TrickyMagnet

[trickymagnet]

Hello! This is my little intro post as a Christian pagan.

Deities I’m working with: God (I also call him Theos), Ne Zha, Sun Wukong, Six Eared Macaque

Deities I plan on working with: Hermes

I’m just here to learn whatever I can from the pagan community here and answer any questions y’all might have for me! 😊

[trickymagnet]

Altar update since I’m finally moving forward with working with Wukong and Macaque! 😊

[trickymagnet]

What other deities are you interested in working with?

Aside from the deities I’m currently working with, plus Hermes, I don’t really have any I’m interested in working with right now.

Loki did reach out to me but I didn’t think I needed another trickster deity to work with. And I have talked with Jade Rabbit and Kui Mulang, but I don’t have any plans on working with them.

[trickymagnet]

So, when I was looking into Chinese mythology, one section caught my eye. That being the 28 Lunar Mansions. What was interesting about them to me was only two of them had any kind of stories. Which meant my brain instantly wanted to make characters for the other 26. So it made me weirdly happy to realize one of those two Lunar Mansions who actually has a backstory, Kui Mulang, has apparently decided to just keep an eye on me because of my interest in the Lunar Mansions.

[trickymagnet]

Do you also give sweets to Nezha?

Yes, I give him sweets. The first thing I gave him as an offering was actually some Oreos.

[trickymagnet]

So, I finally decided to check to satisfy that niggling curiosity if I have any other patron/matron deities (aside from Theos). And I’m very glad I did, because knowing I have Sun Wukong as a patron deity makes me incredibly happy.

[trickymagnet]

Here’s my attempt to draw Wukong and Macaque accurate to how they look as deities (I kinda interviewed them a bit to get it as correct as possible).

The idea for this came from the time I saw a bag saying “I’m your sole mate” that had a shoebox in it next to a solar generator box.

And I drew them as Legos because that’s the style I have the most practice with. 😅

[trickymagnet]

So, I don’t really use a pendulum to talk to the deities. Part of this is I tend to shake, so that could mess with it. And another part is I found a method where that isn’t a concern that I actually like more mostly cuz it has Chinese roots. And that method is moon blocks, also know as jiao bei.

Moon blocks are curved pieces of wood. You hold them to your forehead while thinking of your question, give em a tap against a surface, then drop em. And the way they land gives you a yes, no, or maybe/with-holding an answer.

[trickymagnet]

The main reason I got into Chinese mythology in the first place is all thanks to the Lego show Monkie Kid. And one of the biggest ships in the fandom for that show is Macaque and Wukong.

I found out their opinion on the ship wasn’t very favorable, but I was curious as to why they didn’t like it. I was worried about making them uncomfortable, but I finally asked them if they were okay with me asking why and they said yes.

It turns out in the context of the show itself, they’re fine with the ship. It’s the way the fandom has depicted it that they have issues with.

Macaque doesn’t like how most of the blame can get shifted onto Wukong. While we still don’t know how their fight when down in the LMK interpretation, if it’s anything like what happened in JTTW then Macaque is equally at fault, and he acknowledges that.

Wukong doesn’t like how he’s often portrayed as sappy and super mushy romantic type. I asked if he’d ever considered if he was aroace and got a yes. I was like “I don’t want to pry if you don’t want to answer this, but as someone on the aroace spectrum, are you on that too?”. He didn’t want to answer though, and I can understand that. But I do still plan on asking him if he wants this knitted bee I have in the aroace colors for his altar if/when I get to that point. :3

Anyways, that’s their opinions on that!

[trickymagnet]

Okay, time for part 3 of Macaque as a deity! Time to address his part in Journey to the West!

So, obviously one of the first questions I asked was if he was the Macaque Spirit King from the Brotherhood. He didn’t want to answer, so I left it. However, when I asked if there was missing background/context for his fight with Wukong, he said yes.

The only thing I could think of for that was if he had been the Macaque Spirit King. I was just like “I know you said you didn’t want to talk about it but that’s the only thing I can think of”. And then he told me the answer was yes. Guess he wanted me to find the answer by digging or something?

I asked if Wukong didn’t recognize him because he never showed or told him about his six ears, and he said yes. The thing that surprised me the most though was he didn’t seem to hold as big of a grudge against Wukong as expected. If someone killed me, I would hate their guts.

It turns out the reason is because Wukong didn’t actually kill him. I’d asked if he copied Wukong’s techniques by listening back to the teachings Subodhi gave him, and the answer was yes. Do I asked if he hadn’t died since he’d also heard the immortality method Subodhi taught Wukong, so he just lost an immortality instead. And the answer was yes.

And the reason he’d impersonated Wukong in the first place was because it was a potential (relatively) easy way to get Enlightenment. And he tried to impersonate the whole group because he didn’t expect them to actually make it without Wukong.

Welp, that ended up being a bit of a long post! 😅 Anyway, that’s a basic summary of Macaque’s prevalence in Journey to the West. If you have any more questions about him as a deity or any of the other deities I work with (or want to work with), my ask box is open!

[trickymagnet]

Wukong : Doesn’t know what piercings are and recognizes them when called ear jewelry.

Also Wukong : Wears highlighter

He’s an interesting deity lol.

[trickymagnet]

So I’ve been working on a book idea and finally got chapter 1 done. With my recent venture into paganism, I’m also checking in with the deities who do appear in the story to try and make sure my representation of them is as accurate as possible.

What was supposed to be a short trip to Earth turns out longer than expected when the Jade Rabbit finds herself robbed.

[trickymagnet]

As I’ve mentioned previously since the job I spend the most time at is a mail one where I’m loading boxes into trucks, the most common way for me to “see” the deities is by coming across certain boxes. So here’s a fun little list of boxes I associate with certain deities:

-Theos=Boxes with butterfly logos on them, if the box is from a Christian based company so it has stuff on it like “Gob bless you” or something

-Wukong=Journeys boxes with the words being orange, boxes with solar panels/generators, if there’s a sun on the logo design or related to the name (ex=Sunnysomething), Frito Lays boxes (specifically if it contains Sun Chips)

-Macaque=Journeys boxes with the words being black, if boxes have lots of purple on them (depends on the shade though), any boxes with moon imagery or moon related stuff in the name

-Ne Zha=Scooters, bikes, toy electric cars (especially if any of those three are pink), Build a Bear boxes, Bare Necessities boxes, kids toys (depends on the type), The Children’s Place boxes

-Hermes= It’s literally a mail job, so…. (I honestly mostly keep an eye out for any signs of him outside of that job since it’s inherently skewed into his domain)

[trickymagnet]

Macaque as a deity part two!

So, my original assumption about what kind of deity he would be was divination based. Mainly because of his ears. Only to find out he hates his hearing. Which left me with the question of what kind of deity was he then?

So I thought about it a bit and came up with a guess, and when I checked if that guess was right, turns out I was right.

His focus as a deity is wisdom based. He is a very strategic type of person. Even if he doesn’t listen to the future anymore, he can still learn loads from listening to the past, and use that info to make intricate plans. So kinda like a Chinese version of Athena, in terms of what they specialize in.

I think it’s kinda funny that he’s a trickster type whose focus is wisdom/strategy. But hey, it never hurts to have more wisdom, especially if you’re going to be working with two trickster deities already.

And that’s it for part two, and part three will be about his role in JTTW (Journey to the West).

[trickymagnet]

Here’s what my altars look like so far. Theos is on the left and Ne Zha is on the right.

[trickymagnet]

Okay, so a little bit of a dump about the Six Eared Macaque as a deity. Since he isn’t widely worshipped and doesn’t really have much background info on him written down, I had a lot of questions. And here’s some of the answers I got.

-He doesn’t like his hearing. Which is honestly very understandable. If I could hear everything in the past, present, and future, I’d go crazy.

-Apparently his favorite method to tone down the audio intake is headphones and such instead of noise reduction spells. I don’t really know the reason aside from he just prefers that.

-While he doesn’t listen to the future anymore, he will listen to the past.

-Everything he has heard has come to pass, which probably plays a part in him not believing the future is variable.

-I personally do think the future is variable and my theory is he stopped listening to the future before he could hear something that didn’t happen. I got a really icky feeling though when I suggested listening to it a bit more to test out that theory, so that’s not happening anytime soon.

-His powers are wind related, but not wind based. Or something. I asked if his powers were connected to the wind, and I got both a no and a yes so I took that as a kinda.

-He does correlate with moon and shadow symbolism (he doesn’t have shadow powers though).

And now I’m gonna break this up into multiple parts so this doesn’t get too long. Part two will focus on the kind of deity he is, with part three focusing on his role in Journey to the West.

[trickymagnet]

Another fun story about Ne Zha. The second thing he told me (like, told in the sense of it wasn’t a response to a question) is that he likes bears.

There were a few days (and when I say a few days I mean at least a week) when I was coming across at least one Bare Necessities box and at least one Build-A-Bear box. And it got to the point where I was wondering if it was just a coincidence or if one of the deities was trying to tell me something.

So one day when that was still happening I just kinda asked out loud of it was one of them or a coincidence. A few seconds later I picked up a box that had multiple stores listed on the tape on it. I looked at the tag to see which store it was from the ones on the tape. It was The Children’s Place. And Ne Zha is known as a protective deity of kids.

I said “Ne Zha?” out loud, and right that very second another Bare Necessities box came down. So I took that as a yes lol. I later confirmed with him that he was telling me he liked bears, and was sharing that just cuz. He’s neutral on the animal themselves, he just likes bear plushies and stuff. Which is why he now has a small teddy bear as part of his alter. I asked if he wanted to name it, and he named it Xiaochun.