This Is The First Real Installment Of My Long Quest To Combat The Ancient Aliens On All Fronts, As Well

This is the first real installment of my long quest to combat the ancient aliens on all fronts, as well as give exposure to a pretty obscure topic: Mesopotamian Polytheism. We're here, we're pagan, and I'm here to explain it.

Love is always a very awkward conversation. I've had a lot of talks about it with various people, not just concerning my own relationships. I knew a girl with nine siblings in middle school, even more worryingly thin than I was, who picked up the slack where her mom couldn't. It's been an ongoing project over the course of several years between my dad and I to try to define love in a clear, logical way. I have a friend who dated a suicidal boy because she didn't want him to kill himself, and it was one of the unhealthiest relationships I've ever seen, second only to perhaps the story of a man who loved his son and tried to beat the sociopathy out of him. I've had happy accidents, like living for a lonely four months in Spain and getting a housemate who was absolutely torn up about his sexuality, and telling him about my own experiences. I can't say I've gone through the same sort of stress as other LGBT people, but. Comparing pain is sort of pointless to begin with. It was enough that I understood, cared, and did my best to help when I had the chance. My relationship with my mother is complicated, in that she loves me with a fiery passion but expresses it through control. She feels responsible for my actions in a way that... doesn't function well. There is no line between personal and professional action, and a lot of times I feel more like her psychiatric patient without the benefit of a professional distance. She resents me, is confused by my actions, and frustrated. She loves me and only wants me to be my best, so by her logic I should just do everything she says, but it really isn't that simple. I'm 21 years old with my own life, and I'm afraid of her calling the police on me or banging unexpectedly on my door. I am comfortable with who I am. LGBT in a three year strong relationship, pagan and more certain of it than I ever was just shadowing my mother at church, fairly decent looking aside from the scars and split ends, capable of quite a few basic things and able to learn anything I need to. My anxiety stems from how other people respond to me, and my history. That's hardly unique, more a simple fact. I started this post off my saying that love is complicated, and I meant it. I've been listening to a lot of documentaries today, reading about gay history. I ran into a particularly misogynistic story that made me physically ill in a way that stories usually never do, and it made me think. It made me think about my mother, who's fierce and professional and feminist, but who admitted to me once that if I ever turned out lesbian she would outright sob over having failed in her duty to save my soul. It made me think about my dad, who's definitely not sure what to make of my sexuality (I came out to him) but doesn't care about making it his business either so long as I'm careful and safe. Acceptance from someone who's just starting to untangle his culturally trained misogyny, and isn't that funny? People are complicated. Just take a brief glance in a neurology textbook, or a psychology textbook. The ways we learn by building associations in particular fascinates me. It explains a lot, to me. Love is complicated. The Greeks had multiple words for it, Eros and Agape and Philia and Storge. We have multiple ways of referring to it in English, too. Roughly 220,000 words are in the Oxford dictionary, but I still haven't found a good way to describe how I feel when I see other people trying their hardest out of good intentions and having it go terribly, awfully wrong, without any possibility of understanding. I don't understand everything. I definitely don't claim to. But it's a gift that I understand what little I do, and I'll keep trying to understand what I do not. I hope other people will do the same. And I hope that little by little, some of the solipsism will be filed away from the world. Not everyone will accept everything. Not everyone is willing to be conscious of the ways their actions affect others. Maybe I'm a naïve idiot venting my rare moment of optimism. I didn't really have a plan when I started writing this, you know? I just have this aching fire in my chest. For myself, for the people I've met, for every time I've seen one person blank faced and going through what amounts to a "Windows.exe has stopped working" every time their locked-in worldview is faced with strange and alien data. It's definitely not going to change anytime soon. But hey. At least the government will let me get gay married. That's more than I expected, I'm kind of curious to see what will come next. Which will be put a stop to first, gay people and non-whites getting lynched in the next county over, or pagan merchants being run out of town? Does anybody actually listen to questions like that, or just nod and smile as they recycle their plastics and move on?

Homelessness and Polytheism

So, as of today I'm living out of hotels and my car. I'm still out a job. My altar setup is in storage, I have no home to sprinkle with water and fill with the scent of cedar. No stove to cook on, no fridge, my couch is in storage, my BOOK COLLECTION. It's.... I should be panicking more than I am. I don't know why I'm not. Part of the worst of it, for me, is the lack of sacred space. I don't have a home to connect my gods to. I'd see Nuska in the glow of my bedside lamp, Gibil in my oven that doubled as a kiln. I would greet Nanna when I saw him as I drove into the parking lot, and the nearby park had a stream where I'd done rites for Dumuzid and Geshtinanna. Gula had a votive statue on my altar, and I always had some sort of offering laid out for my personal gods. I had Nisaba's written cuneiform name (since she is the written word) in the most important place in my living room. But it's not like I'm going to roll over and quit. These are my gods. I am their servant. Even when I'm an uprooted disaster of a human being with little to offer, I can still offer a cup of water and a few words of heartfelt praise. This new chapter is going to be tough. I'm going to meet it with everything I've got, and I pray that my gods see and approve of my efforts. I have promises to keep, and I'll meet my potential even if I have to claw my way up. My gods, my goddesses, I think I relate more to Enheduanna now than I ever have. If all I have to offer is a cup of water and my own words, then that's what I'll do.

Dragon merch, hand-bound books/homemade ink/homemade quills, Ferraro Rocher. I will also accept soft and fluffy items, and any food or drink with ginger or lots of spice as a major ingredient.

If You Were A Deity

What would you want people to give you as offerings?

On Worshipping Gods People Believe Are Dead

It’s winter, which means it is negative seventeen degrees outside, which means I’m on the rooftop burning incense again, prayer keeping my lips from freezing off. I hear Her tell me to go back inside before the cold makes me die up there, but I tell Her that She is fire enough- the sketch of a lion on a scrap of paper in front of me, the epithets scrawled in blue ink on my forearm where my long sleeves can hide them. Accidentally saying oh gods in class and pretending I just really love Rick Riordan. She finds me in my dreams and tells me She will be here when it is safe for me to worship Her but I shrug Her worries off, I am Her lion cub, I am young and still soft but I was built to survive. Remind Her the Gods- not just my Gods but the rest as well- are always calling out. This is resurrection by worship and my mother’s church does not feel holy. I call myself devotee, I call Her patron. Somewhere, a girl is learning to put claws on, the burden of life as a battle. Somewhere, Sekhmet is teaching them how to properly slash and stab, how to win a fight, and how to forget. Somewhere, a girl is learning how to love enough to hold her family together. Somewhere, Hethert is teaching her that it isn’t her job to keep wood from splintering. Somewhere, Serket is teaching her to be the stress on the beam if she has to be. To survive. Somewhere, Bast is teaching a woman how to love her strange, wonderful daughter. Right here, I light the candles with a lighter I stole from my father’s desk. I use my body to shelter the flame from the wind.

Somebody once told me

That a haiku is not real poetry.

I felt a coil of scales unfurl in my stomach,

fangs unlatch from my throat

As blood pooled on my tongue

And claws itched in frail human hands.

My laughter Is the three-page magnum opus

Full of brief ink-stained kisses

And a twelve-point Times New Roman coup.

I do declare.

Signed-

One blue blooded pen

Gushing visceral spurts of

Silver-tongued delight.