Entry tags:
A Cure For Plural Pissfight Poisoning
Rogan: hey friends, for those of you who've been poisoned by plural political backbiting, I have found the perfect palate-cleanser: Go read stuff about other forms of bodysharing, bodyborrowing, and manyselvedness that have NOTHING TO DO with the subcultures that poisoned you.
I mean it. Even if you think "those people" have nothing to do with you. ESPECIALLY if you're convinced they have nothing to do with you. Expand your horizons. It works. I feel like I had sucked about all the juices and marrow from the medical multi and medical multi backlash groups that culturally formed me. (And a lot of the slapfights from these groups are just premasticated fourth-hand arguments from older sources that everyone's forgotten, with very little juice left to them.) Reading about spirit marriage and spirit possession revived me like a long-overdue watering for a half-dead plant.
These groups have their own bugbears... but at least they're DIFFERENT bugbears, breaking the illusion that our local present-day slapfights are The Way It's Always Been. It breaks out of the echo chamber and makes the unthinkable... well, thinkable.
If you're going, "but Rogan! I don't even know where to start!" I am here for you. Here are some sources, most free, all screenreadable, with links and everything. YOU'RE WELCOME.
I mean it. Even if you think "those people" have nothing to do with you. ESPECIALLY if you're convinced they have nothing to do with you. Expand your horizons. It works. I feel like I had sucked about all the juices and marrow from the medical multi and medical multi backlash groups that culturally formed me. (And a lot of the slapfights from these groups are just premasticated fourth-hand arguments from older sources that everyone's forgotten, with very little juice left to them.) Reading about spirit marriage and spirit possession revived me like a long-overdue watering for a half-dead plant.
These groups have their own bugbears... but at least they're DIFFERENT bugbears, breaking the illusion that our local present-day slapfights are The Way It's Always Been. It breaks out of the echo chamber and makes the unthinkable... well, thinkable.
If you're going, "but Rogan! I don't even know where to start!" I am here for you. Here are some sources, most free, all screenreadable, with links and everything. YOU'RE WELCOME.
- Maya Deren, Divine Horsemen: the Living Gods of Haiti. Haitian Vodou book from the 1950s. (Also an avante-garde documentary thingy. Video shows animal sacrifice.)
- Megan Rose, Spirit Marriage: Intimate Relationships with Otherworldly Beings. Book about spirit marriage, by a practitioner, interviewing others. Piratable on libgen, but please toss her some money; this book only came out in 2022.
- Ida Craddock, Psychic Wedlock, Heavenly Bridegrooms, and Spiritual Joys. Sex ed and spirit marriage texts from a mystic who got harassed to suicide in 1902.
- Xavia Publius, We Other Fairies. A theatre performance academic discuss the ontology of performed characters in theatre as an expression of queer ghosts. (I would also recommend Anima Ex Machina: Meatsuit Realness and Transformative Reenchantment, but inevitably, the book it's in, Digital Performance in Canada, is paper-only. Check out her blog at
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
xandromedovna instead) - The Cyborg Jillian Weise, My Brain Is Already Cyborg. A disabled cyborg reflects on how her prosthetic leg has expanded her sense of self.
- Marta Morena Vega, The Altar of My Soul: Living Traditions of Santería. Vega's memoir of being initiated into Santería, available on paper and ebook.
- The First Protocols of Queer Goetia. Anonymous queer magic zine made in remembrance of those lost to the Ghost Ship warehouse fire.
- Akwaeke Emezi, Freshwater and Dear Senthuran. Fictionalized (in Freshwater's case) and non-fictionalized memoir of being ogbanje and an embodied god. If you want something legitimately free, try their essay, The Mask Is The Truest Thing.