This is the first century in a very very long time where we can actually see the almost full scope of humanity and its longing and its depravity. Lucifer once described the internet as a sort of Hell.
The internet is our new archival system, one that lots of people have access to if you live in a "first world" country.
For a very long time, most people did not write or know how to read. Those that did were privileged and maintained an understanding of how society is or should be based on their systematic control of narrative. And even now we depend on those narratives to have any understanding of what happened.
But even those narratives are fragments, right? Unless maintained by an institution, we find them in fragments. Rituals found with only some of the text legible. Tablets that eroded, or half burned remnants from fascistic burnings. And even if we hadn't burned them, we tend to just only write down bits and pieces.
I experience this in my own craft. When I go back to read ritual reports or dream recordings, or even spells, there's always at least some context missing. You get get the full scope of an experience without recording 24/7.
So what we do have is, for the most part, highly curated and somewhat incomplete, as all writing always is.
A lot more people write now, obviously, on the internet. And for the first time ever, more people can access the divine directly, themselves, and share that experience with millions of people through this invisible signal in the sky.
The weird thing is that now we are all constantly being surveillanced, and watched. So a chronic nonchalance has taken everyone. We are afraid to be weird or difficult to explain. Because you have to explain, you are obligated. But if you explain in the wrong way, you may be shunned. That's scary, someone recently asked me something about that. How do you still find the will to post when people are nasty about it?
Sometimes (a lot of the time) I do opt to just keep things to myself. But my motivation now as I have read through studies and grimoires and diaries from centuries ago, is the desire to document it. Just document it.
There was never any rule or piece of evidence that suggested that the ancient people were not also neurodivergent, strange, impossible at times. Their accounts were usually either censored, or maintained only through love. Remembered only by the people who knew them.
My relationship with Lucifer is very highly contingent on him being Lucifer, it is defined by that. He is the Lord of paradoxes, he is a myth, a legend, a god, a demon, an angel. Contradiction is our playground.
And likewise, my personal composition is inherent to the game.
But I can't help but always be so fascinated by observing the dynamics that arise in other pagan deity-devotee relationships. I adore seeing how the strangest people experience the divine.
There is a person out there who is a cat, and they are devoted to Baset. WHAT
I want to hear what that person has to say. And many may think that person must be insane, mentally ill. Maybe they are, maybe they're highly autistic and maybe they're disabled. Maybe their situation is informed by psychology and spirituality. But man oh man do I wanna talk to them.
You're an ecstatic dancer devoted to Dionysus and you're also turn into a cheetah when possessed? What the fuck. What that's so fucking crazy. How does that work?
You work with Archangel Michael AND you're married to Leviathan?
You're married to BELIAL? I've only met him a couple of times I never even thought about him being a freak.
You're a lesbian devoted to Selene and your girlfriend is devoted to Aphrodite and your other girlfriend is devoted to Ares. They would have stoned you, but here you are.
But its hard to explain why you're a Therian without going into some shit you don't want to remember. And you don't want to explain why Hades has been with you since childhood because it's complicated.
So fucking don't. Record what you want remembered and let people in 100 years debate among themselves. When the ancient people invoked these Gods, the magic worked because they had relationships with them. The Gods did not only exist between the written lines of ritual. They were with them, accessible, watching. They didn't write down that this spell found in a family grimoire only really works so well because the witch who wrote it was in love with their daemon, and that spirit has a personal affinity for her daughters.
These shamans they recorded in the woods who say they have the spirit of a bear, of a cat, and the God they worship transforms them. We don't know how how that worked when they weren't being recorded by researchers.
You tell me you're a fairy and you are the husband of a forest spirt. That makes sense to me, and even if it doesn't, man oh man does it sound interesting.
Idk. Some of the most devoted and successful practitioners I know are also angels, demons, bunnies, and other creatures. Maybe I feel this way because I personally am autistic and understand easily the concept of having a highly specific experience.
I don't need to know everything about why you're a sex worker devoted to Asmodeus. When you post on the internet, in your diary, or whatever the fuck, I am not expecting you to act like an ancient priest. I think it is totally okay to want your space to be fun, and I think it is so important to spirituality to be weird.
"I'm an asexual deer spirit married to Artemis"
That's so cool. What. Talk about it. Write about it. Write about it on paper and etch it into stone.
We can talk about mental health and risks, we can share resources on psychosis, schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, religious psychosis, cptsd and a lot more while we're at it. We can promote safety without eliminating gnosis.
BE so fucking weird. Be so difficult to explain that you are the only person who can explain you. And then only explain what you want to.
I do not believe this is some new 21st century phenomenon of stupid kids and insane people. I these are the fringes we have never read about before, and I want us to talk about it. We are not exempt from history.
I think a genderfluid cheetah with adhd is the exact kind of person Dionysus would love. I think an anxious autistic fairy who somehow ended up in a human body is the exact kind of person Hermes would love. These people don't belong ti any institution, they belong to the world. We're finally seeing it and I love what I'm seeing.
Just be weird. Everyone is so mean these days, especially to kids.
It makes sense to me that the gods are the only ones who do understand those we belittle too much to listen to.
