From an Urban Hermitage

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.