“I fuse bishop with the Book of the Law and summon … Rabid Thelemite!”
–Jennifer overheard in the bathroom

Sometimes I just feel like such a fool for believing so hard, trusting so much and being blind to my own faults. Of course, I guess I need not point out the obvious fact that I have issues with the women throughout my life.

What I figured out is that I have a standard of acceptability — or apathy — that I maintain for those around me. Either you meet those standards, you don’t meet those standards or I just don’t give a shit enough to wonder if you meet or don’t meet those standards.

So I stand now between my sarcasm and anger — even up to just days ago — and the reality of my choices. How will the pieces fall? I don’t know. I would like to feel that this is just a bad personal soap opera that I live out for the benefit of those who masochistically read my journal. But it’s not. It’s finally down to having to draw my own lines between conviction and playtime. Am I only a Thelemite when I am sitting in a Mass? Am I only a Thelemite when I am jumping cabalistic hoops with the Brethren in the aegis of the Camp? Or am I am Thelemite all the time without prejudice … that is the question that I have to answer now.

But then, I think I have already answered that with the life that I live and the choices that I make to stand firm in the convictions that Thelema is not some superstitious cure-all for the human condition as Christianity believes itself to be. Thelema is something that is evolutionary and revolutionary. Thelema is something that builds that bulwark of resistance to the slavery of the mind, heart and spirit of those who utilize it rather than mouth it from the corners of their Crowley stained lips.

My leather, your lace, my sweat, your blood and the mix of liquor infusing the two into a lustful evocation of animalistic violence and barbarous orgasm.

Monday morning and it seems like a whole new universe has opened up and fallen right in my lap. I seem inspired at the moment. I feel like I can tackle the system and win. I know that I will be able to accomplish my current set of goals over the next year. I sit here with my second cup of coffee and thinking about the day of work ahead of me. In fact, I am thinking about the entire week ahead of me. It will be an interesting one to be sure.

Or this could all just be bad heartburn … sometimes it’s hard to tell …

I have decided that I will choose manifested friendship over unrequited love. It’s a tough decision, but one that will ultimately make me happier in these hopefully not so short years of my life.

This whole “Scarlet Woman” (I am sooo ‘scarlet’!) thang is just sick to me. We have women running around thinking that a wink and a handjob is the way to emulate ‘the Scarlet Woman’ persona in various Thelemic communities.

The conversation tonight went something like this:
[Semi-dark room, Will & Grace on TV, Jenn on one couch, me on the other]
[Censored banter back and forth]
bishop: [mild sarcastic mode] No, you just stick daggers in my back.
Jennifer: [fake hurt mode] I do not.
bishop: [heavy sarcastic mode] Oh, that’s right. They are more like broadswords.
Jennifer: [major whine mode] That’s not true.
bishop: [shocked mode] What? You think they are dainty little toothpicks or something?
[Silence]
[More silence]
[Peals of laughter from both of us]
Jennifer: [more major whine mode] Yes! And they are the ones with the little fuzzy ends too!

I am not here to support you, I am here to dismantle your mind.

The first principle in changing the psyche is understanding that the psyche can be changed.

I have spent time in reflection of my past and my present. I have a bitterness that still exists. I acknowledge this. But this bitterness must be capable of being a tool in my repertoire of changes. I cannot allow myself to be manipulated by my own feelings that are no longer valid in this point in my life. These feelings are from the past, not the present. They are to be memories, not weapons. I can be part of the whole without fear of that which haunts me — even when I feel the past is being repeated in front of me.

I pride myself in continually saying that I never shut doors on people. And I don’t. But sometimes I still need to slip out a back window and just call it a night.

You know? I am where I am because I didn’t have the kind of discipline or responsibility or self-control or brain cells to figure out that I was destroying my own life until it was almost too late to do anything about it. I’ve been there. I’ve blamed the kitchen sink. But the kitchen sink didn’t respond and save my life. But the kitchen sink did sit there silently while I gave it all the necessary components to be a scapegoat and allow me some kind of temporary peace with my ills. It was a target, not a resolution. Once the clarity of responsibility took hold (discipline came later), I could only realize that my days in the “Dark Ages” were not a negative as so many (and I did too for a while) might perceive, but something of a life lesson. A hard lesson to be sure. Most likely an unnecessary manner in which to learn that lesson in the big picture. But it was a lesson nonetheless that had to be learned. And if I was too hardheaded to learn it any other way, then at least I got through it and have come out the other side stronger, wiser and alive.

Time and time again we have seen conversations that have seemed good at the time only to fail in the light of experience. I have watched communion fall into corruption, magick fall into mediocrity and life fall into lethargy.