I recommend that book, especially because it works whatever your dynamic and preferences.
In these days of that godawful 50 Shades book, it needs stating that BDSM is about far more than men tying up women to fulfil some atavistic idea of the “true nature” of the sexes, but that model is how it’s currently mostly (mis-)understood.
In fact, many sex surveys identify men as the more submissive and/or masochistic sex (the two things don’t always go together) and there are variants on these as infinite as the variations of the human mind within monogamous heterosexuality alone.
Even women who have a drive to be sexually submissive needn’t worry that this means they’re supporting a load of retarded sexist twaddle - this blogger, submissive feminist writes a lot about that side of things and while I don’t always agree with what she writes, she’s doing good work deconstructing the myth that heterosexial submissives are conceding the superiority of the opposite sex.
And her guides to things like ice-branding, anal sex and behaviour modification are useful whatever your particular kink - ice-branding especially looks like something that might be magickally useful outside any kind of sex or kink situation.
BDSM is about more than just pain, as well, some people aren’t into it at all and express their kinkiness through dominance, submission, fetishism, or roleplay.
Back to the subject line of this post, I don’t see BDSM as a “tool” you can bolt onto your magickal practice, and I find the way a lot of people who aren’t into it (and some who are) write about BDSM to be as creepy and alienating as reading mundane people spilling their salacious fantasies of what black magick must be about - the two topics are equally taboo, considered warped and wrong, and yet are fascinating to many people who haven’t dived right in as a lifestyle.
Often as not, that’s just so they can imagine all the disgusting sick things you must be into, and feel superior for one brief moment, in their otherwise wretched little lives…
Personally, I believe these preferences (and BDSM is about more than just pain, in fact many BDSM people don’t use pain at all) are innate, the same way one can be innately straight, gay, or bisexual, etc., and therefore the best people to write about this are people who are already into it, for whom it’s not some weird scary thing, and is actually normal.
An important point is that not every kinky thing is right for everyone (a fact that’s often not acknowledged) and anyone who says “Oh, you’re a domme/sub/pet, you must like X then,” is trying to manipulate you whether they know it or not, because it’s perfectly okay to be into a little of something, even something quite extreme, whilst not wanting to take on board any other activity or behaviour that’s often associated with it.
You might want someone to piss in your mouth, but that doesn’t mean you want them to call you names, slap your face, or be in any other way abusive, and that’s fine - you might want to drive long pins through someone’s skin as they scream and cry, but not want them crawling round on their knees and calling themselves a slave - that’s fine too.
A lot of BDSM porn tries to cover all bases of the paying audience and so it becomes the norm that sets of activities are grouped together in hopes that will hit the spot for their target audience, but I think this is misleading and off-putting, especially to people who have one or two specific and strong fantasies, but are turned off by the stuff they always see portrayed along with them.
This is an important point if you’d like to incorporate (for example) knife-play into sex-magick, or whipping, or roleplay, but feel like everything else that’s ever portrayed with it is gross and weird - no two people are alike, and it’s perfectly okay to be choosy!
Just as you can’t like everyone you meet, and can’t (for example) even like every magician just because you share an interest, there’s no guarantee of liking every kinky person you meet just because you share their interests - some of the people posting on Tumblr especially make my flesh crawl, or make me want to laugh out loud, so it’s not some clique or club IMO where you have to suspend judgement (by the feet, and give it a good thrashing! lol!!) - 99.999% of successful BDSM is about communication between the people involved, and what works for one couple or group might be a pathological headfuck for another.
Although I think the drive to be a kinky fucker is innate, I think sometimes people don’t recognise it, are either honestly unaware or suppress the kind of things they’d like to explore through fear, or moral judgement on their own desires.
When people aren’t expressing a deep-seated drive appropriately, that can lead to some very fucked-up relationships, because the person is busily trying to exercise their drive towards dominance or submission without the other party being aware of it existing as a thing in its own right, and it all goes horribly wrong… I speak from my own experience a couple of times, but also from other people I’ve talked to in-depth about this topic.
For example, a man with a deep need to be sexually submissive towards a woman will court her like crazy, doing everything in his power to make her feel honoured and respected, and then often attempt to take a passive role, even trying to annoy her in minor ways, unable to ask for the outright dominant leadership and correction he really craves, so she feels she’s gone from being his Princess to being some kind of mother-figure who’s taken for granted, gets pissed off, and leaves - and that’s just one example, using fairly broad strokes.
Getting back to incorporating kink in magick, Flowers’ book shows how to do that in LHP terms, I can’t really do it justice here - it’s not a book of “tips n’ tricks” so much as a way to use the dynamic in a magickal fashion, and it aligns with the “subjective/objective” ideas he explains in a magickal context in Lords Of The Left-Hand Path.
I doubt it would be much use to anyone who’s looked into BDSM and honestly finds it leaves them cold, but if it intrigues you, if you don’t always have great relationships and suspect that some kind of overt power exchange with a lover would turn you on more than a “normal” partnership, then buying Carnal Alchemy, and looking for some BDSM imagery and ideas online that resemble magickal archetypes might be a first step towards getting your kink on in the Temple.
If that seems like a giant leap, then small steps like exploring fantasy scenarios can help you understand yourself better, IMO that kind of insight would fix most people’s neuroses as well, but then I AM very biased on this subject!