Ego-trapped
≠ ✰ pagan festival season AZ monsoon season ☯ waxing crescent moon
If it's Tuesday, it must be technopagan.
I let my ego off the chain last weekend. It was a vain and foolish thing to do. And it had consequences.
There is a commenter on another board who wraps his unspoken victimhood and his spoken politics in pseudo-mysticism and a "spiritual war." You may know the type. Sometimes certain Christians do that when they don't want their opinions questioned. He seems threatened by my paganism and comparative religion studies. His pseudo-mysticism is getting worse, his politics are growing steadily more oppressive, and his jargon and babble are pegging the meter. He's trying to take power and authority from mysteries he can't perceive, much less understand. So just for a second I gave him a vague glimpse.
❝There are reasons I broke my reply into two parts. You're trying to confuse things by mixing and matching issues. It won't work, I'll just keep answering separately.
You don't know where I get my news. When it comes to occult information, your "sources" and eyewitnesses and "primary documents" don't know squat. I've been on the shadow borders for twenty-nine years. I've a whole slew of contacts representing more faiths and paths than you can shake three wands and an athamé at. I've done research as a practitioner, a historian, a philosopher, and a scholar of comparative religion. You can't cloak your wanna-be claims from me. I've been to the places you fear and I've walked the paths beyond your longing.
And that, neighbor, is how you do it right. You can't do it without truth and experience.
Or hadn't you noticed that yet?❞
Okay, that "three wands and an athamé" line was cool. What wasn't cool was letting my ego in the driver's seat and not immediately kicking him out once the job was done.
I've a very well developed ego. Most ceremonial magicians do. So do most witches and pagans. My first real studies were on a left-hand path, and in the beginning that's almost a survival trait. That's not where my path lies anymore, it's still useful on occasion. But I hadn't allowed myself to take pride in my ego for a long time. It felt good. I let things slide for a bit. I forgot that giving one's ego the reins can distort your perspective and expectations.
Almost immediately I misread something that very same commenter posted. I thought it was an attack on me and I responded with full ego power. Because I didn't take the time to ask questions, because I didn't double check, because I jumped right in ready to thump heads, I ended up looking very foolish. And I diminished the power of my own slap-down.
Of course it gets worse. A long time ago I promised myself that while I might fix misspellings and grammar errors, I wouldn't change entries or posts without marking them as changed. I screwed up. I had to own it. I had to take responsibility. I would rather have deleted the post. Instead I put a strikethrough over it and added three words, "I was wrong." It's there, I won't change it further.
I ego-trapped myself. What I'm supposed to do is use truth to make the world a little better than I found it. What I tried to do was make a myself a Name of Power. Someone to be reckoned with. Someone to be worried about. At least in that limited setting.
It's not about the power. It's about making the world a little better than I found it. It's about the Future. Yes, with a capital F.
I'm not going to save the world. It will go on without me. If I am very lucky, I might leave a little of my experience and hard won wisdom for the next guy. The guy who won't know my name or title or much of anything about me. Except maybe a line or two.
It's not about me. It's about Veritas. It's about the Future. And my ego can't change that.
Lesson learned. Again.
Maybe it's enough.
Today.
