From an Urban Hermitage

So, as I said in the previous post, a few weeks ago I ended every practice I was trying to do: spiritual, magical, whatever else. I've entered into a period of contemplation: what I'm doing, where I'm going, what isn't working and why.

It kind of began with a bit of bibliomancy someone did for me on JMG's blog here after I recounted the problems I've been having for a number of years, with my patron relationship having vanished and my attempts to reach out not going well, my mind spitting out one name after another in a maddening spiral that has been increasing in speed in recent times. It mentioned a covenant, which tied into ideas that I'd had myself more than once - that the specific manner in which I'm trying to interact with the gods, the probably ill advised oaths I had once taken and the patterns they set down, were a big part of the problem. Something about that confirmation settled it in my mind, and I waited until the appropriate day to approach my shrine, with the appropriate prayers and make a formal request to be released from these vows.

That bit may have been successful. I have a very hard time trusting any of my instincts, any impression right now; the strong feeling of presence I felt, the words clear in my head, I release you, is more than I have had in a long time.

I tried continuing my practice after that, but in a lot of ways it was the same as it ever been - names continuing to be spat at me at machine gun speed. Until it finally hit the limit of believablity. It took a while, but it finally went and used the one name I know it can't be, the one deity I know for a fact is not and never will be trying to get a hold of me. That was enough to shatter the illusion.

It wasn't pretty or fun when it happened. There was a minor explosion, and the following depression that has been part of the cycle never hit the dark depths of self loathing that just encourage me to get up and try again, it slid right into a sort of numb acceptance, an unhappy peace with the situation where I distracted myself with old video games until this whole knot of stress and misery went away.

An odd side effect of that. We have this cat, adopted her almost two years ago now, so while this whole cycle has been on going, and she's always been very ambivalent toward me; she watches me with some interest from a distance but usually wouldn't go near me. That's since changed. The room mate is still her favorite person, but she sleeps on me all the time,and I can pet her without her sliding away like I'm diseased. I don't know if that is directly related to this (no odd behavior from the other cat, but we have had him a lot longer and he's always loved me best) but the timing lines up and it makes me wonder if I didn't banish something ugly.

I've given up the idea of a spiritual life, for the present moment at least; I'm too broken right now for anything to get through, and the break clearly can not be fixed from that direction.This has been more of a relief than I might once have thought; the desperate search for some meaning I've been compelled to keep up the last several years has worn me out.

But why did this happen? I can point to the dysfunctional ridiculousness of NeoPaganism deep in its end stage, the dysfunctional groups I met and the bad ideas they imparted to me, people who let their personal issues become married to, and centralized into their religious lives until the gods were little more than unhealthy coping mechanisms. That's all true, but what in me was all that able to hook? What was continuing to enact this self defeating cycle long after the dysfunctional people were gone, long after I knew how bad they really were? That's what I've spent a good chunk of this time trying to figure out. And it's not the first time I've picked apart my personal problems, bad patterns of behavior I engage in and the childhood scars that probably cause them, though I don't think I ever got all the way down to the bottom of it.

My life has been most strongly marked by experiences of rejection and exclusion. I'm one of those people that just doesn't get on very well, I always do the wrong thing, say the wrong thing, rub everyone the wrong way, I've never been sure of why but it is what it is. I've accepted this, I've been living a hermit like existence for years now that I'm much more well suited to, better than attempting and failing to socialize. None of that made the treatment I received at home or school, from both peers and teachers and administrators (especially that latter) any easier to deal with at the time. I'd accepted that reality at the time, too; having gotten the message loud and clear that you're not welcome here, and being naturally inclined toward solitude I was ready to embrace my outsider status and wander off in my own direction. Oh no, yeah they don't like that. While I was clearly never going to be allowed in the inner circle I was required to want to be there, to live my life with my nose pressed against the glass just hoping someone would give me a chance. I assumed it was so I would be available to be used at will. My refusal to accept this role likely helped to bring about a lot of the trouble and abuse I experienced.

(Yeah, these were mostly upper class people with upper class values. I myself am not, I was from one of the dwindling number of working class families that just barely managed to hold on to their homes when all the rich people moved in and proceeded to drive everyone else out. No doubt this all played a huge part in the way things worked out: the managerial class would be hostile to any child that won't accept their direction and doesn't want their help or approval)

I know some of the problems that linger to this day and have helped contribute to this mess. Like the hard time I have knowing what I want. That's not an instinct I developed, I went the opposite direction, more useful to you when your life is a long series of conflicts and stand offs - if you don't want anything, there is nothing people can bribe you with; if you don't care about anything, there is nothing they can threaten you with. When the conflicts end, it's definitely less useful. I know this has left me with a mostly negative identity: I know what I am not, what I don't want to be, where I don't want to be. Once time passes and you're able to escape the conflict, when you can put distance between yourself and those things and places you don't want so that they're not pressing in on you anymore, well, what then do you have? Combine that with the former problem of not knowing what I want, and my life is one where I drift around in a way I am increasingly uncomfortable with.

That, I think, was one of the things that made that former patron relationship so meaningful, especially when it first came long ago now. It was something positive, something I did have, something I did want, a whispering promise of something that I could one day be. That alone inspired me then to move forward, to take risks, move out of a bad situation, go somewhere new, try new things, all on the basis of this promise of something that I could have. A lot of those moves ultimately didn't end up well for me, blew up in my face, but unfortunately for me I ran into a pop spiritual movement on its downward spiral, into dysfunctional people marrying fantasy with religion; it took time before I could find the trained occultists that actually know what they are talking about, systems of training that look like they will actually work. Still, when I realized that patron relationship had up and vanished, no wonder it made me panic, or try my best to find something similar to replace it.

A lot of this I already knew. This time around, I think I hit a deeper level, another wound and a deeper need that I never saw before, and that ropes in a lot of my other self defeating behaviors.

When my mother rejected me and pushed me into the role of family scapegoat, there were very particular things that came along with that: I was incompetent, I couldn't do anything right and everything I touched turned to shit. My sister was the hero of the family, the responsible one that had to take care of everything but I could not be relied on and would just fuck it up (this meant my sister had a lot of responsibility dumped on her shoulders that she didn't deal well with either). This situation was manufactured through nitpicking, goal post moving, refusing to teach me anything and then berating me later because I didn't know the things she never taught me. My relationship with my mother was very combative, and remained that way until I moved out, she started treating me very differently and things improved between us while my sister gradually took my place in the family hierarchy; I used to think she hated me but now I know it had nothing to do with me, this is just her own self defeating behaviors that she isn't able to see, that unfortunately affect the people around her more than my own do. There was a similar dynamic at school. where teachers decided I was stupid and started to treat me like I was (I never bought that, and was eventually able to prove as much, to my own satisfaction at least); there was the same moving of the goal posts game to ascertain they got what they wanted out of me and never had to give out the reward they had promised; any action that I took that someone else happened to notice was up for criticism and mockery (and I'm down playing this, reading my school record was scary, the degree to which I was monitored, the things people projected onto everything I said and did - I do kind of understand what happened with my mother, but this whole thing I will never get).

And so what did these things teach me? To be an outcast is to be ineffectual. It is to be a failure. That the keys of success, or not even success just basic skill and competency, lie in someone else's hands, and if you aren't able to impress them they won't give you anything (even if they are in a position where they are supposed to, like parent or teacher). I knew that my confidence is not great, but this is a different level from that, not just doubting your own ability but seeing skill wedded to group acceptance in such a way that, as long as you are outside the group, it is entirely off the table, not even an option for you.

So I live in a world that I see as hostile, that was known to be hostile in the past, without much of a social safety net, no one I could turn to for help (not that I would want it anyway, from past experiences of so called help), but at the exact same time I can't do anything to help myself either. I believe the technical term for this is screwed.

I think what lies at the bottom of a lot of what I do is a sense of helplessness, a fear of helplessness, a desire to escape that state but not certain how to do so since the power to do anything lies elsewhere.

And if the one positive thing I had is a connection with another being, someone whose acceptance could open doors of possibility otherwise locked to me, someone whose acceptance had opened doors and what a new experience that was, and then to have to go away? No wonder I've spent the last few years with my head slowly exploding. No wonder I kept repeating behavior patterns I knew weren't getting me anywhere, from this perspective what other option did I have?

And yes, I can also see how a spiritual life, or at least the way I unwittingly came to understand it thanks to those I fell in with, would really not be as helpful here, reinforcing this pattern rather than breaking it.

Taking up magical practice instead may be the best thing I could do. Take power back for myself, take control of my life, develop my own capabilities; deal with these long standing issues, transform myself into a state of health and balance.

Provided of course that I can find it in me to do it. And that's really the issue here, isn't it?

I know that I have an iron will buried under all this baggage, that when I can get it out I can easily accomplish things other people struggle with. If I can give myself a good motivation, if I can convince myself that it is something I can do on my own, that I need no one's help or approval, that I have access to every thing I would need and my success or failure rests with me alone. If I can get both of those things in place, I could do it as easily as I lost weight and got in shape a few years back (with lifestyle changes that I have maintained).

Is magical training something entirely on my own to do? I think because it got tied in with the quagmire my spiritual life turned into (and magic and religion are all but one and the same in so much NeoPaganism) I wasn't seeing it that way, that losing a patronage meant losing that opportunity. It is very likely I need to reexamine that assumption, and then see what I can do for myself here.

So I've hit another dead end in my religious practice. Or not another one, the same one I've been smashing my face against for a few years now, ever since I began earnestly trying to fix what had gone wrong.

How to describe it? Disconnection. Becoming aware that, on the other end of the practice I'm trying to establish, there is only a gaping void. Knowing deep down that you're only shouting into the wind, knocking at an abandoned house, whatever metaphor you want to use. I'm doing something wrong.

Might this be a Watcher on the Threshold moment I just need to push on through? Maybe, I suppose, but I really don't think so. There are plenty of other signs pointing to a deeper problem. Back when this began, this push to fix things and get back on track, I was bombarded with the message that something had changed. And the things I used to do that worked didn't work any longer, hadn't for a while. It's been an aggravating trial and error process where I don't have the ability to get clearer answers than that and I have no other people I can talk to about this.

The loss of that previous divine relationship was likely a part of it, and accepting that took a long while. Based on the timing, I half suspect the tainted egregore of NeoPaganism may have also been in play, the point crossed where the present state of madness prior to destruction became the inevitable future; I had already been out of it for long enough, long enough perhaps to avoid being ensnared in the backlash, so don't go back, find something else, something more stable.

I erase that name from my mind; I try to pull most of the NeoPagan programming out of my head. It still happens though, that wall. I'm still doing something wrong, Or not doing a right thing, perhaps.

The last time this happened, I decided to reach out for advice; my own divinations were not enlightening. I no longer have any connections of my own, a friend still has a few people she barely knows through Facebook but no one she could vouch for - I had to take what I could get. Most of it was free services, too, and so I also got reintroduced to that wonderful tendency of NeoPagans (and others online, no doubt) to volunteer to do something, and then piss off into the night without doing it, without a single word, just nothing. At least the vanishing act meant I didn't have to deal with the part two of that old song and dance, where I'm the asshole for expecting you to actually do what you said you were going to do, rather than heaping endless praise upon you for volunteering when no one else did (as though your raising your hand counts for anything at all if the task remains incomplete, if you had remained silent with everyone else the end result would be the same).

Can't say I missed any of that.

There was one went a bit beyond a quick or half finished tarot reading, one I spent some amount of time talking with. A lot of what she had to say to me seemed to tap dance all over every insecurity that I had in a way I don't think was deliberate, so it was a little while before I could think it through with a clear head. As far as the answer to the questions I had go, I think she was the least helpful - she was all over map, kept what advice she had very basic, completely unwilling to commit to an answer, and she had a ready made excuse for it, and maybe there was something to that, but in retrospect I wonder if she just didn't know what the answer was. She was helpful in one regard, and that was bringing me back into contact with that old NeoPagan mindset so I could see what a dead end it really was.

I have been out of it for a long time, so it was kind of jarring to hear someone mouthing these sentiments like they seem rational. It was jarring, when I make a statement trying to distance myself from the LARPing crowd using religion to create a soap opera life for themselves more interesting than their real one, to be chided for it, like you can't not believe them, of course it's reasonable to think great cosmic powers have nothing better to do than play house with you, what else would they be doing? I used to be surrounded by such people, but the spell has long since worn off, it was losing its grip while I was still there; now this just sounds like blithering nonsense.

So how did that ever happen in the first place? Well, it was incremental, and with a lot of it I had been agnostic at best; I was new at this and other people weren't (or claimed not to be), I was less educated than others (or they claimed to be), I've had more than a few experiences many people would raise their eyebrows at but they happened so maybe this other thing could happen, too? It was over time, when they sealed themselves in an echo chamber and lost more touch on reality that people's claims started getting out there, and rather than looking for sanity checks they started cracking down on anyone questioning them claiming it was oppression. Getting to know people better also helped with that, it's a lot harder to miss the smell of garbage from up close, when you can see it with your own eyes. I don't know whether or not this woman is a LARPer as I don't know her, but NeoPaganism itself has been redesigned for the LARPers and everyone has to toe the line.

Serious or not, a lot of her advice to me was rather alarming, and it was difficult to sit there with a straight face while I was being given suggestions on how to act with the gods. If a person I knew behaved that way around me, they would be bounced right out of my life in less than an eye blink; in this respect, I think most people would agree with me. The tone of her voice, like she thought this was some sort of flirty fun game, not the bright red flag of narcissism waving you toward the exit. Is this how you act? Would you put up with this from anyone?

It's that view of the gods informed by modern fantasy fiction tropes; she shares that view, said as much more than once. The gods are basically just people. People with superpowers. And religion is an endless soap opera you weave around yourself dealing with these petty, over emotional people with superpowers. The gods really have nothing better to do than play house with you, serving as your sassy room mate, benevolent sky parent, the handsome rogue here to sweep you off your feet, or whatever other role you feel is missing from your life.

There are ways people view the gods that I've never agreed with nor liked that I think were too neat and tidy from a mortal perspective, too sterile; I've always thought the world was messier than many seem comfortable with, and I personally prefer the messiness. But this is a step too far, reducing the gods to the human level only. It's a mistake to think gods are identical to people, that they think the way you think, feel how you feel, want what you want from your limited, short term, mortal perspective. Those humanizing elements are part of the draw for me, but the idea that it would all play out exactly the same with immortal, non-corporeal beings that exist on another plane seems kind of silly to me. And disappointing.

It was an interesting lesson though; one thing to leave a group and rethink a lot of their assumptions over time, quite another to encounter those old assumptions again after you've left them behind in favor of something saner. There is definitely no going back, no way that was going to build a foundation for anything deeper or more meaningful.

Most of the advice, even the stuff that seemed basic, wasn't even that great. No, i don't think I have to "journey" to anywhere to solve my problems. I'm pretty sure whatever problems I'm having are very much of this world and there is no need to mentally reenact fairy tales in order to solve them.

Though maybe not, as here I still am.

The last successful run I had at regular practice of banishing rituals had me bar the issue of the gods altogether. I wanted to actually get through every step of the Sphere of Protection without being derailed by the greater problem, that was the way I saw to do it. It succeeded for a while, but then again I did set myself the goal of getting through to the end and I accomplished that - so the problem could surge up again. I don't think it's a long term strategy; even aside from my suspicion that adding divine names to the ritual would make it more potent (and that's certainly necessary nowadays), it seems to be the path of the mystic that draws me. The gods are my primary interest - not nature, not power, not wisdom, or at least not without that connection propelling things forward. I don't know why it is, it sometimes seems odd for me, all things considered. But it is.

The issue of the gods, of where I go from here, needs to be settled first. I'm not sure anything permanent can stand until it does.

No help from any outside readings as far as that goes. They (the other ones, that is) mostly confirmed my own intuition that my old connection that had been the center of my spiritual life was lost. As for the future, it's all sunshine and roses for me going forward, as I step over this little setback and get on the path, which may not look exactly as I once imagined it but is still going to be great.

Yeah. And how do I get from here to there? Good question. It will just work itself out somehow was kind of what it amounted to, there was an offer to further clarify that, but then said person pissed off into the night without another word so I suppose it will have to remain a mystery. And I have well exhausted my sources for outside assistance.

The way that was worded, if I can take it seriously, makes me think it's something very simple. But I'm just not seeing it.

That may be more frustrating than anything else.