Indi Latrani @indi@awoo.space

I'm non-binary and AMAB, I present androgynous but identify as demi-boy and gay. Nonetheless I've dealt with a lot of body dysphoria and been lucky enough to get a lot of medical transition services.

I may (or may not!) be an outlier and a weird case, but I refuse to be sidelined or ignored.

@adeptomega Yeah, I really want to see you, this weekend was just weird for us. :) Looking forward to hugging!

@typhlosion Did I miss some Discourse? c.c;

Hi, I'm still here! Had a nice break-from-routine weekend where my owner was gone and everyone else in the house pretty much had nice cuddly offline social-times and game-playing. And now I'm feeling slightly overwhelmed by onlineness again.

I should probably eat some lunch.

How's everyone here doing?

@spiderrobotpig@witches.town Glad to help! :)

Oh by the way, since we're sorta talking around the edges of animism here too, there's a book I like to recommend about that too: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B009W12LA0

It's got some pretty dense philosophical content but it's very well-argued and the conclusion it presents is the nearest thing I've ever seen to my exact worldview in (non-fiction) text. :)

@spiderrobotpig@witches.town Thanks! You too, and I love talking about this stuff in general really. :)

@spiderrobotpig@witches.town Well I didn't exactly invent it. ;)

I've also been known to use "The Dreaming" when I need to emphasize that it includes what we often otherwise think of as imaginary/fictional worlds.

@spiderrobotpig@witches.town That's pretty close to what I'm saying, but both those words feel like they put their baggage in the wrong place. ;)

That's why I prefer "Spirit World" ;)

@spiderrobotpig@witches.town I mean, that sounds a bit too paradigmatic to be a chaos magic 'big thing'. I've also seen a lot of shitty solipsist chaotes. ;)

@spiderrobotpig@witches.town Like, I"m willing to agree that it's all psychological too, if we allow that 'psyche' doesn't just refer to a singular mind connected to a single physical body. ;)

@spiderrobotpig@witches.town Most of the time I get talked down to about actually believing in spirits it's from little babby chaotes going "don't you know it's just all psychological?" >.<

(I mean, there's also the atheopagans, but let's just leave that subject aside for now)

@spiderrobotpig@witches.town YES YES YES.

If chaos magic means "experiment until you find what works for you and build around that" then I'm still doing it.

If it means "pretentiously tout how often you're switching up your paradigms" then eff that. ;)

@spiderrobotpig@witches.town I mean, I'm on the spectrum myself, and I think that's tied in with my spiritwork too? More at ease interacting with non-human persons than human ones? :)

Chaos magic did and does appeal to me in a lot of ways too, and my practice still has some elements of that (ask me about my sigil wall) but it does still all derive from an animistic paradigm.

(Though TBH I think a lot of chaotes root themselves in a gnostic paradigm and then just refuse to admit it. :P)

@spiderrobotpig@witches.town This is why I have some sympathy for at least DISCUSSION of practices from cultures that are not my own, they tend to have worldviews that are more compatible with mine in that regard.

@spiderrobotpig@witches.town The reason that doesn't work for me is that I ended up with the animism stuff, the spirit-world experiences for lack of a better term, before I ran into any of the rest, so hearing Chaos Magic treat it all like it's psychological effects or constructed servitors feels pretty bad to me ALSO.

@spiderrobotpig@witches.town There's a lot in common between chaos magic and shamanism in general, so it's no surprise that Phil Hine is writing about it. It's like... remember what I said about it all going back to animism plus trance states? Chaos magic is basically rooted in just focussing on the 'trance states' part of that (gnosis, etc).

@spiderrobotpig@witches.town Yeah. >.< When it's coming out of New Age stuff, shamanic teachings have a lot of the same problems that other newage stuff does, a desperate attempt at proving validity by tying itself to... whatever else. Pseudoscience, some sort of cultural traditions, whatever. It's intensely disheartening at best.

@spiderrobotpig@witches.town The things that feel best to me are the ones who are willing to roll it back that far (e.g. neolithic practices), or to actually take just those core spiritual technologies and apply them in new ways without having to call out to other cultures in search of validity. Phil Hine is a pretty major chaos magic figure, so he mostly does the latter, and does a pretty good job of it.

@spiderrobotpig@witches.town The appropriation question gets really hard when it comes to shamanism because when you trace cultural practices back far enough, you'll find that a whole lot of them end up rooting in animism and trance states and the sorts of things that 'shamanic practices' focus on, and we end up in a situation of 'there's no better word even though this word has some problems circling around it'