On The Blessedness Of Pride

When I was a teenager in Southern Texas, I started a magickal group that quickly turned into a cult. I did it for a lot of reasons. At times—especially at the beginning—I honestly believed what I was saying. But by the last year of it, I knew I was a liar. A horrible, destructive, and manipulative liar. I lied to and hurt everyone I cared about in my home town in Southern Texas. And I probably would have continued on like that if it hadn’t been for the calling I felt to the Great Work and to the service of the Divine, a calling that had begun when I was a small child but only truly began to bear fruit the Summer I turned 18. At that time I began to experience the intense sense of guilt and compunction that has haunted me ever since, and in confusion I went into isolation, suddenly vanishing from the small occult scene in my home town and staying with my grandparents. This was my first experience of that sort of periodic isolation, though it would eventually become a hallmark of my spiritual life.

About six weeks later I emerged and systematically walked the length and breadth of my home town, coming clean to everyone to whom I had told these horrible lies, everyone that I had manipulated and used, everyone to whom I owed the truth. But I was quite surprised at the result. I got very little response. No one was angry. I was not shunned. My friends didn’t abandon me. My girlfriend at the time didn’t break up with me. In fact, nothing happened at all. The cult did not lose a single person, as far as I noticed. They didn’t revise their beliefs or incorporate the truths I had told them into their lives or narratives at all. They just kept on merrily being a weird little 90s vampire cult. My girlfriend at the time even insisted that I was lying about lying, her memories fabricating evidence on the spot to support my original deceptions.

My lies, I eventually came to see, had taken on a life of their own. People had become invested in my lies and told lies of their own, to both themselves and to others. These lies incorporated my lies and depended logically and emotionally upon my lies. So when I tried to make my little confession and dismantle the cult before anyone else got hurt, when I tried to untangle my lies from everyone else’s lies and become honest, they just weren’t interested. They didn’t want an honest version of me, and made clear that they had no interest in changing what they were doing.

Shortly after I realized this, I had the mystical experience that led me to leaving town, the same mystical experience that led me to my late teacher and the life I lead now. A couple of months before I left my home town, I passed leadership of the cult to another, but while she was an excellent friend and a good leader, she didn’t have my gift for coming up with new “revelations” for the membership. Without that regular stimulation, the communal “high” of the cult experience wore off and people drifted away.

I struggled immensely for years with this experience. Frankly, I still struggle with it.

Soon after this, while homeless in New Orleans, I met my first wife. Together we engaged in a different sort of shared mythos, one far less sinister, far more honest, and far more loving. But I found that I was still sometimes compelled by my life with her to lie. Sometimes it was to protect our safety, sometimes it was to protect her precarious sense of reality and meaning or my own, but in any case, the result was the same: deception. I had met my late teacher by this time and he had made quite clear that he expected honesty from me, but it shames me to admit that I was unable to live up that precept. I tried my best to avoid it as much as possible, but I was still dishonest in my new life.

Fast forward to 1998. My first wife and I had split up and our newborn daughter had just been taken away by her adopted parents. My now ex-wife called me to ask for one last favor…to “tell her something”. To lie to her. To tell her something that would make her angry enough to stop hurting, if only for a little while. So I told her the most awful lie I could imagine…I told her that I had celebrated when I found out that she had signed the adoption papers. That I had reveled in the loss of our child. In reality, of course, I was heartbroken. My daughter had been born and taken away, and I never even got to meet her. But I had to pretend to gloat. I had to pretend to take pleasure in the situation so that her mother, my first real adult relationship, my second real love, the first partner I ever lived with and the only partner I was ever homeless with, could blame me. So that she could be angry at me. So that she could hate me.

I did what I had to do to get the job done.

I got off the phone and immediately burst into tears. I went into the room I used as my temple and cast my circle furiously, sorrowfully, in fear and trembling. I invoked deities and evoked spirits. I chanted and sang. I wept uncontrollably, wracked by giant, aching sobs. I called out to everyone and everything I held sacred and swore my first truly personal magickal oath, an oath that made my oaths to the A.’.A.’. look downright juvenile:

“I swear by my name, by everything that I have and everything that I am, that I will never again deceive myself or others in thought, word, or deed.”

Years later, after I got over my Kantian period and became less ethically rigid, the problem with this oath was pointed out to me and I did a new ritual, adding the clause: “Except to protect the safety of myself or others.” This is the version of the oath that I have lived by ever since.

I wanted to write a different homily this month. I wanted to write a homily about Pride, a month dedicated to the struggle, presence, and yes, joy, of queer people. I wanted to write about the parades and parties, the concerts and celebrations, and the pure exuberance and amazing power that is queerness. I wanted to write about how much happier I have been since I transitioned. I wanted to write about how, for the first time since I was eight years old, I think I actually might not commit suicide someday. I wanted to write about how I have been mostly freed from the horrible depression that haunted me my entire life and how my relationships with my wife, my spiritual communities, and my friends have improved immensely as I have been become so much happier and so much more well-adjusted. I wanted to write about how wonderful it is that, after the repression that has marked American culture since the Puritans first set foot on this continent, queer people can finally be free to marry, have children, and live our lives. I wanted to celebrate the fact that we can finally be free to dance in the streets.

But I won’t lie to you, dear ones, and I won’t lie to myself. I take no joy in Pride this year. I am hurt. I am afraid. I am constantly being bombarded with messages that my wife and I, that our community and the people who are like us, don’t belong here. That we don’t really belong anywhere. That we should just not exist, and that there are always people willing and eager to make that happen.

But I also look at the bravery and love of my own communities, as varied as they are, and I look at the bravery and love of the other communities with whom I stand in solidarity. I see the people in Los Angeles bravely trying to protect their communities from ICE. I see the people in Palestine bravely trying to protect their children. I see the people in Ukraine bravely trying to protect their homes. I see the activists like Greta Thunberg bravely trying to do what’s right. And everywhere in this aching world, I see indigenous people bravely fighting for possession and stewardship of their own lands.

And I am awestruck.

There is much comfort in each other. There is much comfort in the fights for justice and accountability happening all over the world. There is much comfort in unashamed queer love. There is much power in our joy and our celebrations, even if we have to weep while we sing and we are forced to carry savage weapons upon the dance floor. There is a whole generation of young people out there that deserves a better, more joyful world. It is my will to help build that world, and I would love it if you would work with me.

So let us turn to each other in love, faith, heartbreak, and thanksgiving. Let us reach out and hold each other in our grief and joy. Let us remember, despite the fact that there are people out there who want us to not exist, that we are here and that we are queer.

Let us take pride.

Blessed Full Moon, dear ones. And happy Pride.

In love,

Soror Alice