Blood-brotherhoods and similar rites have been employed by men to mark friendships and alliances for thousands of years. Evidence of the practice can be found in the lore, literature and recorded history of most cultures—from Norse and Celtic mythologies to the tribes of Africa, Australian and the South Pacific, to the fiction of Jack London and Mark Twain.Today, many homosexual men are adopting and adapting marriage rites and relationship ideals that were designed to unite males and females, and which remain steeped in millennia of culture, tradition and imagery inspired by heterosexual unions. Blood-Brotherhood offers an alternative mode of perception: why not remove the feminine element and the trappings of heterosexual romance from the equation altogether and model bonds between androphiles after the bonds that men have made between each other for thousands of years? Why not base these unique unions between men on a tradition that honors male friendship?
Blood-brotherhood is not an attempt to “homosexualize” history or to “homoeroticize” the practice of blood-brotherhood, which has traditionally been practiced between heterosexual male friends. Rather, it is an attempt to inspire homosexual men to think about and solemnize their relationships differently—no matter what legal arrangements they decide to make.
Blood-Brotherhood is a toolbox for the imagination, containing a wealth of research about blood-brotherhood myths and practices from a wide variety of cultures and time periods, including excerpted texts and original translations by Nathan F. Miller. Blood-Brotherhood also documents Jack Donovan’s own bond with his compadre in a unique blood-brotherhood rite, presented as modern adaptation of this ancient ritual.
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