Steadfast, a Poem

For dear life do I clutch the pearls of my heart

For those fates woven are the heart of my work

Steadfastly I hold my bonds

Partaking of the laughter, love, and pleasure that they bear fruit is the ultimate devotion to Aphrodite

A fervent lover I shall strive to be

Compassionate, attentive, and ever curious

Embodying the values of my beloved Goddess

Emboldening the ones I love

and Employing my empathy at all times

Gods Can Care, A Thanksgiving Reflection

One of the largest growing pains I had coming to polytheism was the idea that- as a favorite author mine has said- ‘the divine don’t care about your personal progress’. To an extent I do believe that to be true. Pan might enjoy your company, what you do for conservation, and your dedication; but he’s not your life coach. Many gods often do have higher priorities extending beyond one of your mortal incarnations. But that isn’t to say they’re always disinterested.  I almost feel like some people’s hard-line stance on this idea might come from an aversion to having your religion resemble a ‘Footprints’ poster. I’ll admit it, sometimes I’ve avoided certain spiritual ideas because they hit a little too close to my trauma.  But I finally got it through my skull- The idea that a divine being cares is not a Christian invention! It depends on the god, it depends on the nature of your relationship with them, when you met them and for what purpose- Despite their grander priorities, they can genuinely be invested in you.  I will, of course, be using Aphrodite as an example (a surprise I’m sure). As far back as the earliest myths, she’s seemingly always had an eye on the mortal world. Whether it meant bringing her human OTPs together, fucking a human man in broad daylight, presiding over the wedding of a statue she gave life to, showing up on a battlefield- She was a worldly goddess deeply embroiled in mortal affairs. I’d say she had many little human pet projects she tended to with interest. Then I have all the ways she’s moved in my life. She’s been a guiding hand in my art. She’s brought me and many others together. She’s been a tireless advocate for my self esteem. She’s told me time and time again to be confident, to be the flirty little bitch I’ve always wanted to be but too anxious for. Last week she told me I should never be afraid to try and act sexy- because there’s plenty of people that think I’m sexy already, so of course they’ll just find me more sexy if I act it! I struggled to rationalize these experiences of her with the philosophy that gods don’t care about your personal growth, but on further reflection it’s clear to me she wants me to be the best possible version of myself. And that shouldn’t be hard to believe- She is the goddess of love, beauty, lust, and self-care. Since I strive to be her priestess, it only makes sense she’d want me confident in myself. If I’m to be her hands on this earth, she’ll want to train me well! So today, this Thanksgiving, if you struggle with that like I did... Think about your relationship. Think about the reciprocity you have with your heavenly connections. And if they seem to favor you, take that with pride. Don’t be afraid to say they love you- especially if you love them. And as always, show them your gratitude for all they embody and all they do.  Give thanks, and may love find you <3

An Open Letter to Aphrodite

Glorious golden Aphrodite, my sacred love,

As I think of you- of our time together, of your many myths and legends, of the beautiful art created in your image- my mind races with adoration and devotion. But when I sit to write those musings, no words feel adequate. No single word, sentence, paragraph, or paper could ever hope to convey the joy you bring to my life; in fact I suspect now that no earthly expression could ever hope to illustrate the exuberance in my heart.

It's beautiful to have a connection that intricate, a tie between mortal and goddess that defies definition and can only exist experientially between the two of us. And the wonder of it all will never be lost to me. No, I will never get over the fact that the gold-crowned goddess of love, pleasure, and beauty exists. I will never shake the high of realizing that there are higher powers- and that one of them is the embodiment of all I cherish in life.

When I think of my sexuality I no longer feel shame. I do not chastise my own feelings- Feelings given by nature, inextricably woven into our DNA. I don't repent for living a life I love, I merely have to smile in the knowledge that you're with me in that moment. 

I dedicate my life to you not only to be your hands on this earth, but to share all life's joy with you. Verily, when I heard you were the 'laughter loving' goddess I knew I found my place.

Let's laugh together then, Aphrodite. Let's laugh in the good times, moan in the better, and cry together in the worst. Let's live to taste the world, savor every beautiful moment, and always discover new delights.

I love you, Aphrodite. In a way you understand more than I could ever describe. I love you, and I can't wait to spend another lifetime at your side.

Religious Trauma and the Fundamentalist Doomsday Cult

Content Warning: Pretty heavy discussion of doomsday fundamentalism and emotional abuse I’ve tried writing three different topics this morning, and none of them were working out. I wanted to touch on some aspect of Christianity that I believe is failing our generation, but my brain just couldn’t make the words. In all my drafts, though, I noticed a theme. And if I’ve been subconsciously using that theme this whole time, maybe it’s what my brain wants to write about.  There are so many reasons I believe the modern church is struggling (and rightfully so), but I suppose the biggest, most obvious, one is simply that those of us who grew up in fundamentalism have been pushed away.  I grew up in a small pentacostal church (yes, the snake handling kind). Looking at it now, it feels like a doomsday cult.  Countless sermons about the coming of Christ, media hype surrounding blood moons suggesting that the world was ending soon, watch parties for Left Behind, year-long studies of Revelations, and this one man who every single sunday was possessed by the Holy Ghost to warn us: “Be ready, be ready, be ready”. To this day, even though I don’t believe in Christianity, whenever I hear a loud sudden noise my entire body tenses in fear that it’s the trumpet of the seventh angel about to show up and prove everything I believe is wrong. Of course I don’t think that will happen. If I thought it was a genuine possibility that Jesus Christ could appear at any moment and throw my soul to hell, I probably wouldn’t have dedicated my soul to Aphrodite. But that is what effective brainwashing does. That is what true emotional abuse does, it sinks it’s claws into you so deep that your mind is changed forever from it. And, also characteristic to abuse, if I said this to any of the people responsible for it I would be gaslit.  “You’re just feeling convicted.” This is the most insidious line in Christianity. My rational brain knows, of course, that me hearing bullshit I hate and wanting to turn it off is NOT in fact my soul feeling convicted- it simply means I am hearing bullshit I hate and I’d rather not spend my time thinking about it! But in the heat of the moment, when you’re face to face with your own mother, your emotional response is immediately guilty.  I know it’s wrong, I know it’s not true, I KNOW it’s not right: But that’s abuse. It hijacks your mind, your normal through processes, and all you can feel is conditioned sympathy for the abuser.  But of course it goes deeper than that. I’m still scarred in so many other ways.  I grew up constantly being told there was no future. To this day whenever I muse about ‘oh I wonder what this place’ll look like in ten years’ around my parents I’m met  with “the world probably wont be here by next year”. Without fail. Every time. I have to actively convince them to just imagine a hypothetical scenario where the apocalypse doesn’t come tomorrow just to talk about something as mundane as “hey do you think this mall is still gonna be around?”

I thought that I would never get to discover true love, I would never get to have my first kiss, I would never be married, I would never get to be a mother, I would never even get to drive a car. Hell, I was ten years old- That mindset hit everything! I would pray to Jesus asking him to not come back until after Pokemon Black and White came out. I laid awake at night thinking, ‘oh man I’ll never get to see a Star Wars Episode 7″. I couldn’t bring myself to watch trailers for upcoming things because it’d just make me sad I probably wouldn’t get to experience them! (Now I wonder if that’s the underlying reason I don’t watch game trailers outside of E3 and actively try not to get hyped for anything).  I’ve also had Generalized Anxiety Disorder since I was 10. Yeah, that didn’t fucking help.  In many Christian circles, they just assume the end of all things is imminent. And when that is the most popular religion on the planet... Yeah! That’s how you get things like manmade climate change! That’s how you have those in power justify exploitation and colonization! Towards the end of my mandatory church services, the pastor could tell he was losing me. To keep my attention, he offered me a regular spot to write in the church newsletter. The very first thing I wrote was titled “DOOMSDAY”, an article wherein I simply argued, “Yes, Christ is coming. But it’s awful for our mental health and makes our life decisions shortsighted if we just assume there is no tomorrow.” Sorry, did I say that was ‘the first thing’ I wrote? That language was a bit misleading, it was also the last thing. They declined to publish it, told me to forget about the offer, and never went to me for anything ever again.  So if I wanted to profile a reason why Christianity is failing, I guess I ended up doing that. When you create an environment like that, when you operate on the basis that the world is ending next tuesday (no matter how many times tuesday comes), when you actively choose to refuse anything that even slightly challenges your world view- Yeah, that’s when your religion fails.

That’s how your weekly church article writer grows up and writes to extol the virtue of the Gods you tried to bury. 

An Introduction; My Way to Aphrodite

Hellloooo friends-to-be! I’m Gwen, I use she/her pronouns, and I’m firmly devoted to the goddess of love, beauty, and pleasure: Aphrodite! I was struck with inspiration to start my own silly little pagan blog after reading so many others, and I don’t know where else to start then the very beginning! I’d like to share how I made my way to her, because it’s such a roundabout path and I love recounting it ;3; So, without further ado...

I grew up in a very, very, fundamentalist Christian home- like so many unfortunate witches, pagans, and women of faith today. In all, I’d say my experiences were pretty typical. But there are a few main takeaways from that period. I was hit and forcefully restrained if I refused to go to church, up until I was 18. For most of my childhood, I was going to church 2-3 times a week in some pentacostal shithole. But around age 13, I started forming opinions and beliefs that went against everything I was being told.  I had reached the point, in my studies of the bible, that I decided that even if the Christian god was real he wasn’t worthy of my worship. I was also a student of history; specializing in art history. Appreciating art history requires rich cultural context, and so from a young age I was learning about the beliefs of our ancestors. I’d always find myself wondering- “Does anyone still worship these people? There’s no way all the tradition can actually just be gone, right?”. Sometimes I’d think “These pantheons are so much more interesting and rich then what we have now, why can’t we have this!”  Given my living situation, I hadn’t known anything about paganism or wicca. The closest I ever got was a PowerPoint presentation given by a girl I crushed on in middle school, which (of course) was just a very cursory look and only touched on the worship of the Mother Moon and Father Sun. And so, until my adulthood, I just assumed that was it! I was casually interested in wicca, if for no other reason than it was something different from what I grew up in, but I never looked into it because I rationalized that even if I did believe in it I couldn’t act on it under my parents’ roof.  We finally come to 2022. This is kind of embarrassing to say, but when I started playing Final Fantasy XIV this year and learning about the ways Primals existed, I started getting really introspective on the nights I laid in bed sleepless. I’ve always kind of believed in some supernatural force that Humans can manifest. There are plenty of hucksters out there, but there are genuinely some examples of miracle healing that science cannot adequately explain. So I was thinking- If enough people believe in something, and it enters the collective unconsciousness, and people could reflect on that concept and gain insight from it... Was it functionally the same as a god? I was having all kinds of internal dialogue about this, and in the middle of it came my birthday.  For my birthday, I got a nice chunk of change. I decided I’d treat myself to a visit to my favorite retro game store, since I hadn’t been able to do that in months. I started thinking about what I’d wanna be on the lookout for, and I made an offhanded joke to my friends: “If they have a copy of the Thousand Year Door, I will start believing in a higher power.” That was just a joke, of course! But one made in a specific context: I’ve always wanted to play that game but I don’t like emulating, and in all my years of game collecting I had never seen a copy of it in person! I was really in the mood to play it, but I was resigned to the fact I’d probably never see it.  The next day came... And there it was. A mint condition, complete-in-box, copy of Paper Mario the Thousand Year Door priced exactly within my price range. It wasn’t a bad deal in general, either! It was only a couple dollars more than the game sells for online loose.  I grabbed it as quick as I could, and I shared a picture of it with my friends saying; “This is a huge moment for me, but I’m deeply concerned by the implications.”  I was afraid I’d end up having to reconcile with the Christian god, shave away important parts of myself to fit into the gates of Heaven.  I spent the next two weeks shoving that down and distracting myself with the loveliness that is TTYD. I loved it, and was excited to play more Paper Mario in the future after I finished it!  Well soon my parents went out of town, and on a whim I decided to use the rest of my money to look at spiritual books at Half Price Books just out of curiosity. I was going in pretty agnostic- Whatever caught my eye I’d grab. Whether it was wicca, Buddhism, new age- The sky was the limit. I ended up settling on a $3 book- Morgan Le Fay’s Book of Spells and Wiccan Rites. I only went in there to grab a book, but I decided I’d check out the video game section on my way out because why not.  And what did I see? Super Paper Mario.  As silly as it sounds- That convinced me I was onto something. It became undeniable in my mind that forces beyond my reckoning were pulling strings to nudge me towards them.  So I got home and I started reading. And I was dumbfounded by what I read in the introduction. It was everything I had been thinking about. All the things I’d imagined could be true about spirituality, completely independently, and thought it was just me. I thought I must have been the only person in the world to think of these things- But there they were in ink. All the conclusions and observations I made in my secular studies of history and culture were all there. I was learning a lot even if it was just a book of rituals I had never heard of before. But what really struck me was seeing all the different gods represented in it! Of course Mother Moon and Father Sun were there, but there was also Isis, Athena, Hecate- So many!  Of course in my limited understanding, I assumed whatever I saw there was just the accepted pantheon of wicca. Having grown up in a fundie conservative household, my brain assumes there’s rigid rules on everything. But I happened on one prayer that indicated you could add the name of any favored god or goddess.  It clicked.  I realized, right there, that I could worship Aphrodite. That was my first thought when I finally realized the freedom of pagan belief systems. I greatly value love, compassion, and empathy and I am vehemently sex positive. For a while I jokingly called myself a succubuskin because I wanted to be the kind of woman that could disarm people with charms and show them the depths of pleasure they’ve wrongfully denied themselves. I always wistfully wished there was a a real live goddess and belief system for that. But I just... Didn’t realize it was there all along! Under my nose, all I had to do was just research a little bit. I was ecstatic. I wasn’t a full-blown believer yet, I was still agnostic because I hadn’t had any spiritual experience. I was just doing my research- but I really, really, really, hoped Aphrodite would prove real. I did some research online for modern Aphrodite worship, and I found a little invocation you could do as an introduction.  I felt like it might’ve been sacrilegious to just ring a goddess’s doorbell- But it seemed the most direct way to prove if this was real or not.  And she answered.  I felt her, she was there with me. It was beautiful and existential and humbling all at once and the weight of the implications loomed over me. We talked, and she made it clear she stood for everything I had wished for. The gods are not omniscient, but I’ve practiced meditation and trance work secularly all my life- I truly believe my heart’s desires must have reached her on the astral plane and she carefully arranged circumstances for that fateful meeting.  From there it was a long road of absorbing as much information as I could about paganism (not just wicca, I’m a solo eclecticist) and Aphrodite. I honed my meditative skills, talked to her every day, and learned all I could about her myths across every culture.  It’s already been a long story, so I’ll keep that bit short. But ever since I’ve started my walk with Aprhodite, I’ve been ecstatic and hopeful. I’m looking forward to the future like I never had before. Our relationship is so close in just a few months, and I’ve even chewed her ear on that and I truly feel like this isn’t my first rodeo with her. My friends have always described me as a bit of an old soul, and I truly believe my aptitude for communing with her and navigating the internal world is a result of lifetimes of work and many habits I coincidentally formed growing up. I get this overwhelming sense that I’ve been readying myself for this path all my life without even knowing it. Meditation is my strong suit, and I truly mean that I’ve been practicing with modes of trance for over a decade. Currently I have a set of multisensory triggers that I’m training into myself and it’s been so so SO rewarding. I do a small rite every friday, anointing myself with rose oil, and have done a few larger rituals in the seclusion of my parent’s rural backyard. I keep a little incognito altar for Aprhodite, and I meditate every single day. I don’t always invoke her, but it’s very often I do and some times she’s even showed up of her own accord.  I’ve written a bunch of poetry I’d love to share over the coming days as well. She’s been an amazing source of inspiration, and I’ve been told by many others they can feel her presence in my spiritual work which is just. So amazing to me.  I would, one day, love to be her priestess. And with my knack for meditation, I’ve fantasized about the possibility of me even being an oracle one day ;3; I, of course, also honor the rest of the hellenic pantheon and just recently made an arrangement with Apollo! But, my heart was clearly always made to be chiefly hers <3 I’d like to leave this little introduction with a drawing I did of my little meditative basecamp. I use visualization as my main tool, and even though I’ve never been a landscape artist I was stricken with inspiration to sketch this doodle of my basecamp the very same night I discovered it. And somehow... It came out alright! This is the beach-side altar I visit daily in meditation, and from there I’ve done so many wonderful things. (Fun fact, the sand castle was something I randomly decided to build and it’s been a tradition for me to try and maintain it. Some times I have to start from scratch, of course, but I know she appreciates the effort I put in to something even so frivolous in her honor ^^) Be blessed everyone, and bless each other! <3