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5 September 2018 16:46![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
haptalaonLike:
I've been thinking recently I'd quite like to set up shop as an exorcist.
But bring to my practice a therapeutic angle, an understanding that "I have a sense of dread in my house" could be all sorts of unspiritual things. Bring links to local services, like food banks and couples counselling. Give them a carbon monoxide detector. Maybe help redecorate the room in question. And listen, take them seriously, make them feel heard. And go through some sort of appropriate banishing process that makes them feel safer. I believe that the experience of haunting is a real one, even if the haunt itself is not. I believe it would be an interesting avenue to follow as a caring profession.
To do such a thing, one needs religious authority. Right? Clients need to believe you are more powerful than the thing living in their house. So where does one get such a thing? You get it from an official body, or you give it to yourself.
Giving it to yourself is, I believe, traditional for big-name occult and pagan figures - you bullshit some stuff about secret initiations on the astral and being the herald of the new Aeon and getting a message from Aiwass and meeting ancient witches in the New Forest and having a grandmother who initiated you and having an ancient cake platter you inherited from the true traditional witches and definitely wasn't bought in a Brighton junk shop and being a professor in Singapore.
Or to get it from an official body, you're wrestling with the murky reality of community - impressing the right people, staying quiet when required, having sex with the right people, and playing dirty to get ahead.
I want a third way.
I want a way to acquire meaningful external validation from somewhere accountable which can act as a check on power, both for me and for others in the craft. So when I go into this house and say "I am a fifth level Druid-Paladin", I know I have accomplished a certain standard, I know it's not just my ego getting out of hand, I have something more meaningful to fall back on than my own bullshit, or the strength of my discernment. But I also want to get this validation independent of small community politics - I want it based on merit, based on work, based on strength. I guess I want fairness, something authentic, which can't be derailed if I don't want to have sex with a leading community figure, which won't be called into question if I'm less hot or well-connected than my detractors.
I want what the process of being ordained as a priest or taking vows as a nun promises - even though the reality cannot, of course, be a perfect one.
I guess what I want is human nature to be better than it is, or for me to be more capable of handling the world's unpleasantness.
I've been thinking recently I'd quite like to set up shop as an exorcist.
But bring to my practice a therapeutic angle, an understanding that "I have a sense of dread in my house" could be all sorts of unspiritual things. Bring links to local services, like food banks and couples counselling. Give them a carbon monoxide detector. Maybe help redecorate the room in question. And listen, take them seriously, make them feel heard. And go through some sort of appropriate banishing process that makes them feel safer. I believe that the experience of haunting is a real one, even if the haunt itself is not. I believe it would be an interesting avenue to follow as a caring profession.
To do such a thing, one needs religious authority. Right? Clients need to believe you are more powerful than the thing living in their house. So where does one get such a thing? You get it from an official body, or you give it to yourself.
Giving it to yourself is, I believe, traditional for big-name occult and pagan figures - you bullshit some stuff about secret initiations on the astral and being the herald of the new Aeon and getting a message from Aiwass and meeting ancient witches in the New Forest and having a grandmother who initiated you and having an ancient cake platter you inherited from the true traditional witches and definitely wasn't bought in a Brighton junk shop and being a professor in Singapore.
Or to get it from an official body, you're wrestling with the murky reality of community - impressing the right people, staying quiet when required, having sex with the right people, and playing dirty to get ahead.
I want a third way.
I want a way to acquire meaningful external validation from somewhere accountable which can act as a check on power, both for me and for others in the craft. So when I go into this house and say "I am a fifth level Druid-Paladin", I know I have accomplished a certain standard, I know it's not just my ego getting out of hand, I have something more meaningful to fall back on than my own bullshit, or the strength of my discernment. But I also want to get this validation independent of small community politics - I want it based on merit, based on work, based on strength. I guess I want fairness, something authentic, which can't be derailed if I don't want to have sex with a leading community figure, which won't be called into question if I'm less hot or well-connected than my detractors.
I want what the process of being ordained as a priest or taking vows as a nun promises - even though the reality cannot, of course, be a perfect one.
I guess what I want is human nature to be better than it is, or for me to be more capable of handling the world's unpleasantness.
