Video: Voice hearing...

Here's one that might appeal to people from the Hearing Voices Network - a video on voice hearing.  While now I have to go into a trance to concentrate to hear voices, in spiritual emergency, I had them hardcore and got "diagnosed" with a mental illness that no longer makes sense.  Voice hearing isn't necessarily because of an illness, it can often be an enriching experience, and is far too often demonized by medical professionals.

Speaking of which - another shit day yesterday.  I was at work and I felt a sharp pain in my chest, and began to hyperventilate.  My boss called an ambulance and I was taken back to Toronto Western Hospital.  The paramedic was great, but the triage nurse was a bimbo and assumed that because I was on Latuda for voice hearing (just to tone things down) this was a psychiatric thing and I needed a shrink, not a cardiologist.  I was offended that they led me to the psych area, and demanded to be taken seriously.  I had had an ECG in the ambulance, and the readings were normal, so by hour 5 of waiting and still no help after I informed them this was not a mental health thing this time, I picked myself up and left.  Talking to my GP's clinic today, I got the validation I needed from a great RN and she assured me that it sounded not too serious, but to call if the chest pains returned.  There is a rare side effect of the Pƒizer vaccine (which is the one I got for COVID-19) that can lead to inflammation of the heart, and I began to fear that this was my problem, but apparently it's seriously uncommon and because I wasn't still in pain today it was probably fine.  Again, maybe this is something in the energy body that's still funky, or maybe it's damages from long term acid reflux and it just felt particularly bad yesterday, but to assume I was "crazy" and put me in psych before checking me out in other ways is not just insulting, it's bad medicine.

I have had it with Toronto Western Hospital Emerge and I don't think I will ever be going there again, unless I have no choice and an ambulance has to put me there.  Awful.  The psychiatric discrimination continues.

-Saraƒin

"Saint Maud": A film review...

 

Today, my friend and I streamed this movie, curious to see it.  I was especially curious because of its religious overtones, loving a good saint story... this one seemed to at least have that as a theme.  Well, there's a lot to unpack about how I felt about it, so let's begin.  Here's why I didn't like "Saint Maud":

Firstly, it wasn't much of a horror film... it was kind of more of an arthouse dark drama, or a light thriller to me, but perhaps that's because my life has been so horrific that I just don't feel that creeped out by this kind of thing anymore, but my friend also felt it wasn't that scary.  That is fine, except one of the failings of this film is that despite being beautiful visually, it's rather pointless as far as what it's attempting to say.  A new Catholic convert who has a troubled history works to care for a dying dancer, despite a dark event that happened in the past with another client.  This woman seems to be fanatically religious, a bit of a bigot about things like the dancer's bisexuality, and obsessed with penance.  The dancer (Amanda) is a non-believer and Maud doesn't take it very well.

What I didn't like about this film is that if it is just another piece about mental illness (in this case it would be about mental illness coupled with religious fanaticism) it's a bit demonizing about that subject matter, and could have been done much better.  Mentally ill people who are religious are often a lot more interesting than this, and less tragic.  If it's a skeptical analysis about people who feel genuinely called by God, I find that personally offensive as a real mystic, one who has often felt the Divine's presence through hard times in my life, because it reeks of something that perhaps a cynic who grew up Catholic might have created (I don't know much about the director, but it seems that way)... it doesn't explore the beauty of suffering for God, it presents the "religious experience" as horrific when it is painful, and suggests that the whole thing is just absurd.

If this film is about a person who is simply being controlled by the devil, who thinks they are holy and called to serve God, I suppose that's ok as a theme, but I feel that the problem with that concept is that often people who are this heavily influenced by diabolical forces are in fact very holy, Satan wants to go after them to ruin their chances of uniting with God, and Maud here is quite shitty as far as holy people go.  I imagine most true holy mystics would have less of a problem hanging around queer people (as an example), Jesus Himself hung around prostitutes and tax collectors, the so-called unwanted... I don't imagine they would be this preachy and bigoted to their faces, even if it crossed with their religion.  She also really fucks things up, in the end.  In short, Maud is a lousy saint, so she's not a good representation of someone truly called, so it doesn't make sense that the devil cares this much to muck with her life, he would have bigger fish to fry.

I didn't like it because I don't feel it works on any level, no matter how you slice it.  It was cinematically beautiful, but a bit of a yawn as a plot.  Still, I guess it's the kind of thing secular audiences would want to gawk at in a religious horror flick, though I think my comic's twist is much cooler than what happens here - in "Asylum Squad", a mentally ill woman turns out holy... in this movie, a holy woman turns out mentally ill.  Not very interesting, kind of a boring trope, if you ask me.

I suspected I wouldn't like this movie, so my feelings here don't surprise me.  It was also a little bit slow, and although I can relate to Maud's suffrage in some scenes through what I went through in the past with dark forces, here it just didn't seem to mean anything... all aesthetics, no substance.  Nice try, but this could have been much more interesting.

I would love a teen mystic movie, rather like the teen witch trope... no Christian wishy washiness allowed, but plenty of stigmata and levitation.  Maybe that already exists... I mean, I did rather enjoy "Stigmata", even though that's not exactly the same thing.  This movie made me roll my eyes because of how strange people already find Christian mysticism... this just makes the experience seem fanatical, and nothing more.

-Saraƒin

More hospital nonsense...

This is what I imagine most psychiatrists think I am like at this point -
weird, charismatic, and possibly dangerous.

I have come to understand that it's likely that many physical symptoms I have been having (lethargy, cramping, chronic headaches, weight I just can't shed, sleep disruption), as well as some of the more timid, despairing feelings I have felt, might indeed be signs of some degree of depression, something I wasn't believing I had, because it feels different now from what I felt when I had it in my teens and 20s.  This is likely burnout from extreme exhaustion, having suffered the spiritual assault, along with everything else.  Not getting anywhere with outpatient care, I got overwhelmed last night and took myself to the closest ER.

Toronto General was quite nice, but had to put me in a cab to go to Toronto Western, where they were to assess me.  There, I waited in a strange area, a glass room with a gurney with bed restraints on it (hello Segufix, my old friend!) for hours, with an excruciating emotionally induced headache, until a young male doctor saw me.  He was pleasant, but clearly didn't know how to read me, assuming my expressive speech was a sign of racing thoughts, and thus mania, rather than a refined, creative mind that likes to regularly partake in friendly banter with intellectuals.  He was perplexed when I held my gaze and described my mind as being "without thoughts, usually" and that "thoughts come to me when they are relevant".  I had come to hospital to find acute assistance with a low dose of an antidepressant, which I am willing to take at this point to see if I can at least stop some of the more painful physical sensations (again, I am not anti-psychiatry, I am just very critical of a lot in it, and if a pill will help, so be it) ... I was willing to play their game, and they still fucked it up.

His "concern" was that an antidepressant could make me manic, based on my totally bogus former diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder, something that haunts me now, to this day, like the soul of a dead stalker.  It's amazing how a bad doctor's opinion of where my mind was over a decade ago retroactively has the power to muck up my ability to get help when I need it.  When I told him I have never been manic, that I have been in acute withdrawal once or twice, and also that voices were just so funny it may have seemed that way at other times, it was clear that he wasn't listening, but instead just pandered to try to get me to see things his way... I saw right through it.  I might have even made him nervous because of how jaded and dry I was throughout the interview.

I left at 1:30 am with two sleep aids and a note that indicated an outpatient clinic would call me in a day to help.  When the clinic called today, I revealed that I have a psychiatrist who simply refuses to ever get back in touch with me.  They then said they couldn't help me if I still was under her as a patient.  When I called my psychiatrists's office to try again, I got a secretary and she said I would need to be re-referred through another clinic to even talk to her, because of how long it had been since I had talked to her.  So I fired my psychiatrist on the spot.

Finally, another lead called me from Women's College Hospital, where my GP works.  Much better.  I now have an appointment tomorrow to discuss my situation with a doctor while my GP is away, and I am going to ask to just work with my GP and no shrink at all from this point on, if he's willing.  I quite like my GP, he's friendly, knowledgable, and hasn't let me down yet.  Most psychiatrists have been square, evil, odd or insane, or all of the above... I think I am done with them now.  I am not moved by anything they have to say about the mind, even the most recent one was making me wonder if she wasn't all there.  My analyst is still a dream and so that is how I will get therapy... too bad he can't prescribe.

Sinners, why is getting on antidepressants as an impressionable teenager so much easier than it is as a sophisticated 39 year old woman who knows who she is and what she needs?  I'm not asking for anything I could abuse here.  I do wish that this terrible bogus former diagnosis would just go away and never be mentioned again, because I haven't shown anything that could possibly be interpreted as a sign of it in well over a decade.  

Fuck psychiatrists, they remind me of bad Catholic priests - I hope my GP says yes and takes me on.  I will lick a cop's boots, but only because I have a cop fetish, I think they're terrible too... I won't kiss a doctor's ass unless they earn my respect.  I once called a shrink "darling" in the ER after he recommended ECT, just to let him know he had lost my compliance.  The young doctors are sometimes worse than the older ones, not knowing who they are at the stage in their lives when they would be getting training, trying to be "healers".  I often say that young people are like green bananas - give them time.  But in psychiatry, I just don't expect them to ever ripen to be anything terribly interesting.  

-Saraƒin

Video: Telepathy...

 

Probably one of the rarer psychic gifts, I do believe this is possible.  I used an oracle deck to read about spiritual telepathy - it was a bit tricky but it looks like I have conveyed enough of a message about it.  (I have several oracle decks and will read with others at some point too, for videos.)

-Saraƒin

Video: Spirit guides...

 

My shortest video yet!  Just some basic details on spirit guides - seems like I have a few, one is Coyote, all are animals/animal energy.  I did this with the tarot again, maybe my next reading will be with Dixit cards.

I think I figured out something I needed to do to clean up the remnants of sinful forces affecting me, left over from the assault on my soul.  It popped into my head to call to Jesus and say "I renounce the devil - help me with this" when before I was just praying to be freed from evil forces.  I channeled that this declaration is an act, and calls for something specific from God, and days later, while scrying on evil's effect in my life, text appears in the mind's eye, reading "the devil is gone".  I also feel slightly less troubled now.  (I feel sheepish if that is all I needed to do, because any bible believing baptist could have told me to do that, while I was trying other things.  We shall see.  Evil forces sometimes still had a hand in tripping me up during a reading, which at times made me very nervous, and I would need to do prayer work to get it back.)

I was in a health food store yesterday, and picked up a bottle of Dr. Bronner's castile soap from the shelf, the soap with the fanatical label on it.  My guide said "There are some people who read your blog who think of you a bit like what's written on this bottle of soap, but don't worry too much about it.  You're still delightful."  I decided a while ago to abandon caring about what others think of how strange my life has been, or of what they think of me as a result of having lived it.  If respect and success never come my way, so be it.  At least I lived my truest self, sought finer qualities in my personality, and delighted in my peculiarities in a way that suited me.  In the end, we all have to let it go when we die anyway, so why not have fun with consciousness while I'm here?

-Saraƒin

Video: Entheogens...

 

As the video says, this doesn't go too into brain chemistry, it acknowledges the chemical process and cautions against pushing the brain too far.  I recently explored two doses of psilocybin and I feel it was the boost I needed to push consciousness slightly further, but I knew to quit after two sessions.  Please use entheogens with respect so you don't have to deal with psychiatrists later!

-Saraƒin

Video: Channeling about godhood (using Dixit cards)...

I wasn't "on" at first this morning due to psychic interference (something I worry will create conflict with my psychic career) so this took a couple of takes.  This discusses the concept of the human god, or avatar.  I expect to get trolled by satanists at some point for this one, as much as I am likely to get trolled by fundamentalist Christians with other videos.  Eclectic mystics just can't win!  (BTW I said "Chiron" but clearly meant to say "Charon" - you'll see what I mean when I get there in the reading!)

This was done with a different Dixit deck (I have several) - I think this is "Dixit Revelations".  More to come!

-Saraƒin

Video: Mediums - channeled info using Dixit game cards!

 

Dixit is one of my favourite party games... but because of lockdown and restrictions, I have had less opportunity in recent times to play it, because of the lack of gatherings.  An alternative use for the cards is for psychic readings, something that has led me to try and collect as many expansion packs as possible.  These are almost better than oracle decks because they are less specific, could be interpreted in a myriad of ways, and make a fine alternative to the standard tarot, if there is more to be said in a reading than the standard major and minor arcana might suggest.  So this video used Dixit cards for a simple reading on mediums, something I will try again soon with another subject matter, because I feel this went well.

I should try getting into cartomancy with playing cards, but I would need to study them a bit more than I have to get used to them.  I'm a very visual person so I probably will just stick to methods like this and the tarot, when I pull cards.  Crystal ball and spirit writing have been incrementally improving for me as well.

-Saraƒin

Old Man Coyote...

 

Many, many posts ago (probably deleted now - I don't remember), I discussed an "insight" I had about a "wolf medicine man", which was at a much worse stage of me for channel and wellness.  A strange recurring vision of a dog faced man had happened in my spirituality, which I had interpreted as a wolf person (sometimes thinking it was a coyote man), but because of so much conflict in me for so long, I was unable to decipher the full meaning... and I think I now may have done just that.

This is not a wolf medicine man, but what certain Native American societies have called "Old Man Coyote"... he was the first source to approach me as I slipped into spiritual madness.  While contemplating on what I was calling my "guide" months ago, I got that whoever he is, his name begins with "O" - well, upon looking up Coyote online in folklore, He is known as "Old" Man Coyote, so that must be what the "O" stood for.  I do not have the richest knowledge of Coyote in my studies, only that He is known as an archetypal trickster, and can be a guide of sorts to humans, like in this Simpsons episode.  (The wisdom Coyote provides here isn't the finest, and if Homer had been advised to know himself, it might have been a better insight... still, it was a fun episode, and they worked this spirit's energy in well as a vibe.)

Coyote made my journey easier by making it funnier - I am getting that the cartoon visions were from the influence of this spirit, to cushion the horror of what I was facing.  Though it is true that I have not screamed or cried as much as I did during my possession, I have also never laughed as hard as during that time.

There was a time when I was deep in my initiation where I felt my soul take on the form of a clownish dog, and I felt compelled to roll in the grass like a happy canine.  I suppose this was Coyote showing Himself to me in a powerful way... I also once shapeshifted into a pouncing lioness, which I suppose was Sekhmet related.

Coyote presents the Higher Spirit of God to me as a playful friend who wants to teach with laughter, and be a companion who encourages me to lighten up.  He is the cosmic clown, the prankster who wants me to relax and enjoy life.  When people seek Satan because of what they think his character qualities are like, I think what they really want is Coyote's energy, who is impish but loving about it... Satan is lies and false gifts designed to lure you into a karmic nightmare.

I see a touch of Coyote whimsy in the mighty double rainbow that followed the 2014 WorldPride in Toronto - probably not literally that spirit giving us this natural phenomenon, but suggestive that God is all loving and will show it with a sense of humour.  The stern old man in the sky God is not, that's been my experience.  Perhaps He appears in any way one must work with Him, so that they listen.  For me, I needed a friend who would keep me laughing over how absurd everything was.

-Saraƒin

Video: Auras...

A short primer on auras - not my most fascinating video, just some general understanding.  There are some (perhaps obvious) pieces of advice on having a healthier aura, things like taking care of the body, mind and spirit.  I get the sense my own aura has gone through many shifts as I have healed and developed.  I can't see auras like some can, but I can channel things about them sometimes.

I just got my second vaccination shot yesterday, so I'm laying low a bit until the soreness and fatigue goes away.  Good to know that the waiting period is over!

-Saraƒin

Video: On death...

 

I thought about doing this one before - my channeling seems a bit more relaxed now, so I thought to film this today.  I used to fear dying, even when I felt suicidal, but now I mostly am at peace with it.  I think Jesus was the god who really helped me prepare for it, trusting that He will help me transition to a better place, when I leave.

This video touches a bit on both the Buddhist and the Christian.  I personally feel that Jesus CAN save you from Hell, but mostly He will help prevent you from having to reincarnate.  I don't believe most people are destined for Hell, I think that is a warped Christian concept... I think most are destined for reincarnation, depending on the direction their lives take.

-Saraƒin

Video: The pursuit of enlightenment...

 

Not specific to any particular path, this video is a general message about the pursuit of this concept.  I feel like I am on some sort of path, it's been complicated by things, but I seem to be well along the way to better things now.  I am able to have more fun now with spiritual skills and better self awareness, wherever I may be on the journey.

Channeling is getting a bit more interesting as of late, and has less funky days, something I was concerned about.  Usually when it goes funny, I just have to give it some prayer work and wait for it to bounce back, if I am having a moment where I can't read very well.

-Saraƒin

Video: Kabbalah...

 

This one was the big test for me as a channel - a subject that often boggles my mind when I try to study it.  The result is insight on how to approach this mystical tradition, rather than complex understanding, something you are better off finding for yourself in the Jewish traditional branch of Kabbalah.

(I want to note that I later realized I accidentally used the plural "sephirot" over the singular "sephirah" here because without a tight knowledge base on something, in this case the Hebrew language, sometimes I will slip up as a mind.  The general message came through, but a technical detail was funny.  Channel isn't perfect and can be like that sometimes.)

If an occultist sasses me out for this, I don't care, but if a rabbi calls me out, I will feel a bit self conscious.

-Saraƒin

Video: Mystics and mysticism...

 

Another brief one - this clarifies what a mystic is, and the common misconceptions of them.  I personally identify as a mystic because of my intense transformative experiences as I opened to the Divine, and because of my powerful relationship with God.  I have known other mystics in my life as well.  A true mystic lives it, they do not just take an interest in it.

I am really moving along well now so everything I have been doing, or a lot of it, has helped to ease my nerves and take away the darkness I have felt.  It's as though a new chapter in my life is opening up, in more ways than one.  Such a relief!

-Saraƒin

Video: The chakra system...

 

I was inspired by some black woo nonsense from a so-called black arts cult guru I watch for the lulz, and decided to do my own channeled insight on what the chakras are actually about.  Hopefully I did a much better job than he did - I swear, I could find better wisdom on life from a drifter drinking scotch from a bottle in a brown paper bag in the alleyway behind a strip club than from this guy.  There is so much bullshit out there, not just in new age, but in the occult as well.  I have seen too many examples of black magicians speaking pure hyperbole to put any of my trust in LHP spirituality... it's not just because I was assaulted by evil forces, but that's another reason I won't bother with that stuff.

I had some more breakthroughs where I got the sense to offer prayers to a few other gods, which I will talk about more in time as things unfold.  I am coming to understand that petitioning several gods I had tried in the past was fruitless, but others might have been right for me.  These new gods are Thor, Mars, and Helios.  My patron deity is Sekhmet for magick, but if there's a specific need a certain god could help me with in my growth, it's worth experimenting when I get a sign to try, which I did through divination.  It was neat that there was thunder and lightning in the sky on the day I figured out to petition Thor for help, perhaps that was a sign from nature that at least that god was going to help.  (I had also gotten a spirit drawing of a Viking longship months ago, which might have been a premonition.)  My method is - fuck around with prayer and find out, now that I have surrendered my soul's path to Higher Divinity.  It feels safe to do so at this point.

-Saraƒin

Video: Using spirit boards...

 

It's Canada Day, so... no red and white for me, but orange and authentic native jewelry, in solidarity with Canada's First Nations, Inuit, and Metis people.  I slipped up a bit and said "aboriginal" here when "indigenous" was probably more appropriate... oops!

I generally don't recommend the use of spirit boards, but I do use one now for psychic interpretation (minus the planchette), which I discuss a bit at the end of this video.  I don't find then that useful at higher levels of development, and I certainly don't trust them as safe for the unprepared, at least with the planchette involved, but I do discuss a bit how there might be something constructive about them if you know what you're doing.

-Saraƒin