The last post was already in the works when when Gordon, Jason, Jow, and RO began their discussion of the simplicity, complexity, and relative eclecticism of their practices.\u00a0 I seriously sympathize.\u00a0 If you\u2019ve read my previous post, I imagine you can see why: eclectic Wicca, years of unverifiable personal gnosis (both my own and that of those I\u2019ve worked with), Hellenic gods, neo-shamanic spirit-journeys, Chaos- and Hermetic-inspired sigils, masks and hammers and things no one else has ever thought to do with a circle.<\/p>\n
As I said before: I\u2019ve spent years searching for a tradition.\u00a0 I\u2019ve played with Cunningham and Conway, dabbled with Crowley, Carrol and Kraig, mocked Lady Sheba and Silver Ravenwolf alike.\u00a0 I am a student of Tarot and astrology.\u00a0 I\u2019ve experimented with candle magic and sorcery and astral projection, with auric healing and magically enhanced massage.\u00a0 I\u2019ve tuned myself to the elements and grounded into the astral plane \u2013 invoked the cosmic forces of the quarters and cast spells with nothing but the power of my own aura.\u00a0 I have gone on spirit journeys and hung out with gods and spirits.\u00a0 No one tradition I\u2019ve found covers half these things, let alone all of them.\u00a0 So, while the search continues, I\u2019ve been working on my own: a systematic breakdown of the things I\u2019ve done (as best as I can with my substandard journals), and maps of the things I want to do in the future.\u00a0 I doubt anyone will ever want to join, but it will be perfect for me. And who knows, maybe I\u2019ll find the perfect apprentice some day.<\/p>\n
And yet \u2026 I still wax poetic, sometimes, about Traditions and Orders.\u00a0 I share that strange jealousy for those who can name their path and have it recognized.\u00a0 Envy for those who\u2019ve found a teacher or a system that they can adopt in toto<\/em> \u2013 even if they still need to look outside that system for new techniques to fill its inadequacies, addendums and appendices to a finite and discrete system.<\/p>\n I\u2019m white, (apparently) cisgendered, and from a (lower) middle class family.\u00a0 The list of spiritual traditions that I have any \u201clegitimate\u201d claim to are relatively few.\u00a0 Unfortunately, none of them are to my taste.\u00a0 Which leaves me either blazing trails in a dark and moonless wilderness or seeking refuge in other spiritual lands \u2026 and trying to avoid the ones where the locals would just as soon I curled up and died.\u00a0 Or, as always, all of the above.<\/p>\n Does it sound a little like I\u2019d like someone to do the hard work for me?\u00a0 Yeah, it\u2019s a little bit like that: I envy the people who can just accept a prefab structure.\u00a0 For whom any of the existing systems have meaning.\u00a0 Satyrs are not, by nature, hard workers: we like to drink and dance and fuck (nymphs, eachother, mortals, deities \u2026 I deal exclusively with enthusiastically consenting humanoids of legal age, myself, but other satyrs aren\u2019t so picky).\u00a0 So, yeah, I wish I could take a lazy rout.<\/p>\n But I can\u2019t.<\/p>\n So I\u2019m ecclectic.\u00a0 I look to the past and to the modern Western Hermetic and Witchcraft traditions for inspiration.\u00a0 I learn techniques from anyone who is wiling to share \u2013 god or mortal \u2013 and try to make sure all my sources are ethically sound.\u00a0 Still \u2026 inevitably \u2026 I\u2019m a transgressor of spiritual boundaries even as I am of social ones.\u00a0 I\u2019m bisexual.\u00a0 Although I\u2019m male-bodied and I present (mostly) as masculine, I actually identify as \u201cfuck you and your stupid gender dichotomy\u201d.\u00a0 I am a hedonist and an intellectual in a society that simultaneously condemns both pursuits and sees them as inherently incompatible.\u00a0 I am a historian in a religion that is (understandably) skeptical of mainstream historiography (a post of its own for another day), and which in its attempts to acquire popular and legal credibility is increasingly absorbing the overculture\u2019s anti-intellectualism.<\/p>\n I am a queer, hedonist, shamanic witch.\u00a0 The party\u2019s at my place, and we can talk Plato in the morning \u2026 maybe hung over, maybe still smashed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The last post was already in the works when when Gordon, Jason, Jow, and RO began their discussion of the simplicity, complexity, and relative eclecticism of their practices.\u00a0 I seriously sympathize.\u00a0 If you\u2019ve read my previous post, I imagine you can see why: eclectic Wicca, years of unverifiable personal gnosis (both my own and that … Read 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