Manicatlas - Kuen

no i don’t have an “astigmatism” i can just see the halos of the angels that live in car head lights that you losers are too spiritually closed off to see

You gotta write for funsies sometimes. Everything doesn’t have to be groundbreaking. Like. Who cares if it’s a little silly it is made out of love

My favourite genre of media is unhinged homosexuals

them: so why are you so into death magic and morbid, dark aspects of witchcraft?

me: there is a bitter truth in the evanescence of life and languishing charm in the macabre; you cannot know life without touching death with your fingertips. the decay is the melody of soul.

me to me, in my head, truthfully: i am an edge goblin creature and I love being dramatic and looking good in black

"that trope is so overused in fanfiction"

no. i have never once looked at fanfic and thought "i wish there weren't so many amortentia Aus" "i wish they didn't always have that Oh, Oh moment" "i wish there weren't so many jokes alluding to canon"

in fact, i want more. make more silly little jokes about reg drowning. give me the oh moment again.

i will read the same trope over and over again, that's what fanfiction is for

he's a pirate. he's exiled from fictional italy. he's a theater kid. his best friend has anxiety and lives in a suitcase. he's wanted by the catholic church for being too silly. he calls you "my dear boy." he was banished for being a fool and decided to start a circus called the troupe of fools. his main mode of transportation is a turtle. he dual wields pistols and a sword. he has beef with a giant whale. he lives on the ocean and has fire powers.

he's even italian.

wails and throws up

I don't know if I just haven't encountered it yet, but I haven't really seen anyone talking about or acknowledging something that's neither Unverified Personal Gnosis or Shared Personal Gnosis, but rather a third thing: Personal Group Gnosis.

PGG emerges from a small group of people having similar experiences to each other, which may or may not resemble anything that people outside of the group are experiencing.

This isn't inherently a bad thing. But among those who lack critical thinking skills, it can lead to some real trouble if they conclude that their similar experiences means that they're uncovering an actual objective truth, regardless of whether it's congruent with anything anyone outside of the group is experiencing.

One thing that many people fail to account for is the fact that they and their group generally share many of the same preconceptions and biases. For example, a group of younger Wiccans are very likely to believe in now-debunked ideas such as the great goddess hypothesis and the witch cult hypothesis. They'll believe in the existence of pagan gods, but they'll probably have a Christian-influenced understanding of divinity and morality, with little to no comprehension of the role that animism played in the development of pre-Christian traditions, nor with any real appreciation for how different values influenced the stories that people told about gods and other spirits.

They might even be exposed to similar media, which gives them all similar ideas about gods, spirits, and history. Even if they don't directly engage with the most popular media, it can still reach them through second or third hand exposure.

They're also likely reading the same spiritual, occult, and esoteric writers; or at least, reading people who have very similar ideas to one another.

And finally, since they're most likely friends and therefore trust each other, they are naturally biased toward accepting each other's experiences as valid, and working them into their own mental maps of the spiritual or metaphysical world.

In short, they're all primed to have very similar experiences to each other.

Without awareness that exposure to similar ideas can influence similar mystical experiences, it's very easy for a small group like this to generate a sort of shared map of reality that they feel justified in regarding as absolutely, objectively true.

It's at this point that people begin to feel confident telling you that if you just talked to your gods about what they're claiming, your gods would absolutely confirm them to be true. And if they don't, you were never really talking to those gods.

Having one's entire internal map of reality dictated by Personal Group Gnosis can be incredibly dangerous. It alienates you from the rest of the world by making you feel as if the only people you can trust are those who agree with your PGG. It can make you see outsiders as spiritually inferior, especially if they disagree with you outright. It can even encourage conspiracy thinking, because attributing what outsiders believe (or apparently believe) to the actions of a malicious conspiracy is a very common rationalization.

In other words, this is how you get a cult.

Now, a lot of people won't recognize it as a cult (and some will vehemently deny it's a cult) because it might not have a clear leader (though there's almost certainly a small number of people who have the most influence), and it probably doesn't have a financial goal. However, the destructive capacities of small groups of people living in their own reality cannot be denied. Members who don't go along with the group's accepted model of reality are often treated harshly, and are frequently targets for harassment. They may say that if you don't like it you can just leave, but let's be real, that's no simple matter if you believe that these are the only people with a real grip on reality, or if these people are basically your only friends, or even just your only friends who share your spiritual beliefs.

(If you're in this kind of situation? My advice is to start making more friends outside of this group. You don't have to cut yourself off from this group cold turkey; you can just start hanging out with other people more.)

Now, I'd like to emphasize that none of this is to say that PGG is inherently bad; I am only pointing out that it can be incredibly dangerous for people who lack knowledge, perspective, and critical thinking skills. Additionally, a group where there's a lot of this going on can be very dangerous for those who desperately just want to belong and get along, and push themselves to adopt their groups popular beliefs for fear of consequences.

Just like a single person's UPG doesn't dictate reality for everyone, neither does a single group's gnosis. PGG isn't inherently any better or more "correct" than UPG.

When I say "connect with nature" I don't just mean the aesthetic forests with deer and beautiful flowers.

I mean the weeds growing through concrete, the fungus that grows on the rotten shed, the nettles that always seem to return and the scary, spindly cellar spider in the corner of the bathroom.

Nature is not always pretty or magical - the pigeons and seagulls you swat at are nature too, the wasps and flies that hover by your meals are animals too, store-bought strawberries and the leaves that fall from your neighbour's tree are not all that different from the Giant Sequoias and it's seeds.

If you want to connect and understand nature, I mean *really* connect to it, in it's entirety, you have to seek out and learn about the ugly, scary and mundane things as well. You don't have to like it, just don't forget that it's there.