Hello Pagan Forum,
I was once an avid reader and frequent poster here, not long after I finished my first degree.
Like clockwork, I return again being nearly a full year out from finishing a graduate degree.
Raised first an Orthodox and then much less orthodox Jew, the faith and culture of my adopters, I have always approached religion with the heart of an atheist and spirituality with the mind of a scholar.
As a lifelong seeker, I’ve mostly been taken with atheistic Satanism and Buddhism.
I’ve often been called a witch, though I never claimed anything of the sort. As I have learned more about my natural mother, I’ve sometimes wondered whether there were something to the indictment, but as a lover of LaVey, I typically choose to chalk it up to both me and my mother having been thrust into similar circumstances, the consequence of which was an intuitive understanding of the Lesser Magic of Satanic witches.
I am now staring down my wedding—this Halloween. My partner is no atheist nor religious whatsoever. He often says things that would make me think he were a devout Satanist, but I don’t say so because he was raised in a rigidly Southern Baptist nook of Appalachia, where I have often been asked what text Jews follow (just as an example of the willful, clannish ignorance and insularity they harbor).
But something strange has been happening since we first got together, and now that I have the luxury of time to think and read without the oppressive demands of rigorous syllabi, I’ve wanted to come back here to read and share.
There is a trend in our relationship that became impossible to ignore after our first year together. Even then, it started as a joke. When we first became friends, I told him he was the most wanton hedonist I’d ever met, a word he’d never heard. I embraced his spirit of hedonism. The shared love we have of entheogens was integral to bringing us together, and our practice of psychonautics has been one of the most important pastimes between us.
But there was and is a predictable pattern in our relationship that is as reliable as a clock. Every time we push the boundaries of hedonistic experience, especially when we involve entheogens, the most profound good fortune follows within 2-5 days. Neither of us are very superstitious, but after observing this trend for a full year and never seeing it break once, we began to joke that we had caught the attention and garnered the affection of some spirit or deity.
It’s been three years now, and the pattern remains unbroken. We push the limits of sensual experience; an unlikely windfall follows.
Now I’m interested in doing just a little bit more to connect, I guess. I never meant to be a believer in any god but myself, but I find myself very much believing in an interceder. I have often wondered if Bacchus might be our benefactor, but I don’t feel much connection there. Really, I don’t know that it matters too much who I call this apparent force or even if it matters to personify it at all. We nicknamed it our lesser hedonist deity. But maybe it’s Voluptas herself?
I think I probably sound mad, but it feels as though I have been a seeker forever, and instead of finding my spirituality, it found me.
Enough blabbering. Thank you for keeping this community going.
I was once an avid reader and frequent poster here, not long after I finished my first degree.
Like clockwork, I return again being nearly a full year out from finishing a graduate degree.
Raised first an Orthodox and then much less orthodox Jew, the faith and culture of my adopters, I have always approached religion with the heart of an atheist and spirituality with the mind of a scholar.
As a lifelong seeker, I’ve mostly been taken with atheistic Satanism and Buddhism.
I’ve often been called a witch, though I never claimed anything of the sort. As I have learned more about my natural mother, I’ve sometimes wondered whether there were something to the indictment, but as a lover of LaVey, I typically choose to chalk it up to both me and my mother having been thrust into similar circumstances, the consequence of which was an intuitive understanding of the Lesser Magic of Satanic witches.
I am now staring down my wedding—this Halloween. My partner is no atheist nor religious whatsoever. He often says things that would make me think he were a devout Satanist, but I don’t say so because he was raised in a rigidly Southern Baptist nook of Appalachia, where I have often been asked what text Jews follow (just as an example of the willful, clannish ignorance and insularity they harbor).
But something strange has been happening since we first got together, and now that I have the luxury of time to think and read without the oppressive demands of rigorous syllabi, I’ve wanted to come back here to read and share.
There is a trend in our relationship that became impossible to ignore after our first year together. Even then, it started as a joke. When we first became friends, I told him he was the most wanton hedonist I’d ever met, a word he’d never heard. I embraced his spirit of hedonism. The shared love we have of entheogens was integral to bringing us together, and our practice of psychonautics has been one of the most important pastimes between us.
But there was and is a predictable pattern in our relationship that is as reliable as a clock. Every time we push the boundaries of hedonistic experience, especially when we involve entheogens, the most profound good fortune follows within 2-5 days. Neither of us are very superstitious, but after observing this trend for a full year and never seeing it break once, we began to joke that we had caught the attention and garnered the affection of some spirit or deity.
It’s been three years now, and the pattern remains unbroken. We push the limits of sensual experience; an unlikely windfall follows.
Now I’m interested in doing just a little bit more to connect, I guess. I never meant to be a believer in any god but myself, but I find myself very much believing in an interceder. I have often wondered if Bacchus might be our benefactor, but I don’t feel much connection there. Really, I don’t know that it matters too much who I call this apparent force or even if it matters to personify it at all. We nicknamed it our lesser hedonist deity. But maybe it’s Voluptas herself?
I think I probably sound mad, but it feels as though I have been a seeker forever, and instead of finding my spirituality, it found me.
Enough blabbering. Thank you for keeping this community going.
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