‘What are you doing?’ She turned bodily in the straps, looking at me, her eyes wide. ‘Where are you going, Master?’
The word ‘Master’, though it had come appropriately enough from the girl, who was, legally at least, my property, startled me.
‘Don’t call me Master,’ I said.
‘But you are my Master,’ she said.
I took from my tunic the key my father had given me, the key to Sana’s collar. I reached to the lock behind her neck, inserted the key and turned it, springing open the mechanism. I jerked the collar away from her throat and threw it and the key from the tarn’s back and watched them fly downward in a long, graceful parabola.Tarnsman of Gor. Chapter 5, Page 69 of ⭐️Edition.
My Reflection On This Quote
When I read this passage from Tarnsman of Gor, it struck me with a quiet, aching truth, one that speaks not only to the dynamic of Master and slave, but to the essence of identity itself.
In that moment on the back of the tarn, when he removes her collar and casts it away into the sky, it is not just a symbolic gesture. It is a confession. He is not yet her Master, because he has not yet mastered himself. He is still lost within, still questioning, still battling the man he thinks he should be against the man he truly is. And so, he lets go of her collar, not because he denies the bond between them, but because he does not yet feel worthy of it.
That struck me. Deeply.
To me, this is the core truth. A Master must first Master himself before he can Master another. If he does not know who he is, what he believes in, what he values, what he truly desires, what he stands for, then how can he lead? How can he claim ownership of another soul, guide her, mold her, command her surrender, if he is still fragmented inside?
What moved me most was how the girl responded. "But you are my Master." She saw something in him he could not yet see in himself. Her submission was real, even if he wasn’t ready to accept it. That contrast, her clarity and his confusion, mirrors the journey so many of us face, whether we walk the path of Master or kajira.
We must stop lying to ourselves. Stop hiding from the things we feel, the desires we carry, the truths we know in our bones but are too afraid to speak aloud. We must accept ourselves completely, authentically, before we can ever claim or surrender fully to another.
Mastery and submission begins within. It is the strength to look at ourselves, stripped bare of masks and titles, and to say, "This is who I am. This is what I need. This is what I will no longer deny."
Only from that place of deep self ownership can a Master truly own. Only from that place of surrendered truth can a kajira truly kneel.
That scene, for me, is not about a collar being removed. It is about the realization that freedom and slavery both begin in the heart, and until we are brave enough to face ourselves, we can be neither Master nor slave in truth.
