Learning As I Wander

Oh my gods, I never realized how much I've been waiting for someone to ask me this!

I believe developing an emotional connection with the gods can help establish a spiritual relationship that can help one grow, not just as a follower, but as a person as well.

(Like everything else, different followers will have different beliefs and won't agree with the above sentiment, so these methods are for those who want to add them to their practice. Everyone honors the gods differently).

Why these methods were developed in the first place:

I grew up in a very Catholic environment that utilized fear and formality as an appropriate form of worship. This combined with the physical discipline my family incorporated during religious events often left me feeling paranoid about my behavior around religious figures, eventually leading to spiritual imposter syndrome and the inability to talk about my own problems because neurodiversity was a taboo subject since, according to the family priest, would lead to "improper behavior before the Lord."

I wasn't able to be properly diagnosed until years after moving out, and it took me even more years to finally convince my family to seek much needed therapy.

Part of the reason why I was able to do all of this was because Ares taught me:

"Formality does not always equal a good relationship, especially when the follower requires affection to create strong bonds with their gods."

This does not mean that formality never works for anyone because there are people who prefer having a set schedule, strict rules and rituals with a more esoteric or ancient aesthetic.

This post is aimed more toward those of us who feel paralyzed in such environments that lack a more relaxed atmosphere that would allow room for mistakes, practice and improvement. Those who prefer gods that understand our disabilities, executive dysfunction and hold us when the world feels distant.

Depending on the follower and the god:

-Some gods might prefer a more formal relationship while others will hug and hold you as soon as you start crying.

-Likewise, some devotees prefer a more formal relationship while others, like myself, prefer a godly hug whenever I feel like the world is crashing around me.

So keep a clear communication regarding consent, be honest about how comfortable you are with the idea of being hugged and if you're not, please be sure to establish that boundary with the gods.

Note: Boundaries are there to help create clearer communication and will not offend the gods. If you feel like setting boundaries will negatively affect your relationship with the gods, please look into your personal history and feelings with setting boundaries. Oftentimes growing up with authoritative figures like parents, caretakers or teachers who might have caused fear when boundaries were needed, often lead to feelings of discomfort when needing to set spiritual boundaries with beings we perceive to be far more powerful than we are, much like how we previously perceived caregivers when we were children. I talk a bit more about this here: (LINK) and (LINK)

And finally, please be respectful of the gods who do decline affection but also be honest with yourself regarding your needs requiring affection.

For example: As previously established, I have a lot of religious trauma regarding the need to be formal in front of a god.

Due to this, I mostly work with gods who like affection while I occasionally work with those who don't because it keeps me from falling back into old religious patterns of guilt and perfectionism.

While there are formal gods who are very understanding of those of us with disabilities, the strict atmosphere makes me forget that my Depression, Executive Dysfunction and PTSD are allowed to coexist within my practice.

A formal form of honoring the gods and a more relaxed affectionate form are just a matter of preference that can also coexist.

There are special occasions where my practice is as formal as a midnight ball while other days, dedicating an act of getting out of bed and high five-ing a god is as spiritual as it gets due to my depression.

So without further ado here are the methods I learned from Ares to show and receive affection:

How to Hug Gods:

The Mental Method:

This is by far the easiest method because it only requires you to imagine you are hugging your god.

You could be doing anything but as long as you imagine you're hugging your god, you're doing it, the god doesn't even have to be present but they'll still receive it, much like a virtual hug.

Pay very close attention to sensations!

Sometimes you'll suddenly get a mental image of a god hugging you or showing affection.

-For example: Sometimes I'll be doing my own thing and suddenly get a tingling feeling on my forehead with a mental image of Aphrodite kissing my forehead.

Sometimes I'll feel Ares' warmth on me much like how he did during this moment, posted by @thepastelpriestess : (LINK)

Note: There are also people who have gods that do not take on a human form when they interact with them: (LINK) If you're someone who has a god that does this, politely ask them to please take on an animal form or whatever other form you associate with them that you're able to hug.

As a child, there would be times where I'd hug Ares in his wolf form.

If you do this enough times, your body will start to remember and be conditioned to mentally see godly affection triggered by your emotions which leads to the next method...

The Emotional Method:

This method is a conditioned response to the previous method but requires you to practice with sensations that get triggered by your emotions. Your emotions can be as simple or as complicated as you need them to be.

You can be happy, mad, sad, etc. You don't always have to stick to just one emotion and it's healthier if you allow yourself to truly feel your emotions. This can also be used as a form of healing in order to process whatever triggered that emotion.

Having a god comfort you during these times can help you feel like you're not alone and remind you that you are allowed to be human in order to really feel your feelings. Especially when society encourages us to ignore our emotions and shames us for having and showing raw emotions.

For example: whenever I start crying, I often sense Aphrodite lending me her lap or shoulder to cry on as she strokes my hair or rubs my back. I also feel Aphrodite when I see something so beautiful it makes my heart feel like it's being filled with warm stars as my eyes fill with tears.

This method has helped me on days when I don't know what to do but need the gods to be there for me.

It has also helped me remember that I'm not alone in my journey because it triggers an automatic hug from Aphrodite who kindly reminds me that emotions are there to tell me when it's time to take a step back, take a deep breath, listen to my needs and practice self-care because I'm worth my own love too.

The Physical Method:

This is the most dynamic of the methods and requires something physical to hug. This can be a pillow, a stuffed animal, a willing pet, a willing person, etc.

What you do is ask the gods to temporarily take the place of whatever you're about to hug and hug it.

You can hug it for as long as you two have agreed on (remember to ask for a longer time if you need it, just make sure all parties are in agreement).

This is the first form that I used when I was little because it helped me practice using my imagination because it helps you remember the sensation of hugging or being hugged.

There are other methods as well, but these are the big three that I have been consistently using since I was little.

I hope these helps and please remember that your practice is between you and the gods.

Abolish private prisons.

Okay, I don’t know how true this is - but this is huge fucking news.

I’ve been saying this for a while now, but Disney, Amazon and co. are trying to return to the studio system of the old Hollywood days that got - rightly - discontinued in the 1960s. Those were the days when each studio owned their own cinemas that could only stream their movies, where they owned actors who could only play in their movies (unless hired out by others) - and that led to people like Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe etc. literally being owned by studios that fed them non stop pills and driven to overdose.

That’s the end point. That’s not the point we’re at now. But you’ll notice that in the last 3 or 4 years, every major production company now has a streaming platform. Much like up until the late 1960s in America, you can only see movies on company-owned platforms. This, with Johansson, is a huge step further - the largest production company in the world - who breached contract, not the other way around - are now essentially blacklisting Johansson from working with them for speaking out against them. Sure, this isn’t a blacklist on the level of the red and lavender scares - but if they can do this to Johansson, the biggest actor in the world, it sets a huge fucking precedent for blacklisting anybody who stands up for workers’ rights.

It also sees Disney - and other companies will follow suit, as they always do - moving a step closer to owning their stars. What Disney is trying to say is that Disney and Johansson are not equal partners in the contract, but that Disney has the ultimate say over everything. This idea that the contract is a formality is absolutely fucked, because it means that artists have no rights under the corporations, and if they want to continue to work they have to obey. Nobody is signing exclusive contracts yet, but you bet this is reverting to Judy Garland times. 

A twitter thread by Caitlin J. Stout @CaitlinJStout from Feb 25 2021 reading,

A friend asked the other day what percentage of people I went to youth group with “deconstructed” and what percentage remained evangelical. As I thought about it, I realized that for the most part it was the kids who took their faith the most seriously who eventually walked away.

Those of us who tearfully promised that we would follow Jesus anywhere eventually followed him out the door. The Queer kids, more than anyone, learned exactly what it meant to work out our faith with fear and trembling.

They told us to read the Bible and take it seriously and then mocked us for becoming “social justice warriors.”

Now they’re warning us not to deconstruct to the point of meaninglessness.

But they took a chisel to God until he fit in a box. They “deconstructed” the concept of love until it allowed them to tolerate sexual abuse, celebrate white supremacy, and look away from kids in cages.

Not too long ago, my friend Bella came out as aromantic to me, and now I’ve got some things to say.

I was the one who told her what aromantic means, because I was explaining different sexual orientations to her. I remember saying, “Asexualiy is when you have romantic attraction, but no sexual attraction.”

Bella immedently, without missing a beat, asked, “Is there an opposite to that?”

I asked what she meant, and she asked if there was a term for sexual attraction but no romantic attraction. I told her about aromantics. She got weirdly quiet, then excused herself.

Not two weeks later I was heading to my boat. I was supposed to meet Bella and another one of our muteral friends there for a day of fishing.

As soon as I was in earshot, I saw Bella storming off the boat, and our other friend standing there like an idiot. Boi had no idea what was happening.

Anyway, Bella isn’t looking where she’s going and walks smack dab into me. That’s when I realized she was crying. Puffy red eyes, wet cheeks, the whole nine yards… And if you know anything about Bells, she does not cry. Ever.

She’s been through some serious crap in her life, and she does not cry. She’s tough as nails. Bella has a steel core. She does not not cry. I’ve seen her fall off a roof and break her arm before, not a single tear. I can’t stress this enough, Bella. Doesn’t. Cry.

So seeing her in tears shook me. I took her by the shoulders and escorted her somewhere more private where we could talk. We ended up in the women’s restroom, which was weird as fuck for me, because haven’t been in a woman’s rest room for years. Luckily it was empty, and I’m realistic, I know I don’t pass so well, so I don’t think anyone would have said anything anyway.

Before I can even ask her what’s wrong she hugs me around my middle and burys her face in my hoodie. Then, in a voice I can only describe as traumatized, she says, “I think I’m broken.”

I’ve never seen her in so much pain, and Bella and I are CLOSE. She’s one of my dearest friends. She’s like my little sister, but if she’s like my sister, our other muteral friend is like her twin. He and Bella have know each other WAY longer, they’re practically inseparable. They come as a pair. They’re a duo. They’re a package deal.

Appearently, said muteral friend asked Bella out and forcefully kissed her. She shoved him off, and told him she’s aromantic, which she only recently figured out. She wasn’t ready to be out, but this muteral friend left her no choice. She tried telling him no, and he didn’t listen. Bella saw no other option.

Quote on quote, this is what he said to Bella. “That’s okay. You just haven’t dated me yet. We’ve been like, unofficially together for years. You’re probably just freaked out that it’s finally going somewhere.”

After that I’m not 100% clear on what happened, but apparently Bella kept saying no Nd trying to explain herself, but he kept insisting he could ‘fix her.’

Eventudally she started crying and stormed away. That’s when I found her.

Keep in mind, this was her first experience coming out, and her best, closest friend insisted he could fix her and forcefully kissed her. I found out later he also implied corrective rape would ‘solve the problem.’

Bella was traumatized. She’s still traumatized. I tried to make her feel better by buying her an aro pride shirt, and taking her go a local LGBTQ+ hang out. I wanted her to be around like minded people, so she could see she wasn’t broken, and her identity deserved to be respected.

Instead of a warm, welcoming environment… The first thing someone said to her was, “This place is for REAL lgbt people. You don’t belong here.” He also implied she wasn’t human.

Just think about that for a minute. Her first experiences with being an out aromantic have been limited to;

A person she trusted more than anyone forcing himself upon her, claiming she was ill, and needed to be fixed. (Raped.)

Sobbing in my arms in the women’s restroom because she thought she was broken and defective.

Being told she wasn’t welcomed in LGBTQ+ spaces and called inhuman.

This isn’t what I want for her. Bella deserves better than this. She needs a support system, not all this crap. I’ve spent the past week trying to undo all the damage exclusionists, arophobes, and people she trusted did.

I didn’t put up with it as a teenager really into sci-fi, I didn’t put up with it from the dude bros in game and comic shops, and I certainly won’t stand for it in my LGBT+ community.

you a bitch

LGBT+ Holiday films of 2020

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pointed out that many young people are concerned about having kids because climate change will make the planet increasingly uninhabitable.

Rich people farm babies because they need to ensure that their own children will live in the same type of deeply unequal society as they did and thus can inherit their wealth and be assured that there are enough workers to ensure that it maintains the same value. Even if they do not create ideal conditions for raising children, they demand you replace yourself with a new person to toil away for them, and to need their resources and have to buy shit to survive, anyway.

Nationalists/Fascists farm babies because they believe that controlling the family sphere is the best way to control information and to produce armies and police that enforce their legitimacy. If they are isolationists, they want to stop all migratory populations which means they are extremely vulnerable to the population aging faster than it can reproduce. In the racist context they also believe in both out-populating what they see as inferior races, but they also on the quiet don’t want their enemies to stop having kids either because that means they won’t be able to exploit future generations for free labor, or have an “other” accessible to scare their kids over.

Religious fundamentalists farm babies because they believe that population under a religion determines its strength and sphere of influence and they would rather have a noncompetitive time of it by breeding more followers rather than trying to appeal to converts, whom they distrust. You can see this in certain organized fertility movements like Quiverfull, etc. Many fundamentalists fear that as religion becomes more voluntary and personal, rather than an obligation under threat of violence, the power and influence of religion will shrink.

All three of these interests oppose accessible and free health care, family planning and reproductive rights. All of these interests have significant reasons for opposing the right to a safe, accessible, and nonjudgmental abortion, as well as the right to safe, accessible, and nonjudgmental prenatal care and post-natal child support, and in the USA, universal parental leave. 

It may seem counter-intuitive that people who farm babies might want to make it hard to be a new parent but consider that setting a precedent for public assistance in one direction also sets it in the other. Instead, they prefer forms of influence like fox news up there that mostly do not have to take responsibility for the welfare of the people, but instead can just sway public opinion to vote against their own health and safety, or sway the public to uncritically accept actions pushed by far-right lobbyists.

Omegaverse is a coded way of exploring gender and desire, of navigating identity and sex and relationships in a world where the people you desire and the kind of sex you get off on are part of the system that oppresses you politically, and your own biology is at once the instrument through which you live and achieve sexual fulfillment, and a weapon that can be used against you.

Wolf dynamics don’t work that way because IT’S A FUCKING METAPHOR. 

It explores these dynamics in a way that is just unfamiliar enough that it isn’t like being smacked in the face with memories of the entire rest of the world. You don’t read it and think in the middle of a sex scene, “Jesus, guys like this make up most of the government that decides whether I get to have abortions.” It’s a fantastical framework that you can shake off when you stop reading, because it’s not actually real.

You better damn well bet a lot of A/B/O actually explores queer and trans and intersex experience and sexual autonomy and impaired consent and domestic violence and reproductive rights, and manages to be hot as hell while it does so.

This shit.

So Hunchback is far and away my favorite movie from Disney’s Renaissance, and it always makes me so happy that yes, people seem to appreciate it, people seem to love it, but I’mma go into exactly WHY it’s my favorite, and WHY I think it’s so crucial, and WHY I think it should be required viewing for young boys specifically.

We all know that a huge bulk of the media we’ve grown up with consistently has that one frustrating message:  Being the hero means you’ll get the girl.  Many boys let this mentality bleed into reality.  We have “nice guys,” who feel that their niceness entitles them to romance, when obviously that discredits a female’s personal choice.  We all get this, we all know this, and a lot of us get that it’s a toxic message.

So check out our hero.

He’s an incredibly good person who isn’t conventionally attractive.

Check out our lady.

Super good person, conventionally attractive.

The movie so deliberately builds up Quasi’s hopes.  There’s a whole fucking song about it.

But Esmeralda, who is her own person with her own motivations and preferences, chooses another man, who is also good and also attractive.

A lot of people criticize this aspect of the movie, the fact that Quasi doesn’t get the girl BECAUSE of his appearance.  But my argument?  This is the best damn message a movie could ever send.

Because when things get dicey, when Esmeralda’s life in in danger, when Quasi would be putting his own life on the line, he knows that romance is no longer within the realm of possibility.  He knows he won’t be “getting the girl.”  He knows this, and he allows himself a moment of bitterness, he risks falling prey to the “nice guy” trope, and he almost succumbs.

“She already has her knight in shining armor, and it’s not me.”

BUT THEN HE DOES THE RIGHT THING.

He has NO ulterior motive for saving her life.  NO ulterior motive for opposing the man who raised him.  And he doesn’t know that he’ll get any reward, he knows he could straight up get killed for his actions, and yet he still acts.

And there’s no bitterness. There’s still so, so much love between him and Esmeralda, pure awesome platonic love, and love between him and Phoebus, and just fucking love all around, it’s amazing.

I’ve heard so many people express distaste at Quasi not ending up with Esmerelda.  Like he was cheated out of some kind of reward.  But have they watched the ending?

Does that look like a man cheated of his reward?  Does he look like he “lost” to Phoebus?  No dude, that’s a man who has everything he ever wanted, and that’s also a man who didn’t “get the girl.”