when they were caught.

And I’m sure some boys still make blood pacts like the one in Tom Sawyer. A friend told me recently that we had made a blood pact as
boys that I didn’t even remember.  It is also likely that blood-brotherhood oaths are still common in less developed countries.

Gang members swear oaths and get tattoos, and I thought that given modern health concerns this might be the best way to bring the
tradition of blood-brotherhood into the modern age. Often, men get memorial tattoos of some kind that symbolize their connection to
another man who has died. Why not get a tattoo that symbolizes your connection to another man—a mentor or a best pal, the guy who has you back—in life? That’s the spirit of blood-brotherhood.

With that in mind, my compadre Lucio and I performed our own blood-brotherhood rite by mutually tattooing each other with our
initials. We did it while smoking cigars and drinking whiskey. We wanted it to be a guy thing. The last chapter in Blood-Brotherhood
develops that idea, and describes the rite we performed and the technique we used in greater detail.

Is there conformity in the role that is played by homosexuals? A stereotype that prefers effeminate images of men? Especially in the media?

Jack Donovan:  Yes, that was the subject of my first book, Androphilia. Homosexual males who consider themselves part of the “gay” community often have a conflicted love-hate relationship with masculinity. Sexually—and you can see this both in the majority of pornography and online pickup profiles—homosexual men venerate manliness and virility. They want their fantasy men to be uppercase MEN. They present themselves as MEN looking for MEN. There are exceptions but that is the general rule.

However, homosexual males—especially older ones—have often had difficult relationships with their fathers. Many have also had tense, negative or possibly traumatic experiences with dominant peers who enforced traditional masculine norms. All homosexual men are aware of the fact that there will always be some straight men who, given the opportunity, would exclude them from male groups, emasculate them and push them out to the enemy “Omega” zone on the basis of homosexuality alone. This anger at heroes and father figures and this potential to be excluded creates resentment against traditional, exclusive, hierarchical models of masculinity.

If MAN is the ultimate brother and father, homosexual men want to love him and be him and murder him all at once. So they love him through surrogates and kill him by rejecting what he stands for. They side with women against him to castrate him. They mock and taunt him with flamboyant, effeminate displays. They look down on his stoic, simple, grounded manliness by aligning themselves with high culture and excess.  Gay culture is patricide.

The patricidal nature of gay culture is what most often makes it through media filters; it’s what people expect from homosexual males.
It’s frivolous and angry at the same time, but people only see the frivolousness of it, and gays have politically gone out of their way to make themselves seem as harmless as possible—even when they have to lie to or mislead the public about what most gays actually do and think. The public image of gay is too silly and harmless to be taken as a real threat, as long as the sex stays behind the scenes. But a man who can only be silly and harmless, who can never be seen as a real threat to anyone, has castrated himself. Manliness is strength, it is formidable. A man stands his ground. The silly faggot does tricks for attention and then rolls around on the floor, offering his belly. He’s a harmless, neutered lapdog with a pink barrette in his hair for the entertainment of his female masters.

Many of the men who like my work have good relationships with their fathers and male peers—they bristle when they see this sort of
castrating bitchiness and lapdog behavior in gays. Some read my work and suddenly see their own conflicted behavior, and begin a process of reconciliation and purging of that need to castrate men even as they castrate themselves. I encourage that, but I no longer see these men as “gay.” When they’ve moved beyond the culture of castration, they’ve moved beyond gay.

Blood ritual is important to magical practice. Could you tell us something about this use of blood in magic?

Jack Donovan: Well, blood is connected with life. It keeps us alive. Blood is connected with life and the soul and also with family and the
heart. Blood is also readily available, just a cut away—though cuts are painful and a sacrifice in themselves. The sacrificial spilling of
blood is an act that invokes life and death. If you’re going to perform some sort of magic, it’s difficult to think of an element more
powerfully symbolic than blood.

Blood ritual is written about extensively in the Hebrew Bible. Are there any instances which come to mind?

Nathan F. Miller: Probably the most important instance occurs in the book of Exodus after Moses has been given the Ten Commandments and the laws.  Moses and other Israelites sacrifice some bulls at an altar to Yahweh, and Moses spreads part of the blood onto the altar, and, after reading the laws out loud to the people, he spreads the rest of the blood onto the Israelites themselves.  This ritual actually has a form like many blood-brotherhood ceremonies, with animal blood divided up between two parties that are making irrevocable promises to each other.

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