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Okay, so at this point it's obvious that I'm obsessed with tabs. As someone who has HHORRIBLE ADHD, I can't stand monoliths of text beyond textbooks and fiction. SOO I have broken my ramble up into tabs for your convenience. Read and respond to what you're interested in, and leave the rest!
I've had to do some quick run arounds to get tabs to work in WYSIWYG, so click below for the little collapsible links to show below! It all loads locally on the page, so don't worry about crazy load times. Poptart wouldn't do that to you, I promise.
Introduction | Nerd Shit | Spiritual Babble | Gaming
Hi everyone, I'd figure I'd start my blog off with a slightly more detailed introduction!
Writing this first blog is a bit difficult since I think I will approach this blog from a loose, free-form perspective as opposed to locking myself into particular topics. I think until I can get some initial momentum going, these will be more of a "What-I've-Been-Up-To" kind of entries. Hopefully you'll find them entertaining...lmao. After all, I've come to chat and make a few online friends, so that's all that matters to me in the end!
To elaborate on the basic info that is already included in my Profile Bio, I tend stick my fingers in a lot of pies...lmao. My current interests revolve around tarot, writing, video game streaming, programming (professionally and for fun), tweaking and improving my spiritual practice, and occasionally making art and digital assets for personal projects.
Even though I'm ditzy and spacy as hell, I somehow made it out with a Bachelors in Computer Science with an emphasis in cybersecurity. Eventhough I'm in IT software engineering, I'd think it would be fun to eventually make a lateral move to cybersecurity one day. When I'm not working, I build little toy Dot NET applications, practice deployments with AWS and Azure, and scour for cool open source projects to contribute to. If you have any suggestions for fun projects with great communities out there, let me know! I'd also like to get involved with some CTF's. Any suggestions?
As far as my interest in tarot goes, I've been reading for 5 years now. Eventhough I initially read tarot for the amazing psychological benefits, in hindsight it's clear that it was my gateway into the occult and broader alternative spirituality as a whole. While exploring my beliefs on the side, I shaped my reading style after influential tarot community members and authors including, but not limited to, Rachel Pollack, Benebell Wen, Kelly-Ann Maddox, and Mary Greer. I consider tarot as a fundamental Tenet of my spiritual practice.
Strictly speaking about my beliefs, I started my first year exploring Wicca before very quickly realizing that I didn't quite fit its shoe. For most of the following 3 years, I stuck practicing an eclectic smish-mash of witchcraft inspired by Hinduism, shamanic practices, and Tibetan Buddhism. While I had a lot of profound experiences during this time, I felt like beliefs from these systems were still foreign and hard to grasp, especially since I come from a traditional & un-impressionable western upbringing steeped in Judeo-Christian thought. Maybe one day I'll pull out some of my weird experiences I've had, but those stories are not for today! lol.
For the past year I've been slowly creeping into western occult practices and astrological magick out of a need for a stronger spirtitual foundation, despite its ties to Judeo-Christian belief. Currently, I've been actively working with content found in The Golden Dawn source material, literally anything I can find on Hermetic practices, the Hermetic Qabalah, and Damien Echol's works surrounding ceremonial magick.
As I'm trying to get into Astrological/Planetary Magick, I'm having issues wrapping my head around how the Hermetic Qabalah fits into it. Any one out there familiar enough to stop by for some IM'ing and/or able to point into some good Quabalah 101 resources?
As far as my concrete spiritual practice goes, I've started COMPLETELY from scratch. For the past two weeks I've solely performed the Middle Pillar exercise, which seems to be a Golden Dawn approach to centering and grounding, for two weeks to date. Unforunately, I've only been able to perform 11/14 days, despite insistence from many ceremonial magick sources that daily practice is crucial for development. For those of you that have some sort of ritual practice, do you agree with this sentiment? Do you follow it? Ya gurl is struggling. lmao.
I've been spending a metric f***-ton of time playing Dark Souls 3. My boyfriend just recently set up a banned profile for me via Steam Family Share so I could experience the game with more mods, specifically the Cinders Mod. Honestly, it makes the game SO MUCH HARDER. My casual ass was close to rage quitting with Iudex Gundyr, which BTW immediately turns into a cancerous growth and shoots weird black-blue Hell flames in all directions IMMEDIATELY into the battle.
The Cinders Mod is pretty awesome though. I definitely haven't had a chance to utilize it to its fullest degree, but I'm having a good time nevertheless.
Comments
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Fabian Dee
whose version of the middle pillar are you practising? I've seen descriptions vary significantly between authors, each has their plus points.
Thunder In A Clear Sky
interesting.
i'm of the Potawatomi (fire keeper) tribe and i'm into Midewiwin. amongst "occult" and esoteric things.
could probably help you out with Kabbalah.
i don't do tarot but i definitely don't discount it. there are many ways to communicate with the universe and therefore the Great Spirit and Divine Feminine and etcetra and receive feedback.
i think you'd probably also find the Gnostic (Nag Hammadi/Dead Sea Scrolls) scripture pretty intriguing, too.
the Kabbalah and Taoism relate very heavily to Native American Sacred Medicine, tradition and ideology.
Thats awesome!! I've never heard of midewiwin until just now! You'll have to tell me more about it.
I'd love to hear you experiences with kabbalah as well, if its something you actively involve in your practice.
I'll look into the dead sea scrolls too! I've been interested into reading those for a while. Thanks for mentioning them.
by magical_poptarts; ; Report
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midewiwin
here's a little bit of matter-of-fact information about the Way of the Heart.
essentially in our life and times our spiritual practices differ greatly from religions (in fact that word doesn't even exist in my native langauge) because we see that there are many different paths to enlightenment, we would say there are pieces of the puzzle scattered about, but ultimately the deepest understanding of our own creation (and destruction) is found by speaking directly to Nature/Cosmos, lucid dreaming and projection, experience and with synchronistic experiences involving everything from other people both light/dark, repeating numbers, synchronistic music, poems, sacred life paths and we have 4 different types of medicine men and women. 2 of which are traditionally male roles and 2 are traditionally female.
in fact it's well known to us that we function better in pairs. the male roles are more outwardly expressive and dynamically change their surroundings while the female roles are more cleansing and hold things together.
we perceive yin/yang but we call it Sun/Moon (masculine/feminine).
we relate to Kabbalah because Kabbalah came about much the same way and we incorporate the tree of life amongst other things.
in the Book of Light by Zohar it says "in the beginning we are one being. like left/right. we commit into duality upon incarnation and as we walk with God correctly we are magnetized and purified, and become like left and right again. infinitely". (paraphrasing).
it's deeply rooted in the harmony of opposites and embraces the feminine aspects of God conciousnesses and of ourselves and this energy flows through us and vice versa for the masculine aspects.
mother earth and father sky.
as far as the nag hammadi goes off the bat i'd recommend the Apocryphon or the Secret Revealation of John, the book of Thomas, the book of Wisdom, the book of Enoch and the Gospel of Mary Magdalene.
this is all the same tale repeating itself sempiternally.
the love between sun and moon for us is what caused the big bang and will cause it all to come back together, we commit to the being of eachother and we search through the masses to find eachothers hands. playing out that love story in the physical against all odds for all times and every time.
as we do this we ascend inexplicably and impossibly higher and higher into the dimensions and into heaven.
there is no light without dark.
these things come from the same source. this is why you can often find individuals like you and are that are aesthetically and vibrantly dark that pass the light between ourselves and into others.
if you'd like to know more we can definitely talk. i'm always intrigued to hear people's stories and what they see.
by Thunder In A Clear Sky; ; Report
Donald
Impressive blog!
I have experience with half of that. Working in a related technical field. For the philosophy I touched on a few of those, some time spent notably on Kabbalah. Although I went in a bit of a different direction...
Thank you, that's awesome! What direction did you go in, if you don't mind me asking?
by magical_poptarts; ; Report