Devoured by Flame

To say that the last couple of months have been a whirlwind of crazy would be to put it lightly. This post is a rant. If you’re not in the mood for it, don’t worry, there’ll be other content soon. I’ve written this post a hundred times over the past two months, trying to explain my disappearance from the world. I can’t seem to ever get the right words until I realized I’m trying to be polite to people who don’t deserve my being polite. They also don’t deserve my complacency and silence. So I’m speaking out about it now and I’m not calming down until I am done getting it out of my system.

I have left my relationship of 8 years in pursuit of living a more authentic life. And by “authentic” I mean that the reason there was any issue in the first place was because I was denying the very backbone of my nature and that is the fact that I am and always have been sapphic. My fiance, unfortunately, was simply a catalyst for this realization. I woke up one morning and knew that I needed to get the hell away from him. Not only was he the cause of a great amount of distress, but he made living with him unbearable and destroyed the foundation that made me a very sexual, very confident person.

I owned a house with him. Not only did I have to leave the house, but I had to leave a great deal of my belongings behind. I worked on that home far more than he ever had, as he sat idly by and watched me take care of literally everything. I owned chickens, a beautiful lawn and garden as well as within a neighborhood that was nice and quite frankly, very ordinary considering who I am.

I realized that this life I was living was comfortable and I was satisfied in it because of the way I was raised to want this life and though that sounds wildly complacent, you must understand the consequences of having grown up in a poor household. There was always something that we couldn’t have, always something that we couldn’t do, and money was the sole reason for distress. I always felt I was needing something more and lived a life in dissociation because of it.

Then, I did a complete 180 and was about to marry a fairly rich man. I would have never needed to worry about money or poverty again. I would have lived a life not needing to think about expensive things and how the economy was being impacted by the insanity of capitalism. I was set.

This is not, however, who I am.

Not only am I sapphic, but I am religious. He was not. I thought maybe I could repress that part of me and that by living with someone who did not understand the mechanics or the intelligence that comes from walking the path I do, I thought maybe he would ground me and make me more balanced. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Instead of grounding me, he would punish and distrust me for making any decision on my own. He would think that I was untrustworthy of a person because I did not think like he did. He didn’t let me make my own decisions without criticizing them or contemplating the options outside of them. It was… gaslighting at its finest. He would say that he was fine with me being who I am with what I believe, but he would not really believe it because it would make him out to be someone who he is not.

I have threatened to leave him numerous times over his argument against my beliefs. Not only was it disrespectful, but it was demeaning, as well. And as much as I want to walk hand-in-hand with people who hold differing beliefs than I have, I realized that because my mysticism has become such a holistic part of my life and practice, not living out my life in the way that I want and hiding my feelings and beliefs was barring me from success.

Since leaving him, my practice has flourished. It’s not because I’m able to sit at my shrine every day, it’s not because I can hear the Gods better, it’s because I am no longer holding myself back to impress someone else all of the time. I can now acknowledge the reality of the divine in my every day realm. I do not fear being criticized or judged anymore, and if I am, it is more than likely that they will then wither away from my life.

I have lost not only my partner but friends, as well, because of this. I can no longer walk a path that is designed under someone else’s nose to be “acceptable.” I no longer with to hold the Divine at arm’s length to make everyone around me comfortable. I am a Godspouse, a partner to Loki, and I am dedicated to this path in the way that I have sworn my full participation no matter the cost. I cannot be with people who do not understand the gravity of this decision has made on my life and I cannot be with someone negligent to the fact that the Divine walk in our lives every single day.

I cannot sit around in a circle and give offerings that I know my Deity does not want. I cannot listen to Him as well as listen to them teach me the opposite of what He has been saying all these years, in all of these ways, patiently waiting for me to understand.

I know what this sounds like – I am running from my problems. But Owl, that sounds like you’re being afraid of confrontation. But Owl, if you don’t like it, why don’t you change it? Why didn’t you explain to them your thoughts and opinions?

My good narrator in the back of my brain, you do not know how hard it has been to try to encourage people to discover for themselves their own way. I am not going to say that my right is correct or just or the “only way.” No. I am only going to present my argument. And when that argument is shut down before I can even breathe a word, I am leaving. I am done needing to prove myself to anybody. Especially not people who have made me uncomfortable since the first day.

I am not going to exalt someone who offends not just me but has managed to offend my Deity, as well. Once again, I am His partner. I am His Spouse. If I were to choose anyone, it would be Him from the start.

I am not afraid of saying this anymore – I am not afraid of being up front about the expectation I have in my life about who I follow, who I hold hands with in ritual, and who I think has their ducks in a row to this regard.

I am also so tired of being labeled as “heathen.” Heathenry in America is inherently problematic. There are so many things that are based out of its Nazi background, and it is changing far too slowly to undo all of this. The philosophies of the reconstructionist ideology is based off of things that no longer exist. It is inherently an atheist framework that bends to some sort of “inclusive” guideline. I’m not holding hands with people who don’t believe my Gods are real and walk actively in my life. I’m not holding hands with someone who goes out of their way to disrespect them and to not acknowledge Their desires for maintaining a good relationship with them. I am not holding hands with people who lied to others to get what they want. I am also not holding hands with people who make others think that they are crazy for being against their “values” and then cast out as a leper for not upholding those “values” when it’s really just as racist and bigoted as the people they claim to espouse against.

I am not saying “all heathens” are like this. I do not think they are as I have not met all of the heathens in the world. But I have hung out in enough heathen spaces to know that their discrediting of literally anything that isn’t written down in their textbooks is just a problem in general and that their religion is growing far too slowly to ever be considered inclusive. It’s ableist, centrist, and it’s fucking ridiculous. Grow up, people. Religion does not happen in a vacuum. It does not happen in your textbook. It also doesn’t happen with a bunch of people who couldn’t even write down their own practices and now we, instead, can only rely on Christians to figure it out for us.

Yeah.

I have a lot of opinions. I’m not going to play games to make everyone like me anymore. I am done crawling up a ladder to make friends. I have friends who love me and who care and have gone out of their way to help me be a better person and make better decisions in my life and who have been there for me every fucking step of the way. I am not here for friends who are “family” and have not so much as reached out to ask if I’m okay – not just now, or ever – and have that be part of our “oath” to each other and break it in the same breath because they are afraid of admitting they actually don’t feel like being around me or those they claim to be friends with. I am done making friends with narcissists most of all, and I’m tired of being around people pleasers who exalt them just as well and do not so much as question the narrative that they proclaim as fact and cast themselves a victim.

Bullshit. I’m done. I’m out.

Reconstructionism that is not balanced with praxis and mystical encounters is a great example of just how badly Christian protestantism has affected us so poorly in the way we design a religion. A religion that is not balanced with spirituality and only relies on a textbook framework to discover it is a religion that was dead from the start. There’s a reason people can’t get out of only being in the “beginner” range and it’s because there’s nothing that could even make way for someone to branch out above that and become more engaged.

Narcissism is an enormous problem in the pagan community. I will write another post about that later, but I am going to leave it at the fact that I have seen so many people fall for the fact that these people are so good at hiding who they are and how they behave that it happens right under their nose, and truly good and moral people who know better but think that those who are above them should know even more are exactly the cause for their rise. They won’t even figure it out until they are long gone and away from whom they have been conned by.

It’s also not a word I want to fling around lightly. I don’t like the fact that the moment someone does something someone doesn’t like, the word “cult” is made as an insult. Not everything is a cult. However, some things absolutely condone cultish behavior without it being the initial intention. It’s just getting someone into these groups who have a personality that attracts those who don’t know any better and then having them wield the full and complete power over them that begins the cult patterns that become a narrative of hate and distrust even when they’re not exactly trying to be that. They think they are doing a moral good in the world. They think they are having purpose in it. They ignore all the signs and manipulate them to fit their narrative as long as it fits their narrative and does not go around or above it.

It’s human nature. We all want to fit in. We all want to be loved and adored. But at what cost?

I was terrified of being cast out – knowing I had friends who were and that I’ve seen people part from it by the dozens. The rude awakening was yet again the realization that if they can treat other people this badly in order to promote their “good works” and make an appearance in the way they want to appear, they sure as fuck are going to turn around and do the same to you the moment you step out of line.

So in summary, hi, hello, I’m back. I’m not going anywhere. In fact, I’m writing a god damn book right now about everything I’ve learned the past 6 months. It’s a work in progress. And it’s a whole fucking lot. I hope it actually, legitimately helps people instead of me enabling this narcissistic behavior again and exalting some sort of Big Name Pagan just because people know them. In fact, the entire book is about empowerment and helping people help themselves to figure out this whole religion thing on their own without relying on yet another cult-like leader to step on their heels again. Because, my friends, that’s the problem. We know too little about our own spirituality here in the West, that anyone who makes it sound like something organized or even fringe is immediately someone we need to look to, instead of listening to ourselves.

I’m so close to winning NaNoWriMo I can taste it.

On that note, I don’t even know who reads this blog or who reads my posts, but I’m sure you’re going to find a lot more where this came from. So if you don’t like it, this is your warning to leave now. I’m just getting started.