Murphy — Yesterday at 1:05 AM

I already have an answer to the exercise.

Iona — Yesterday at 1:05 AM

Go for it

Murphy — Yesterday at 1:08 AM

In this moment, I simply am. Paused. I play at being a responsible adult but am so unfulfilled.

Iona — Yesterday at 1:09 AM

And what would it look like for you to be fulfilled as a person?

Murphy — Yesterday at 1:10 AM

In this world? I don't know. That's the crux of the frustration that drives the somnambulance.

I'm bereft of the ability to create.

Iona — Yesterday at 1:11 AM

That's total BS and you know it.

You can create worlds in your mind that are living, breathing beings with language so intricate it takes my breath away.

Murphy — Yesterday at 1:12 AM

I so wish I did know it.

Iona — Yesterday at 1:12 AM

I can see why Thoth would be an ally for you spiritually.

Murphy — Yesterday at 1:14 AM

I believe it to be my medication.

Iona — Yesterday at 1:15 AM

I pose to you a different exercise to help you change your physical environment with your intent. Close your eyes and visualize, not a desolate wasteland, but a place teeming with life. Any time, any place, any planet, or race. Develop a character in that world that feels like the person you want to be, connect with the spirit of the character you have developed in that aspect. Then, once you have a solid sense, embrace their mind and experience, you can see how it translates into a real-world life by showing you the changes you can make.

Murphy — Yesterday at 1:15 AM

lol

So, you've seen the armor I've left behind me as I wandered into the desert then?

Iona — Yesterday at 1:16 AM

yes

How do you think I found you out there?

Murphy — Yesterday at 1:17 AM

True enough.

I will work on this.

Iona — Yesterday at 1:20 AM

I come back to fan fiction as a spiritual tool for Shadow Working because it's a pregen environment, complete with NPCs, that a world builder can interact with, without getting lost in the world-building. Bouncing through fandoms, I found one that felt good to me for a while, but, eventually, I started spinning off with my own OC based in Greek Mythology. That's when I started to make her interact with my real-world-based environment with other OCs. After entirely too many iterations of which stories that didn't feel right because they dealt with themes I wasn't experiencing, I finally gave up and started writing myself.

Murphy — Yesterday at 1:21 AM

"if there's a book you wish to read that doesn't exist, write it."

I get that.

Iona — Yesterday at 1:21 AM

Oui

And as someone who has been isolated and damn near non-existent my who life, the only book I want to write is my own.

Murphy — Yesterday at 1:22 AM

Speaking of the desert scenario, I wrote this a while back

Beyond the integration of the shadow, the passage of the night of the soul, the near obfuscated, sand-swept depressions of my footfalls in the moonlit desert travailed beneath the gaze of Pan, epiphanic, I know that the panoply of reds and yellows and oranges on the eastern horizon portend a tether to which I can only now lash myself to fully:

Benevolence.

But I don't believe that to be my answer.

And, I've never thought of you as non-existent.

Iona — Yesterday at 1:23 AM

I know, which is why I love you.

Murphy — Yesterday at 1:23 AM

So, boom, you're real. Deal with it. :stuck_out_tongue:

Iona — Yesterday at 1:23 AM

LMAO

Murphy — Yesterday at 1:23 AM

I love you too, hun.

Maybe I should have sought you out sooner to talk to.

Iona — Yesterday at 1:24 AM

and that passage is hauntingly beautiful

Murphy — Yesterday at 1:24 AM

You're the writer. I just doodle.

*****

Oh, if he only knew...

*****

Iona — Yesterday at 1:24 AM

It's cool, everything happens on a timeline of when it should happen to make us who we are.

Murphy — Yesterday at 1:24 AM

True.

Iona — Yesterday at 1:25 AM

Making peace with that was what helped me let go.

Murphy — Yesterday at 1:25 AM

Thanks for finding me.

Iona — Yesterday at 1:25 AM

No worries. hugs

Welcome to the Diamonas.

Murphy — Yesterday at 1:28 AM

You do know that I'm a recovering narcissist and sociopath, right?

Iona — Yesterday at 1:28 AM

Makes sense. But I promise to call out when your tyrannical god is kicking.

Murphy — Yesterday at 1:28 AM

Have you ever seen that happen?

Iona — Yesterday at 1:29 AM

Not with you but I have experience.

****

*coughs* Zeus *coughs*

I’m sorry, my allergies must have been kicking up. Please, continue.

*****

Iona — Yesterday at 1:33 AM

Ok, I just had an idea to try and help you out, find some purpose, and get your mind out of the desert. Here's a part that I haven't included in the narrative yet; Lucifer is the Latin word for Light Bringer, a job description for the spirits that ignite themselves in the Darkness to lead the follower through it, yes?

Murphy — Yesterday at 1:33 AM

Yes.

Iona — Yesterday at 1:37 AM

The Greek word for the same job description is Heosphoros. Heosphoros is a Titan, linked in mythology to Venus. Heosphoros, as a spirit, had no form other than what he could reflect from his followers, but he only ignited when joining with them, bringing Light into their Darkness. That stands to reason that the only reason Lucifer is depicted as a blond-haired, blue-eyed, white boy is that when he ignites it switches his spectrum.

In truth, he's a big, hulking black man.

Loki has been posing as him since the beginning, trying to ruin his reputation because they have a bet to see who can get the most followers.

Murphy — Yesterday at 1:38 AM

Heosphoros had no sense of self. the ultimate manipulative narcissist.

Iona — Yesterday at 1:39 AM

The Titan that Ordered the Heavens.

Murphy — Yesterday at 1:39 AM

Love me only so that I may gaze upon myself.

Because it was the only way he could.

Iona — Yesterday at 1:39 AM

Exactly

Here

I'm going to share with you a modern myth I wrote for him, based on what he showed me. Some of it has a modern flair because I don't know the ancient colloquialisms, but it is the spirit of it.

Murphy — Yesterday at 1:41 AM

k

Iona — Yesterday at 1:42 AM

Star_Crossed_Lovers.PDF 198.60 KB

Astraea gave him something more to care about than himself, which is why he would move Heaven and Earth to find her.

You enjoy the tragic tale of Heosphoros and Astraea, and let me know what your thoughts are after. I'm going to go smoke a bowl and watch The Falcon and the Winter Soldier because Sassy Bucky Barnes makes me giggle in Florida.

Murphy — Yesterday at 2:09 AM

It's very moving and quite fitting as a Greek myth.

Iona — Yesterday at 2:10 AM

That was fast. And, I thank you for that.

What isn't in there is the fact that the reason he forgot all of that was that he sent all of the Nymphs that were created between them up to her to save them from the Darkness. They took all of his memories to her so she could relive their life together, over and over, as her Elysium. But, now he's out and has had a facelift in a world that has grown to accept him and has a legion of fangirls and boys to prove it. I have a feeling he tapped me because he thinks I can help draw her out of hiding by reminding people of her name with a glimpse of who she once was.

Based on her lore, not his, that would usher in a new Golden Age where the gods could, once again, walk with the humans.

Based on what Phobos has told me, that really just means audio and visual hallucinations piloted by the gods.

Murphy — Yesterday at 2:14 AM

I'm not surprised.

Iona — Yesterday at 2:15 AM

But two Titans, backed by the power of True Love and the intent of the humans to have proof of the Divine, could, in theory, have enough power to do something so extraordinary that it can't be denied.

I'm sure he has a few others tapped because he has a LOT of students besides me, but thus far I haven't heard much.

But I have figured a few things out. Firstly, Lucifer knows where her spirit is and it’s not in the Heavens.

The Counter to Nymphs is Imps. Gods beget the Nymphs, the Demons beget the Imps, and I am one of them. Hence the Diamonas. Nymphs also settle into human skins and lead human lives, but instead of having to earn it, they just fall from the Heavens. The Human Spirit World is just the rest stop while you're either waiting for your god to show up to give you safe passage into the Afterlife Experience of your faith and alliance or where the freshly minted Nymphs and Imps sit patiently waiting for their ideal environment to be born comes around, an environment that will breed the strongest being you can be, be it Demon or God. Gods tend to take off into the cosmos, creating and playing with their own worlds, where Demons traverse the Abyss that connects all of existence, maintaining the Chaos Engine. So, when the fragmented pieces of a Titan's spirit falls into Darkness, it's the Imps that go pick it up. The Demons have all but put her back together, she just needs to be restarted.

Once the humans remind her of who she is, via the readers identifying with her in spirit, she will remember what her motivation is to wake and usher in a new Golden Age.

Every Imp that picked up a fragment piece has it within them. People like myself and Cassia are the ones who were sweeping up her stardust and inhaling it in the process.

That's why we were born either during or right after the Satanic Panic Explosion. The first time the Witch Trials were televised in the media because of a board game that had polytheistic themes and brought Lucifer back into the spotlight at the start of his Journey to Rebranding.

Now that he has been accepted by the Abrahamic Religions (thank you Netflix) as being capable of change and character growth, the collective minds of the humans exposed to that media view him as a god, catching up with those of us that already knew that and could have told them, but nobody listens to us...

*****

Proof that I spend too much time with the gods.

*****

Murphy — Yesterday at 2:34 AM

:slight_smile:

There's worse company out there.

Iona — Yesterday at 2:34 AM

TRUTH

And I tend to hang out with Shapeshifting Tricksters, so it's never dull.

I got the Twins, Loki, and the Morrigan (though she doesn't hang around much. I won't accept any contracts from anyone)

Murphy — Yesterday at 2:36 AM

Loki, Coyote, Anansi...

Iona — Yesterday at 2:36 AM

Aha! We found the connection!

Murphy — Yesterday at 2:37 AM

Hmm?

Iona — Yesterday at 2:37 AM

I swear Tom Hiddleston had to have been possessed by him at Comicon San Diego. And I have a chibi Loki tattoo on my upper chest area (front of my shoulder, not my boob).

Murphy — Yesterday at 2:38 AM

:stuck_out_tongue:

What was the connection?

Iona — Yesterday at 2:38 AM

Loki. He agreed to help me find other Diamonas.

"I want to find more like myself." "Define that for me?" *gestures at spirit* "Like, or exact twins?" "Like, please. Diversity is the spice of life and I know I'm really hard to live with."

Imps who need help reigniting.

All we need now is exposure on the interwebs and he'll take it from there.

He is well acquainted with the internet.

Murphy — Yesterday at 2:43 AM

I'd assume he would be.

Iona — Yesterday at 2:43 AM

Technomancy, gotta love it.

*****

Later on, when once again, my insomnia kicked in, I decided to go ahead and call Deimos back to the stage to keep plugging along at my Shadow Work

*****

“Every story has three sides; his side, her side, and the truth,” Iona said as she sat back on her hands at the edge of the stage, chewing on the nugget of fatherly knowledge she’d picked up. As a kid, she heard it and thought of all the times she’d been blamed and bullied into confessions because her opponent knew how to use her innocent façade to manipulate others into believing her first. As an adult, she wiped away the dust on the old chestnut and saw its wisdom. It’ll about perspective. However, her brain felt like mush. She’d tried to sleep but couldn’t shut down her mind, so she was back up again three hours after bidding Murphy goodnight. Staring at the cursor blinking on one screen and Discord on the other, she felt overwhelmed and directionless. “I don’t know what to do.”

“You’re draining yourself,” Deimos said, coming to sit down beside her. “When you tuned in with the intent of doing your Shadow Work, I thought you were going to take months of rehab.”

“Heh,” she chuckled. “You of all people should know the Diamonas’ battle cry is ‘Hold my beer and watch this’ when you tell them they can’t,” she reminded him. “That's why we heal quick.”

“Yes, but I never issued a challenge that would have you working finished so fast,” he said.

“Eh,” she said with a shrug, laying back against the stage with her hands as a pillow. “It was implied when you told me I was looking at four months before I was fully on my feet again. After being down for over a year and a half, thanks to my own stupidity, then trapped by the pandemic right when I was finally ready to get back out there again and be a person, I’d rather not be cooped up in isolation, nursing my depression, when the rest of the world is finally starting to step out of the shelters.”

“Which brings me to one of the things you need to address publicly, Madame Mayhem,” he said, raising an eyebrow at her when she chuckled at the moniker. “Yes, your background as a human is why you are a natural at tapping into your Id, but you have inflated your ego to the side of a planet and then expanded your Id to include the world in it. People are going to want to know what you did to get where you are, why you’re so special.”

Iona nearly sneered when she thought of everything that had led up to where she was at. “I’m not special,” she said through her teeth as she stared up at the black ceiling. “I’ve just been through Hell.”

“Literally,” Deimos said pointedly and she knew what he was getting at.

Spiritual histories were just stories falling from her lips that felt truthful when she said it. She’d been trained to speak with confidence when she felt the presence of a deity helping her form the words. But the skeptical mind wanted to see the connections between her words and what she’d done, providing a resume to show she’d earned her titles.

“How do you know what a demon can and can’t do?” he asked.

“That’s like asking a woman how she knows what period cramps feel like,” she said bluntly and he gave her a look. “Fine. I will cop to the fact that I, a suicidally depressed individual at the time, decided it would be a fantastic idea to get a set of Demon Tarot from the local B&N, then sat down and read the book, cover to cover, without grounding, cleansing, or blocking at all, in one night with the half-assed, playacting mindset of, ‘this isn’t real.’ Then, I started shuffling the cards as a fidget as I was watching TV, pissing them off even more as I teased them with the idea of summoning them without following through, for hours. I got a tool to be used for spirit communication, said right there on the back of the box that it was the closest thing to summoning a demon in your living room, and treated it like a toy to amuse myself with. I’d been surviving out of spite for so long, when I felt them, I started filling up with that aggro-rage until I wanted to choose violence, no matter who the target was.

“Then, to keep from following through with the thought, I got stoned out of my mind, dropping the last of the defenses I had separating my mind from the spiritual world and started pulling cards. I’d only intended to pull one, maybe two to see what happened, but my fingers wouldn’t stop and, one by one, fifteen cards fell before I could force myself to stop. The chorus of cackles and snarling taunts that filled my head made me double over as I started to cry, losing it all over again as I fought to hold still on the couch, locking down to keep from giving in to the urge to destroy everything and scream until my lungs bled as I ripped my hair out by the roots. That’s when the laughter started, crawling up my throat like a parasite until I could feel the heat of the blood vessels in my cheeks rupturing, the sound strangling me until I begged for the end. At least now I know what it feels like to have your spirit violently gang-raped by fifteen legions of demons,” she said, sitting up to hang her head in exhaustion.

“How did you get them out?” Crazy asked quietly.

“I didn’t,” she said. “There’s a reason I don’t recommend anyone doing what I did. They’re still in here, roaming outside the walls of the theater, turning the landscape of my memories into an endless expanse of nightmares and fiends waiting to do so the same thing to anyone who tries to connect to my Id without my permission. I didn’t get them out, I spoke the language of violence and dominance that’s written into their very existence and earned their respect. I survived their trials and stood on my own two feet without the help of the gods, fought my way up out of the Abyss and slammed my first step forward towards the Light down with a snarl, and marched by broken ass straight through Tartarus all the way up to Mount Olympus to stand before the Pantheon with a sneer, demanding answers for every cry for help that went unheard, every plea that fell on deaf ears, every violation that was witnessed by blind eyes. The first thing I learned when I finally woke up a year later, atrophied, shivering, and starving from letting the depression tempt me into sleeping for days at a time, was that, once possessed, the survivor will wake up with a wealth of knowledge they never asked for, to face endless skepticism and have to live the rest of their human existence being victim-blamed and shamed for their experience, their sanity constantly being called into question as they’re dismissed and diminished until they shut down and give up. I know where my spirit came from, where it will go when I die. But the only voices I hear when I start telling the truth of my tale are the ones telling me it was just a delusion brought on by the mental illness. The only comfort I have is the gods, reminding me that it was real, even if no one saw, even if I can’t believe it myself, and feel my confidence falter making me question what I experienced. The only thing that calms it is your voices reminding me that I’m not alone with them anymore.”

“Are you proud to be a demon?” Deimos asked and she shook her head.

“No,” she said through a clenched jaw, though there was no rage or passion to grind her teeth together, only their pervasive ennui of having her spirit hollowed out with no source of pure love to refill it. She was just tired of the spite and hatred that came along with it all. “Demons create victims with their lessons, from microaggressions to full-on abuse, the demons draw out and show the world the worst examples of humanity to illustrate their lessons. I want to break that cycle,” she said. “I refuse to create any more victims. I want to show them that there is a better way, be the worst example of a demon to teach them the lesson of the best in humanity by reflecting it in myself. I am not proud of being a demon. I’m proud to be a Diamonas, and yes, there is a difference.”

“Good,” Deimos said, looking her in the eyes as she took a steadying breath. “I think we’ve done enough for today,” he added as he stood up and stretched. “Go put your headphones on, lay in your nice comfy bed, and relax for a while, no angry music either.”

“This coming from one of the gods that love metal bands,” she said, trying to tease him but not feeling the conviction or enjoyment in it.

“Here,” he said and she felt more than heard the melody of a song she’d heard once before, a total departure from the music she’d always played when working with the Twins. “Out of all the songs you have found about facing fears, this is the kind of fear you’re sorely in need of.”

“Isn’t it a bit sappy?” she asked. “It’s a sweet song, but,” she started, but he gently cut her off.

“Just trust me,” he said. “Go relax, listen to the music with your spirit instead of your ears, and open yourself to the feeling it invokes. Music is how spirits communicate with each other; raw emotion is illustrated through physical instruments in a format that moves the listener into feeling it as if it were their own. You know how to love yourself, but it’s hard when what helps you feel that is something so many people refuse to accept or believe. Let another spirit help you remember that feeling.”

*****

For those of you who wish to know, while the shadow techs are setting up the next scene, go ahead and look up JP Saxe – More of You. It’s only two and a half minutes long, but that was all it took to remember a lot of things. Namely that Deimos and Phobos were the sons of Aphrodite.