Huh. Hadn’t heard refer to body mod as the “modern primitive” movement since the early 1990s. The modern widespread popularity of body piercing, scarification, and tattooing did arise from the various “alternative” subcultures’ adoption of the “modern primitive” subculture; a lot of the individual components of “modern primitive” arose from sexual subcultures in the 1970s. Piercing arose primarily from the Gauntlet piercing studios that started by catering to the gay S&M subcultures in California in the 1970s, especially genital piercing. (Others experimented early, especially 1970s punks, once again often borrowing S&M culture). Tattooing had never really gone away, but techniques and artistry slowly expanded (again primarily in the 1970s in various subcultures, especially BDSM) to include black work, tribal, designs “borrowed” from other cultures, etc. Similar for scarification and branding, extreme body play like corseting and cupping, and so on: often used in BDSM, expanded from there. “Shamanistic” things like suspensions I’ve only ever read of being inspired by things like documentaries (and even issues of National Geographic!), but it was definitely adopted by BDSM cultures, too.
The Fakir was pretty just a charismatic guy who was an early embracer of a lot of these techniques for their own sake, rather than being a component of a separate subculture. He was a popular subject for a lot of the early documentation of the body mod scenes (especially revolving around Gauntlet and the various glossy body mod zines in the US that began coming out in the late 1980s) because he was enthusiastic, and he did publish his own popular zine in the early 90s (Body Play), but he was not anywhere near the “father” of the MP movement… but he was a popular figure for people already in the movement. I’d personally give the nod to two folks: Jim Ward of Gauntlet-- he was the respected source for piercing, piercer training, piercing research, and published PFIQ, and as late as 1992 I remember people having to travel to a Gauntlet shop to get piercing done-- and Ed Hardy (yeah, the Ed Hardy, of douchebag apparel fame), who is the primary tattoo artist who began researching/experimenting to expand techniques to include tribal/etc., and published the highly influential Tattootime books which documented tattoos in different cultures and encouraged artists to begin adopting new styles. I will credit the Fakir on coining the term “modern primitive” as the umbrella term; it was the subtitle of his Body Play zine.
And one event coalesced everything–tattooing, piercing, scarification, branding, body mods–together for the consumption of the “alternative” scene in the 1990s that brought it all into the mainstream: the book Modern Primitives from RE/Search in 1989. The book gathered interviews and information from the disparate body mod folks and scenes, and published it in book form, as an issue in the RE/Search book series that was very popular in punk, indie, DIY, zine, comix, etc. circles.
So, my take on Fakir? Charismatic guy who had his own peculiar angle on body mod, and because of his own efforts happened to be one of the mouthpieces when folks came around looking for someone willing to talk about it. The spiritual “modern primitives” thing does provide a framework for a few annoying holier-than-thou types who would be overly serious about any hobby they happened to be into, but even they will be likely to just refer to it as “body modification.”
Oh, and if you’re interested, add http:// to wiki.bmezine.com to find an often NSFW wiki that documents a lot of the people, publications, and history of all of the above from an insider/fan point of view.