Introduction & self-disclosure

It benefits me to stay anonymous on the internet, but I’m not a secretive person. In the interest of developing our parasocial relationship so you can understand my future writing more deeply, I want to use this first post to tell you what I can about myself.

First, the reason for my anonymity: I’m estranged from my family for mental health reasons. I have bipolar 2, which for me manifests through rapid cycling hypomanic episodes. I’m also autistic. Both of these conditions are well known to be genetic, and the reality is that both of my parents and my sibling all share the same conditions.

In my family I am the only person who had any interest in developing coping skills, adapting to a balanced and healthy lifestyle, and overcoming my inbuilt limitations. As I have grown in my understanding of my conditions, it has become impossible to maintain relationship with my family, who remain enmeshed with each other to an extent that I find very disturbing.

For years I tried to continue relationship with my family, but their state of being makes it too difficult to maintain my wellness. Their aggressively immature communication skills and total lack of interpersonal boundaries are a danger to the house of cards I live in. So I removed my name from all my internet accounts, moved to the American South because it’s not enticing enough for them to surprise me with a spontaneous visit, and blocked their contact in every way possible.

I don’t think my family realizes that our relationship is one of estrangement. Neither of my parents maintained close contact with their own parents in adulthood. So they probably think it is quite normal that we don’t talk. As far as I know they still text my phone number, not understanding that the messages won’t go through. They are happy enough this way, and I have my peace of mind. It’s not even sad for me anymore.

Anyone who relates to this experience may benefit from reading Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay Gibson, if you haven’t already.

One practice that helps me feel like part of a lineage despite my estrangement from my family is ancestor worship. This comes naturally to me as a half-Asian who grew up living immersed in predominantly Chinese cultures. I was exposed to ancestor worship a great deal in my childhood, and I’ve never really felt like the dead are far away.

I started talking with my ancestors on a proper daily basis when I joined Alcoholics Anonymous. In the end it turned out that I don’t actually have a drinking problem, and after working the 12 Steps I left the program. But I credit AA for transforming my spiritual practice from something casual that I didn’t really think about into the foundation of my everyday life.

In the process of studying the folk history of my ancestral cultures (Ireland and the Philippines) I learned something that surprised me. All my childhood, I thought I was maladaptively daydreaming and talking to imaginary friends. But I was actually practicing astral projection into the Otherworld and hanging out with the Sídhe and the Old Gods.

I was a lonely child. My family moved countries every 2-3 years and I never managed to hang onto friendships beyond our departure. On top of that the undiagnosed autism made it difficult for me to socialize with other children. This was especially true when we moved to the USA, where people mainly socialize by discussing pop culture – my family kept me under a strict media prohibition, so I was unable to engage. I still don’t consume media, and I still struggle with Americans, despite having lived here for decades now.

Instead of socializing with humans, I spent most of my time alone in my bedroom reading fairy tales and books about mythology, and when I got tired of reading I would lie down in my bed and disappear into my mind and the Otherworld.

When I joined AA and began to habitually pray, I discovered that a lot of intangible beings were right there waiting for me. They had been there for me since I was a child, and I had simply fallen out of touch. I think this is true for many people who play a lot in the imagination as children. If you are curious, why not reach out a welcoming hand and see who takes it?

These days instead of doing so much astral projection I socialize with my intangible friends through invocation. I will make another post listing the offerings that help them project themselves to Earth with the greatest ease.

Spiritual practice was the foundation of my everyday lifestyle for some time before I received the first soul contract that made me a Manach. Today I am under contract with three Gods: Saturn, Pluto, and one who, like me, prefers to remain anonymous. In addition to my three contracts I treat Zeus, Poseidon, Venus, and Miss Moon like adoptive parents.

Unlike a priest, who works for the Gods through service to the human Collective, my role is to serve my Gods directly. Basically, my energy is the food the Gods eat, so it’s imperative that I keep my energy clean and healthy at all times. This is part of why it is so important for me to maintain my estrangement from my family and to protect my boundaries from humans who feel entitled to my personal service by nature of seeing me as a member of the pagan clergy.

Early in my monkhood I encountered numerous toxic personalities who felt that because I am a monk, I have a duty to cleanse them of their energetic impurities. On the contrary, it is actually part of my contract obligations to deny assistance to people who would contaminate my spiritual energy.

Each of the Gods who hold my contracts has different requirements for me. These requirements create the foundation of my lifestyle. It would be very boring to list them all here, but I’ll share a few.

For Saturn, I work as an Oracle. Saturn is the God of Time, and since I have a direct line to his energy, I have some power to see outside the illusion of linear time. The seekers who come to me are very much in line with mythology: insufferable shitshows who have ruined their lives beyond the hope of repair. Over time I’ve learned that my role is to tell them what they’ve done wrong, explain the inevitable consequences of their actions, and then ghost them, leaving them alone with their problems. Without fail, they misinterpret whatever I’ve told them and go on to fulfill my prophecies to the letter. It is difficult to explain what purpose this serves for my seekers, but the benefits I’ve experienced in healing my own codependency are beyond expression.

For Pluto, on my porch I keep a collection of spirit houses, and every year during Ghost Month and Samhain I light candles inside the uninhabited ones to invite wandering ghosts to stay. This serves two distinct purposes. First, it protects my neighbors from being haunted. Second, it gives anxious and abandoned spirits a sense of security. In the spirit house village the ghosts are able to socialize with each other, and this helps them with their grief processing so they may find peace and eventually move on to Pluto’s realm. I know I have done my job when I find formerly inhabited houses empty.

By my anonymous God, I am held to very specific dietary restrictions, and if I violate them I am punished by the development of life-threatening allergies. This actually happened once when I selfishly tried to encourage this God that he might enjoy the flavor of fried oysters just because I wanted to eat them. So now I am allergic to all shellfish. In addition to being prohibited from eating certain food groups, I am not allowed to consume artificial additives, which I’m sure you can imagine is actually quite challenging in the United States. Now that I’m healthy enough to do most of my own cooking, this is easier to manage.

In two separate posts I’ll unpack my astrological natal chart and my Human Design chart. But I think I will call it here for now. I hope learning a little about my history made my demeanor a little less unwelcoming.