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perzephone
Thursday night I slept all night. Woke up at 8am... thought, oh I'll take a nap & then get up around 8pm & stay up all night. Riiiight. Around 8pm, I took a Provigil, which is a stimulant designed for shift-workers & people with narcolepsy. I'm tired as fuckall, but my brain will not shut up. I'm kind of bored with WoW, so I don't even have anything to keep my mind occupied, other than its own incessant rambling. Rob went to bed around 4am, came out around 6 & got a blow-job & then he went back to bed. There's not a lot of information out there about Provigil, but it's Schedule IV. Gives me a slight headache about 4 hours in. I don't like it much, never been big on stims, especially with the brain-not-shutting-up problem. My doctor doesn't seem to understand the difference between 'sleepy' and 'tired'. I am tired all the time & I only get sleepy when it's bedtime. I can't explain it to her any better - I've tried fatigue, I've tried to describe it to her by saying it's like I'm always walking through 4' deep mud carrying wet sandbags, but she doesn't get it. So she gives me a sleeping pill (which helps the insomnia) & a stimulant, which makes my brain act like a tweeking hamster on wheel. At least I can NOT take another one of these pills, I just have to wait for it to wear off. Soon, I hope.
Been thinking about prayer & entitlement. Christians seem to have it lucky. When you get right down to it, the Christian/Catholic 'God' doesn't want much from his people. If you follow the Christian Bible (which was written by people), you just have to avoid putting other gods before God, you have to set aside a day of worship, you can't be jealous of your next-door neighbor, you can't kill (unless the church tells you to), can't make graven images... it's very simple rules for everyday life. Not to much to ask in return for an afterlife in paradise. Christians are encouraged to pray, (even though they apparently need a priest to interpret the Bible for them) & for the most part, most Christians I know ask God to bless them, their families & their friends with good luck & health & well-being. A lot of Christians I know pray to God & ask for stuff. They feel that in exchange for following some simple rules (most of them follow said rules loosely, I guess it's all up for interpretation), they are entitled to some sort of earthly return. Health, money, new jobs, children, a Barbie Dream House complete with Ken & a pool-boy. Most Christians I know don't ever ask their God what they could do for Him, only what God can do for them. Must be nice - a religion with little or no personal responsiblity. Hel, in Catholicism, you can do something against everything you're told, go & tell a priest in a little box, chant some prayers on a rosary or do some community service as penance & you've got a clean slate again. I'm not one of these fundamentalist Pagans who feels the need for continual hatred against Catholicism or Christianity, I don't bash Christianity or Catholicism - sometimes I poke fun (and I'm leaving Judaism & Muslim out of this because they've got chores to do. JHVH & Allah are not as relaxed about Their followers as God is) at the followers & their sheepishness, but I don't hate them. The only time I really even get irritated enough to say something derogatory about Catholics or Christians is when they try to convert me or when they knock on the door at 8am.
I do feel slightly resentful, though. How did they get off so light? I mean, yeah, when I was a kid, I was given ample opportunities to become a Christian. I even went to a Billy Graham revival at Dodger Stadium when I was 12 - mainly because at the time I had some serious hots for Jack Palance & at the time, Billy Graham looked a lot like Jack Palance. So it's not like Christians turned me away. I've been to Catholic churches & Protestant churches, I've gone to open meetings with Mormons, been to Quaker & Methodist, Episcopalian & Baptist, been to Latin Spiritualist churches, been to Pentecostal & Lutheran churches... In Protestant churches, the preacher or minister or reverend gets up on a podium & tells everyone to obey the rules or burn in the Christian Hell. Yes, you do have free will, but if you use it to do something against the Big 10, you have to ask for forgiveness or you'll go to Hell. Sometimes they read from the Bible, sometimes they have sermons prepared in advance, little homilies or anecdotes. The collection bowl is passed around, personal prayers might be asked of the entire congregation... In the more charismatic churches, that's when things would really start to get interesting - singing, gettin' the Spirit, the snakes & strychnine come out, people are healed... people roll on the ground & froth at the mouth & speak in tongues. Most church meetings are boring, especially for kids. Sunday school was always a joke, but we usually got to color or do arts & crafts, & there were always pastries or baked goods & coffee & punch after while the grown-ups socialized.
In Catholic churches, it's a little weird because the priest or deacon or bishop would read the same ceremony every time, with a sermon based on the season or a day in the life of Christ or some such. From the Catholic masses I went to, there wasn't much mention of punishment for transgressions, but there was a lot about duty to the community, duty to family, how God & Mary see the worshippers (positive affirmations were big in the 80's) as bright spots of light, like stars or snowflakes or something like that. Then everyone who had confessed would take communion after the weekly miracle of transubstantiation had occurred. Then announcements, personal prayer requests, collection plate passing, wrapping things up basically. Sometimes there would be snacks. The Greek Eastern Orthodox church I went to in Memphis was a riot - everybody would spill outside & eat barbecued goat & dance & ouzo would be passed around. I would have converted solely on the basis of beautiful Greek boys & barbecued goat, but I didn't want to learn Greek at the time. Or try to learn Greek and Latin. (Now, a million years later & many grimoires tossed aside, I should have taken the catechism classes at the very least).
But I always tasted something foul behind the sermons. It seemed like it was all too good to be true. You follow these rules & get a golden key to heaven... you go to church & ask God for all kinds of things, as if He was a djinn instead of a deity. You fucked up, you confessed & paid penance, or you simply asked God or Jesus Christ for forgiveness & it was granted. Maybe because I never joined a church, I missed something there, some initiatory Mystery, some Great Secret only revealed to church members who've been to a year's worth of Sunday services. It's too easy, too simple. It's like a get-rich-quick scheme. Yeah, you pay the churches for membership, keeps the coffee & donuts after the sermon free, keeps the pews waxed. Most social organizations do require membership dues - I pay $40 a month for my Union dues. Where is the catch? Even that whole 'spreading the word' bit seems anticlimatic. Who doesn't love talking about their religion & swaying other people to their point of view? It's like chicken pox or lice - the gift that keeps on giving. Going to church always felt hollow for me. Empty. Church weddings were the worst - especially when you've seen the newly wedded couple flirting with other people (or screwing caterers under the reception hall stage) almost immediately afterwards. I guess I was always just a little too mistrustful of this giving & forgiving God. When people ask me if I believe in 'God', I always know which 'God' they're talking about, and in a way I do believe a 'God' actually exists, because millions of Christians/Catholics/Jews/Muslims have created Him in their images. He's a very pervasive thoughtform & He's invaded every aspect of American life, even our politics, our money, our schools... the harder we try to keep His spiritual realm separated from the secular realm, the more He seeps in. But to me, the Catholic/Christian God is like a far-off distant planet, so far off even the deep-space telescopes can't see Him. So far removed from earthly concerns that He may as well not exist. It's a superstition, a leftover from a quainter time in human history.
The things about Paganism that drew me in were the concepts of personal power and personal responsibility. It got a little corroded by Wicca, but the principles remained even after the magic circles came down. Spellcraft always intrigued me. Aleister Crowley defined magic as causing change to occur in conformity with will. The thought that I could have power to do something, or power over someone, or that I could influence someone or an event far removed from myself... wow. I could speak directly to the Gods - or they could speak through me. I didn't need a priest to intercede or interpret omens for me, I could see the future and speak with the long-dead and the still unborn. Our Gods are alive and in everything, every thing we do there's a God out there that's in charge of it. Karma. That's the big thing right there. If I do something, it's my choice to do so. I have total control over my own actions, and therefore I have total responsibility for my actions. I can't blame anyone else for my decisions and deeds. It's my fault, whether it's a fairly benign action or a malignant one, I own the outcome. Yes, there is some room for chance and fate, and sometimes our actions are guided by other hands, but we have free will for the most part. There's no real Hell - there are Underworlds, Summerlands, Valhallas, some kind of limbo space where you wait for your ride on the Reincarnation Railroad... but no place of eternal reward or eternal punishment, really. The soul is eternal - the afterlife isn't. In Christianity, if you do something against God's will, well, it's pretty much just between you & God. In most Pagan religions, you see the great interconnected web of life. All your choices affect other people & creatures & probably the Time/Space Continuum as well. You're dealing with the Macrocosm, the Great Big All.
I've never been much on praying. If I pray, it's for rain. I need the rain, but my need doesn't circumvent the desert's need. Of course, I know right now I can pray for rain all I want - those prayers aren't going to be answered here until late July, early August, if they're answered at all. But I can still seed the clouds with my desire for rain. Of course, I also have to feel accountable for any place that gets flooded between whenever I started praying for rain & whenever my prayers are answered. A part of me feels guilty for Hurricane Katrina. My continual internal yen for the ocean may have decimated a large portion of the Asian Pacific seacoast. The Gods sent an ocean to the wrong location... I'm not big on snow, & by my disliking snow, I'm probably contributing to global warming. Sometimes, the responsibility for everything that happens on earth can be overwhelming. I know that I'm not the only one responsible - but I partake in that group dynamic. All of us snow-haters are melting the polar ice caps. All of us rain-makers are flooding the Northeastern seaboard... All of us ocean-babies are causing tsunamis. So when I pray, I try to be very specific in my requests: "Please send some rain to Las Vegas, NV. A quarter-to-a-half inch on a day when there is light traffic, preferably a Wednesday or Thursday afternoon". They're never personal, and I don't pray for my families or friends or co-workers. It's too dangerous. I could ruin someone's life just by wishing them well.
Most Pagan deities out there expect things in return for favors. In some cases, it's a living sacrifice. Some Gods like meat, some like honey, some like rum and cigars... Some want to spend a night with you, some want you to bear Their child... Some want incense, some want you to burn little boats on open water, some want great deeds done in Their names & boasted about in mead halls. Mostly, they want our attention. They want some kind of heartfelt display of devotion in return for Their generosity. The Pagan Gods are usually responsive to prayer and sacrifice, but it always seems to me that Their gifts come with big COD charges. There's always a catch, always an angle that you didn't cover in your request. Something always goes the opposite of what you wanted or needed. Nothing is ever straightforward. The Gods' gifts have sharp edges, but if you go against something They tell you to do or not do, you don't get off easy. You can't just say, "Oops, my bad, forgive me?" You can't just chant rosaries or tithe more to the church & be forgiven - no, you have to pay for that transgression, and it might take awhile to regain the loving graces of your particular offended deity - and sometimes nothing you do is good enough. Sometimes, you sacrifice & sacrifice, you offer yourself up time & again and your pleas for help or your offerings of love and devotion and service are ignored & there's not much you can do about it - keep trying or find a different God. Then there's karma to contend with. Sometimes, you don't even have to do anything to gain the attention or wrath of a deity - They just become your special friend. Sometimes, drawing the notice of a God isn't as wondrous as it might seem - They seem to expect more from someone They've chosen to draft into Their service than someone who comes to Them as a supplicant.
I've gotten slight touches of it in southern Baptist churches listening to the choir... gotten glimpses of it in Pentecostal churches when the snakes all sway to one beat, heard a whisper at Midnight Mass... But the one thing that was missing in the various houses of Christian & Catholic worship I've been in was present in my Pagan practices, as few & as far between as they've become. There was a definite feeling of connection. There was something alive, something aware, something that made my hair stand on end & the top of my head explode. It wasn't always pleasant, but it was something so wholly Other that I would never expect communicating with it to be entirely pleasant. It spoke in symbols and riddles and seasons. It spoke in the slanting golden light on the floor in Autumn. It spoke in the hot winds and raging monsoon rains of August. It spoke in the dried leaves in the gutters, it spoke in the bones, deep in the soul, in the blood. Its voice was the drum and the pounding of feet on a hardpacked dirt floor, its voice was the ocean and its eyes were the stars and the Moon and the blue gems of the peacock's tail. The earth was its heart, all the earth, the oceans, the trees, the sprawling cities, the missile silos, the ruins of ancient and new.
But right now, in this time and in this place, it's like I'm looking at it through a very small door, and it's not looking back at me. At least I've been trying to keep the door open, because once it closes, well, I lost my chalk & probably won't be able to draw a new one.
Finally, I have typed long enough that my brain finally shut the Hel up. Bedtime!
Been thinking about prayer & entitlement. Christians seem to have it lucky. When you get right down to it, the Christian/Catholic 'God' doesn't want much from his people. If you follow the Christian Bible (which was written by people), you just have to avoid putting other gods before God, you have to set aside a day of worship, you can't be jealous of your next-door neighbor, you can't kill (unless the church tells you to), can't make graven images... it's very simple rules for everyday life. Not to much to ask in return for an afterlife in paradise. Christians are encouraged to pray, (even though they apparently need a priest to interpret the Bible for them) & for the most part, most Christians I know ask God to bless them, their families & their friends with good luck & health & well-being. A lot of Christians I know pray to God & ask for stuff. They feel that in exchange for following some simple rules (most of them follow said rules loosely, I guess it's all up for interpretation), they are entitled to some sort of earthly return. Health, money, new jobs, children, a Barbie Dream House complete with Ken & a pool-boy. Most Christians I know don't ever ask their God what they could do for Him, only what God can do for them. Must be nice - a religion with little or no personal responsiblity. Hel, in Catholicism, you can do something against everything you're told, go & tell a priest in a little box, chant some prayers on a rosary or do some community service as penance & you've got a clean slate again. I'm not one of these fundamentalist Pagans who feels the need for continual hatred against Catholicism or Christianity, I don't bash Christianity or Catholicism - sometimes I poke fun (and I'm leaving Judaism & Muslim out of this because they've got chores to do. JHVH & Allah are not as relaxed about Their followers as God is) at the followers & their sheepishness, but I don't hate them. The only time I really even get irritated enough to say something derogatory about Catholics or Christians is when they try to convert me or when they knock on the door at 8am.
I do feel slightly resentful, though. How did they get off so light? I mean, yeah, when I was a kid, I was given ample opportunities to become a Christian. I even went to a Billy Graham revival at Dodger Stadium when I was 12 - mainly because at the time I had some serious hots for Jack Palance & at the time, Billy Graham looked a lot like Jack Palance. So it's not like Christians turned me away. I've been to Catholic churches & Protestant churches, I've gone to open meetings with Mormons, been to Quaker & Methodist, Episcopalian & Baptist, been to Latin Spiritualist churches, been to Pentecostal & Lutheran churches... In Protestant churches, the preacher or minister or reverend gets up on a podium & tells everyone to obey the rules or burn in the Christian Hell. Yes, you do have free will, but if you use it to do something against the Big 10, you have to ask for forgiveness or you'll go to Hell. Sometimes they read from the Bible, sometimes they have sermons prepared in advance, little homilies or anecdotes. The collection bowl is passed around, personal prayers might be asked of the entire congregation... In the more charismatic churches, that's when things would really start to get interesting - singing, gettin' the Spirit, the snakes & strychnine come out, people are healed... people roll on the ground & froth at the mouth & speak in tongues. Most church meetings are boring, especially for kids. Sunday school was always a joke, but we usually got to color or do arts & crafts, & there were always pastries or baked goods & coffee & punch after while the grown-ups socialized.
In Catholic churches, it's a little weird because the priest or deacon or bishop would read the same ceremony every time, with a sermon based on the season or a day in the life of Christ or some such. From the Catholic masses I went to, there wasn't much mention of punishment for transgressions, but there was a lot about duty to the community, duty to family, how God & Mary see the worshippers (positive affirmations were big in the 80's) as bright spots of light, like stars or snowflakes or something like that. Then everyone who had confessed would take communion after the weekly miracle of transubstantiation had occurred. Then announcements, personal prayer requests, collection plate passing, wrapping things up basically. Sometimes there would be snacks. The Greek Eastern Orthodox church I went to in Memphis was a riot - everybody would spill outside & eat barbecued goat & dance & ouzo would be passed around. I would have converted solely on the basis of beautiful Greek boys & barbecued goat, but I didn't want to learn Greek at the time. Or try to learn Greek and Latin. (Now, a million years later & many grimoires tossed aside, I should have taken the catechism classes at the very least).
But I always tasted something foul behind the sermons. It seemed like it was all too good to be true. You follow these rules & get a golden key to heaven... you go to church & ask God for all kinds of things, as if He was a djinn instead of a deity. You fucked up, you confessed & paid penance, or you simply asked God or Jesus Christ for forgiveness & it was granted. Maybe because I never joined a church, I missed something there, some initiatory Mystery, some Great Secret only revealed to church members who've been to a year's worth of Sunday services. It's too easy, too simple. It's like a get-rich-quick scheme. Yeah, you pay the churches for membership, keeps the coffee & donuts after the sermon free, keeps the pews waxed. Most social organizations do require membership dues - I pay $40 a month for my Union dues. Where is the catch? Even that whole 'spreading the word' bit seems anticlimatic. Who doesn't love talking about their religion & swaying other people to their point of view? It's like chicken pox or lice - the gift that keeps on giving. Going to church always felt hollow for me. Empty. Church weddings were the worst - especially when you've seen the newly wedded couple flirting with other people (or screwing caterers under the reception hall stage) almost immediately afterwards. I guess I was always just a little too mistrustful of this giving & forgiving God. When people ask me if I believe in 'God', I always know which 'God' they're talking about, and in a way I do believe a 'God' actually exists, because millions of Christians/Catholics/Jews/Muslims have created Him in their images. He's a very pervasive thoughtform & He's invaded every aspect of American life, even our politics, our money, our schools... the harder we try to keep His spiritual realm separated from the secular realm, the more He seeps in. But to me, the Catholic/Christian God is like a far-off distant planet, so far off even the deep-space telescopes can't see Him. So far removed from earthly concerns that He may as well not exist. It's a superstition, a leftover from a quainter time in human history.
The things about Paganism that drew me in were the concepts of personal power and personal responsibility. It got a little corroded by Wicca, but the principles remained even after the magic circles came down. Spellcraft always intrigued me. Aleister Crowley defined magic as causing change to occur in conformity with will. The thought that I could have power to do something, or power over someone, or that I could influence someone or an event far removed from myself... wow. I could speak directly to the Gods - or they could speak through me. I didn't need a priest to intercede or interpret omens for me, I could see the future and speak with the long-dead and the still unborn. Our Gods are alive and in everything, every thing we do there's a God out there that's in charge of it. Karma. That's the big thing right there. If I do something, it's my choice to do so. I have total control over my own actions, and therefore I have total responsibility for my actions. I can't blame anyone else for my decisions and deeds. It's my fault, whether it's a fairly benign action or a malignant one, I own the outcome. Yes, there is some room for chance and fate, and sometimes our actions are guided by other hands, but we have free will for the most part. There's no real Hell - there are Underworlds, Summerlands, Valhallas, some kind of limbo space where you wait for your ride on the Reincarnation Railroad... but no place of eternal reward or eternal punishment, really. The soul is eternal - the afterlife isn't. In Christianity, if you do something against God's will, well, it's pretty much just between you & God. In most Pagan religions, you see the great interconnected web of life. All your choices affect other people & creatures & probably the Time/Space Continuum as well. You're dealing with the Macrocosm, the Great Big All.
I've never been much on praying. If I pray, it's for rain. I need the rain, but my need doesn't circumvent the desert's need. Of course, I know right now I can pray for rain all I want - those prayers aren't going to be answered here until late July, early August, if they're answered at all. But I can still seed the clouds with my desire for rain. Of course, I also have to feel accountable for any place that gets flooded between whenever I started praying for rain & whenever my prayers are answered. A part of me feels guilty for Hurricane Katrina. My continual internal yen for the ocean may have decimated a large portion of the Asian Pacific seacoast. The Gods sent an ocean to the wrong location... I'm not big on snow, & by my disliking snow, I'm probably contributing to global warming. Sometimes, the responsibility for everything that happens on earth can be overwhelming. I know that I'm not the only one responsible - but I partake in that group dynamic. All of us snow-haters are melting the polar ice caps. All of us rain-makers are flooding the Northeastern seaboard... All of us ocean-babies are causing tsunamis. So when I pray, I try to be very specific in my requests: "Please send some rain to Las Vegas, NV. A quarter-to-a-half inch on a day when there is light traffic, preferably a Wednesday or Thursday afternoon". They're never personal, and I don't pray for my families or friends or co-workers. It's too dangerous. I could ruin someone's life just by wishing them well.
Most Pagan deities out there expect things in return for favors. In some cases, it's a living sacrifice. Some Gods like meat, some like honey, some like rum and cigars... Some want to spend a night with you, some want you to bear Their child... Some want incense, some want you to burn little boats on open water, some want great deeds done in Their names & boasted about in mead halls. Mostly, they want our attention. They want some kind of heartfelt display of devotion in return for Their generosity. The Pagan Gods are usually responsive to prayer and sacrifice, but it always seems to me that Their gifts come with big COD charges. There's always a catch, always an angle that you didn't cover in your request. Something always goes the opposite of what you wanted or needed. Nothing is ever straightforward. The Gods' gifts have sharp edges, but if you go against something They tell you to do or not do, you don't get off easy. You can't just say, "Oops, my bad, forgive me?" You can't just chant rosaries or tithe more to the church & be forgiven - no, you have to pay for that transgression, and it might take awhile to regain the loving graces of your particular offended deity - and sometimes nothing you do is good enough. Sometimes, you sacrifice & sacrifice, you offer yourself up time & again and your pleas for help or your offerings of love and devotion and service are ignored & there's not much you can do about it - keep trying or find a different God. Then there's karma to contend with. Sometimes, you don't even have to do anything to gain the attention or wrath of a deity - They just become your special friend. Sometimes, drawing the notice of a God isn't as wondrous as it might seem - They seem to expect more from someone They've chosen to draft into Their service than someone who comes to Them as a supplicant.
I've gotten slight touches of it in southern Baptist churches listening to the choir... gotten glimpses of it in Pentecostal churches when the snakes all sway to one beat, heard a whisper at Midnight Mass... But the one thing that was missing in the various houses of Christian & Catholic worship I've been in was present in my Pagan practices, as few & as far between as they've become. There was a definite feeling of connection. There was something alive, something aware, something that made my hair stand on end & the top of my head explode. It wasn't always pleasant, but it was something so wholly Other that I would never expect communicating with it to be entirely pleasant. It spoke in symbols and riddles and seasons. It spoke in the slanting golden light on the floor in Autumn. It spoke in the hot winds and raging monsoon rains of August. It spoke in the dried leaves in the gutters, it spoke in the bones, deep in the soul, in the blood. Its voice was the drum and the pounding of feet on a hardpacked dirt floor, its voice was the ocean and its eyes were the stars and the Moon and the blue gems of the peacock's tail. The earth was its heart, all the earth, the oceans, the trees, the sprawling cities, the missile silos, the ruins of ancient and new.
But right now, in this time and in this place, it's like I'm looking at it through a very small door, and it's not looking back at me. At least I've been trying to keep the door open, because once it closes, well, I lost my chalk & probably won't be able to draw a new one.
Finally, I have typed long enough that my brain finally shut the Hel up. Bedtime!
