3/21/2005
“There is no part of me that is not of the Gods.”
This statement from the Gnostic Mass (by way of a Golden Dawn interpretation of an Egyptian inscription) is an amazing and powerful thing. Think about it: if you recognize your essential oneness with the divine, knowing yourself to be a part of everything and knowing everything to be a part of you, the illusion of disconnect falls away. You can no longer believe the lie that you’re fallen, inferior, sinful, bad. You are a part of the gods, and the gods are a part of you. (At this point, do not ask me, “But, taijiya-san, what about that other line in the Gnostic Mass that says ‘there is no god where I am’?” That is attributed to Hadit, in Liber AL II:23; and it’s in reference to something else entirely. Not feeling particularly pestilent today, I don’t feel like going into my interpretation thereof at the moment.)
But, yeah, part of the gods. The other day I’d got out my old Episcopal Book of Common Prayer and was reading the Easter Vigil rite, thinking that I might still find the flowery language appealing. I didn’t; I found it appalling, almost, because of the heavy emphasis on marking the worshipper as wretched, worthless, sinful and weak and fallen. Yegads, get that drilled into you from every sphere for long enough and you’re bound to take it to heart–and who on earth wants to live with that burden. If you can believe that you are the creation of a deity (itself a bit of a stretch), then why can’t you believe that you’re exactly as you’re supposed to be, just as your creator intended you to be–not a failure, not a fuckup, but the absolute crown of creation?
We are human, of course, even if we share in the stuff of the divine; and being human means that we are limited, fallible, liable to corruption and decay and every form of perversion and foulness imaginable–but there’s plenty of elasticity in the definitions of those things, and one man’s failure is simply another man’s challenge–(heh, and one man’s perversion simply another’s delightful diversion). If I am apart from god, as some religions teach, then I am forsaken and vile; if I am a part of god, then I am just as I must be, just as I was intended to be, and therefore capable of seeking out my purpose in life and doing my Will therein.
I like that second idea much better!
The Serpent and the Moon 
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