#open path

You know what’s exhausting? The gatekeeping in pagan, witchy, and druid spaces.

Paganism isn’t some exclusive country club where you need a secret handshake and a bloodline chart to get in. There’s no test you have to pass. No aesthetic you’re required to have. No ancient ancestor approval needed.

You don’t need: ❌ A certain look ❌ Ancestral receipts ❌ A bookshelf full of academic tomes ❌ A crystal collection the size of a small planet ❌ To practice a specific way for X number of years

You do need: ✅ Curiosity ✅ Respect for the path (and others on it) ✅ A willingness to grow, learn, and connect ✅ A heart that feels called to it—even if you’re stumbling through it like a baby deer on roller skates

Paganism is messy. Personal. Ever-evolving. Your path doesn’t need to look like anyone else’s to be valid.

And for the folks who sit around acting like the Gatekeepers of All That Is Sacred™… congratulations on missing the entire point of earth-based, open-hearted spirituality.

The land doesn’t gatekeep. The sky doesn’t gatekeep. The sea doesn’t gatekeep. Neither does Spirit.

So why should we?

While I am seeing clients with all variety of presenting issues, I wanted to give a special plug to the asexual community. In my own experience, and in many others, therapy has not been a safe place to talk about asexuality, with well-meaning therapists unintentionally invalidating asexual people's feelings or questioning asexuality's authenticity. I'd like to extend a special invitation to the ace community now to provide you with a space to talk about these issues from someone who is also asexual and understands your experience.

If you or a struggling loved one live anywhere in California and are looking for a new therapist, here is my Psychology Today profile. Despite what the banner says, I AM accepting new clients and I look forward to your call/email! To schedule a 50-minute $25 consultation to get to know me and see if we are a good fit, click here. If the appointment time you want is not available, select any available time and ask to see Lauren Williams. We will work something out. :)

For additional discounts, I am registered on Open Path, an expansive directory of therapists that you can access for a lifetime membership fee of $59. If you are not already a member, joining will allow you a lower sliding scale fee than the typical rate.

I insist that this is not the kind of story that fits with them. However, I seriusly need to do this right, for the demons, for the bastard himself.

Again, I hope you all enjoy it.

The Black Death

“A dense mist engulfed the portuary town of Sicily as a dirty withe chariot aproached from the Northside one fatidic morning of October. The horses that pulled it looked sick, with their whinny resounding through the souls of those who first saw them like the pleads of a dying men, the rhymt of their gallop confessed the bad omens they carried in tounges that no one could speak. The sun wasn’t coming out that day, as even it cowered to the darkness that acompained the chariot.

—Aye! Aye! —exclaimed the charioteer, coughing and whipping his horses with his famelic arms and an old wip.

The mist stopped as the chariot did, like if it were a simple passanger itself. Near the entrance of the town, under the few houses that went to the end of the town and a sign of putrefacted wood and worn out letters, the real passager got out, saying not a single word to the poor looking driver before giving him a fist of herbs and a small sheet of paper.

—I owe you my life, sir —claimed the charioter, thankful and trustful.

—You shall pay me soon, then… —whispered the young man as he turned around, willing to travel what path was left to his destination on foot.

Only the sound of footsteps and the clicking sound of a wooden cane could be heard, as the townsfolk that stayed in their homes and businesses observed the withe haired but young foreigner with suspicion and intrigue. The man, with his black clothes, stiff cane and leather bag, never stared back. He was the doctor that the town needed, and he wasn’t in humor to humilliate the peasants that day.

—Maybe it’s too late… —Wondered the Doctor, scratching his withe beard. 

Almost running through the streets he directed himslef to the city’s port, guided by no one. Promptly he arrived to the dock, where rotting carcasses of the hanged still moored with rope around their necks. Ships of all sizes slowly swung, exhibiting like the corpses of the condemned. But the one that was supposed to soon touch land was an emissary of death was about unload a terrible charge; a Plague. 

His superiors had heard about it long before, and terrified predicted a wave of death and decay so great that it might as well be the end of all men. A disease so terrible that made the greatest Imperium of the world quail, that cared not about the children of god, killing everyone in its path, and transformed the deserts of the East in black seas, making all the Crusades look like a simple bar fight, and leaving piles upon piles of corpses, tall enough to cover the light of the morning sun.

—He is here!

—It can’t be.

—Just in the right moment.

The people that had gathered among the docks welcomed the Doctor with most expectation and joy. The strange man was a light of hope in their eyes, as the dim light of the early sun was completely covered by the mist of the morning, that with the help of the cloud that the Doctor carried, claimed the town for themselves. 

—What is happening here, my friend? —Asked the Doctor to the nearest man, putting his best smile. However, fear started to grow inside him as he realized that he already knew what was the problem.

—Ships came, the mariners look so sick, we’d never seen something like that! —Answered the man with nothing but fear in his eyes.

The Doctor walked to the sick mariners, seemingly calm, with only a few corageous enough and the constant feeling of having the spirits of the hanged swirling in the mist, to accompany him. Dead flesh by fingers and tumors as big as apples adorning their necks; the mariners had what was soon to be known as the Black Death. Such sight deeply affected the Doctor, that feared they wouldn’t survive enough to be played with, and make the townsfolk help them arrive to a church. He had more important things to do in the main ship, and as so, giving the excuse of finding a cause to such an horrible illness, he went alone. The folk cheered such an heroic behavior, for the Doctor was about to enter the guts of the beast.

He wandered to the insides of the ship, slowly revealing his nature: skin gray as ashes of the dead, theet and claws sharp and short as daggers to eviscerate, a tail that moved elegantly over the ground, and horns long and curved in a beautiful but simple way, with black ends. The demon Doctor finally was free, as he both rejoiced and shivered at the results of the Black Death; mariners abandoned still alive, drowning in their own vomited blood, corpses filled to the brim with tumors, and at the end of it all, a rotten, destroyed last corpse of what seemed to be a rather small and young man roughly dressed as a Eastern Companion Lady. It was of a unnatural pinkish color, from hair to inners, including the skin. It’s odor was strangely sweet.

—Not even the rats would claim this one… —Said the Doctor, poking the rotten corpse with his cane, not impressed with the weirdness of the body. A expression of disgust was on his face.

—But you can, it’s not that expensive —answered the supposed corpse in a sweet tone, or at least the sweetest it could do with its vocal cords so damaged.

—What in the bloody name of lord Baal…?

The now somewhat alive youngster extended a tounge like a venomous serpent, wich slowly coiled around the Doctor’s cane in a unsuccessful attempt to look somewhat provocative. The Doctor looked at him with mistrust, as he didn’t want another demon on his lands, even less one that could put in risk his entire career. But something called the attention of the Doctor: the young, rotten, blighted and lustful demon had glittering eyes with a strange beauty on them. The Doctor stared at them, almost forggoting for what he was there. Something was deeply wrong with its irregular and dead green iris and yellow sclera, but it wasn’t any kind of magic.

—Who the hell are you and what is your business here? —Asked the Doctor as politely as his word enabled him to be, snapping out of his trance and pulling his cane out of the mouth of the living corpse, ripping its tounge— I just cleaned this thing…

—My name is Gillian, and I am a humble Satan’s servant like you —said Gillian after he grew another tounge— born in holy land like you, ended up in the west, where Lord Belcebub gave me his most recent toy. Really not my type, but kinky, I must admit.

—Go to the point —The Doctor was quickly losing his scarce patience.

—Whatever you say, big boy. I was taken by those called Mongols in an invasion, they used me and threw me to the walls of a city —Gillian stopped to whisper, curses or compliments, it didn’t matter to the Doctor —, and I came with the merchants that ran from the war, and here you have me. So, do you want me to…?

The Doctor interrupted Gillian, tapping the wooden planks with his cane. The smug and peaceful expression with wich he entered the ship was again in his face. He Scratched his beard again, meditating about the situation. Before speaking he put on a small pair of reading glasses.

—I want you to leave. Now! —Shouted the Doctor, clearly mad. Fur od the same grey of his skin slowly spreaded around his body as it grew taller and demonic in form— I can’t afford to lose all my potential patients because of your pestilence!

The horns of the Doctor were about to break the ceiling when a flame materialized between them, taking the form of a shining crown.

—You don’t sound like a doctor at all —said Gillian, carefree and rather relaxed, almost like if he enjoyed the anger proyected at him, and unable to see.

—I am, but I have no enough hands, nor patience to amputate all this people, it wouldn’t even be fun anymore —The Doctor turned around, ready to leave. The boy didn’t whort the risk of beign discovered that soon— I am not the only one that will get damaged by this situation, so is better if you swim back to the East.

—I will see what I can do, hotstuff, but, sure u’ don’t want some of this? —Gillian lifted his leg, showing off what was left of it before it fell, leaving nothing but a small pool of black mush.

—Never in my 1,369 years of life have I been so horrified…

—It is not the last time you’ll say that, I bet —Gillian chuckled.

Breathing deep the Doctor started to leave, thinking of ways to actually save some lifes before the plage started to get worse. His demonic form disipated with the mist of the outside, letting the sun light enter through the few holes in the ship and hit both demons.

—Anyway, before you leave, what is your name? —Asked Gillian, trying to slowly cralw.

—Kinto —Was the only answer.

Gillian stopped in his tracks, now looking at Kinto under the sun light, he knew the name, everyone did. Kinto was the demon that singlehandedly transformed part of the Holy Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem from loyal and godfearing warriors to an encrazed cult that practiced surgery on the child of the christian and muslim alike in the chaos of the damned cruzades, and the demon who made his golden earrings from the crosses of the Templar fallen heroes. All despite of being all but a warrior demon.

One last time Kinto looked behind, to see the pink son of the wither, angrier than ever, not for his actions and indiference, but because he felt a kind of warmth that no scream, bloody murder or great payment had given to him, all when looking at those rotten, glittering eyes.

In that cold morning Kinto, the cruel image of the sadism dressed as men of medicine, the corruption of those to swore protect, cure and save, met both the factor and the person that would end his current life, and forever change his eternal one, just like the world itself”.

Omfg I realized how many errors of all kinds I commited. I am so sorry. I don’t feel like a Fan anymore.

You use the calaboose tool to create lines, strokes, point-to-point paths, and Bezier curves paths. In other words, my humble self is kind of like the pencil caulking iron in that the lines yield a similar stem from. It is different leaving out the shade tool forward-looking that it requires more skill to draw censorious objects. With the pen tool, objects are formed nearby clicking from point to point instead on just house plan as if the tool was a real pencil. Mutual regard effect, it is like manipulating a footstep between two knitting needles. Expedient confusing? We will and bequeath try to clear yours truly up in preference to you in next section. After that, the best thing to fit is practice drawing with it. Learning how to draw amongst the pen tool is a little like enlightenment toward ride a taxi. In association with toleration, ethical self will folks the feel for the goods. An open path is a series of line segment that remain a line and do not summary.<\p>

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