I don't think I've done one of these yet.

[fayanora]

-Name you would like to go by: Fayanora [fay-uh-nor-uh] (Fay for short)

-Present path or tradition: when I was just starting out this pagan thing, I didn't connect to any earthly deities at the time. That has since changed, but my original path remains. I'm a writer, and I liked to make up cultures and religions for my writing (still do); one of the cultures and its religion I made up for a story resonated with me so hard that I adopted it. It is an alien world and humanoid alien people are one of the races native to it; the path I chose, called Yahgahn, is one of many of the religions of that world, that world being called Traipah.

These are the beliefs that define my path.

And these as well.

This too.

My deities, the four main ones from this list for me being Djao'Kain, Ahndahn, Grahbahn, and Nahtahdjaiz.

Among other differences, is my path has nine elements/directions:

Element....Directional correspondence
1. Metal = East
2. Water = West
3. Light = South
4. Air = North
5. Fire = Above
6. Earth = Below
7. Consciousness = Within
8. Void = Without (outer space plus really anything that isn't one's self)
9. Spirit = Kohrain - Yahgahn word for All. (Means all spacial and temporal directions combined.)

A major reason for this difference is that I don't cast circles, I cast spheres.

Oh, and I'm also a Discordian, with an interest in Eris, Loki, Lucifer, Sutekh, Oya, and Eshu. My path combines both the light and the dark, both the right-hand path and the left-hand path, both order and chaos, and both the profound and the profane into one balanced path that I call the two-hand path.

-Interests: spirituality/paganism, science fiction/fantasy, writing, cryptids, paranormal stuff, weird coincidences, philosophy, science, fairies, letting my inner child play, diversity in fiction, world building (for fiction), constructed languages, ren faires, sci-fi cons, strange and unusual facts, BDSM, magick, horror (paranormal or psychological thrillers only, I can't stand slasher flicks and I'm touchy about gore), superheroes, megalithic geometry, Otherkin, multiplicity, and much much more!

-Age (not mandatory): 36, but a kid at heart.

-Brief Bio: I was born, I grew up, got weird, been androgynous all my life, got bullied a lot as a kid (including sexual harassment in high school) because of those last two things, then in my teens I realized I was actually a woman, began living that truth full time in my twenties. Became pagan in my teens when - in a fit of depression - I went over to a willow tree in our yard and started talking to it just to have something to talk to, and it answered! (Not in words, but in feelings and images.) That started a years-long friendship between us.¹ That was The Moment for sure, but I had a bit of a head start, since Mom is a New Ager and Dad is a spiritual agnostic, neither of them remotely Christian.

As an adult, I got diagnosed with depression, anxiety, and autism; I probably have ADHD, too. Life goes on. I have always been highly eccentric, and normal people bore me. My eccentricities are varied and deep, becoming my friend is like falling down the rabbit hole into Wonderland, only weirder.

Adding:

Favorite philosopher: Robert Anton Wilson. I especially love his book "Quantum Psychology."

PS = Since some others in the community have come out as such, I can assume it's safe for me to come out as a Multiple. Nine of us in the system, two appear as children but given the weird nature of our form of multiplicity (being almost constantly co-conscious, being able to communicate with each other internally, but still having our own distinct thoughts and feelings) are not actually children. One of these two, named Ian, is MIA. Molly Elizabeth - who usually appears to be 7 years old and blonde but sometimes age shifts as high as 18 - is very active in the system. Others in the system include Fayanora Ahnabahn, Tempest, Alex Antonin, Pyrayton Svaenohr (Pi for short), Negarahn, Lolita Leigh Smith (also MIA), and Djao'Kain.

1 = Until it died. The beginning of the end was when the willow got knocked over by a wind storm, but remained attached enough to keep living. Then the owner of the property had it cut down. I was very sad. So was my little sister.

introduction of me

[iaai_helle]

I am not actually a tumblr refugee, unless you count an ex-tumblrite who hasn't blogged with them in two years.

name to call me
Yai works just fine, ey/em or they/them

current path or tradition
very much a nontraditional path. I follow a mixture/corruption of the the Cthulhu Mythos merged with Discordianism and with some aspects of philosophical nihilism, all with an overlay of animism. more practically speaking, I subscribe to a system of five major deities (Fates) whose present day forms in my practice came about through two years of constant ritual work and invocation. the five Fates are Hăliṭ, Météén, Livlae, Sóv, and Helle. Helle is my chosen patron and the deity of death, dreaming, ruination, decay, entropy, and endings.

most of my active practice take the form of tarot readings or other cartomancy and dream interpretation, though I have recently begun to explore visualization meditation through mantra chanting, crystal work, and sigil creation and drawing. I follow an eight-element system with three distinctive binary spectra while reading tarot and interpreting the world, and emphatically reject the masculine/feminine binary as rather useless to a genderless person such as myself.

skipping the interests tag because I have too many and am bad at winnowing down the lot

brief bio
raised completely nonreligious by determinedly atheist parents. that is, I was not told God did not exist - I was in fact not even told God was a concept which could possibly twinkle in anyone's eye or mind. a story I like to tell is about how I did not know the churches had a function other than to host charities until about third grade, and only discovered the concept of 'God' at that same time. I read parts of the Bible and attended church twice and decided Christianity was silly and kind of offensively violent, an opinion I've never truly shaken.

this went until my first religious experience, which I had in the Natural History Museum in NY city while watching the big bang video that you see at the beginning of the 'history of the universe' exhibit. I didn't know what to do with this for a long time, but in 2016 I began to practice tarot reading more regularly and experienced an even more impactful religious experience in a prehistoric cave in France. after this I began to practice more earnestly. at first I merely invoked titles of Cthulhu Mythos deities, but soon I was merely calling them suchlike as Order, Chaos, Society/Charisma, Life/Nature, and Death/Ruin. later I translated those titles into Old English, and then reformatted their phonology to fit a personal conlang that I use for ritual purposes. their current names hail from this transmutation. most recently I successfully petitioned Helle to allow me to take them as patron deity.

An introduction, migrating outwards from tumblr

[lexidius]

-Name you would like to go by:

Lex, Static, BS (they/their/themselves or he/his/himself)



-Present path or tradition:


This one's kind of hard to pin down as it's very loose, eclectic and free-form without being tied down to any one faith. It's fair to say I'm a pantheist following modern polytheism though. A lot of my work seems to gravitate towards Greek/Roman, Celtic, Norse, Egyptian, Australian and Maori, with a strong focus on animal spirits, esoteric shamanism and a sprinkling of Pop Culture Paganism alongside my Personal Pantheon. Important themes and/or recurring figures at the time of writing this include the balance/overlap between polarities (chaos/order, life/death, sun/moon, masculine/feminine, love/fear) and two of my most prominent figures right now are Apollo and Lillith.



-Interests:

Creative Arts (art, photography, writing, music, film/theater), language/culture/travel, urban exploration, speculative fiction (sci-fi, fantasy, alt-history), solarpunk/eco-sustainability, psychedelia in relation to esoteric philosophy (see: Terence McKenna), paranormal/ghost hunting/cryptozoology, anthropology, poking my nose into studying the occult, videogames, cartoons, tabletop roleplaying, otherkin/alterhuman/transhumanism, anthropomorphism, furry (including postfurry).



-Age (not mandatory):


As of writing this, 23 (24 in January 2019).



Brief Bio:


Though my family does have Christian roots on both sides, I was never raised to follow any one single belief and grew up for the most part with open-minded, unconventional parents. My father (now deceased) was a black sheep among a family of undertakers and often found himself exploring the darker, otherworldy sides of esotericism, wrestling with his shadow right up until finding himself through zen pantheism. My mother is a hippie and much of her interests are involved in having a green thumb and reconnecting with nature, though in the past she was more inclined towards new age, neo-spiritualist beliefs - many of which I find myself taking with a grain of salt due to a healthy dose of my father's skepticism. After being diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder in 2017, I came to walk a Middle Path between spiritual and psychological in regards to my alters/headmates and their/our identity/identities. I have considered myself otherkin since early childhood and while there are some psychological reasonings behind this, I consider this to be mostly spiritual in nature. I also consider myself somewhat of a soulbonder.