Hello all, I was Muslim for ~17 years, then Eclectic Pagan / Deist / Agnostic ~2-4 years and now I would say that I am some mix of Chaos Magick and Abrahamism and have been for a little longer than that, roughly.
I have definitely achieved uhh…things. Most notably and easily explainably astral projection, relationship with egregore(s) (entities) and things that I can only call “manifestation.”
In some ways it feels like I have FUCKED myself up in some ways. But in others ways it feels like I have “the sauce” which helps me in really cool and interesting ways.
I have always viewed–I don’t even know what umbrella to call it, spirituality?–this sort of stuff as one of the main most underutilized playgrounds for the communist pursuit circa 2022. I see untapped potential but I also have had…shall we say bad experiences that I wonder if are rendered onto me by alphabet agencies or more conspiratorial sounding, shall we say instruments of evil or something less dramatic idk.
What is your experience? How much does this sort of this overlap with politics for you, and if so, in what ways, and if not, how so?
I am a pagan, my experience has been pleasant, I guess… I follow my own path which is a bit Arabian reconstructionist and a bit Hellenist and Kemetist. The values, world view, myths, and community is what keeps me identifying as a pagan. Even if my belief is somewhere between nontheistic and polytheistic. Either gods exist, or don’t, but there can never be just one god.
We have a community of pagan Arabs on Discord, as well as those interested in Arabian paganism.
Very interesting! I’m not very familiar with much of these but it’s always fun to learn! I’m not on Discord atm but I’ll have to check it out if I am one day!
I could rationalize monotheism but only if we are talking about an entity that is essentially multiple entities in practice, such as perhaps an idea that there is one single entity that may encompass the omniverse but who is split into separate parts to create the reality we are experiencing. Like maybe if you melted us all together we would create one sum that could be called a single god of everything. But in the day-to-day, there seems to be so many competing interests that regardless of “the ultimate truth” it’s IMO easier to understand it from the polytheistic framework.
I find polytheism far more intuitive. It is the reason why polytheism always popped back up, and why monotheism always had to be enforced. The whole reason of the Wahhabi movement in Arabia was to restore monotheism after the return to polytheism in Arabia.
For me I was raised Southern (USA) Baptist and I moved onto witchcraft as well. But the more I studied communism, marxism-leninism specifically, the more it seemed that Communism replaced my previous desires for a religion to fill up the ideological void I had prior. For witchcraft, ideologically it was very nature oriented but it lacked what I personally needed in my own life, and it didn’t sit right because of being raised Southern Baptist. As a white person it’s pretty easy to get into dicey territory with witchcraft due to cultural appropriation and the misrepresentation of cultures. I moved away from it for that reason as well, I didn’t want to offend anyone or misrepresent their culture. And it was no way in hell I was ever returning to Southern Baptism, so I go by the Communist philosophy. I’m agnostic now, mainly because I don’t care if God(s) exist and I want to only work with the physical world, not a world that may or may not exist and can serve as a distraction from analyzing the already complex physical world we have now.
Yes yes yes, I will definitely agree that communism scratched an itch that I was always trying with religion but didn’t quite suffice. The two kind of blur together for me at a certain point.
I’m also mostly white and I stuck to (mostly) very Nordic stuff when I was into it, and more surface level witchcraft too which didn’t stick out as being particularly out of a particular culture (I’m sure they were, but, you know, didn’t look too far into it). I’ll always say that as long as your intentions are pure and you are approaching something different with respect that “integration” can be achieved as opposed to “appropriation” (but what then if you sort of make it your own?) but I also agree that “dicey” is a good word for it.
I definitely agree that there is plenty to get lost in in our political world, and the higher stuff is kind of heavy and inspires scary feelings in me. Mostly I am still very interested in it for two major reasons: 1) It helps me get by, I truly do believe in, for example, life after death which soothes a lot of existential dread, and 2) I do believe in magic/“magic” being a tool that can affect the physical world. It sounds kind of silly, like the most famous examples that come to mind is the Tumblr witches trying to hex Donald Trump (likes charge, reblogs cast, lmao) but, I mean, hey, the CIA looks into this supposedly woo-woo type shit, and they certainly would keep it extremely hush-hush if they did discover something scientifically quantifiable about it all that could be harnessed. I do not think it would be a good use of resources to convince normal communists to try and make a sigil or a servitor or see entities through the lens of egregores (or whatever other words we’d use, these are mostly chaos magick terms but they all blend together) but I would definitely want religious people and spiritualists of all stripes to be assured that they have a valued place in the communist pursuit; even if we assume magic is fiction and there are not unseen forces operating outside our field of view, this is still vitally important IMO for bringing people on board–imagine how awesome it would be if fascists didn’t have a near-monopoly on Christianity in America, for example.
Quick question, what exactly about witchcraft didn’t sit well with you because of being a Baptist prior? Did it just feel “wrong” in some sort of way after being Baptist for so long or what? I will say I was in denial that I was no longer Muslim for a long time, but after I accepted that it was easier for me to explore other religions etc. than it was for me to, for example, try pork, which I was very conditioned to be disgusted by and feel very “wrong” for eating.
I’m not anti-religion at all, it’s just not for me at this point. What felt wrong was rather me becoming a lot more paranoid about my surroundings, thinking everything was some sort of sign about my fate. I was terrified a lot of the times, thinking that death would come soon. So I dropped it entirely and go by science because it doesn’t cause me the same paranoia I had then. That’s just me tho
No yes I definitely know the paranoia. I started seeing “synchronicity” everywhere and my thinking became very schizophrenic in a “everything has deep subtext, everything” sort of way (drug use back then didn’t help either lol). I still stand by some instances of it but I’m definitely not “seeking it out” anymore as that’s when, as I say, “if you think yellow cars mean something always you’ll start seeing yellow cars everywhere.” Some things IMO are hard to write off as “just coincidence” but others feel force-fit.
I’ve also taken a step back from a lot of this as it was boiling my head in general. I still “talk to God” and pray. I even still believe in negative entities, “demons.” But I also appreciated one day that they were so terrifying and powerful precisely because I was giving them so much attention.
