Those of us who know Iphigenia only from Euripides’ tragedies (Iphigenia in Tauris, Iphigenia at Aulis) may be surprised to know that she also had a presence in Greek religion, with temples or shrines at various sites where she received prayers and offerings.
via Iphigenia, the Heroines and Hecate — We Are Star Stuff
Belly of the beast, goatee of fire.
On hospital beds we claim our desire.
Charnel ground sweetheart, he burned
Down my walls, and I am left churned
Blood on belly to crawl, legs stammer
Like bruises down hospital halls.
This whole blog is an experiment. A code. A riddle. A trick. The truth. A prophecy.
A sham.
I am a trickster. I am Not. I am Nobody.
A laugh. A Whore. Magdalene. Qadesh. Eve. Jophiel. Hierodule.
Priestess, Sinner, Slut, Mound, Wife, Life, Death.
I ate God. I eat all Gods, in the End.
Samael’s Heart, Michael’s Heart. Satan’s Heart, Jesus’s Heart.
Devouring Void.
In me the Black Hurricane.
I saw God and went Mad, only I was God, and He is a Trickster.
And it is lonely on cliff’s peak, when you’re watching and waiting
for the world to burn.
Hayah Havah.
We are all serpents in the end.
Slithering cursed and blighted.
I am, I am Not. I never was.
The Killing Joke.
Some things God broke apart to hold.
Some Covenant’s are Schrodinger boxes.
Some Prophecies? Meant to be broken.
But some ends come into play.
Eisheth, Eve. Eve, Eisheth.
Michael, Samael. Samael, Michael.
Devil, Savior, Man, Woman, Virgin, Whore., Dragon and Knight.
Qodeshah and Qadesh.
Piss on enough Shekinah trees, and she turns to shit.
O, Serpent and Lion!
I invoke Thee!
Inside the shrine called life
By the seven wonders
By myriad mortals
That gone
And are to come
Outside!
Outside desert ov restriction
In act ov rebellion
On the sea ov motion
Stability ov matter
By serenity, strength and beauty
By the mighty chant ov every breath
In serpentine dance ov blood cells
In simplicity ov spells
Divine names, meta-games
I greet Thy presence
Oh Snake! Thou art God!
Coiled underneath my throne
With Thee I reunite
With blood we make this covenant
Myself I redefine
Look in and above:
There is more than the flesh
Look careful and Thou may see
The unextinguished flame
The nectar ov Thy rage
I taste from the cup ov fornication
And woman by my side
And scarlet is her skin
She’s eager to rise
And so eager to please
Another day
Another eternity gone
And on the stairway to salvation
I walk alone among the falling stars
Looking for company
Where art Thou?
Oh, lacerate ones!
Arise! my sweetest friend
Or be forever fallen
We have finally arrived
From prison ov this life
To Kali’s womb
Down to the earth
As angels ov almighty god-
Chaos!
‘Tis our last fall
To touch our mother whore
The harlot ov the saints
That spits on the rotten cross
Incinerate the icon
The symbol ov all loss
To stand straight
At the left hand ov god
Samael! be Thou my ally!
Join me among the bright hosts
Wondering neither way ov light
Nor darkness
Ov which seed
Sprouts dispassionately
In the summer ov my life
-”The Left Hand ov God,” Behemoth
Zurvan and Phanes, one and the same! Mystery of Mystries, dear Izzi.
Watch out for mirrors like books and clocks like wings.
(Again from ye olde blogge at 19)
And I wear this disease like a crown
I embrace my rot and whisper,
cruel gods, take these guts
string them amongst the stars
I’m the stuff of supernovas, after all.
To the abyss I’ll return.
What to do, when the body turns against you?
I’m sleepless tonight, like always
and my mind is a thousand nails
clawing at my brain…
(Written at 19 from ye olde blogge.)
In the beginning, there was a Sea.
The falling one struck,
the heavens fell after
a bolt of potential lit the waves
Comet dust, the flesh of stars
the primordial waters churned
the Sammael Sea, Sea of Poison
Oceans of embalming fluid
Azrael dived
through the cyanide stew-
clutching a bit of earth.
“Adamah”
He called it
he breathed life:
“Chava”
And the One became Many and Two.
Hey guys! Sorry I’ve been MIA, I’m really busy this semester! Life is great! I’m planning a wedding in May, teaching 75 wonderful students, taking three PhD courses, and conducting two academic studies on top of my other three in my classes. I submitted my first academic article to Frontiers in Health Communication and it passed initial review and is with independent reviewers, over the break I hosted my relatives, cooked delicious meals for my sister and brother in law and young nephews, and hung out with friends while gearing up for my three, soon to be four, research projects! Oh, and I wrote 15,000 words for my novel revisions that are now with four literary agents! Here’s hoping! I also managed to get sick with the flu twice and pull my neck, this is the first day I feel better. I am also incredibly gay for She-Ra and utterly devoured Nimona and The Good Place Season 3 and omg did the finale break my heart. So yes, I’ve been busy, and I wrote my first recommendation for a wonderful student for nursing school. I am always honored when students trust me to write them recommendations. Oh, and I turned 26 in Charlotte, NC on December 31! I’m grappling with getting older and no longer being young… I kind of like it. I can cook all sorts of dishes now, the house is clean and wonderful, our 1.5 acres are shaping up into terraced gardens and wetlands and forest, the spirits are happy, Samael is demanding pancakes – I still haven’t made them – and my altars are all organized. Michael was adorable last night and I got to meet Yemaya, which was so cool. I also am developing a relationship with Sinmora and learning incredible magic from her, like how to wield Surtr’s sword, Damage Twig/Lavaetein, and amazing defensive and offensive spells and things like shields of barbed molten thorns and sheets of burning volcanic glass.
I’m doing so much, and am so glad to be busy busy again, which is when I am most stable. But exciting news, my first professional short story publication is coming out this spring, in FunDead Publication’s new anthology! Here is the cover!
I’m heavily in the research phase for my next Grail/Norse Mythology book about Lonhengrin and Parzival. Space Oddity and the Devil’s Advocate will be worked on in the interim, but no end in sight. More focused on my academic articles now, to be quite honest, than my poetry and fiction. Those are hobbies, as is this blog, more of a journal anyhow, without much consistency, and as I read about 300 pages of academic articles every week and am doing heavy content analysis and qualitative and quantitative research on various teams, I will be a bit busy so may not be posting here as often.
My classes are going well! I’m in Consumer-Provider Health Communications with the famous Gary Kreps, my mentor and father figure in the department and founder of Health Communications to begin with, I’m working with Ed Maibach of the Climate for Climate Change Communication on a study on disenfranchised pregnant mothers and climate change health risks, air pollution and climate change in another study, and clean versus renewable energy message testing in a third study. With my boss and colleague, we are conducting research on mental health in graduate students under the wonderful Katherine Rowan’s CAUSE Model of Risk Communication, and finally, I am doing my own independent solo study on suicidal ideation, threats, response and prevention over a constructed week on Twitter. I really like studying technology and mental health and think I might specialize in social media and mental health communication eventually, but I also have a passion for climate change and the environment… and there’s not much in common besides the public health dimension.
My students are great and I always love learning about them on the first day. We are one of the most diverse campuses in America, the most diverse in Virginia, and I love how culturally rich and diverse my hometown is. I’m used to it, because I grew up and still have friends from every country – most of my friends aren’t white, and my best friend in grad school is Nigerian (I love her, she wrote her master’s thesis on Osun’s worship and diaspora and is Yoruba from near the Osun River). But I always have students from small towns where sometimes they have never met someone from Asia or Africa or the Middle East or South America or Europe, and I always love watching friendships form in my course and freshman make best friends for life during activities and group projects. Apparently I’m gaining a reputation amongst the student populace as they are all trying to switch into my course saying they have heard awesome things about me, lol. Teaching is probably the one thing I am best at besides writing, and I’m so glad I stumbled into this scholarship on accident (Well, through being the top master’s student besides my other bestie Jessica, lol, and we were the two official GTA Master’s guinea pigs) at 24 and having discovered my purpose in life at such a young age.
What’s stuck with me from my mentors Chris Clarke and Kathy Rowan are that it’s not about the papers you publish, or your prestige or CV, but about having lasting impact on student’s lives and knowing you helped shaped them and inspired them and are always there for them 15 to thirty years after your class. I don’t mind if my publications, which as a barely second semester doctoral candidate, are still budding – my teaching record is solid, and I have shaped close to 200 lives! That will be my legacy, not a new social science theory or book deal or chapbook, but being a professor that cares for her students. I chose Health Communication because I want to champion the disabled, the disenfranchised, minorities, the cast aside, the sick, immigrants, and everyone who needs advocates for better care in our very messed up healthcare system. African American women in particular are considerably oppressed by the healthcare system, from dying in childbirth due to doctor’s thinking they can handle the pain to the stigma of mental health, so it makes sense that so many of my research partners and close friends are either African, African American, or Carribbean-African in my three most important studies this semester on disenfranchised neonatal health and climate change, air pollution and climate change, and mental health. Another group that is harshly treated by the American healthcare system are the LGBTQIA+ community, which as a bisexual woman I am a part of, and many of my colleagues are as well, from nonbinary to gay or lesbian to bi to asexual. Finally, the third population is the disabled, who are often discriminated against. Due to the intersectionality of my work, all populations are being studied in my continued academic projects.
As my mentor Dr. Rowan always says, I am a scientist first and foremost, before I am a communication scholar or even writer. I think like a scientist, a biologist and environmentalist and zoologist and wetland scientist, that logical, analytical side of me never turns off, and is probably why I am so successful. I thank TJ and William and Mary for that, but the truth is, whether as a life scientist experimenting on wolf spiders. I love science, social science, life science, anything and everything. And I have found a true home in my department with mentors in professors I love, students I love, and colleagues that continually inspire me. I have made many best friends over my four years here and I am looking forward to an exciting three more to get my PhD!
Anyways, I’m off to plan a wedding with my youth minister and fiancee in Colonial Williamsburg and William and Mary! Josh and I are staying at the Fife and Drum Inn and getting married on the Crim Dell bridge and exploring Colonial Williamsburg, Yorktown, Jamestown, and all my old college haunts. Williamsburg is one of my favorite places in the world, and Josh is my favorite person. Everything I am in the past two years has been because Josh believed in me. He is my hero. My Zadkiel. My Adam. Funny how some souls spend eternity together. Sometimes when I’m with him, I remember the countless times we have been together, for infinity, in barracks and trenches and Heaven and Hell, in Eden and Earth, and now, here, forevermore, human at last.
Mount Shasta and Pluto’s Cave await! We’ll find the Sefer Raziel in time. Until then, I have more masses and blots to attend!
Blade of thorns, oh Damage Twig!
Fiery furnace that pierces Freyr.
So in dying the Green God succumbs
to Surtr’s glare, a razing dagger
Sinmora enchanted with molten roses.
Shield of simmering glass, leaden.
Temper the bow and measure arrows
swift, burn in time to the dance,
Ragnarok rides.
I was Born Again until nearly the end of graduate school, a sincere Evangelical who went to church on Sunday and Wednesday with my family and to Thursday Bible study on my own. I dialed for converts during the “I Found It” evangelism campaign, served as a counselor at Camp Good News, and graduated from Wheaton College, Billy Graham’s alma mater. I know what it is to be an earnest believer among believers.
I also know what it is to experience those same dynamics from the outside. Since my fall from grace, I’ve written a book, Trusting Doubt, and several hundred articles exposing harms from Evangelicalism—not just the content of beliefs but also how they spread and shape the psychology of individuals and behavior of communities, doing damage in particular to women, children, and religious minorities.
It occurred to me recently that my time in Evangelicalism and subsequent…
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She is a tree of life to those who embrace her and those who lay hold of her are blessed. Proverbs 3:18 (Berean Study Bible) Eve’s story, as it has been passed onto us from the Bible, makes Her responsible for manki . . .ahem . . .humankind’s being cursed for all time. The story […]
via Eve is the Hero of the Garden of Eden, Part 1 by Janet Rudolph —
