Gorean Slave Brands and Brandings

Information that you may find useful and interesting and some day may be asked of you.

If you have had a chance to read some of the training materials already on this site then you would know that a slave that has yet to be branded can not be sold in a public sale. It was recommended by merchant law that all slaves be branded and collared. This is done for several reasons. One would be to be for the purpose of identification and then the second reason would be to impress upon the girl that she is now legally an animal. It also marks her as a form of livestock or a commodity, a trade good added to the world market. The brand does not hold the personal and symbolic relationship that the collar does. The collar marks a specific owner, telling the world that the slave belongs to that one person. The brand just marks the girl as being a slave. The brand unlike the collar is permanent mark, and though the owner may change the mark does not have to, also her reality as a slave girl will not change. It is for this reason that many owners commonly do not brand their girls themselves, but instead have a professional place an “institutional” mark on the girl. It is their collar that marks them as a personal slave not the branding.

The professional that do the branding are often the caste of the metal workers, to insure the quality of the brand, as the placement of such in a skillful manor is not easy thing. "I could, of course, examine your thighs, your lower left abdomen, your body generally," I said. The thighs and the lower left abdomen are the brand sites recommended by Merchant Law. Masters, of course, may brand a girl wherever they please. She is theirs. Sometimes brands are placed on the left side of the neck, on the left calf, the interior of the left heel, and on the inside of the left forearm. The customary brand site, incidentally, is high on the left thigh. That is the site almost invariably utilized in marking Gorean kajirae." - FIGHTING SLAVE OF GOR, Pg. 349

There are several different brands and each mark is selected by the Owner of the slave, sometimes they are chosen to fit the nature of the girl ho is to wear it. In this way it may be used to compliment her form and manner rather than contradict it.

Though the left high thigh is often felt perfect for a female slave. It is sometimes though rare for a brand to be placed on the abdomen, neck, forearm, calf or heel. However it will always be placed on the left side of the slave girl. It is done so that the right hand of the Master can easily touch the brand which marks his property as his. And as a subtle statement and reminder to the girl that she is property.

Note that most branded girls are hardly ever freed. Those that are freed after being branded are giving papers “ Papers of manumission” which documents the release. The slaves that are freed must carry these papers with them wherever they go for it the brand is found, she will be returned to her slavery and maybe punished as a runaway slave. Though slave that are freed commonly seek to find a way back to a collar for once been taught of such, most do not seek anything else.

For branding a slave is bounded to a branding rack…. It is a rack in the shape of a X or X table. At the end of the X it may have either snap bracelets where the slaves wrists and ankles maybe placed or rings where the slave may be secured to the X or table with binding fibers. A removable vise like clamp may be attached to hold the slaves left thigh motionless during the branding if she is to be branded on the left thigh.

The Following Branding Ceremony is based on a branding performed by Tarl Cabot in the 10th Book of the Gor Series : Tribesmen of Gor

He holds up the heated branding iron, white hot, for the slave's inspection.

"You will soon be branded, girl" He tells her.

As soon as all is in readyness, he holds the smoking iron above her left thigh and says:

"You are now to be branded, slave girl"

He then brands her, holding the iron and pressing it firmly into her skin for five full Ihn (seconds), then swiftly and cleanly removes it. He examines the mark closely, hoping that it was clean and deep enough to create an excellent brand. It is common Gorean practice to allow the slave the luxury of screaming, since it is in effect her final act as a free person.

Sometimes assistants are standing by with small vials of oil and salve, which they now dab onto the brand to reduce chance of infection and promote healing.

THE FOLLOWING BRANDING AS DONE IN THE HOUSE OF SLAVERS IN THE BOOK OF

ASSASSIN OF GOR, Pg. 149-150

the branding of girls that will be later sold. This is not always done by Slavers though, often a girl will be sold unbranded so that the owner will have the choice in selecting a brand, and so that he may have the pleasure of being the first to own her as a branded girl. Of note in this passage is the words spoken regarding "Hand-Branding," a form believed to present a better mark that that done by machine. "'Is the iron ready?' asked Ho-Tu of the guard, and the man nodded. At a signal from Ho-Tu the guard carried Virginia to the branding rack and placed her in the rack, spinning the lever that locked her thigh in place. She said nothing but stood there, wrists braceleted behind her back, locked in place, watching the approach of the iron, observing the graceful, white-hot character at the iron's termination; she screamed uncontrollably when the iron marked her, firmly, decisively for about three Ihn; and then she sobbed, beside herself, while the guard spun the lever releasing her; he lifted her from the rack and put her on the stones at the feet of Ho-Tu and Flaminius; Phyllis' eyes were wild with fear, but she, like Virginia, did not so much as whimper as the guard lifted her, carried her to the rack and locked her in place. 'We still do hand branding,' said Ho-Tu to me. 'Mechanical devices brand too uniformly. Buyers like a hand-branded girt. Besides it is better for a female slave to be branded by a man; it makes them better slaves. The rack, however, is a useful device, preventing a blurred brand." He indicated the guard. "Strius," said he, 'has one of the firmest irons in Ar. His work is almost always exact and clean.' Phyllis Robertson threw back her head and screamed helplessly, and then she, too, began to sob, trembling, when the guard, Strius, released her from the rack and put her with Virginia."

THE BRANDING OF A SLAVE GIRL AS DONE IN THE BOOK

SLAVE GIRL OF GOR PAGE 57 - 59

It is told from the perspective of the girl being branded, both presenting a description of the action itself, and her reaction to it, including the effect on her mind, body, senses, and end perception of herself. "I tended the brazier. It glowed in the darkness. Two men came and stood over me. I looked up, startled. They pulled me up by the arms and took me to the white- barked tree. They threw me on my back, my head down, on the tree. I looked at them, wildly. My hands were tied together before my body and taken pulled up and over my head. They were fastened, behind my head, out of my vision, to the tree. My body was stretched out, one leg on each side of the trunk. "What are you doing?" I cried. I felt my body being tightly roped to the tree. I squirmed, my head down, my legs up. 'Stop!' I cried. Ropes were placed on my neck and belly, and on each leg, above the knees and at the ankles, and lashed tightly. 'Stop,' I begged. 'Please stop!' I could barely move. The men stepped back; I was fastened to the tree. 'Let me go!' I cried. 'Please!' I whimpered. 'What are you going to do?' I asked. They looked at me. I was helpless. 'What are you going to do?' I whimpered. 'Oh, no!' I cried. 'No, no, no, no!' My captor had gone to the brazier and, with the leather glove, and another, too, with two hands, withdrawn the white-hot iron. I felt the, heat of it, even feet away. 'No!' I screamed. 'No!' Two men, large men, strong, held my left thigh immobile. I looked into the eyes of my captor. 'Please, no!' I wept. 'Please, no!' Then, head down, helpless, held, I was branded a Gorean slave girl. The marking, I suppose, took only a few seconds. That is doubtless true. Objectively I grant you the truth of that. Yet a girl who has been marked finds this obvious truth difficult to accept psychologically.

Perhaps I may be granted that those seconds, those few seconds, seem very long seconds. For an hour it seemed I felt the iron. It touched me firmly, kissing me, then claiming me. I screamed, and screamed. I was alone with the pain, the agony, the degradation, the relentless, hissing object, so hurting me, the men. Mercifully they let me scream. It is common to let a girl scream, a Gorean kindness, while she is being marked with a white-hot iron. Afterwards, however, once the iron is pulled out of her body, and she is fully marked, Gorean males are less likely to accord her such consideration for her feelings. They are less likely, then, to be so indulgent with her. This makes sense. Afterwards, she is only a branded girl.

It begins swiftly, almost before you can feel it. I felt the iron touch me and almost instantaneously, crackling, flash through my outer skin and then, firmly, to my horror, enter and ledge itself fixedly in my thigh. It was literally in my body, inflexibly, burning. The pain then began to register on my consciousness. I began screaming. I could not believe what was being done to me, or how much it hurt. Not only could I feel the iron, but I could hear it, hissing and searing in the precise, beautiful wound it was relentlessly burning in my thigh. There was an odor of burning flesh, mine. I smelled, burning, as of a kind of meat. It was my own body being marked. I could not move my thigh. I threw back my head and screamed. I felt the iron tight in my body, then, to my horror, pressing in even more deeply. The marking surface of the iron, then, lay hissing, literally submerged, in my flesh. I could not move my thigh in the least. I threw my head from side to side, screaming. The marking surface of the iron is some quarter of an inch in depth. It was within my flesh. It was lodged there, submerged, hissing and burning. Taking its time, not hurrying, it marked me, cleanly and deeply. Then, swiftly, cleanly, it withdrew. I smelled burned meat, my own. The men released my thigh. I began to choke and sob. Men regarded the mark. My captor was commended on his work. I gathered I had been well marked.

The men then left me and I continued to lie, head down, roped and helpless, on the broken, inclined trunk of the white-barked tree. I was overwhelmed, psychologically, with what had happened to me. The pain was now less. My thigh still stung, and cruelly, but the pain seemed relatively unimportant now compared to the enormity of the comprehension that shook me to the core. I had been branded. I shuddered in the bonds. I moaned. I wept. My thigh would be sore for days, but that was unimportant, even trivial. What would remain was the mark they bad placed in my flesh. That, unlike the pain, would not vanish. I would continue to wear that mark. It would, from now on, identify me as something which I had not been, or had not explicitly been, before, but now was clearly, for the eyes of all. I lay there. I knew I now was, because of the brand, deeply and profoundly different than I had been before. What could a brand mean? I shuddered. I scarcely dared conjecture the nature of a girl who wore such a mark on her body. She could be only one thing. I forced the thought from my mind. I tried to move my wrists, my head and body, my legs and ankles. I could move them very little. They were helpless in their constraints. Only animals wore brands.'"

Now we have some general knowledge of branding and why it is recommended by merchant law. Now we will look at the different types of brands that a slave girl may find herself branded with.

The first being the most common brand given to a slave girl It is important for a girl to be well and cleanly marked. The brand will stay on her for the rest of her life and a blurred brand would considerably decrease her value.

It was also meant to suggest that the girl was under discipline. This is made clear by the description given in Dancer of Gor when it talks of the vertical bar with the two curling extensions which were as in submission to it. This could be intrepreted as femaleness being subject to the maleness of the strict vertical bar.

Despite it's attractiveness the Kef brand in all it's variations was the most common brand type on Gor. One of the primary reasons it was given to slaves to make them understand that they were now no more than a common slave girl.

THE KEF brand

"I had now been branded, a small graceful mark burned into

my left thigh, high, under the hip. It had a vertical bar,

a rather strict one, with two curling, frondlike extensions, rather

near its base, as though in submission to it. It looked a little like a "K"

That was mine, There were variations on this theme. Some of the

other girls had similar brands, but, in one respect or another somewhat different.

There were other sorts of brands, too, but the "K-type" brand was the

most common.

p66 Dancer of Gor

As we can see the brand was meant to be attractive and feminine. The brand is also meant to be clean and precise.

If you knew me not of the metal workers," I asked, "why did you permit me to mark the blond haired slave?"

"I wished to see what you would do," he said.

"You risked a badly marked thigh on the girl," I said.

"The mark was perfect," said Ulafi.

"Thus you see," said I, "that I am truly of the metal workers."

"No," said Ulafi. "I knew you were nnot of the metal workers.

Thus I saw that you were truly of the warriors."

"Should I have blurred the brand?" I asked.

"That would have been a shame," said he, smiling.

"True," I grinned. All men like a well-marked girl.

p85 Explorers of Gor

THE DINA

The Dina is another of the common slave brands found upon Gor. It is the brand given to the former Judy Thornton in Slave Girl of Gor.

"....my own brand was the "dina"; the dina is a small, lovely, multiply petaled flower,

short-stemmed, and blooming in a turf of green leaves, usually on the slopes

of hills, in the northern temperate zones of Gor; in its budding, though in few

other ways, it resembles a rose; it is an exotic alien flower; it is also spoken

of, in the north, where it grows most frequently, as the slave flower...."

p61 Slave Girl of Gor.

This again is described as a very feminine brand. It is a flower with exquisite petals, complementing the feminine beauty of the slave. However, in the north at least, it is a common flower, referred to as the slave flower.

Dina later makes it clear that the brand is not that unusual upon Gor.

"As it became more popular, it was becoming, simultaneously, of course, a fairly common brand.

Girls branded as I was were already spoken of on Gor, rather despairingly as "dinas".

p 63 Slave Girl of Gor.

Thus the Dina although a little more exotic would still be regarded as the mark of a common slave.

THE BRAND OF THE FOUR BOSK HORNS

This is the mark that the Tuchuks use to brand their slaves.

"....the brand of the Tuchuk slave, incidentally.....is the sign of the four bosk horns

that of the Tuchuk standard; the brand of the four bosk horns, set in such a manner as to

somewhat resemble the letter "H", is only about an inch high....the brand of the four bosk horns

, of course, is also used to mark the bosk of the Tuchuks, but there, of course, it is much larger

p62 Nomads of Gor

Generally this brand would only be found on girls who had, at one time, been properties of the Tuchuks. It is significant that this was also the brand used to mark animals thus reducing the slave to this status.

The MARK OF TREVE

This was a brand given to slave girls owned by those of Treve.

"Incised deeply, precisely, in that slim, lovely, now-bared thigh was a startling mark, beautiful, insolent,

dramatically marking that beautiful thigh as that which it now could only be, that of a female slave"

"It is beautiful," I whispered.

..."It is the first letter, in cursive script, " she said, " of the name of the city of Treve."

p277 Captive of Gor

This, like the Kef is a cursive representation of a letter in the Gorean alphabet. Kai would imagine that this is a T in shape, perhaps also with a strict vertical bar like the Kef and with the crosspiece being cursive in design. This mark would generally only be found on girls who had been enslaved by those of Treve.

THE BRAND OF TORVALDSLAND

This brand was used by those of Torvaldsland to mark their slaves.

The brand used by Forkbearrd is not uncommon in the north, though there is less uniformity in Torvaldsland on these matters than in the south.... The brand used by the Forkbeard, found rather frequently in the north, consisted of a half circle, with at its right tip, adjoining it, a steep diagonal line. The half circle is about an inch and a quarter in width, and the diagonal line about an inch and a quarter in height. The brand is, like many symbolic. In the north, the bond-maid is sometimes referred to as a woman whose belly lies beneath the sword.

p 105 Marauders of Gor

This brand would usually only be found on girls who had at one time been slaves in Torvaldsland. The symbolic nature of it again emphasizes the slave's vulnerability and femininity.

THE TAHARIC SLAVE MARK

This brand was used by those of the Tahari to brand their slaves.

"The contact surface of the iron would be formed into the Taharic character 'Kef'

...Taharic is a very graceful script. It makes no distinctions between capital and

small letters and little distinction between printed and cursive script.....The initial

printed letter of 'Kajira', rather than the cursive letter, as generally, is used as the

common brand for women in the Tahari. Both the cursive letter in common Gorean and the printed letter

in Taharic are rather lovely, both being somewhat floral in appearance.

p148 Tribesmen of Gor

This may be seen as a regional variation of the Kef. It would generally only be found on girls who has served in the Tahari. The emphasis again is on femininity and attractivess.

Penalty Brands

These were brands used as a punishment to the slave girl.

"Sometimes, too," she said,"a girl may be branded as a punishment, and to warn others

against her."

I looked at her puzzled.

"Penalty brands," she said. "They are tiny, but clearly visible. There are various

such brands. There is one for lying, and another for stealing."

p277 Captive of Gor

This is the only time in the books that these are mentioned apart from when Elinor receives them later in this book. This may be because Elinor, , is the most difficult and rebellious slave in the whole series. penalty brands would have a deterrent effect, in that the punishment would be very painful and the brands would remain forever marking the girl as a thief and a liar