Q: Do I believe in demons?
A: Absolutely. Addiction is real. Poverty is real. Hunger is real.
The Roman Catholic Church maintains some of the highest standards of education for its clergy. You do not simply respond to an advertisement in the back of a magazine. To become a Roman Catholic priest, you need a degree from an accreted university. That degree will include education in religion. It will include an education in the sciences, including psychology. So why do Roman Catholic priests continue tp perform the sacrament of exorcism?
Because like addiction, poverty, and hunger: mental illness is a demon. This is one of the reasons I publicly denounced the word Wicca to reference my spiritual beliefs. I suffered a moderate traumatic brain injury. Asa result of therapy to regain an understanding of language and affect, I learned to observe affect and language to determine if the speech was metaphoric or literal. My eyes became wide open. When someone says their guru walks on water, they typically mean it as a metaphor. Folk do not tend to believe there guru can literally walk on water. When my shit doesn’t stink, I assure you it still stinks. It just means I nailed a topic well. But my eyes had not opened to metaphoric speech. My eyes opened to the lack of metaphoric speech. I realized people sometimes mean shit doesn’t stink and their guru really does walk on water.
I developed a tremendous distaste for the word Wicca. Not a distaste for the totality of Wiccan views or practices. But for the abundance of psychoses that often followed the sentence: ‘I am Wiccan’. I also became wildly adverse to the enabling of mental illness in general. If you literally see or hear a god or goddess, you should first visit a psychologist rather than your new age guru or pagan book store.
The first thing I realized about Wiccans and the larger pagan community was that it condoned. enabled and empowered the mental illness called pedophilia. Note that I am not saying Wiccans or the larger pagan community are all pedophiles. Like those Roman Catholic priests, Wicca does have its fair share of child rapists. At the time, the news was filled with children claiming they were raped by their priest and / or priestess in some form of ritual claimed to be Wiccan. Of course it happened. The Church and School of Wiccawas teaching that fathers should rape their daughters with dildos at about the time of puberty. The Church and School of Wicca even provided a chart of dildos that ascended in size as the child approached initiation into Wicca when she would be raped using a penis.
Boys were also subjected to rape at their initiation. However, they were not subject to the vaginal stretching exorcises from their fathers because boys have no vagina. Instead, before boys were raped into Wicca, the Church and School of Wicca instructed that mothers should surgically modify the boy’s penis before his rape.
However, these vile teachings of child rape in the name of Wicca were not my main objection. Mental illness is common as is this flavor of mental illness. Earlier I pointed to the Roman Catholic priests. All large groups contain the mentally ill. Few groups other than the Man Boy Love Association openly support the raping of children. Wiccans and the larger pagan community certainly did.
The founders of the Church and School of Wicca were invited to so called ‘Pagan Pride’ festivals where they sold their Good Witch’s Bible containing that filth. Gavin and Yvonne Frost were invited to do the same at one of the largest pagan festivals of the time: Starwood. Even today you can witness their praise and condemnation in Amazon reviews of the Good Witch’s Bible.
Even folks in the community who prefaced that raping children was not their preface argued the Frosts had a right to suggest it. I agree, freedom of speech is an important feature of my nation’s constitution. Ah but my condemnation of raping children into Wicca was condemned. Why would I speak out against raping children? Because despire my brain injury, I am not so pen minded that my brain fell out and went splat on the ground. One should not enable mental illness or our many other demons. So I withdrew from the nut cases.
More recent life events have caused my creation of an empowerment tool for both disabled veteran and disabled non veterans. Currently it is a for profit business but I am looking into becoming a not for profit. I call it the Sexy Vikings and structured it loosely on the Heathen religion of the pre-Christian Viking archetypes. It is not a religion, it is a business with a message.
Never quit.
Never surrender.
Retreat only to flank
Our sexy Vikings are disabled veterans. These are our crafts folk. The message being they still have value. In our society, a person’s value is often judged by the ability to earn. The wonderful side effect is many have challenges with substance abuse as a result of not feeling worthy for this world. Art therapy has been proven to aid substance abuse and suicidal thoughts by restoring ones sense of value.
That brings us to our sales folk. We call them our Valkyrie as they are the ones who carry us off the battle field and loft us to Valhalla. See what I did there with metaphor? In a traditional Viking song, our mother tells us we will hew (slay) many foemen on our voyage to the haven. Poverty, substance abuse, poverty and other demons are our metaphoric foemen. Our crafts are our axes. So as I construct our metaphore, I visited modern day Viking groups and forums. There I discovered other modern myths, gained input, and met friends.
In one Facebook group named Vikings and Shield Maidens, I learned something else and met new foes. What I learned is that just like the Wiccans and pagans, modern day heathens and Vikings continue to enable and empower mental illness. Minds remain so open, that brains continue to fall out ang go splat. Please understand I have met some very sane folk there. But like the Wiccans and pagans, I have observed many an enabler. Folk who do not speak out against mental illness.
A subgroup within that group has emerged. It could be a single person with many voices in his, her or it’s brain. I do not know the correct pronoun because the members seem to change gender within each identity. The group calls its self the Ryttere and claims to be heathen, but their imagery is the Christian lore of the four horsemen of the apocalypses, only with guns. One would think heathens would use images of Ragnarok.
Additionally, they call themselves the Secret Kings and claim they are legion. As they are secret, i cannot tell how many they are. I suspect it is a handful of people with a legion of nicknames and instant profiles. Their names include names like (My Cunt), Skankhunt (Skank Cunt or Skank Hunter) and other childish names that Bart Simpson might use when he pranks Moes Bar, so at first I thought it was a prank. But then ThunderDme (Thunder Dump) stepped in. The way he talks, I believe there is actual at hand. I think he, she, they, them or it actually believes the secret kings, mystic gate keepers, Ryttere exist as something more than a role playing game. If so, I think it is called it is called psychosis.
Any community of any type is only community if it cares for its members. Mental illness is a horrific thing. Asa member of any community, it is our duty to not only try to help the ill but prevent the spread of disease. In our online communities, saying no that is not real to a psychotic is essential. The internet and role playing is a great place to take a vacation from reality. Choosing to stay in that retreat becomes psychosis.
If they believe this is literal reality rather than metaphor, you are psychotic.