The History & Arts of the Dominatrix

THE HISTORY & ARTS OF THE DOMINATRIX by Anne O Nomis
This much-anticipated book is the illustrated treatise on the Dominatrix throughout history. Begun in 2009, it has taken four years to come to be published with artwork illustrated with permission of the highest museums and libraries in the world.

No book previously existed on the subject. Nomis set to work meticulously researching the most discreet and mysterious occupation of the Dominatrix. This book reveals the ancient roots of the Dominatrix lie within sacred rituals to a Goddess Inanna who ruled one of the most important cities of the ancient world, the city of Uruk (or Warka). With a Masters degree in archaeology and art history, Nomis has included exerts of a hymn to the Goddess with rites of gender transformation, punishment, pain and ecstasy, linked to the high en-priestess named Enheduanna, and images of the Goddess.

Into the English history record, the secular profession appears in books from the 17th Century, with flagellation prints of the Dominatrix in role of 'Whipstress' and 'School-Mistress'. The ladies providing birch discipline were interlinked with royalty, nobility, parliamentarians and secret societies. By the 19th Century, London held 20 sumptuously appointed discipline houses, run by 'Governess' Dominatrices, one of whom invented a special machine for whipping, known as the Berkley Horse.

In the 20th Century, the book presents rare vintage snapshots of mid-20th Century ladies of the 'bizarre underground' in time, space and place, from London, New York, The Hague and The Herbertstrasse. Lastly, Nomis examines the contemporary occupation of the modern-day Dominatrix, and contributes a theory of their 'Seven Realm Arts' characterizing their practices in a framework beyond the catch-all term of BDSM. This book is the seminal work on the subject of the Dominatrix, her history and her arts as a unique craft.