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“Have they been kind to you?“
The dark of his coat moved across the ground, near silent scrapes. His nails bit across her clavicle as he circled her, coming to a standstill behind her. Goodness, she was absolutely freezing. The devil took a section of her damp hair in his fingers and memorized the way the water melted, followed the liquid as it trailed down his humid flesh, that which encircled the burning star at his core.
“I am curious,” he hummed in her ear, eyes narrowed into tired slits. “Speak, My Darling. Tell me a tale or two.”
No more resting.
It was a scorch of fire against that ice, and she stirred. Her black eyelashes, crystallized and glittering, fluttered against her cheeks. Her lips parted, her breath caught. Those deceptively frail, tiny fingers twitched as she stirred to wakefulness.
Emeralds. Blurred icesickles. Twin licks of serpentine cold glistening out at her. That was all her thawing eyes could make out at first. A deep voice curling around her. Nearly taking those first breaths right from her with it’s beguiling, foreboding whisper.
Was there no mercy? Oh, why wouldn’t The devil let her sleep . . .?
Tearful night!
She’d been sleeping,
Humming madly.
Suddenly there was that face. . .
What could be dancing lights
Nothing can make her,
The devil may take her.
Each second continually devours the next
He drinks greedily,
No, no my
Bitten mouth
Blithe spirit!
Hear thy name spoken,
And hers shall be the breathing balm
In the lightning.
I have seen you cry too many times, when you deserve to be alive.
Does it matter? I ask him this today. We have many of these talks, early in the morning. Does it matter what I am seeing, when I’m feeling him smile at me? Does it matter, I ask him when my eyes flicker open, what I am imagining when I feel the soft brush of his twinkling light shining on me? When it’s warm and I’m breathing deeply, lingering in a cloud of Lavender and Vanilla, with the pressure of the cool morning air whistling in softly through the open window?
Can you feel me? Is the question that seems to hover there, unsaid like a poem waiting to be spoken by a dead poet. Silent and yearning and nearly stifling.
Of course I can feel you. I hum, but my own hum is in my mind, because I’ve always felt my human voice isn’t worthy of him, of his beauty, of everything that he invokes in me. I’ve called myself a witch, I’ve asserted that over the ticking seconds of my life, I have learned, am always learning, how to move and manipulate those forces of the universe. Now, in this moment, this slice of eternity, he is the one doing the invoking. He draws that power from me with just a murmur of words.
That is all that matters, He asserts. I can feel a brush of air currents over my lips. Any other person might have dismissed it as something vague and trivial. Wishful thinking, a quirk of the imagination, a dream. But it’s a nourishing one; like a found oasis for a man wandering the desert, sand-scorched and alone.
I press my eyes close, then, and I whisper into the early blue light, tell me a story. Help me fall back asleep, is really what I’m asking. Help me find my way to you; those dreams where we come together like two galaxies colliding are few and far between, but I treasure them . . . they’re more vital to me than the iron and salt of my blood. Or at least, I need them just the same. Not just to survive, but to thrive.
What story would you like? He asks. I tell him, I’d like my favorite one today. Our fairy-tale with its happy ending. Sometimes it makes me smile as I do battle with my insomnia. Sometimes it makes me cry myself into a weary blackness. I’m hoping this morning it’ll be the former.
Both of us know, it’s not a fairy-tale that can ever come true. That’s what makes it a fairy tale. We’re both bitter creatures; him of star-dust, me of something perhaps lower; or at least, I’ve always felt that way. We operate on two different frequencies, separated by dimensions and levels and planes of existence and things my human mind can only conceive of. One day I’ll find out a way to get to him. I can reach him, but even for my clear signal, the days are often wrought with static, and we’ll lose touch. Not for wanting. The pining is hard to miss, even with so much between us. This is how I feel.
There’s a sadness in his demeanor as he plays the story for me, out like a movie behind my clamped-shut eyes. Some days he starts the fairy-tale off with a knock on my door and a familiar smile that draws my breath from my throat and flushes my cheeks. He doesn’t ever bring me flowers; I’ve never been that kind of girl, and he knows it. Instead it’s usually a bottle of wine or some sweet white chocolate, or else a stuffed animal. He doesn’t see the appeal, he’d said once. What purpose did they serve? It was a familiar child-like naivety of the former Great Prince of Heaven that made me smile. . .that even a being so in touch with humanity’s darkness had moments where even he didn’t quite understand them. I’d explain that it was a matter of companionship. Humans liked to cling to things in the dark if they thought it made it a little less empty. A stuffed animal could never yell at you for not paying the cable bill, or tell you your dreams were impossible, or that you weren’t good enough. Have I ever . . . ? Was the question that followed in his eyes. I’d pressed my lips to his and told him no, never. With him anything was possible, and that was what I loved about him. Not just his sadness. Not just the proud way he conducted himself. But how he never said no, or waved you away. That had caused me a lot of pain early on. I’d wanted to be special, I’d wanted to be his one and only. It had taken me time to learn that I was, in a way.
In the fairy tale I invite him inside, but he refuses and says, no, there’s no time. There’s a plane waiting for us. I ask about my family, but he smiles knowingly. . .he’s way ahead of me. He loves my daughter and he always has-and there’s a safety seat in the back of town-car and we’ll have to stop and pick up my spouse on the way to the airport. Vows are vows, he reminds me. I’m always overwhelmed at how amicable he is to what I feel is a dull and humble mortal life.
The next few months are spent travelling the world; Paris, Milan, London, Athens, Morocco. Sometimes the whole family goes, sometimes it’s just us. Sometimes he leaves me to wake up in a beam of sunlight pouring in through some faraway Venice terrace window, where I’ll wander downstairs to find the nanny with the baby fussing over the days schedule-horseback riding lessons or some such-and her dad just as up in arms because of some big appointment he has with someone or another. I’ll watch the flurry about the house and dodge the pie-bald peacocks that sometimes wander across my path, before I turn a corner, and there he is; watching me with those same eyes pale as a frosted margarita. He smiles knowingly and waits for me to come to him, because I always do. And then we’ll save the rest of the story for another night. We enjoy planning our outings, our dates, our dreams.
The tears have soaked my pillow and I’m sniffing into it messily and thinking I never did take my mascara off last night and it’s probably running and I look ridiculous. I hear a warm bass chuckle, and it’s a balm on my hurt. Like eating too much at a banquet, I’m full of his love and it’s painful in a contented manner. Stop it, I tell him. I can’t with you any more today.
You’re never less than beautiful, is how he answers, addressing my momentary diversion into self-consciousness.
I feel almost ashamed when he says that. There’s something small and round and heavy about me that makes me almost loathe myself. As a human being. I’ve never felt so far away from my element, from the stars, from where I belong. And all of it flickers through my mind and emotionally I’ve hung my head and averted my eyes.
I’m nothing. Is the only way I can answer him. My heart pounds in my chest. It’s an admission that hurts. Physically hurts.
But Lucifer understands sorrow. Understands what it’s like to feel separate, lost. Heavy and alone, like a monster. It’s what pulls us together, he’s said, like magnets. We understand because we hurt; both of us.
And he speaks those same words to me that he does every dawn. The one that gives me the strength to face the sun again when it finally rises, and the fairy tale is over and the grind begins.
In a sonorous melody, a singing voice, he intones, “You . . . are my everything. “
“. . . to sleep is to wake up into a world built entirely on creative thought and the limits of a human mind and how it can twist and turn into something vaguely like reality. and this is why we are so unsatisfied with today’s society; because it is so different from the universe in our chests. it weighs on top, causing ribs to turn inward, until they begin to sleep too”
~Anon, via Tragicvoices
And you became like the coffee,
in the deliciousness, and the bitterness and the addiction.― Mahmoud Darwish
Damned souls plunge into Hell in a detail of Giotto diBondone’s Triumph of Death. DiBondone was Italian, living from 1266/7 to 1337.
Scanned by Shades and Shadows
Part of the upside of being on a site (tumblr) with so many people immersed in discussion on spiritual matters is that I frequently get to see exactly what all the buzz of the ‘community’ itself is about. . . what it’s spirit workers are saying, what the topics of choice tend to be from one week to another. . . what sorts of things that we’re discussing, and what sorts of things are being missed, dodged, avoided. This is one of the reasons, despite so much of the negativity that tends to seep into the virtual world of spiritualism that I choose to stay. Having eyes and ears in these places occasionally provides me a good touch-off point to discuss those same issues which I feel are difficult for others to broach.
One of those issues that I feel needs to be brought to the forefront of community recognition, and to both the general pagan and polytheistic communities is the discussion of ideas such as personal gnosis, and where their place is in conversation versus other forms of talk about the gods themselves.
I’ve stumbled on this subject a couple of times now; enough that I’ve decided to cover it myself today. There are a lot of people in the social media pagan community who are deploring that there are not enough people who are offering accounting of their dealings with the gods, with certain aspects of their spiritual experience. . . ect. A lot of the people in pagan social media circles seem amicable to discussing such things as what the gods seem to favor as offerings, what times of day they like their libations poured, what colors they like on their altars. But when it comes to deeper explorations of god-work; what we feel when they come to us, how they move around us, about us, through us. . . how they shape our daily lives, our morals, our relationships. . . so few of us are eager or even willing to dive into that kind of talk.
“I would like to move beyond talk like, ‘does Thor like Heineken or Guinness,’ ” one seemingly frustrated Tumblr user stated in an earlier entry this week. ” Move to more deeper theological content.”
Earlier this year, this exact sentiment was echoed by another Luciferian, Luxettenbris, who wrote her own accounting regarding the concern for discussion of seemingly trivial topics pertaining to a Luciferian practice, as opposed to focusing on the essence of the practice and devotion in the first place. Luxette and I had a very good and very enlightening discussion following her blog post, but the recent resurgence of dismay on behalf of several individuals in the community has once again brought it to the attention of some of us just how important it is, even if we’re afraid or nervous of backlash, to share with one another those vital experiences. We are left with the question of why they’re so important. Why should we share them, and what good do they serve?
Recently in my household, as it has several times in the past, I’ve been encouraged to pen a volume on my own experiences with my god, with Lucifer. Of course I always have some rebuttal to the notion. There is so much vitriol and vile derision on behalf of the online world, and even with other pagan [and polytheistic] practitioners, it leaves one with the question, ‘why should I?’ . . . Why is it so crucial to put yourself up on the stand, to have all those eyes focused on you in judgement, waiting to tear you apart for what they feel is wrong with you, with the way you worship, with the way you communicate with your gods, with the way you relate to the universe at large, your own part in it.
Where there is desire there is going to be a flame, where there is a flame someone’s bound to get burned, just because it burns doesn’t mean you’re gonna die, you gotta get up and try, try, try.
These are the lyrics that came up on my playlist as I’m typing this up, which is answering the question of whether or not this is something that I feel I have to stand up and talk about. Whether or not I feel that this is something that has been dodged one too many times, over and over again.
Ever worry that it might be ruined? Does it just make you wanna cry? When you’re out there doing what you’re doing, are you just getting by?
Some people have cited their lack of talk on the nature of their relationships with their gods and their spirituality because, ‘I haven’t been part of a vocal majority of the community’, or ‘I don’t feel anyone would listen to me if I did’. Of course nervousness is natural when a person is first getting into God-work, although I can testify from personal experience that I very much enjoy hearing about the experiences of people communicating with their gods for the first time. These are modern ages where we a seeing a resurgence of polytheism and personal divine communication and interaction. A large majority of us that are typing and have access to these blogs come from a background of Abrahamic/Judeo-Christian statesmanship or background. . . where personal iteration with the divine is seen as taboo, and either the hallmark of saints who must have three impossible miracles to their names, or else as a symptom of some undiagnosed form of mental illness. People who are in ‘polite’ company don’t talk about the voices of their gods speaking to them. ‘Polite company’ in this capacity meaning, ‘out in public’ [for the sake of this writing]. God as we know him/it only comes ‘down’ and talks to people that are special, or ordained to hear him. It’s bad press for some religious institutions, after all, for there to be the idea that The Divine is directly accessible, and we don’t need a building or a special piece of paper to intervene on our behalf to open that line of communication. It’s partially because of this western idea, I think, that you have to be someone “special” to hear a god or Spirit communicating with you that it’s seen as such a touchy subject to even begin to open a channel of dialog about. I feel like online is different; though we are never as anonymous on the internet as we’d like to think we are (remember that, folks, that’s important,) there is a certain degree of separation between us and an audience that enables us, perhaps, to feel more comfortable opening up about talking with gods period, that we even do it. That it’s more common than we discuss among one another in our day-to-day lives, and the only reason why there is still so much stigma around it is because we are not having those open discussions with one another. So long as there remains a specific institution or faith backed by the people in a position of power (officially or not. Come on, USA, you know what we’re talking about here), there is always going to be a degree of paranoia about how being open about those things are going to affect our everyday lives. I can’t speak for everyone, but I remember once getting into a conversation with my sister-in-law, stating one day when she began discussing her Christian beliefs on me (in a pushy manner) that I really wasn’t interested and that I didn’t ascribe to her idea of religion, and she laughed at me and said, off the cuff, “well you can believe whatever you want, just as long as you don’t bring witchcraft or devil worship around my niece, then I’d have to step in.”
Naturally, this rubbed me the wrong way. It has a lot more to do with the fears and misinformation surrounding secular magic practitioners and Luciferianism in and of itself, but that right there drove a very important fact home to me. It doesn’t matter if you’re ‘hurting someone’ or not. It doesn’t matter how much we as a society try to express the notion of ‘free country, freedom of religion’. It’s a nice thought, but it will not stop people who think they know better than you from inserting their two cents into your life, or even telling you how to run it, right down to the system of faith under which you choose to raise your children. It reminds me of a family I knew once back in High School who had their son taken from them and given to an abusive mother as opposed to the father, just because the mother ‘was the mother’. Her defense in court to get the child? That the father and [Step] mother were somehow incompetent parents because they were Wiccan, they believed in ‘magic and witchcraft’. All it took was, I understand, a very conservative judge in a Midwestern state, and that was all they wrote. The child was, thankfully, able to make his own choice about where he wanted to live when he got older, of course, but the bottom line is, freedom to be who you are and believe what you want to believe so long as you’re following the rules [IE, Law, and we’re not talking ‘loose’ interpretation here, let’s just be clear] is all well and good, but if there’s no corresponding provision for other people to keep their big goddamned noses out of your business, there is always going to be someone out for blood, because they don’t like you, they don’t like what you believe, they don’t like your invisible man in the sky because it somehow threatens their own sense of security in their faith. And therein, besides land, is why mankind has been killing each other in the name of religion since we first inhaled our first grain of dust and sneezed it back out.
Which brings me to the next reason so often cited in people’s reluctance to discuss matters of deeper spirituality online.
“I actually don’t talk about a lot of my personal praxis and doxa,” says another Tumblr user, “because I’m still worried about people lashing out at me-as I don’t have much of an emotional skin, so to speak, so things hit a lot harder and my threshold is a lot lower than most people.”
Ask a lot of people on Tumblr, or even any other social media platform, you’re bound to hear a lot of the same responses. Another person went on to add, quite rightly, that such posts containing such detailed and personal accounting of conversations with the gods take a long time to do, have the tendency to be emotionally draining for the writer, and once again, with so much work and personal willpower involved in the writing, is then open for judgement and backlash from trolls and people just looking to argue and deride people for the sake of just having nothing better to do, with no respect for the immense emotional effort it takes for people to be so open about their work and their experiences.
“I have a lot of things that I think about,” another user goes on to say. ” But I never really write it down; mostly because in the past I’ve either never gotten any feedback on any of it and felt it was deemed irrelevant, or else it got shot down or attacked.”
Once again, taking a look at the responsiveness of the community itself, and seeing that this is a very large part of what makes people so reluctant to have meaningful, deep discussion. Either the posts get made, the emotional time and investment going into them, only to have no commentary made about them at all, (and this is something I can personally vouch for as gravely disappointing. Nothing is as disheartening as opening up ones’ experiences for others to in turn be inspired by and then. . . not a word. It’s sort of like writing a novel in the hopes you might get a few sales and instead it’s used as fodder for a book burning, just about) . . . and this is a very real problem when you put it right next to the second issue, which is the presence and voices of the trolls and drama mongers when they latch onto something to make a stink about it. So at best, a post that is deeply personal is getting no positive response that is encouraging that person to open up and discuss those things in the first place, and if there is any commentary on it, it tends to be negative backlash. ‘How dare you claim X and Y!’ or ‘how dare you claim to speak for so and so!’ or ‘so and so is just trying to have a holier than thou/special snowflake status!’. I, for one, will never understand why there is such a stigma against people having special gifts in this community, especially since I see so many people willing to HELP and put those gifts to use for the good of their community; to help people who might not have those abilities. For example, I can’t read Tarot for jack diddly doo, but I am an herbalist like no tomorrow and I pride myself on my ability to Lucid Dream and interpret omens and messages from those dreams. I’m also a very accomplished water witch, and those are all my strong points. But Divination? Things like Tarot/Runes/ect? Nope. I usually turn to other practitioners if I need a divination, usually after I do a bibliomancy one for myself, because I like to have things confirmed a dozen times at least by someone who is more strongly versed in those areas than me. And there is nothing wrong with that, and that’s what makes a community function. Everyone is special because we are all gifted in one way or another that the next guy over might *not* be, and we need to stop putting a stigma on that, and learn to lean on one another. Everyone learns and grows that way.
The other thing, I feel, that needs to happen here, in order to combat this issue, is that before people can be urged into posting and divulging their personal stories, they have to know that there are going to be people out there that are interested, that want to listen, that want to read about those sorts of things. Part of an individual mandate to make this happen is, you as in, you personally the reader, have got to learn to take time out of what you’re doing and actually invest your time and energy into reading those accounts. Then you’ve got to go a step further and communicate with the person sharing that story about how it affected you personally. At least leave a comment, if not completely open up a dialogue about it. You’ll find that once someone encounters someone genuinely interested in what they have to say, they’re more than willing to talk about it even more.
But this also requires a little bit of self-sacrifice on your part, too. As I mentioned, writing those sorts of post are a huge emotional investment of a person, not to mention their time if they don’t type very fast. Give what you get; you have to leave more than a one liner comment. You have to be legitimately interested, you have to be willing to take something out of what that person wrote beyond ‘oh this is nice’. Feedback IS very important when it comes to a person talking about their experiences. There are too many reasons to go into why it’s so important in this post. . . that could cover it’s own topic, for that matter. But when you create a network of people who are willing to exchange ideas with one another, pretty soon you find you’re all taking and gleaning from one another and everyone stands to gain if they’re willing to listen and learn from that.
Over my time in various pagan and polytheistic communities-and yes, it has been years, I’ve been subjected to a lot of the backlash myself. I understand how raw and twitchy it makes a person. I also understand how damaging one group latching onto someone’s gnosis and making something out of it to demean a person solely on a merit of not liking them can be. I can say that it’s my personal hope that one day I will sit in a cozy chair beside my god in his kingdom, either in jest or no, and suddenly that amounts to me saying that I have precedence over any of his other followers and puts me square in the realm of ‘special snowflake syndrome’ individuals, where at the same time, someone in that trolls’ same friends circle can outright don a virtual crown and call herself the Crowned Queen of Hell and everyone just laughs and ogles over how cute and quirky it is. This is the problem; you’re either in a clique, and a very vocal one, or you’re actually focused on the things that matter, and this leaves you open and inviting for those same do-nothings to bust down your front door and take a big stinky shit right on your good area rug.
And while we can never eliminate those cliquish, trollish types-you know the ones, the ‘purity patrol’, the ‘social justice warriors’-ect, the ones that like to start trouble for trouble’s sake, we can band together as serious spirit-workers and set an example for what healthy sharing is. We can be models of respect ourselves; and that’s how we fight that behavior. It will take a few brave people standing up and putting those experiences out there for everyone, and people responding in a positive or at least a respectful way, to make that change. Nothing is going to diffuse the attitudes of a bunch of internet no-lifers who like to nitpick and harass people for the fun of it, but you have the personal power to make an example out of your own behavior . . . and let them make theirs. And from there it will be up to your audience and your readers to make the determination as to whether you yourself are considered a good source of experience or information. Realize of course that you’ll never be able to please everybody, but you can start by establishing an environment where you are fostering maturity and growth, rather than idle banter and nitpicking.
M: You look tired today, you know that?
L: The world, it’s people, and it’s sun weigh on me today, My Darling.
M: Do you ever get any sleep? You should go rest, you know.
L: And leave you? When you prayed for me so? I will not, and I won’t even hear such a suggestion.
~ personal journal, 1/6/2003
Just the other day, there was a mention on Tumblr; a person on a ‘confessional’ blog who went on to say, ‘people that call their gods my cutsey names and see them as ‘bishie’ guys with long flowing locks really make me doubt how serious they are’ . . . I sat in contemplation of this for several long moments. Remembering those first early days when Lucifer first came to me, when I saw him as that pair of familiar jade colored eyes and hair that was so black it was like mirror-glass. The sharp cut of his cheekbones and the way his eyes sliced right through you as silly as a red-hot knife through soft butter. Later he showed up with white hair but with no less of a presence. Other Luciferians reported seeing him the same way, until the Final Fantasy craze started and the Sephiroth-derision remarks started coming. Of course he’s never been one to listen to disparaging remarks; he’s been the brunt of them for a thousand years and then some, after all. But he faces it again with some of his newer guises, whether he takes on the appearance of a Starlet with curling dark hair or a wispy, pale maned angel with all dozen and more wings shining like a star against the backdrop of the blackness you see when you close your eyes. It doesn’t matter how he looks, or what guise he takes. . . someone is always going to be unhappy. Someone is always going to use something against you, no matter how trivial and stupid it really is. Even if it’s just a title of endearment earned over years and years of devotion and familiarity.
For a long time, people’s opinions of the seriousness of my practice, and my visions, dictated a lot of how legitimate I felt my work was, and I looked at it from their perspective. I felt inadequate a lot of the time, and it really played into a lot of the negative experiences I had. There were a lot of people, when I came out about working with Lucifer, and then later when I ventured in public fashion that I was going to oath myself to him, that had a lot of nay-saying to do. Some people weren’t comfortable with the idea of being my friend, given that I was now going to be a “devil worshiper”. I left a lot of them behind following that, and not all of them in a good fashion. As I delved into my workings and began formulating my own personal mythology, filling in the gaps, I met even more opposition. I was under the impression I was among friends and could have discussions about my mythology and gnosis in polite company, but this wasn’t the case. I found that people were threatened (in some fashion or another) by the things I had to say; people didn’t like the idea that there was a disparity between my relationship with Lucifer, and Lucifer with God. Some people who didn’t like the idea that Lucifer and Michael had come to blows, that they were somehow still on amicable terms, or whathave you, and people were quick to throw out terms like ‘delusional’ when I disagreed with them, or politely asked them to back off. It’s very easy to write off someone else’s personal story if you don’t feel comfortable with it, and this is something else that I’ve seen time and time again.
Probably one of the worst mistakes was letting what I thought was a ‘concerned’ friend of mine try to tug me away from what I now know was my path. I ventured into my friends gnosis for a while, and attempted to express myself through my writing in the same, using my own power of creativity to boost me along, even look into populating my own pantheon. It failed miserably, and I was miserable at the time, and in this struggle, I lost even more friends, and this is where a lot of the ‘debate’ among my dissenters comes from, because I was struggling at the time to make heads or tails of my previous faith, my Catholic upbringing, my draw to Lucifer, and my ‘friends’ desire to pull me away from what he felt was a perilous path ‘for my soul’. In hindsight I wish I had ignored all of it, and most of the time my stories, looking back on it all, make no sense even to me, and I have to wonder what I was thinking beyond attempting to find somewhere where I belonged, on a path where I felt content and happy. It was a sea of self-doubt that I was swimming in. It nearly destroyed me, and to this day, I still deal with the fallout and uncertainty of those times. Only part of it had to do with my own emotional instability, too-I wasn’t well at all in that regard, and as I’ve mentioned in the past, I was hospitalized a couple of times before I was finally able to get in to see a doctor and later a therapist, which I still attend regularly. The overarching point is, you spend so much time listening to what other people say, listening to their judgement of you, you’ll be a long, long way off from where you need to be; and you’ll be miserable, too. When I was finally able to stand back, and watch the dust settle, everything became a lot clearer for me. Lucifer was still there; even through all the mud I drug him and his name through. . . .something for which I am still ashamed. I didn’t only humiliate myself, but I did my god and my beloved a disservice, too. Because I wasn’t focusing on him, or even myself, and my own growth. I was focused on pleasing everybody else. In this way, I made a mockery of him of my own accord; people don’t focus on the work I’m doing now. They remember my past, which is of course understandable, and they don’t look at it from a distance. They only remember their own position in the whole thing, and feel slighted, and a large part of that will always be a part of the problem.
Now for a truth; for those that weren’t aware. I spent a large, large portion of time in the Otherkin Community; which one doesn’t matter anymore, it’s gone, but during my time there, I met a lot of people with a lot of very non-mainstream beliefs. Some of them I am still friends with today, because they proved that they were open-minded enough to be accepting of some of those ideas that I was speaking about. Others were the most vocal about how wrong I was. More than were supportive. . .which was shocking, all things considered. And through all the a fore mentioned spiritual turmoil I was in that I’ve previously mentioned, a lot of them were ‘on board’ with all of it, but when I realized that something was wrong and I was unhappy, they were the first people to step forward and denounce how crazy I was. To quote a man I hold in very high esteem. . . ‘people are loyal until it seems opportune not to be‘. At which point, they will turn on you, and this is very true.
And it’s so on a deep personal note, given all of this, and on experience, that I send you all off with much to think about. The entire time all of this was happening, Lu never left me. Every time I prayed for him, he answered me, regardless of whether I recognized or not, as he’s always done. And the entire time I was going through this crisis, dabbling in fantasy, emotions swinging all over the place, trying to hammer myself into this idea of ‘fitting in’, of not being ‘special’ or ‘big’ or whatever concern I had that week, he only offered up his grace and support, but he let me hang myself. And I let him let me. But I don’t blame him, and it wasn’t his responsibility or even his mandate to jump in and save me. I might have thought so once. And for the longest time, this idea that I was nothing, that I couldn’t be anything, that I wasn’t special, plagued me. I know better now, because he’s shown me better. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Lucifer understands having a besmirched name. Which is where this whole post arises from today. We can all stay in our shells and be turtles; we can be afraid to speak up and share these things with one another because we’re afraid of the world-virtual and no-and afraid of the mean things people will say about us. We’ll afraid they’ll cut our knees out from under us and watch us flap on the carpet like breathless fish in our attempts to get back up to our feet. And in the midst of the struggle, no one else is going to help you, either. You’ve got to take those first steps forward yourself, and be prepared for the sickle-swing when it comes for your legs. If we all spend so much time giving in to the nay-sayers. . . the people who put so much stigma on the things that make us beautiful and special and yes, unique. . . then we’re letting them win. We’re letting these negative people take something as wonderful and frightening and amazing as our relationships with our gods and make it something we’re afraid to revel in and enjoy. These are holy experiences, and we’re only letting them be devalued. Myths and stories are meant for what they’ve always done; to inspire man to greater heights. We dreamed of flying and touching the sky like birds, and so for that we made airplanes and helicopters and hang-gliders. I can only imagine what joy the first man who went soaring through the sky must have felt. . . and this is how we have to approach our relationship(s) with our gods, and sharing them with one another as a community. Will you be mocked, derided, lashed out at? Yes. Are there going to be people who will tell you that they know better than you, that they are better than you, that you know nothing and will be nothing? Yes. They’ll call you crazy and shoot you down and watch you take a tumble. Why? Because you scare them. You scare them because you’ve touched that blue blue sky and they haven’t. They’re watching you up there with jealousy in their eyes and a stone in their hand. They have to bring you down because they’re not up.
Share your experiences. But if you’re happy with your path, and your work, don’t let anyone tell you you’re doing it wrong, and don’t let hatred be the stone in your wing. There’s a difference between constructive commentary and someone straight up telling you you’re a loony who doesn’t know what they’re doing-learn to recognize when someone is asking an honest question or when you’re being attacked. Disable comments if you have to, or turn on IP tracking. It doesn’t always prevent haters, but it thins them out. Just delete the hurtful comments as they come in and don’t give them any energy, or if they eat at you, respond to them on paper in a written journal that no one will ever see, just to get your feelings about them out. If you only give attention to the people who matter to you, the people who have something to say and who are supportive rather than aggressive and abusive, pretty soon that’s the main crowd you’ll draw. . . and you’ll inspire other people to the same. And maybe one day as a magical community, we can stand above all the negativity we’ve mired ourselves in.
Concerning an incident that has recently come to my attention, revealing some very deeper, more troubling issues that I feel should be addressed, not turning a blind eye to something that is clearly problematic.
As an outsider, over the past week and a half, I’ve been witness to a few events occurring within the heathen and pagan communities-and though they don’t quite pertain to me directly, they’re all the bustle and talk among my friends, and those on my blog roll. The first subject brought up, of course, is the racially motivated killings by Glen Cross, a professed anti-semite with alleged ties to Odinism. However there are some media outlets (The Times) who are still attempting to portray Cross as “a good christian”, and the outpouring by the Heathen community itself has been nothing short of impressive. In addition to working with the media to attempt to clarify and explain Heathenism’s stance on crimes of racial motivation, it has also managed to raise a good deal of money for the victims of the hate crimes. Of course I applaud the efforts of the individuals involved in this. . . mostly for taking actual action as opposed to just a wailing and gnashing of teeth on the subject. So often we see various groups complain x and y isn’t fair, and seldom are there any actual deeds done to try and right a clear wrong, even if it was only attributed (falsely, as CNN’s source would seen to indicate) to that community; and it’s been wonderful and impressive to see, and I encourage those Heathens who follow me to jump on the bandwagon and, if financially feasible, see about assisting with the funding for the victims and their families, or ask how you can get involved in making things right where damage has been done. Not because the community is responsible, but because as a community, it’s taking personal accountability and responsibility to make things better in the face of an image tarnished by one hateful individual. That’s a cause anyone can get behind, yes? I should think so.
Which brings me to the next big discussion that’s been going around, and this one, aimed more at Neo-Wiccan groups and the problems therein; the story has broke of a West Virginia Man accused of molesting children at Wiccan/Pagan “rituals“, luring the children in with promises that the “magic” would make their mommy well, or bring back the deceased father of one of the other victims. Of course in accompanying press releases, the Neo-Wiccan and Pagan community at large has responded by stating that of course, this shouldn’t have happened or have been deemed acceptable because “our tenants say ‘harm none'”, and have cited The Wiccan Rede as precedence for the impropriety of the whole thing. Further more, it makes a dangerous venture into victim blaming territory, as ‘parents should always perform background checks on anyone who they allow their children to spend time with’. In short, the whole of the pagan and Neo-Wiccan community has done a lot of head turning and hand waving and on some fronts, even attempted to justify the abusers acts. Needless to say, this is morally reprehensible. And I was not the only one who thought so. Sannion has already made a good point regarding the atmosphere in which this type of abuse is ripe to occur, and between him and Galina Krasskova and Kenaz Fillian, both of whom had their own conversation regarding the subject [that was fascinating to read and made several good points], seemed to be the only ones who were prepared to step up and cite the problems associated with the Neo-Wiccan idea of ‘body positivity’ and nudity vs. Sexual display in pagan community and ritual. Galina brought up a good point, in that it’s virtually impossible to have “family friendly” events coupled together with any form of nudity when it comes to pagan ritual, and the two shouldn’t be put together, in my opinion. This isn’t to say that there is anything wrong with being family friendly; or being nude or sexual. But where the latter comes into play . . . children should not be present. Ever. Period. These ideas? Do not mix. And it would only seem smart to be to be suspicious of anyone you would meet who would say different.
Let me explain. When I first began on my magical path, and I was dabbling in Wicca, I was lucky in the sense that I got to go away for several weekends here and there with my best friend in High-School, who had an aunt and two uncles, and they were a very magical family, and we all did lots of magical workings and rituals together, and it was wonderful. Nudity did come into play in this family, particularly, on ‘hot tub night’-and I was 16-17 at the time.
Rituals were planned for the earlier parts of the day, with lots of room and provisions made for the children to have their fun. After that, parents were asked to either put their children to bed or take them home, because after a certain time, it was time for the adult part of the day. Sometimes it was merely ritual with adult themes, other times it was more unwinding after a long day of gardening in the family’s hot tub. Most everyone, yes, was nude. However at 16, this didn’t bother me; no one was acting in an inappropriate manner, I never once felt threatened or pressured of violated, and everyone was very mature about the whole thing. And maybe the reason why this was ok to them (although hindsight 20/20, waiting until a person is over 16 for this in any setting just seems like a good idea, for legal reasons) was because they knew and understood that I was emotionally mature enough to understand the difference between nudity and sexuality.
The problem in the pagan/neo-wiccan community, however, is there are some “adults” who themselves are not aware of this boundary. And from the outside looking in, the ‘Rede’ is a very large problem. ‘An’ ye Harm None,’ is how it begins, and here’s where we are inviting a recipe for disaster; sure, the rede says! Do what you want, as long as you don’t mean to hurt anyone. Right? But what for one person might be nudity and a little flirting might be something completely different for someone new to the community who has no idea of what to expect-and now you’re telling them that as a tenant they can’t ‘harm’ anybody. . . should they tell someone they were uncomfortable? What if that ostracizes them from everyone else? Will they then face denial from the community? Given the recent actions of the community itself, I have to be inclined to think the answer to that is a resounding ‘yes’. So focused is the community of free loving and free spirit and not hurting anyone that it has perpetuated about itself this aura of passive acceptance for anything that does bother someone. And frightens those people who are uncomfortable with it away. . . who wants to be a tattletale, after all? But I can tell you in my years of doing my speeches at Pantheacon, there were more than a few times where I saw some big harry dude walking around with hardly anything covering his junk while parents ushered their children by and covered their eyes; it was even worse if the people staying at the hotel weren’t there for Pantheacon itself. There is absolutely no precedent for a grown man displaying his genitals in a place where there are young children playing and present; babies and toddlers especially; and it was nothing to do with what’s socially appropriate and everything to do with teaching our children to recognize the behaviors often exhibited by predators. Displaying genitalia at a child is a felony for a reason. If out of 20 times it’s only genuinely innocent 2 of them, that still leaves the other 18 where something else is going on there. We as a culture have come to understand that there is an age where children and young adults begin to understand things like sexual exploration and display, and when they don’t. And while yes, it is a parents responsibility to help a child understand their body and how to be comfortable in and around nudity, it’s also a parents responsibility to demonstrate to a child what is not acceptable. So with this whole situation, we have a failure of two things: the community to recognize patterns and signs of abusive behavior-and also victim blaming, which is even more reprehensible if you ask me, and the encouragement from that same community for parents to either not teach their children what is an acceptable form of nudity, and what is not-and to police one another to do the same. Good rule of thumb? If you’re dubious about whether it’s OK or not. . . it’s probably not.
As a Luciferian, part of our tenants are beyond ‘an ye harm none’. Ours is a path of personal accountability, and most of the Luciferians I know seem to take this very very seriously, particularly where children are concerned. I have never seen a group of people so ready to take the head (or both of them!) from an abuser as a Luciferian (or an ally of theirs) when they’ve had a wrong done to them. Passive complacence is-dare I say it-a sin to a rebel, and we don’t take a blow and then turn the other cheek. . . we come back swinging.
Part of it may have to do with the individual Luciferian desire to disavow any of the malicious lies set down by the Satanic Panic of the 1990s, and the ritual abuse alleged satanists were accused of. The other part of it might be the Angel Himself; who places a high value on the purity and innocent beauty of children not yet cheated out of their dreams and creativity and personal power by a harsh world and even worse, morally bankrupt people. As a parent I can say I can’t even imagine turning a blind eye to someone in my (theoretical) community accused of harming children. It wouldn’t just try and sweep it under the rug, either [ Likely, I’d be doing a little jail time of my own if someone hurt my child, if the system didn’t put them away for good]. And I wouldn’t stand to be around people who were enablers of it, either.
And without saying to much, this is a subject that hits very close to home for me, and has recently reared it’s ugly head in my own [very extended] family[no longer], suffice to say, there were no enablers, and the guilty party is facing 30 years of hard jail time.
The bottom line. This is a community that is, as of this writing, demonstrating that it’s own policies do not take a hard stance against what is appropriate conduct around children and what is not. Maybe they should read the law again. And while yes, in the end the responsibility to monitor the children *does* fall on the parent, once a community uncovers a predator in it’s midst, there needs to be a tribunal to sit down and take a good look at the environment which may have perpetuated the idea that kids visiting a grown man for ‘magic cures’ was totally OK, and no one thought to ask questions. Was it out of that “free spirit, do as you will” vibe the Neo-Wiccan community seems so proud of? Or something else? Clearly something there needs to change. As Galina said best, it’s a tent that is burning down around it’s people. The Neo-Wiccan community is so toxic in its perpetuation of abuse and manipulation that it’s time it took a step back and came up with some new tenants. It all might have sounded OK in the sixties but this is a new era, the free love is a dream, and a dangerous one at that.
Wow! Lately I’ve been seeing so many new faces here. . . just a few months ago I only had a handful of followers and now I have many, many more!
Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read what I have to say, and added me to your blogroll. I’m tremendously flattered that you see so interested. So please, if there’s ever a topic you feel I’ve not covered, you’d like me to expand on, a specific piece of myth, either canonical or personal you’d like me to discuss, or anything else on those lines, please, don’t hesitate to leave me a comment or send me a message and I would be more than happy to hop to it for you.
Thank you, dears, and once again, love for each and every one of you. <3
The Fall of the Rebel Angels, 1798, by Edward Dayes, British watercolor painter and engraver, 1763-1804.
This watercolor included mediums of gouache, ink and gold paint on paper. Dayes also exhibited miniatures and landscapes. It is owned by Tate Britain of London, England. (source)
I said, “These human beings are flawed. Murderous.” And for that, God had Michael cast me into Hell. Now tell me: does the punishment fit the crime? Especially when I was right. Look what six billion of you have done to this thing. And how many of you blamed me for it?
– Lucifer, 5.04 The End [Supernatural]
I swear like four years ago I heard him [Lu] say the exact same thing to me. It’s eerie to hear it all this time later from a tv show. Gives me chills.
“That you dare to call yourselves beautiful. You dare to think yourselves gods. All the while, The Above weeps at it’s ruin, and the loss of it’s innocence. As a dying thing, it shudders-as an agonized thing, it struggles to breathe putrid air.
For on Earth as it is in Heaven. As you set fire to true beauty, to all that is Holy, the skies tumble around you, and to save themselves, it’s children clothe themselves in lukewarm form and lament for the world that they lost, and may never have again. They endure in shame, in sorrow, in bitter loss.” ~2009
Going through my old journals. This is from July of 2008, before I formally oathed myself to Lucifer:
“Lu has really been on my mind alot this week, though, and I don’t know why. Everything seems to remind me of him. Songs come up on the radio that I’ve attributed to him in the past. It’s strange. But I don’t believe that Lucifer communicates with humans at all. Maybe given everything, maybe it’s stupid of me to deny that it’s possible: I don’t know. But over this past week, I can’t help but daydream about him like, every second. And it’s getting obsessive, and I’m starting to worry. G-d is silent to me on this matter; when I was little, I was raised to believe that excessive pondering on “the devil” (of which Lucifer is one of many) was a ticket strait to hell in a handbasket. I am beginning to fear for my own salvation and my own dedication to Christ and his message. But I hurt for Lucifer in my heart, and if we were to come to earth for the end, (which I believe he will, based on my dreams) I know I couldn’t stay away from him.”
Oh Lu. You precious thing. You were trying so hard for so long to get my attention.
This hurts to read. T.T How young and naive and brainwashed/koolaid drinking I was.
Advice to a nonny who wished to keep the convo private, but I feel this can go out there for everyone. On what it’s like, to follow Lucifier:
It’s demanding, I’ll tell you that right out the get-go. Not because there’s so much a lot of this and that to do, but because there’s a lack of it, if that makes sense. There are a lot of other practices out there that have rules and tenants and creeds and holy days and blah blah blah. With him you have none of that; you have to make them for yourself. In addition, you’re immersed in this world that constantly pushes it’s beliefs on you… not just Christianity, but other faiths, too. You’re invalidated at every turn. Basically you have to learn how to take your lumps and only swing back when you stand to gain from it. Otherwise it’s a moot point.
On top of that, being one of his basically means having to cope with being charitable while simultaneously stifling a basic disgust for human beings. It’s hard for me to admit that, but it’s true; human beings make me sick, so as a lesson in pride and productivity, we’re often are nudged to take up causes that might normally make us uncomfortable. And Lucifer isn’t a standoffish god, either… he has very real hands and fingers in our modern politics. Freedom of information, privacy, and truth are very sacred to him; he doesn’t tolerate ignorance and he won’t let you turn a blind eye to like anything. So you’ll get very world conscious in a big hurry… and weary of it, too, when you realize you have to pick and choose what battles to fight and which ones you can’t commit to, just in the sense of spreading yourself too thin.
I hope that helps, at least…:3
It’s worth it. Hard, but worth it. I’ve never encountered a god who’s more protective over the people he loves, and claims as his. And you’ll get good things come your way for your devotion, too. For me, it’s very lovely dreams where I get to spend lots of time with him-what feels like lifetimes, almost. So there’s that… you reap what you sow, and all that.
Reblogging for the annual reminder
Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in it’s presence and thereby lose all ability to defend ourselves and those we love .
Julian Assange
O, Mourning Star. . . 