You are currently browsing the monthly archive for May 2014.
As always, I welcome any questions, or if there’s a topic you’d like to see me discuss, please don’t hesitate to ask. I’ll confess some days it’s easier for me to do simple poetry or prose when I’ve out of good topic ideas, so just let me know!
Welcome to all of you, and thanks for the follows!
“Ah, so. You love him.”
“Yes. I do.”
“He dresses you up just like a little doll.”
“I don’t mind.”
“He treats you like a possession.”
“He treats me like I belong to him. And I do. That’s why I love him.”
by e-nomine-lux-ferous . This is almost exactly how Lu looked the first time I met him. Eerie how sometimes there’s the kinds of similarities there are in these sorts of things.
“What am I in the eyes of most people? A good-for-nothing, an eccentric and disagreeable man, somebody who has no position in society and never will have. Very well, even if that were true, I should want to show by my work what there is in the heart of such an eccentric man, of such a nobody.”
| — | Vincent Van Gogh |
I’d like to
Paint my nostalgia
I search,
I turn,
I veer about
My hands raw from
thick, lead heavy paint
across
his
back
When, his pulse failing,
I
would step into the
black, endless night
And all night we dreamt
it
was
still
breathing.
“If you hear a voice within you say “you cannot paint,” then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.”
| — | Vincent Van Gogh |
If there’s a question you would like to see me answer or link to that I’ve not yet posted, please leave the question here, and I’ll be more than happy to make a post on it for you and then link back to it on the FAQ! <3
My only complaint is that it doesn’t show the sub-sections. Like the 8th level has like 12 subsections for different levels of fraud, and the 9th has four (Judecca, Ptolomea, Caina, and Antenorra).
I wish someone would update this.
Dante’s Inferno (Map)
Speaking with another godspouse this evening, reading an accounting of their relationship with their divine husband, responding to a comment that was made, I started to elaborate on something I’ve known in the back of my mind for a long time, but never really had a cause to ponder until I actually set out to explain it to someone else. And when the thought came to me, it had the profound effect of making me feel a lot better about a lot of things. About being his wife, about relating to other wives, about the issue of jealousy and anger and everything else that I’ve felt when it comes to our past, and recent events. It’s a balm on my spirit, and on my heart.
What I’m about to say isn’t going to sit well with some people; I expect that. Actually were I anywhere else, I would expect a good degree of backlash over it. Right now, that doesn’t matter, and I find myself not caring about it. I’m tired of people’s petty dramas. I’m tired of people’s hypocritical judgmental attitudes, and the way that everyone polices everyone else instead of being concerned about their own selves. This is not only a sacred space for Lu, but I’ve got to start making it more than that. I’ve got to start making it a sacred space about both of us, because we’re both in this together. That is so important. So while I thank you for being a reader, here, your opinions on what I’m going to say don’t matter to me. And if they’re going to cause you to become offended or angry or any other [insert gripe here], you’re welcome to leave, but I don’t care. I’m going to ignore anyone and everyone who isn’t positive and supportive, or at least respectful. And that’s just part of taking care of myself.
Once, a while ago, someone came on my [now deleted] tumblr and asked how it was possible for people who work with different facets of Lucifer to reconcile the differences in canon and lore. For example, a pop culture pagan I know meets up with the Lucifer from the Supernatural verse. Given that I don’t believe in godforms and “aspects” and other diluted forms of godwork-and yes, I apologize if that sounds elitist, but I’ve already stated before that I’m a hard polytheist-how is it possible that the myth and gnosis of the Lucifer that I work with can have so many parallels to that of a fictional counterpart that people do have experience in working with and yet be so different at the same time? At first it may seem like the very idea conflicts with itself, but Lucifer was his usual graceful self in the way that he responded, and used a metaphor of a comet to explain the phenomenon of it to me.
As a comet flies through the solar system, it breaks up. At it comes closer and circles the sun, it sheds pieces of itself; usually ice, and this is what gives it the appearance of a “tail” trailing behind it. Lucifer described other “Lucifers” in the exact same way; that as he went on his walk through his exploratory venture through the cosmos, (UPG* this was prior to his fall) pieces of him as a larger entity broke off and fell away. They scattered throughout creation as he hurled throughout existence, and in this way, parts of himself became their own beings. Sentient, their own small comets hurling through time, space, dimensions, reality, but never losing that little bit of themselves that was once a part of the grander entity.
In thinking about this, and contemplating my issue of jealousy and the words of my other godspouse friend, I was hit with a It very moving and profound motion. It doesn’t matter how “many” wives Lucifer has. My Lucifer is not Wrath’s Lucifer, is not Dawn’s Lucifer, is not whoever-elses-Lucifer here. He is grander than the one bottle both myself and others have tried to put him in.
There’s a bit of Gnostic lore that I read once upon a time-and pardon, I can’t remember exactly where, though I suspect it was Malcom Godwin, that states that when Lucifer treked through the universe, the path he walked led to the creation of The Milky Way. Maybe there are as many bits of him as there are stars in the same galaxy. Given that, it doesn’t matter how Lucifer appears to his followers, it doesn’t matter if he speaks to one wife differently than he does another, because he’s not the same for one as he is for another. My Lucifer, the one I know, has appeared to me in many, many forms. But the two things that have always been a constant, be it in dreams, in visions, in art, poetry, writing, anything; has been the pale jade of his eyes, and the base purr of his voice. I’ve recognized them no matter what face he’s wearing and who he’s speaking through. In dreams I can be running, and I can hear that voice calling me, and I know I’m safe. I could be drowning and dying and see those eyes above me, and I know Lucifer is watching me, and he’s with me. It’s always been that way.
But that’s not the same pair of eyes that watches, say, Wrath, another Lucifers!Wife and my best friend. Do they have elements in common? Yes. Because they all came from the same source. Just like geneticists say that mankind, as diverse as we seem now, came from a bottleneck of material and everyone is somehow linked to everyone else. It’s the same idea.
So with that thought, and a crooning voice in my head, I understand now why he’s always told me not to worry. Not to give it so much thought, not to rip myself to shreds over it. I am his only wife, the only one he loves. Not because of any inborn sense of elitism or desire for monogamy. . . but literally, in every sense of the notion, there is plenty of him to go around. My Lucifer is my Lucifer. I’m His. Wrath will have her own, and hers will not be the same as mine. She is not the wife of the same chunk of ice that I am. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
It makes it even more sacred. That each of us is something unique and precious to him, because the imprints that he leaves on us, as those that love him, are in turn as unique and precious as fingerprints. In the cosmic scale of things, it’s had to grasp. It’s mind-blowing.
And you know? Maybe all gods are this way. Maybe however they spring into being, however they are, there are so many and they are so vast and infinite, as many of their followers have stated, that there is no way our minds can even conceive of them. This is what makes them gods. Just like there are more comets zipping through space than we can count, so too are there gods. Like stars, innumerable, immeasurable, each one of them their own diamond. Each one of them special, beautiful, and personal to their followers. There are enough of them to go around. Whether or not they choose to interact with man is at their own discretion. Some may wish to be lovers. Some fathers, brothers. Some even just teachers. Some, only stories, or distant observers. Their vastness and hugeness sets them apart from human spirits or other entities. Because they have that power.
This brings me great peace. I’ll treasure my Lucifer; for his elegant countenance and his biting cruelty; the way he’s tender with me and merciless for those who slough in ignorance. For his voice, that sonorous baritone, and those jade eyes, at once both tender and severe, and the way he looks at me as if I was meant just for him.
Because I was.
He told me once I was his poet. I am, because this is one piece of him that chose me. There are others that will find others; have found others. But from this point on, I feel like I don’t have to be jealous of him. No one will experience this part of him like I do. Whatever eternity I find myself in, it’s meant to be with him. But he’s large enough that each of us can have him and none of us will have the same. That’s the beauty of all of it.
Which also gets back to a fundamental tenant of Gnostic [Theistic] Luciferianism. There is no right or wrong way to practice. And so many of us have lost sight of this. But imagine. . . if every one of us truly is unique, then maybe there’s a being out there truly meant for each and every one of us. Be it a god, a myth, a spirit, or a bodied person. And because each of us walks a different path; to spiritual truth, to personal serenity, to bliss-none of us has the right to force our ideas or our truths on another. Because their truth is not our truth, and visa versa. Their god(s) are not our gods. Unless them being the same is your truth.
I know this is a hard concept to grasp. It’s not godforms. But think; there are a billion and more people on this planet. As a Whole, we make up Human(ity). But you look closer, each one of us has our own identifying traits. Our own personalities, history, everything. Right down to our fingerprints. Maybe gods are the same way. Maybe God A is the name, but God A has a lot of different individuals that comprise it, and all with their own fingerprints, too.
Wow.
And this is why it’s OK for there to be more than one godspouse/brother/sister/son/daughter. There’s enough room for that. For all of us. And then some.
The God/desses are amazing.
So if I act like I’m the only Wife in the world that matters to him, it’s not because I feel I’m better than you. It’s because I don’t care what your Lucifer is, if he says you’re his. I’ll honor you as a Wife, so long as you give me the same curtousy. But I will expect that your Lucifer has Hir own fingerprints, and is not the same is mine, even if they have things in common; not everyone with hazel eyes and brown hair and tan skin are the same, after all, even if they both like black shirts.
And the same goes for Lokeans, or Dionysians, or Odinswives, or any other godworker/family/claimed. I will expect your experiences to vary among you, even if they have some skeins in common. I’ll also honor the way you are with them, and them with you, and every aspect of that relationship. Because it’s so personal and beautiful, especially, if you’re brave enough to share it with the world.
Stars bless you all. Thanks for listening.
A week later, the wounds that were open and bleeding are scabbed over. They itch and I fight the urge to scratch at them. They don’t hurt, but they’re still there, visible as plain as day.
And it’s a perfect metaphor for what’s going on between Lu and I, too.
We’ve fought before. A few times. No marriage is going to be perfect. I know that. He knows that. There are ancient things between us, things that each of knows pushes the other’s buttons. He’s pushed mine, I’ve pushed his, and we both have hurt one another before. We’ve both said and done things that have hurt the other, and we’ve always recovered from them. Sometimes we ache for a while. But when we heal from those hurts, what we have is stronger and all the better for it.
But the time between is like a drawn breath; a pregnant pause, where there’s a wait. And silence. On his end, on my end. We’re both stuffed full of pride. Me, too proud to invoke his name when fear and doubt-in my own devotion, in my own spiritual fortitude-and him, too proud to call on me when he’s filled with his own hurts. Too proud for me to see his pain, to see how those words leave gashes in his emotional substance. Mine are sharp. My accusations are always harsh, and when I stab at him with them, his face is blank. And he is too proud to tell me, stop. This hurts.
I know it hurts him. Maybe I wasn’t thinking about it at the time, but I could feel it then, and I can feel it now. And the part that bothers me the most is, it’s not just me. Other Luciferians have come forward and told me, they can feel it from both of us, too. They feel that Lucifer and I are standing, back to back, weeping and only casting the most tertiary glances at one another over each other’s shoulders.
Other godspouses have told me, arguments with their gods are not uncommon. When there’s a lesson to learn that they are resistant to. Or that they, too, are jealous of other wives, or other people. Or even for a while, they’re left to their own devices. For a brief few moments, comparatively speaking, their reassurance that it was normal was a comfort. But as the past few days have gone by, there’s a weight in the air; as if you’re standing in a deathly silent room and listening to a clock tick away the time. Tick. Tick. Tick.
I told him. I said, “You have every right to be upset with me.”
His face was that blank mask; which I’ve come to recognize over the years as him feeling deeply, and not wanting me to see it. “I will restate my earlier words. . . You were ill. Clearly, you were not in a healthy state of mind. But well aware after the fact. Yes?”
And I said, “Yes, but it doesn’t make me feel any less like a moronic jackass.”
“You should not.”
” . . . But you’re upset with me.”
He perks an eyebrow. He’s trying to play it off. He’s done this before. “Of course not. Why do you say this, Child?”
“Well. You haven’t called me ‘Child’ for years, for one. For two, you’ve been quiet. Really, really quiet.” I let my own words hang there for a long moment as his lips parted, just a fraction. ” . . . Lu. Have. . . I broken us?”
Those are hard words to think, to get out. And I know that if I have, he doesn’t owe me an explanation. I could face exile right now. To be banished from his sight, and I would deserve every ounce of the pain that would come to me from banishment. In that second I’m fully prepared to shoulder it. To face the consequences of my actions, of my dagger-like words, of the insults I hurled at him. A million things are running through my head at the same time. About how many times I’ve had those same knee-jerk reactions to the ‘other girls’. Most of them before I started on my medication. Before I started taking care of myself. At his prompting. It was his stipulation, that I see someone. That I see a therapist, that I see a doctor, that I start to cope with everything from my past, everything that is dead weight, like iron strapped to my ankles, dragging me down beneath the waves to a black hell. Without his support, I’d have never been well. I don’t have anything if I don’t have you.
His slow, patient words are said with his usual calculating cool. But his eyebrows pinch together above his frosted-margarita colored eyes.
“My darling. I do not fault you for these things you feel. Nor for broken inhibitions when you are unwell. Your words were forgiven the moment they were uttered.”
I still feel crushed. “What. . . what then? Tell me, Lu. You’re still upset. I can tell.”
“No, my darling. Not upset.”
“Then tell me. Please. . . ?”
He’s quiet and soft, his voice a rumble of thunder, like a storm brewing off on the horizon line. “You remember our vows. Mine is in your health, dear one. And in your sickness.”
I feel something hot and humid sting my eyes. “But I betrayed you, Lu. I hurt you–”
“Yours are demons that are not made with provisions for mercy. And they run rampant when you neglect your duties. And your schedule. I do not hold you accountable for the chemicals in your head when they break your defenses. But I hope you will take a lesson in the importance of adherence for the rules I set for you. And attentiveness towards self-care. ” he shook his head then, as though frustrated, and there was only a sharp huff to mark it besides. “I do not mean for them to be stifling. I do not set them to be a lord over you. I set them because I want to see you well. My silence is my concern. Nothing less.”
I feel like I’m getting off too easy. And I hate that. I say, “Someone said I should have known better. That it was stupid of me to get angry. Because you’re The Prince of Hell. That you’re a satan. Maybe the Satan. That you’re a god, and gods aren’t like people, and you have different rules. And I shouldn’t hold you to human expectations.”
He thrummed a deep, cello note in his throat. A dissatisfied bass, and a slight puff of air from his nose. “I am relegated to the fate of a cosmic criminal mastermind. We know this. You know this.”
Oh, I do. And I answer, “. . .I know you hate that.”
“It is all they have, and let them have it.” he returns, and his voice sounds like he’s swallowed something bitter, and is trying not to gag on it.
I’m quiet for a moment in thought, before I finally speak again. ” . . . You know, naturally that means I’ll agonize over it, and bitch about it, and probably curse and swear a few times.”
He tilts a withering look at me, then rolls his eyes. “You do pick the worst subjects to ruminate over. . .”
“Your happiness isn’t a ‘subject’, Lu.”
“I do wish you’d expend your ire elsewhere. It would at least be more productive.”
“If I say I’m sorry again, and promise to try. Would that help. . . ?”
“Do not give them your time, darling. Let them chatter amongst themselves, and let me be what they need me to be. These are the shackles that bind us. Would that I could change them. But I am no god.” at that, he sounds resigned.
“Humility?” Even I sounded surprised at that.
“Honesty.” he shrugged gracefully. “I’ve no need to tell a fractured lie when the truth is so much more damning.”
I lose myself in thought after that, until he comes back later, and tells me to go to bed, get some rest, I have to be up early in the morning. And later when I get home from work, when I take a nap, I think to myself, it’s a measure of the kind of entity that Lucifer is; that he can take a poignant hurt, and turn it into a lesson. That he can take his own pain, even the pain of another, and turn it into a learning experience, something self reflective and steep. It’s also a profound reminder that sometimes, following Lucifer, loving Lucifer, is like pushing a heavy boulder uphill. You agonize and struggle. . . and just when you think you’re getting somewhere, the boulder goes rolling back down, and you have to start all over again. But it’s not quite hell. . . because with Lucifer, you might keep slipping back down. . . but you do get a little further each time. And if you listen to him, if you really listen, it’s his voice that reassures you, one day you will reach the top.
And the top is your own godhood. And he does not punish angry words or wounded hearts. He does not punish for insubordination or disobedience. Because unlike other beings with mortal spouses, he is close to man. And he understands jealousy more profoundly than most.
For why should a Son of Light bow to a Son of Clay?
Just a sketch I did in my journal last night, that I thought I would post here for the relevance.
ASTRIFEROUS
(adjective)
bearing stars; made of stars.
etymology: latin astrifer; astrum – star + ferre – to bear
“Don’t bring up the past of a person who is trying to improve their future”
| — | (via rosexella) |
Me: Well no, huney, those aren’t ours, those are Lu’s.
Lu: Let the child have one, make her smile.
Me: She’s about to go down for a nap, she’ll be more wired than Tony Stark’s basement.
Lu: When she wakes, then. Let her have two.
Me: You’re gonna spoil her.
Lu: *blinks, makes ‘and’? face*
Me: SIGH.
“Never waste your time trying to explain who you are to people who are committed to misunderstanding you.”
-Dan Hampton
Via Lillithtreasures
“In my approach, “fiction” is nothing more than a marketing tool. I won’t say that all “my” stories are “real”. What I say is, it doesn’t matter.”
Via Loki’s Bruid
Self-harm, depression, and mental health are very very seriously nothing to joke about.
Over the course of the past four days, the reactions I’ve garnered in response to the whole situation have been nothing short of appalling. I’ve seen people laugh about my feelings, accuse me of faking my illness or using it as a sympathy ploy, say ‘oh I bet she’s lying about the whole thing’. Then when I thought, ‘I’ll prove to them I’m not’, and I posted photos not just of my past injuries and record of my hospitalization (apparently someone put on a troll blog I spent time in the hospital this weekend. I have no idea who started this rumor or why, but I presume it was to fan the flames of the conflict and intentionally set people on the idea that I was somehow making it all up when I couldn’t ‘prove’ it. It worked, apparently. I can only presume it was the same people responsible for sending me the death wishes to begin with)-both in November of the year before, when I relapsed again just before Christmas last year, and then my scars when I posted support for the #221bStrong movement. . . and instead of that even silencing the doubt, it instead incited people to say, ‘oh she was in the hospital so many years ago’! and imply that I had somehow lied about something that I never even made a claim towards in the first place. . . ? Who knows. And then, as it’s been mentioned to me, now over on Tumblr (I’ve since deleted my account, save for my serenity blog, to support people with self harm and depression) , they’re discussing if I even take the medication I do.
I’ve discussed my mental health in relation to my practice before, and how it has impacted my health in the past, and visa versa. But I’m witness now to a huge issue in the pagan community in general, and with people all around, it seems. And that is the complete and utter dismissal of a person’s well being because you don’t like them.
Don’t call it anything other than what it is. There is a lot of championing online that people who have mental illness can still be very knowledgeable pagans and that it doesn’t invalidate their practice if they have those issues. The problem arises with the people themselves. There’s something about you they don’t like. You make them angry. Insert whatever reason here. They attack you and berate you constantly, and when you’ve finally had enough, you say, ‘please stop, I can’t deal with this right now, I have this history and it will put me in a bad place’.
No, you don’t have that. You’re just saying that to get attention, to generate pity, whatever. No way you have MI. Okay, so you refute with pictures. Oh look those pictures are from three years ago [and must not be valid now]. Nevermind it’s indicative of the history you just accused them of not having. Now that you have it, it’s old; so it must not be valid any more. Oh, now you’re just using your history as an excuse. Do you even take medication for it? Probably not, right? So your claims of ‘withdrawal’ from a drug known to have debilitating side effects including mania, seizures, anxiety, ect are just used to excuse your behavior when you were under the influence of those side effects. And you still haven’t shown us proof you did anything this time. You were just threatening. Right?
This is a huge huge problem. It’s victim -blaming, it’s erasure. It has nothing to do with someone being overwhelmed and bullied and everything to do with ‘oh this person is just using their illness is an excuse’. Mental illness? Is not funny. And it is an excuse when it alters your ability to filter out both your own emotional roller coaster and anxiety and when you are physically so ill you can’t think strait. However, people don’t consider those things. They want to devalue and destroy you, so they target the one thing they know is a sensitive issue; your mental and emotional health. And they either dismiss it completely, or roast you alive because you cited it as a reason why you wanted people to leave you alone and stop sending hateful messages. There is nothing wrong, and let me repeat that, there is nothing wrong with saying, in open forum, ‘this behavior is triggering for me and I’m going to ask that you stop because today is not a day where I can handle it, and it just might put me in the hospital’. It’s not causing ‘drama’. It’s communicating to people that, while in a normal fashion you just might be able to handle their taunts and threats, such and such a day is not one where you are capable of doing so. And when you laugh it off and dismiss their anxiety and their fear and accuse them of doing it for attention, then you are contributing to society as a whole’s incapability to accept that mental illness is just as serious as any other chronic disease that needs understanding, patience, and empathy. You don’t tell someone with depression to ‘stop being sad’ and ‘get over it’. Likewise you don’t tell someone with cancer to just go out and get some sunshine and they’ll feel better. You don’t tell someone with a history of Major Depression and PTSD that they’re just doing it to get attention the same way you wouldn’t tell a diabetic who’s hypoglycemic to stop putting on the pagentry of low blood sugar just to get out of doing the chores. I’ve seen both.
So here’s the thing. It doesn’t matter if you think someone is “faking” it or not. You do not get to sit back and laugh about even the possibility of someone relapsing, hurting themselves, or even committing suicide. It doesn’t make you edgy or cool or the ‘purity pagan’ police. It makes you an asshole. You don’t get to say ‘oh they’re faking it’ and then when you see evidence to the contrary come up with yet another excuse to invalidate their feelings and their mental well being. When you do it over, and over, and over, and over again, you keep reinforcing the idea among people that people with mental health issues/history don’t need to be taken seriously. Oh Margret threatened to hang herself three years ago she won’t really do it this time she’s just moaning and bitching for the attention. This is such a problem that even a Christian rock group addressed it in a popular song in the early two thousands: P.O.D covered it in the song “Youth of the Nation” when they hummed the eerie lyrics about ‘Johnny Boy’ shooting himself in the head.
“He was never really one of the guys no matter how hard he tried, often thought of suicide; he put his life to an end they might remember him then; he crossed the line there’s no turning back, told the world how he felt with the sound of a gat”
The real question you have to ask yourself is if you want to take even the slightest chance that someone isn’t serious when they say they have a history of self-injury and suicidal depression. Do you want to be that person who pushes them over the edge.
Particularly, and only using my own case as an example; when I was out of my medication, I was clearly not thinking rationally. This is a recipe for disaster. I am lucky in the sense that I have my husband and my daughter to anchor me and keep me from floating away. I love my daughter and I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving her without a mother, even though some people expressed clear glee with the idea of my doing so. Other people? Don’t have the luxery of that anchor like I do. And where I was able to pick myself up from this whole awful situation, one day you might encounter someone else in a similar circumstance. And then you laugh and say ‘whatever, faker’ and they just might decide to prove all the people who accused them of doing it wrong. It’s tempting because it’s a final act of defiance, and final finger. You take your own life and then you win; you proved them wrong, and you don’t have to be around after the fact to listen to whatever other bullshit they might spout at you for it later. The people who care about you will ask why, of course; and you wouldn’t be around to explain that someone thought they were being clever and said just the right thing to push you just far enough.
So in summary, it doesn’t matter how much you don’t like someone or how much you disagree with them. If it bothers you so much? Walk away. Walk away. If they’re not in your house holding a gun to your head then there’s no reason for you to bully them for what they believe. And if when you do so they ask you to stop it’s literally making them sick and all you do is laugh about it and call them a fake? It’s analogous to saying ‘Yeah? I dare you, prove it’. And if one day someone DOES decide to go that far, then the blood is on your hands. And by the way. If you get caught? A manslaughter charge, too; at least in the United States.
The pagan and polytheist communities especially really need to evaluate how we treat mental illness among it’s people. MI should be dealt with with nothing but respect, patience, and at least a modicum of empathy. Not mocking, not invalidation, not erasure. I say this as someone who suffers from and deals with it every single day. And I can tell you from personal experience that people are very quick to bite when they see someone invalidating, oh, say depression, bi-polar, shell shock. . . as long as it’s not someone they don’t like. The second you get on their bad side, however, they’re just the same as everyone else who says, ‘oh stop whining for attention, crybaby’. And there is a chance that one day they will encounter that person who doesn’t have a strong foundation and good coping skills; either just because of their personality or because (as our healthcare in the US is literally crap) or they don’t have access to therapy and medication. . . and they do decide to take your unvocalized “dare”. I can tell you they’re starting to prosecute bullies that contribute to suicide very harshly, so it’s something that everyone needs to do their part in guarding against. Either all mental illness, regardless of what you think about the person, needs to be taken very very seriously, or it doesn’t, and you are literally a fake in your crusade to “call people out”. Unless you are a licensed physician or therapist? You don’t get to decide who really has an illness and who doesn’t.
I urge my followers and the magical community as a whole to take a hard stance on this. To not tolerate shame, bullying, and erasure when it comes to people who even claim to have a mental illness/mental disability. The stigma of it, the lack of compassion and understanding among the general public, is only compounded when we allow it to happen in our own ranks. Change starts with you, and how you choose to behave. Either you support taking mental illness seriously, or you don’t. There is no gray line here. Period.
Ayami Kojima, “Lucifer”
O, Mourning Star. . . 
