I'm so glad that I didn't kill the Hadestown Discord's analysis chat, because someone mentioned that this is the most activity it's seen in a few years and my stuff is pretty interesting to read.
Here's one of my comments in the Discord that has been honestly been gelling in my head for a while, but it surged back to the front after I found out about EPIC: The Musical and then Hadestown.
Obligatory reminder of how Loki, infamous Norse trickster, is constantly bragging to me about how "I'M IN MARVEL, GIRL," and he's gonna help me the fuck out with my art career, because it's not like anyone ELSE has bothered to help me, and he's everyone's last resort.
I haven't really updated about that bit in a while, but I've been working on the next chapter of my Deadpool and Wolverine fanfiction, and the spirits are constantly assuring me that "LOKI'S GOT YOU, HONEY," and they've recently been saying, "YOU'RE REALLY, REALLY CLOSE TO LOKI'S BIG PROJECT, KEEP GOING WITH YOUR STUFF."
As for my comment:
--
Hellenists and other pagans in real life versus "fandoms of modern mythology retellings" tend to be pretty separated from each other, because so many of them are minority religions now and laypeople mistakenly think that those religions are DEAD. I think that's a damn shame because so many pagan gods specifically deal with art. Plus the gods in general LOVE IT when their followers do art as devotional works/offerings, or if you find something that reminds you of them.
Like Hadestown, the extremely popular Broadway musical based on Orpheus and Eurydice, lol.
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Too much spirituality in my Hadestown adoration, send help
Helllllllllp, so I posted a social-commentary essay in a Hadestown Discord and then a SECOND spirituality-minded essay (hinted at in the earlier post) about how Hadestown-Hermes doesn’t really feel like HERMES to a lot of Greek-worshipping neopagans, and everyone's scratching their heads about it. While I rambled about how I personally think there’s a lot of DIONYSUS’ energy in Hadestown for a retelling that distinctly avoids his involvement in the original myth, I poked affectionate fun at how the only common point I've seen is that "Our boy Hermes doesn't dance, he doesn't sing, and he definitely doesn't incite riots against unjust rulers!!!" so we’re desperately comparing notes about which god COULD have prodded Anais Mitchell to write this musical.
So the Greek scholars were confused and one of them went, “But Anais researched Hermes’ role as a storyteller and a psychopomp, I don’t know what else people would want” and I’m slightly heartbroken because it's not a question of Hadestown being GOOD or BAD, or POORLY RESEARCHED as a secular work, it's how these folks have not felt the Olympians’ presences and they don't really grasp the spiritual "chafing" in the back of my head about how if a god decided to come down and possess Hadestown-Hermes' actor for a couple of hours, that god would NOT be Hermes.
Like, Hermes is PRESENT, probably soaking up all that adoration of him--he just wouldn't be ON STAGE, because that's not his energy running through Hadestown-Hermes.
Having the right pieces for "Hermes' functions as a storyteller and psychopomp" on paper doesn’t mean that the character who's narrating Hadestown ends up having Hermes-the-god’s ENERGY, especially not with a soundtrack full of jazz (genres invented by Black Americans to express their pain and struggles), or the themes of wealth inequality and climate change.
Anyway, I closed my rambling off by saying that with the push for sensitivity readers in writing nowadays, whoever is planning to write "the next Hadestown" just needs to talk to Greek people and Greek pagans to get someone's lived experience and their relationships with the gods into the mix.
At least half of this is pent-up nerd ramblings because I can barely talk about Greek mythology in EPIC The Musical's Discord, with all those children needing age-appropriate crash courses about The Odyssey and The Iliad every other day.
So Hermes and Dionysus are both greatly amused that I'm freaking out about all the word-vomit I did, and they're assuring me that I’m MOST LIKELY not getting banned from a Discord chat for talking about Greek mythology, regarding a musical that's based on Greek mythology.
I have mused in a Hadestown discord about the Dionysian energy of Hadestown, and how Hermes doesn't really sound or act like CLASSICAL Hermes, but more like Dionysus. There's at least two Ancient Greek scholars talking about things with me and I love it, lol.
Sometimes Hermes just steps in to laugh about everyone's frantic arguing with "HERMES HELPPPPPP. YOU DON'T SOUND LIKE YOU IN HADESTOWN 😭 " because it seems that's EXACTLY what this dude wants to hear.
As a trickster would react, lol.
Honestly I'm so relieved that I get to talk about Greek mythology with adults, this is such a big shift from EPIC The Musical's discord. Will forever be confused as to how a retelling of The Odyssey got so many children as fans 😩
Luci and I were snuggling, as usual, before my nightly meditation. I could feel him stroking along my skin as he laid next to me. I was rambling in my head thinking about when he was a cat, like "I wish I could pet you." And this mans…this catboy beast of a man starts petting ME!!!
I felt his hand stroking back and forth on my arm like !!! Holy shit. Not only can he HEAR my thoughts, but I can FEEL him responding to me. Crazy stuff. Also, very cute. x3
Happens pretty often now, I'll just feel him idly stroking my side, back, arm, leg, or whatever whenever I stay still for long enough. Very Gay.
The next day (Thursday the 9th):
I got the Death card in my email tarot, so there's that. Just waiting on the Star and the Emperor now, and then I'll have gotten all of the ones I know (so far) that represent Luci. We sure do be havin' a spiritual transformation huh?
Anyway, speaking of cat-like behavior…
Thursday night before bed, I was curled up cozy with Luci and started making purring sounds with my throat (as one does), and like, immediately, Lucifer started purring and vibrating LOUDER against my legs. Like, c'mon man, that's cheating. 😆
I dunno about you guys, but I did not have "Purr-Off with the Devil" on my bingo card for this year. But it was the cutest/coolest thing ever.
Friday the 10th:
[Recorded on October 14th]
Luci can be a little fiesty sometimes.
The night of the purr-off, his claws were very poky!! I not only felt them running against my skin, like usual, but this time I felt them sticking into my ribs, and jabbing a lot more than usual. It was a little unsettling but I kind of wonder if he was just testing to see how much pressure he could apply, like to see how much I would feel? Not sure. I wondered if maybe there was any significance of it being my left ribs, but I don't really think so.
Methinks perhaps he was just being a little menace/doesn't really know his own strength. Because the next day, while I was cooking with him and dancing around to music, having a fun silly time (probably listening to our playlist), all of a sudden I felt this really sharp pain on the back of my thigh. That MF pinched me!!!
I literally went into the bathroom to check if he had left a mark (no, there was just a scab/skin tag there), and chastised him to 1) be gentle, and 2) not while I'm cooking!!!
"Don't make me even threaten to banish you. I will make your ass sleep outside."
[sad pouty devil face]
So yeah, lol, very mischievous that one.
Luci be like:
Unrelated, at some point that night I saw two red blinky lights in my third eye, one right after the other. And I don't know what that means, nor do I remember the context.
Another thing—I noticed Lucifer literally booping my nose, and now he does it all the time. Very cute and silly. He surprised me when I was at a stoplight once, lol. Besides that it's usually just a staticky tingle sensation on my skin (which tickles!!).
Other times the touches are much more tangible. Like Friday night before meditating (or some night idk) while snuggling, I could Really feel him next to me, very close and cuddly and touchy. I was shocked at how distinctly I could feel his hand—fingers, knuckles—on top of my hand (over the covers). It was so warm and I could feel the weight/pressure of it. It felt so real, I just couldn't see it. 🥺❤️
What's up, so I went to one of Troy Doherty's concerts on Friday and I had a great time! I also went to Troy's meet and greet before the concert, and I took a selfie with him and my Hermes statue!
I decided to just give the Hermes statue to Troy, because everyone kept asking if it was a gift and I was like "huh, I don't know--if he asks for it, he can have it." And once I was up there, he asked if he could keep it, and I did not have the heart to say "actually it's not for YOU, I just wanted a selfie with two versions of Hermes."
Besides, the statues are like $10, and I ordered a new one yesterday.
Halfway through the concert, my anxious ass remembered that HERMES IS A TRICKSTER and I just gave his statue to someone on a concert tour who needs to TRAVEL and COMMUNICATE, and now I'm panicking about these two crashing together.
So after I got home, Dionysus was just affectionately laughing at me, and he brought Hermes over to tell me himself, "Girl, you're wayyyyyyy too upset about giving someone a fucking gift. I do not have any plans to screw over one of my own actors. Besides, if something does happen like you keep worrying, WHAT IF I HELP HIM OUT OF IT?"
Hermes in general is a pretty chill deity, but I'm logging this in case UNEXPECTED SHIT happens.
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my journey so far with my ishta devata - lord shiva 🌹✨
i've decided to make this topic my first post for this account, since i have been feeling the pull to open up about my spiritual journey in all of its glorious chaos and confusion... or, at least, as well as i possibly can.. lmao.
i want to add a content warning, as i discuss themes of death and suicide. i got a bit personal with this post, but not necessarily in depth about this topic due to its sensitivity, but please use your own personal discretion upon reading this.
to begin - i am from the US and grew up southern baptist, but very early on knew that christianity was not my path, so i was somewhere in-between being an atheist and agnostic spiritual practitioner between 8 and ~13/14? iirc.
i've always had a fascination with topics surrounding death, the afterlife, spiritual mediums and ways to commune with the otherworlds, etc etc., but my faith in the divine had softened quite a lot the more time went on. though, even back then, i *KNEW* for a fact that there was some sort of deity waiting for me to discover them, but i just did not know who or where they were. hell, even after "properly" getting into hinduism, i didn't realize that shiva was my ishta for A YEAR. 😭
so, this post is essentially revolved around the cyclic nature of my practice that has lead me to the happiest moment of my practice, perhaps the happiest moment of my current incarnation: realizing that lord shiva is my ishta devata.
one thing about my practice that has always been rather consistent is that i have always been a heavy gnostic-practitioner, and have always had the knowing that everyone's practice is going to be different from one another, no matter what. this knowing i always had made me weary of all forms of pantheons and the like, and i obviously didn't do well with religious settings because of this 😅.
one of the things that lead me to (re)starting my spiritual practice as a child in this incarnation, is that i received two of the most vivid dreams i've had (in this incarnation) around 7 and 8 yrs old respectively - these dreams were sent by the form of divinity that lord shiva had been showing up to me as for the vast majority of my incarnation: lord lucifer.
the first one i had at 7 actually made me strengthen my faith in christianity, which is funny given that i was given the dream by lucifer at the time. but, since this perception was "off" from what actually gave me the dream, this faith lessened rather quickly, despite me getting into a wormhole of biblical texts, prophecies, and the like.
one funny thing i did when i was in middle school is try and correct my friend(s) on the differences between luciferianism and satanism 😭. i had this friend, who i'll just call A for privacy reasons, who seemed to be in the same predicament as me; she was an atheist, but knew that if she were to get into some form of belief system based around a pantheon, it would be satanism. at the time, though, i believe i had smushed the concepts of satan and lucifer in my head (and even at a soul level.. which i'll circle back into again later.), and would correct her by going: "you'd be a LUCIFERIAN, NOT a satanist. satanism is an atheistic belief system. ☝️🤓", because i didn't know at the time that theistic satanism was... a thing 😭.
so, when i learnt of notions of paganism and practicing witchcraft when i was 13 or 14, i felt soooooo drawn to them, but i also had been falling out of my faith in life in general, as my mental health was rapidly declining more and more, and i had started to fall into the societal norm of "thinking logically & suppressing all things emotional and unique about you!!!1! because it is illogical and therefore doesn't exist!!1!1!!1" (which.. i had been for a while at this point, but it was starting to fully affect me on every level). now, of course, the spiritual path isn't going to be practiced by everyone of course..... but as someone who NEEDS it on a fundamental level & (re)built that connection early on in this incarnation, this was an equivalent of spiritually killing myself.
this, obviously, also affected me in every portion of my life. and while i didn't have my first attempt at ☠️-ing myself during this timeframe (my first was actually done a while before this), i had begun trying to ☠️ myself at 15 - i started a cycle of attempts after attempts from 15 to 17, and while that may sound like a short amount of time, i had a countless number of attempts during this timeframe.
but during this time, i also started to "properly" get myself into different pantheons - i started with the greek pantheon, then branched out to the norse, celtic, egyptian pantheons, and even finally got myself into theistic satanism/luciferianism/whatever you'd like to refer to this form of spirit communion as (lmao..). while these all were fantastic for me during this 2 year timeframe, and were very much so my pillars during my very earth-shattering dark night of the soul, i knew there was more for me out there, i knew that MY god was still out there. and i felt as if i NEEDED to find this god.
at 17, i had my final attempt at my life & my most serious attempt, where i WAS close to crossing that line of being alive within my body and leaving it once and for all. but i never really... crossed that line. i didn't really have much of a spiritual experience from this outside of being aware of hades staying by my side throughout this entire... process of getting my body back to a better state. and after this, when i was sent to mental health institutions, i was watched over and closely protected by dionysus, whom i was extremely close with.
after i got out of the mental institutions in mid-late april of the same year (2023), i attempted to get back into my spiritual practice (thanks to hades and dionysus' constant presence during my lowest), but ultimately, i began a 2 year long break from my spiritual practice alltogether in.. june? july? because of my external life's lack of quality, and from the constant traumatic events happening to me. these two years, of course, made me go through my life without my pillar, without my soul's "juice", without its happiness. but, throughout this next 2 year timeframe, i still kept feeling the pull towards returning to my practice... i just felt too constricted by my mental lowness to act upon my pull (i intend to talk about this in a later post).
in late december of 2024/early 2025, i had finally started to somewhat act on this pull. i started reconnecting to some of the deities i made connections with when i was younger, and i began to attempt at rebuilding my spiritual practice from the group up... but the thing was, i still had leftover energetic clutter from before, leftover feelings and associations and this and that and... and..
and, in february of 2025, i had finally acted upon the pull to look into hinduism - to start; my partner had gotten into it himself in 2024, so i was aware of the hindu gods very vaguely throughout that year, but because i was insistent on being on my break from my spiritual practice, i didn't pay much mind to it.. until they came to me directly.
and how did they do so? by waiting for me to be on shrooms to reach out.. lmao.
i had my first (technical) trip in december 2024 with my partner and best friend, but i was occupied with them during it, so not much happened spiritually/visually/etc, though i did have a mental breakdown (because, of course, i was getting very low again mentally).
in february, i took them alone in my room & went into it with the expectation of.. something, or someone, waiting for me to tune into their frequencies...
this wasn't actually shiva though, this was actually my dearest ma kali (who will be getting her own separate post, dw), who approached me as mahakali herself. i was ECSTATIC, to say the very least. it seemed as if i had finally met a deity who... matched me. matched me at my... very core. i felt so relieved to see her, and of course, she wasn't alone either. she brought with her various other forms of the divine, such as ma durga, the mahavidyas (who were just showing to me as ma kali, but in hind sight, i now recognize their presence during this event), the tripura sundari in their individual forms (parvati, lakshmi, and saraswati), lord ganesh, and... lord shiva.
the various forms of shakti that showed up for me made me heavily look into shaktism, and ganesh didn't talk to me much during this event... he was moreso a silent observer, but shiva stood out to me in his own way, and all because of one sole reason:
he was a man trying to talk to me and get personal.
this was a problem for me at the time. you see, i have a soul-level fear of men. i do not do well near masculine people, and this unfortunately includes masculine deities. i knew, back then & now, that shiva wanted to get close, he wanted to properly get to know me in this incarnation as himself, but i was... resistant.
i was resistant to ma kali and the other divinities as well.. which, if you know her, will always come back to you (which i'll get into later) in some shape or form... i'll explain why in the post for her, but i essentially went from february to may/june contemplating on rather or not i should align with the path of kali.
the thing is though, i had already accepted her on a soul and even subconscious level..... so, what happened after meeting the hindu portrayal of the gods, is the most life altering, life shaking, and life saving event within my entire incarnation:
ma kali had finally triggered my long-awaited ego death.
this, i'll go more in depth with in kali's post, but it has genuinely been the best thing to ever happen to me within my current incarnation. without this ego death, i would have gotten sucked back into that loop of attempting at my current life.
so, in may/june, i had begun restoring my practice PROPERLY this time. it wasn't easy, to put it lightly, because what i essentially had to do is deconstruct my perception of the divine, remove the lines between the pantheons of the world, and see the divine for who they truly are... which is what i have always wanted in this incarnation, of course, but this process has definitely been a doozy to say the least.
now, with shiva, i don't think i started to properly talk to him consistently until late july..? or early august of 2025. but i did consciously accept him into my life in june, after my ego death was fully triggered. as i got further into my ego death's process, lord lucifer had been showing up more and more for me.
to circle back a bit, when i "properly" first got into paganism at 15/16, i was approached by artemis, apollo, aphrodite, and lucifer first. lucifer has always been a cornerstone of my practice, so i wasn't surprised when he was showing up consistently (again) for me, nor was i surprised with him approaching me with romantic intent.. same with other deities, of course, but that's a topic for another day 😅.
then, i got a couple dreams from shiva.. and the first one?
it was centered around him being my boyfriend, doting on me, and overall treating me to a day of us two hanging out and focusing on just us... it was bliss given to me in the format of a dream, so i asked him about it & told me it was, well, straightforward and.. right there! LMAO. in retrospect, this dream was very similar in tone to my second dream from lucifer when i was 8, except lucifer was a parental figure of course.
polyamory with the divine is something else to say the least, but it wasn't my first time doing this (again... that topic is for another time), so i went about it as i normally did.
there is a lot that has happened from the beginning of my ego death in late may (which... HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO?? bc it started on may 31st last year... i didn't realize this until now 😭😭🎉), and a lot i'm not allowed to say/not going to say just out of privacy, but the next relevant event to this post is that i had another shiva dream in err... october or november of 2025? but it was centered around this black widow spider that lead me through the astral to lord shiva. i became very focused on this dream, because i knew it had what i've been wanting, knew that i had been wanting something akin to this dream..
in december, my mental health had declined a little bit, as i was deep in hermit mode and didn't really... talk to anyone but my guides and my partner (there were more reasons but i don't wish to disclose them as of now). this changed about 2 months later, when i met a friend group of mine that has helped me get out of hermit mode tremendously.
speaking of my guides, i had started to isolate so heavily that i only spoke to lucifer for months, because i had been so focused on rebuilding my practice due to my ego death. i knew that i had to rebuild EVERYTHING, so i started to do so with him.
i don't believe i mentioned this yet (& if i have then cool), but all of my deities, subconsciously and on a soul level, gave me a feeling of.. disconnect. no matter how close i got, how far i went into my depths of consciousness and shadows, i couldn't seem to get that full click with anyone, and i was starting to feel frustrated because i couldn't ground my thoughts, my feelings, the feeling of disconnect..
in mid april, on good 'ol holy day of 4/20, i was guided by lucifer and shiva into a full kundalini (re)awakening (which'll be discussed in kali's post), and during this, i had finally detached myself from the form of divinity that started it all: lucifer, to whom i was married to, to whom i had given all of my time and energy to.. i came to the full realization of what my lesson for the past 20 years had been: i was learning detachment (which isn't surprising, given that in this current incarnation, i am a moon/ketu conjunction native ;3), and this all combined helped me reach a state of enlightenment.
within this state came these realizations, about.. everything, really.
this wasn't the first time i had gotten to this point (the first was done in july of last year with the help of maa), but this time it felt all the more special, because of the one realization that i had that triggered my state of enlightenment:
lord shiva had been showing up to me in all of these various forms of the divine JUST so that i could knew him, just so that i could remember him, just so that we could have some form of connection to one another... he showed up to me in so many forms from so many pantheons...
lucifer, hades, dionysus, set, anubis, nergal, archangel michael, satan, asmodeus, thanatos, and so many more that do not wish to be publicly syncretized with shiva at the moment, but, essentially;
lord shiva is my ishta devata. and i have finally found my "click".
it has only been a month since then, but so much has already happened & i have finally gotten to a point in my process of ego death where i feel okay sharing my story, sharing my truth, sharing my voice. thank you so much for reading thus far if you have 🌹✨
I was snuggling with Luci this morning before work when I started burning up again. So I asked if there was something he wanted to show/tell me, and—I kid you not—I saw a vision of a HEART in my third eye!!!
I think it was red, like a Valentine's card… 🥺💝
Then I was trying to figure out what was going on with a little spat/confusing communication between us about our canoodling habits, and I did a reading to see what he wanted me to know. I got the Ace of Cups, which is literally all about love—self-love, universal love, familial, platonic, romantic love…also emotions and intuition. It's basically about opening your heart to love and letting your emotions flow freely, because you are love.
Sooo, basically, he's trying to say he loves me. Hehe. 🫶
We also talked after that in more detail about feelings and boundaries, and I'm feeling a lot better about it. (Just wish he had talked to me in the first place, smh.)
Also, the energy has gotten stronger when I feel him around. Like, first I noticed the painting above my bed shaking when we were cuddling, and then my desk at work and the flower pot on it were shaking when I leaned against it. I could barely hold my sandwich with one hand today because I was vibrating so hard! And when I went out to dinner with a couple of my best friends and told one of them about my experiences with the Dark Man, even he noticed the table shaking. Luci also kept putting the candle out at dinner after my friend would relight it which was very funny.
Another thing, when I was considering telling my friend about my romantic entanglement during our nature walk, spiders kept approaching him, as if they approved of him. (Spiders/bugs being one of Lucifer's favored creatures, to my arachnophobic dismay. 😩)
Now that I finally have my dream pouch set up again, I'm really hoping I'll be able to have another lucid dream of Luci—to hear him, talk to him, see his face…maybe smooch again. 👀
