Got a poke tonight to update here; not a severe nag, still at the friendly encouragement stage. I've been working on my attitude but even now I have a hard time with pokes. I still respond emotionally to friendly encouragement as if it were a command. Sure, sometimes if I ignore things at the friendly encouragement stage I will get Commanded eventually, but not always.
More on that later in the post.
One reason that I've been quiet is that when it comes to the specifics of my magicoreligious practice, I'm quite private. I love to discuss the generalities and will happily talk your ear off over a pint or three, much as a football fan will love to get into the ins and outs of her team's chances in the Cup Final or an RPG nerd will go on about her 15th level Ranger/Thief given minimal provocation. It's an enormous part of my life, of course I talk about it. But when you get down to the deeper stuff, the fine detail, the numen of the experience--I tend to clam up. I know that some people are actually commanded to place information in the public domain, I understand that. But there are some people who just don't seem to know when they should be putting a lid on it. They tell things that shouldn't be told, give away experiences and communiques that weren't really meant to be passed round like a bag of crisps. And for what? For attention? To tickle the jaded palates of a bored audience? Mage porn. Hardcore 3-way succubus action!!!
To know. To will. To dare. To keep fucking silent.
That last part is there for a reason, compadres. You do not have a duty to lay everything out there just for passersby to gawp at. Some stuff is too personal, too intense, to spill. Thing is though, I think I sometimes go too far the other way. I sit on things rather than discuss them. I get all Norrell when I should be being Strange. Hence this, I suppose.
Anyhow, back to attitude.
My whole attitude needs work, really. I mean, yeah, there's Stuff, patterns and paths and rules and old deals and bets and debts, things in place that limit my choices in certain very important ways. But a lot of the time I'm responding as to some authority figure who may not have my best interests at heart and who is issuing a cold command, when that's not precicely what's going on. A lot of the time, if I'm having a problem with my God (or one of His associates, as it might be), what I'm really having a problem with is the Mysteries that He embodies. The way I deal with those things in my life, in my psychological makeup.
Loki both is and is not some guy. He is some guy in the sense that as I percieve Him, He is a living consciousness: He has mind (although of a nature I do not clearly comprehend), He has a palpable physical presence when He wants one, He has drives, desires, and a personality. He loves and hates, celebrates and grieves. But there are ways in which He is not just some guy; He is a portion of the Universe given form, the living embodiment of certain mysteries of existance. When I strive with Loki, I strive with those things; when I work in harmony with Him, I am in harmony with Him. Often what I parse as conflict or cruelty is a manifestation of my own inability to integrate some of those Mysteries into myself.
A couple of obvious examples: I've frequently seen people, men and women alike, complain that certain Gods or Goddesses--Freyja for instance, or Odin, or Loki Himself--are "oversexed." Dude, Odin is not "oversexed." Freyja is not "oversexed." They embody certain concepts--including masculine and feminine sexualities--in a very pure and intense way. Maybe this isn't true in every case, but a lot of the time what these people are responding to with disquiet, or even with fear and hate, are their own responses to these elements. What you might parse as "Deity X came onto me!" is sometimes more truthfully expressed as "the presence of Deity X inspired Y response in me. I'm not ready to handle the fact that I'm capable of Y response, so I'm going to hang everything on deity X."
It wasn't me! A Big Kid did it, and ran away!
I'm as guilty of that as the next monkey. Some of the responses prompted in me by my Gods are intense, wild, and completely at odds with the way I want to percieve myself. It's a lot easier to offload stuff, to protest that the bad man MADE me do it *sniffle*, than to own those elements that are brought to the fore. Part of being a magician and almost all of being a Lokean is owning all that stuff, though; acknowledging it, making a space for it, loving it.
Making peace with the beast.
More on that later in the post.
One reason that I've been quiet is that when it comes to the specifics of my magicoreligious practice, I'm quite private. I love to discuss the generalities and will happily talk your ear off over a pint or three, much as a football fan will love to get into the ins and outs of her team's chances in the Cup Final or an RPG nerd will go on about her 15th level Ranger/Thief given minimal provocation. It's an enormous part of my life, of course I talk about it. But when you get down to the deeper stuff, the fine detail, the numen of the experience--I tend to clam up. I know that some people are actually commanded to place information in the public domain, I understand that. But there are some people who just don't seem to know when they should be putting a lid on it. They tell things that shouldn't be told, give away experiences and communiques that weren't really meant to be passed round like a bag of crisps. And for what? For attention? To tickle the jaded palates of a bored audience? Mage porn. Hardcore 3-way succubus action!!!
To know. To will. To dare. To keep fucking silent.
That last part is there for a reason, compadres. You do not have a duty to lay everything out there just for passersby to gawp at. Some stuff is too personal, too intense, to spill. Thing is though, I think I sometimes go too far the other way. I sit on things rather than discuss them. I get all Norrell when I should be being Strange. Hence this, I suppose.
Anyhow, back to attitude.
My whole attitude needs work, really. I mean, yeah, there's Stuff, patterns and paths and rules and old deals and bets and debts, things in place that limit my choices in certain very important ways. But a lot of the time I'm responding as to some authority figure who may not have my best interests at heart and who is issuing a cold command, when that's not precicely what's going on. A lot of the time, if I'm having a problem with my God (or one of His associates, as it might be), what I'm really having a problem with is the Mysteries that He embodies. The way I deal with those things in my life, in my psychological makeup.
Loki both is and is not some guy. He is some guy in the sense that as I percieve Him, He is a living consciousness: He has mind (although of a nature I do not clearly comprehend), He has a palpable physical presence when He wants one, He has drives, desires, and a personality. He loves and hates, celebrates and grieves. But there are ways in which He is not just some guy; He is a portion of the Universe given form, the living embodiment of certain mysteries of existance. When I strive with Loki, I strive with those things; when I work in harmony with Him, I am in harmony with Him. Often what I parse as conflict or cruelty is a manifestation of my own inability to integrate some of those Mysteries into myself.
A couple of obvious examples: I've frequently seen people, men and women alike, complain that certain Gods or Goddesses--Freyja for instance, or Odin, or Loki Himself--are "oversexed." Dude, Odin is not "oversexed." Freyja is not "oversexed." They embody certain concepts--including masculine and feminine sexualities--in a very pure and intense way. Maybe this isn't true in every case, but a lot of the time what these people are responding to with disquiet, or even with fear and hate, are their own responses to these elements. What you might parse as "Deity X came onto me!" is sometimes more truthfully expressed as "the presence of Deity X inspired Y response in me. I'm not ready to handle the fact that I'm capable of Y response, so I'm going to hang everything on deity X."
It wasn't me! A Big Kid did it, and ran away!
I'm as guilty of that as the next monkey. Some of the responses prompted in me by my Gods are intense, wild, and completely at odds with the way I want to percieve myself. It's a lot easier to offload stuff, to protest that the bad man MADE me do it *sniffle*, than to own those elements that are brought to the fore. Part of being a magician and almost all of being a Lokean is owning all that stuff, though; acknowledging it, making a space for it, loving it.
Making peace with the beast.
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