#unrecorded entity

The Returning revolves around a pantheon of 11 unrecorded entities that I collectively call the Forgotten Ones.  I believe that some, if not all of them, were once known to our Paleolithic era early hominid ancestors, as several of the Forgotten Ones have responded with recognition and familiarity to samples of art and artifacts from that era.  They also feel older than any other entity I’ve ever encountered - older than gods from other pantheons, older than the Fair Folk and dragons I work with, older than any entity I've encountered in the Otherworlds.  There’s something primordial about them for lack of a better word.  But old age and deep roots doesn’t necessarily equate to power, or more importantly for the purposes of this post immutability. 

Long time readers and friends of this blog are probably familiar with my “silly hat” theory of godhood.  That “god” is just a label that people put on the spirits that we worship. It doesn’t mean anything in terms of power, or importance, in my cosmology.  God is just a silly hat we put on the particular spirits who are special to us.  But there is a corollary to the “silly hat theory” that I don’t think I’ve talked about in a while - I think of it as the "aspect creation theory”. We all know that spirits can have different aspects, like facets of gem, and I believe that people can be responsible for creating those aspects. If enough people believe strongly enough that a spirit has a certain personality or behaves a certain way the spirit will start to be affected by that - an aspect of that entity will form that conforms with that belief. 

It was this human driven change that the Forgotten Ones sought to avoid by fragmenting themselves and going dormant.  They wanted to stay as they were, and in complete control of themselves.   The details of how they came up with this plan were shared to me in the form of a myth that maybe one day I’ll share here. But suffice to say, they knew there was a chance that someone would come along one day to fulfill the role I find myself in - a person who would want to worship them on their own terms, whether that meant preserving them as they are or letting the Forgotten Ones lead any growth or change that might happen.  And if no one ever came along to take up that mantle, they believed it was a better fate to die as themselves than to live to become someone unrecognizable.  So the Forgotten Ones broke themselves in tiny pieces and all but ceased to be, until I passed my initiation was tasked with putting them back together.  

This is my ultimate responsibility as their priestess - I’m the caretaker of their essences.  It is my responsibility to ensure that these entities remain in control of their own aspects, staying the same as they were millions of years ago if that’s what they want, or nurturing, but not forcing or dictating, their growth if that’s what they want. It’s an honor to have been trusted with this role, and I have dedicated my life to it.

Part 1: Spirit Encounters Part 3: Spell "Lab Notes" Part 4: Signs & Omens The early stages of developing a relationship with an unrecorded entity can be frustrating and confusing for many people.  The most commonly recommended first steps for getting to know a new entity are research and reading the entities myths and those don’t apply to a completely unrecorded entity and only help so far for an entity whose general type may be recorded in myth and folklore, but not them in specific.  My general advice for getting to know an unrecorded entity of any kind is to take it slow and get to know them the same way you would get to know a new person in your life.  Ask them about themselves every time you communicate with them, and keep track of each encounter using the format in part 1 - pay attention to themes, symbols, imagery, anything that you notice starts to repeat across multiple encounters.  Once you feel like something might be a defining feature or factor of the entity, something fixed that you’re sure of, make note of it and you can then run this exercise.  For this exercise you’ll need a few sheets of paper, a writing implement, the information you’ve been gathering, and a form of divination.  Yes/no forms of divination is fine for this, but something with more nuance is preferred and will give you more detailed answers in later steps. 

Review your existing notes on this entity and find a defining feature of the entity, this can be something that’s been repeated often enough in your notes on your earlier encounters to become a pattern, or something that’s happened less often but was experienced very strongly.  You’re the judge in this step of what is important enough to single out for this exercise, you can always do it again with something else if one iteration of it doesn’t prove fruitful.  

Get your paper and writing tool and write your feature in the center of the page.  Then create a brainstorming web of free associations with anything and everything that comes to mind springing from the starting point. Add as many spokes to the web and layers to each spoke as you can think of and fit.  

There are no wrong answers in this step - this isn’t you telling the entity they are associated with any of the things in the web, you’re making a list of things to ask them about.  

(If you’ve never made or heard of a brainstorming web before here’s a link to a template)

Then go through each item on the web with your divination tool for confirmation or denial from the entity of the association. -- Yes/No divination can give you a yay/nay on an association, “Yes, this is associated with me” or “No, this is not associated with me.”  But a more nuanced form of divination can unlock ones you didn’t think of with “no, but…” or “yes, and…” type answers.  For instance if you started with the center word of “harvest” because you had the indication that the entity was associated with the harvest and from there you branched out to “grain.” You used your tarot cards to confirm “grain” and you pull the Three of Cups, which is a very harvest-y card so you could take that as a yes, but the guide book for your deck specifically mentions fruits and vegetables instead of grains.  You can then follow up on fruits and vegetables vs grains to see if the entity strongly favors one over the other.

Record your results in your ongoing notes for this entity.  Remember:

An example: When I was working on Returning my pantheon of unrecorded entities, The Forgotten Ones, I would get to know an entity organically through divination conversation, dreams, Otherworldly visits, etc. for maybe a few months before I had enough fixed points of data that I thought it was was worth going through this exercise.  Then I would take an afternoon or an evening and run it multiple times for each data point I had, once through for a symbol that had appeared multiple times, once for a theme that the entity consistently used, once for an animal that they had shown a preference for, once for a flower they favored for offerings, etc.  I like to do this exercise in a trance, to add a little oomph to what is basically word association, but that’s not strictly necessary.  My goddess Brona, when I started working on her one of the few things I knew about her was that she was an entity that existed in the in betweens. Because she was so strongly liminal, so intrinsically neither here nor there I had trouble pin down more details on her even as I became very close to her.  So I ran this exercise on the word “liminal” before I had gathered much else for her.  Here is a sample of that map for her, that I just made for this post, so it’s all things that I know are associated with her - I can’t find my original, and at this point it’s hard to think of incorrect examples.

How did the eclipse feel to you? Friendly or fighty?

Rowan here is referencing a bit of Returning lore that I shared on Discord - eclipses are reunions between Flint (god of the sun and fire, and other stuff) and Vega (goddess of the moon and stars, and other stuff) who are siblings. Anyone who has siblings can tell you that sometimes you love them, and sometimes you hate them. And even when you love them, you hate them, and even when you hate them, you love them. It’s a very special relationship.

Some of the most common advise I see around social media for vetting an entity and establishing its trustworthiness relies on asking the entity questions about their mythology and comparing it to recorded stories and history. That’s all well and good when the entity gives off signs associated with a well documented mythology or folklore that you can go research. But what do you do when nothing lines up, or they give you a monicker or name that you can’t find anywhere? Some people might tell you that means the entity is dangerous, or a liar, but I’ve found in my decades of spirit work, particularly with my own Forgotten Ones, that is it far more likely that the entity has just never been written about, or that anything recorded info about them didn’t survive.

In my experience any one who engages in spirit work long enough is going to run into an entity that doesn’t have a recorded mythology or history. Maybe that entity will be like my Forgotten Ones and have no record at all, or maybe it will be a case where they entity can be sorted into a well know category of spirit, but there is no record of this individual.

My personal vetting process really developed when I began to work with the entities I would eventually call the Forgotten Ones, and it consists of just two things, Communication and Observation, deployed with critical thought and time.

Communication:

Ask the entity about themselves, multiple times, and watch out for inconsistencies. Some small variations are normal, like anyone telling a story it’s hard to say the exact same thing every time, but are the major points generally the same?

Example Questions:

What would you like me to call you?

What _______ are you associated with? (Fill in the blank with things like animal, plant, color, scent, weather, anything that the entity might use as a sign.)

What is your preferred method of communication?

What offerings, sacrifices, or devotional acts would you like me to devote to you when I choose to do so?

Tell me a story about yourself?

Observation:

This is where the time comes into play. Think of yourself as a nature documentary team and just observe the entity as it naturally is. Then think of yourself as an anthropologist and see how they act and interact with you. In the best cases their behavior will back up their answers to your questions, in the worst cases they won’t and you have to dig more and communicate more.

How does the entity act around you?

How do they react to different behaviors from you?

How do they interact with the environment?

How do they interact with the people and animals around you?

How does the environment react or change when they are present?

How do you feel when they are present?

What is their personality like?

What communication methods do they seem to prefer

How do they act when defied or told ‘no’?

Do impressions you get from them change over the course of time? If so how?

You may see that there are repeats under Observation of questions I recommend under Communication, and there’s a good reason for that. An entity, any entity, may lie or obfuscate when asked a direct question, but changing their behavior long term to match that lie or misdirection is much harder to do. Remember that not all lies or misleading is necessarily malicious or harmful, spirits have as many reasons for it as people do. But if entity answers a question one way, then their behavior contradicts that answer it’s worth having a conversation about what it true and why their words and actions don’t align.

The success I’ve had with this process is why I feel that vetting an entity is a process that is best done over time. You can contact a spirit once and ask them questions, and everything might seem to check out, but you won't know who they really are and how they really behave until you've maintained some sort of relationship with them for a while. If initial conversations tells you that an entity should behave one way, but your interactions with them show them acting a different way that is something to question. Is this a different aspect of the same entity? A different entity all together? Did you make a mistake in your interpretations? You won't catch those nuances in one single encounter or conversation. My standard vetting process, for instance, ranges from 3-6 months, and is very much like getting to know a new neighbor, coworker, or classmate.

Not only is it okay to not celebrate the most common holidays, it’s great! I love seeing all of the unique holidays people celebrate as part of their practices!