Cut Me Open and Find God: A Ritual of Flesh and Spirit on Mosher Mag

Zev Clarke
May 20
7 min read

Trigger warning: This piece discusses themes of self-harm, bodily trauma, and spiritualised pain in graphic and metaphorical detail.

A deep dive into the perverse spirituality of self-mutilation as a pathway to self-discovery and transcendence. Is pain a prayer? Is blood the holy sacrament? How do we worship the broken body, and what do we find in the scars?

There’s something about pain that forces us to pay attention. To feel.

To know that we are here, breathing, living in the delicate space between agony and grace.

In a world that demands we be whole, perfect, and complete, there’s a hidden allure in the broken. In the fractured body. The worn-down, bent, bruised body.

It begs a question we aren’t always ready to ask: What happens when the body becomes the temple? When the flesh, once pure and untouched, becomes the site of worship?

Self-mutilation is often dismissed as simply a form of pain or a desperate cry for help. But in many cases, it’s much more complex than that. It can be seen as a sacred act of destruction—a violent yet intentional breaking open of the body in order to feel something deeper.

When the world becomes numb, when emotional numbness wraps around the mind and heart like a tight cocoon, the body is the last refuge where we can feel alive. Pain forces us to confront our own existence.

It demands our attention in a way that numbness never can.

By intentionally cutting into the flesh, we’re not merely creating an injury; we’re disrupting the status quo. We’re rejecting the societal demand that our bodies be whole, clean, and perfect.

Instead, we create a form of holy chaos. Through the ritual of self-mutilation, we break the surface to reach something below, something raw, authentic, and unpolished. There’s something profoundly sacred about cutting.

It’s a dark kind of prayer—a communion of flesh and spirit.

Every cut, every wound, could be seen as a defiance of the perfect, sanitised body society demands. It's a declaration that imperfection and brokenness are just as sacred as wholeness.

In this sense, self-mutilation becomes a form of rebellion against the idea of spiritual purity. It’s not an act of aimless destruction, but of deep and intentional self-exploration—a pathway toward understanding and transforming oneself by embracing vulnerability, pain, and flaw.

To cut is to break open. To tear apart the smooth exterior and reveal something raw beneath the skin.

It’s not a destruction for the sake of pain. It’s a sacrifice. A way to reach something beyond, something ineffable.

Is pain a prayer? In the most perverse, twisted sense, yes.

Every scar, every gash, every burn could be read as a kind of hymn, a cry to something greater, a reach toward divinity.

The body becomes the holy vessel—a space where the sacred and profane collide, where transcendence is found in the dirt and blood, the skin torn and the nerve endings raw.

In every religious tradition, blood plays a vital role.

Whether it’s the blood of Christ in Christianity, the sacrifice of animals in ancient rituals, or the symbolism of blood in pagan rites, it is the life force that binds us to the divine.

When we cut ourselves, when blood pours from the body, we’re not just seeing life escape; we’re witnessing it emerge.

Blood becomes a sacrament—a medium that connects us to the sacred, the otherworldly. A ritual. A symbol.

Blood as the sacrament of the self.

Blood as the offering to whatever god you believe in—or perhaps to no god at all.

The relationship with blood in the act of self-mutilation is complicated.

It is not only a release of pain, but a manifestation of self-awareness.

The act of bleeding becomes a personal offering—a way of sacrificing oneself to the higher purpose of understanding one’s own psyche.

In this form, blood is not simply the substance that flows when skin is cut; it is a holy liquid. Sacred, primal, potent—it represents the spilling of life itself.

When we shed blood, especially in a conscious, deliberate way, we are transcending the mundane. We are offering our vulnerability as an act of devotion to the self or to whatever greater meaning we seek.

Perhaps this is the reason the act itself feels sacred: it symbolises the body’s surrender to the idea that there is meaning in the pain, that in order to know the truth of our own humanity, we must first sacrifice part of ourselves.

But in those moments, when the pain swells and you watch it drip, there is a communion. A connection between body and spirit that is hard to describe. And maybe, in those moments, you aren’t just cutting yourself.

You are cutting through—through the illusion of wholeness, through the walls of your own mind, through the very fabric of existence.

You are reaching the divine by breaking yourself open. You are seeking purity in the most primal form of self-expression.

Wounds are often seen as blemishes or mistakes, scars from an unfortunate past. But there is a spiritual beauty in the broken body. The divine is not only found in the perfect and whole but also in the cracked, torn, and damaged. Wounds are the body’s way of showing that it has lived, that it has felt, that it has endured.

To worship the broken body is not to revel in destruction.

It is to find holiness in imperfection.

To know that within the cracks, the scars, the ruined skin, there is something eternal.

For many, the act of cutting is a way to reclaim control over the body. In a world that tells us we must be perfect, smooth, and whole, to cut and bleed is to refuse that societal expectation. It’s to say, "I am not defined by your standards. I will create my own beauty, even in brokenness."

In this, self-mutilation becomes an act of divine reclamation. We take what is painful, raw, and broken, and turn it into a testament of survival—a sign that we are not defeated, but transformed.

In the context of self-mutilation as a ritual, every scar is a sacred record of survival. It’s not just a mark on the skin—it’s a mark on the soul.

It’s evidence that the person beneath the scar was strong enough to endure and came out the other side. For some, it is through these marks that they find a connection to something higher, something beyond themselves.

Every scar is a story. Every mark is a prayer. Every pain is a plea for meaning.

For some, this becomes a path to understanding, to transcendence. To look at yourself—imperfect, bleeding, scarred—and see something holy. To see something beautiful in your brokenness, in your fragility.

What do we find in our scars?

We find survival. We find resilience. We find humanity.

In the sacred, self-destructive ritual of cutting, there is often a longing for something deeper. A desire to feel alive. To feel something real. It’s not the pain that’s sought, but the release. The freedom. The catharsis that comes when the weight of existence is no longer contained inside.

Cutting, in this sense, is not about the pain itself but about what it reveals. When you hurt yourself, when you feel the physical rush of sensation, you are drawn into the most raw, honest part of yourself.

In those moments, there is no hiding, no self-deception. You are reduced to your most vulnerable state, and in that vulnerability lies the potential for growth.

There is a strange beauty in this practice—an understanding that to hurt is to be human. To bleed is to be alive. And to bleed with purpose, to bleed with meaning, is to touch something that transcends the mundane. It’s a rejection of perfectionism, of purity, of the idea that we should be unblemished, unscarred.

This act isn’t merely about the external wound—it’s about the journey inward. For some, the ritual of cutting is a search for meaning, a way to explore the body as a map of emotion, history, and trauma. The more we cut, the more we understand about ourselves, our past, and the complex tapestry of emotions that make us who we are.

We may not find God in the self-inflicted wound, but we find something close to it: a truth.

When self-mutilation becomes a ritual—not of harm but of devotion—it transforms the body into a temple.

The flesh becomes the sacred space where transcendence occurs. By breaking it open, by spilling blood, by allowing pain, we reject the idea that the body is just a machine that must be kept pristine.

We instead elevate it to something holy, something worthy of worship. In many religious practices, fasting, self-flagellation, and asceticism—the rejection of bodily comforts—are seen as pathways to enlightenment.

The belief is that by punishing the body, you transcend it—rising above its base instincts, its weaknesses.

Self-mutilation, in this light, is not an act of simple harm—it is a desperate, twisted form of worship. You break open the body in order to free the spirit. Every wound, every scar, every cut is a sacrifice at the altar of self-understanding.

The body, broken and bleeding, becomes the vehicle of spiritual ascent. In this ritual, the body is not the enemy to be fought against, but the key to unlocking the mysteries of the self and of the universe.

The act of cutting becomes the sacred offering, the moment where the flesh is both a vessel and a sacrifice.

What if our bodies are sacred because they are fragile?

What if the divine lies not in the perfection of our flesh but in its ability to crack, to break, and still carry on?

In the end, the practice of self-mutilation as a ritual of self-discovery offers an intensely personal and intimate encounter with the self. It allows us to explore the brokenness we all carry, not as a weakness, but as a sacred expression of our humanity.

In the act of cutting, there is an intimacy—a communion with oneself. The body becomes both the altar and the offering. The ritual is not about the wound itself, but about what happens when we open ourselves, when we expose what’s underneath. It’s a way to feel—to know that we are not just bodies walking through life but vessels that can transcend, even if only for a fleeting moment.

The act may be dark, twisted, and uncomfortable, but within it lies a strange, dangerous beauty. It is the celebration of the self in its most vulnerable state, where divinity isn’t found in perfection—but in the bleeding, brokenness of being human.

It’s through the scars, the wounds, and the pain that we find meaning. In the act of offering our body to the sacredness of ritual, we affirm that we are not simply the sum of our injuries, but rather the embodiment of resilience, of survival, and of transformation.