A confession (adventures in meta-programming)

 

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

Two years ago, I began perhaps one of the most dangerous spiritual manoeuvres of my path to date. This involved a deep-dive into my childhood and cultural programming in order to root out some things, bring others into the light of the sun, and synthesise the parts into a harmonious whole. The overall effect has shaken me to the core, but in such a way that I think it unlikely to cause too many further problems. Now is the time I think, to relate something of the tale.

While I have been actively on the ‘path’ since my early teens, I was actually raised as a Roman Catholic. I don’t have any horror stories of evil priests to relate, only judgmental old ladies, the smell of incense and old books. Going to church on a Sunday morning was a combination of boredom, an opportunity to daydream, and a vague sense that something of import was going on at the altar. As I got older and prepared for first Holy Communion, I recall distinctly being terrified to try an unconsecrated host in catechism class. You could say that the ‘fear of God’, was in me at an early age. Later, I served as an altar boy, which mainly consisted of waving incense about and ringing bells while wearing a cool robe, so in that sense not much has changed. I would probably have developed along these lines except for one Sunday morning, hungry, I ate a biscuit before mass. My brother told my mother, and she then told me I would be struck by lightning at the altar, presumably in jest. I was perhaps eight years old, and being a literal minded type, I took her at her word.

The rest of the morning was awful, dread driving to mass, dread through the sermon and readings. As the ceremony reached its climax, I feigned sickness and went outside rather than go to accept the bread and wine. I was quite literally terrified that I would be struck down for the minor infraction and couldn’t understand what kind of a God would do such a thing. A godparent came out to comfort the crying child and find out what was wrong, but the spell was broken. My mother, who had tried so hard to induct her children into the church, had with a careless word driven out the only one of us to be truly religious, and unknowingly set me on the path that I still follow to this day.

Fast forward close to forty years. Nine years an A\A\ aspirant, 26 or so years involvement in the occult and spiritual gig, about to finish a PhD and move to the other side of the world. I had for several years been occasionally reading Thomas Merton and found in my local bookshop a copy of his autobiography ‘the Seven Story Mountain (worth a read, I might add). At the same time, an old friend and teacher had been diagnosed with cancer and was increasingly ill, not expected to live past the summer (although I spoke to him two days ago, his still around two years on). Existential stresses are often a driver for religiosity, and I have always been that way in any case, on some level. I was compelled one Saturday afternoon on the way to visit my friend, to enter a church. I can safely say that I actually planned it. I would go in if it happened to be unlocked, and if there was a priest there, I would go to confession.  As luck would have it (!), he was there, and I did all that I had said, I went to confession and was formally received back into the fold, as it were.

The act actually had strong magickal overtones, something cracked open in me. The solar plexus was filled with fire and I was shaking for hours afterwards. I had, for want of a better way to put it, had a conversion moment.

For the next two years I attended mass regularly, learned the liturgy of the hours. Read the bible from cover to cover and struggled to understand the Catholic Church as it wanted to be understood, rather than as Crowley and other detractors had put it. I also tried, vainly I might add, to keep all of the rules of life expected of a Catholic. And there are a lot of rules, I quickly developed what Catholics refer to as scrupulosity, that obsession with sin known as Catholic guilt.

However, there was yet one serpent in Eden: While I won’t cast aside the cultural riches of the so-called dark ages in which the Benedictines effectively brought western society from the collapse of the classical world to the medieval era and largely preserved the mass of classical literature while providing stable environments for life and learning around their monasteries, I also could not ignore the many crimes against humanity committed by the church. You could say I grew rather conflicted between faith and conscience.

This year, on Palm Sunday, I was due to be confirmed on the annual visitation of the bishop of the diocese. That Saturday night I went to the church, intending to go to mass. There was a meeting going on in a backroom and I could see the bishop, the parish priest, and some of the parishioners through a window, a vision I might add, that filled me with a sort of horror. There was no way I was going in there, so I went into the church itself and read vespers. I then quietly let myself out and drove home before mass began. That night I prayed, if there is a God and if he cares one way or the other, let me know that confirmation was the right thing to do.

I slept, I woke up early on the morning of Palm Sunday and read Matins and Lauds. I recited the Nicene creed, which I would recite again later that morning at confirmation, but the words were empty, and I understood that I didn’t believe it, not really, not deep down. That was all I needed to know. Mass was at 10:00, but at 09:00 I got in my car and instead headed in the opposite direction, taking a bokken and jo, and went and practiced aikido in the park. I haven’t been back to church since.  

In order to be a catholic, one first has to declare that belief publicly. I cannot easily lie, especially in a magical setting, so mouthing the words of the creed would have been to lie to myself and to lie to God about what I believed. That in itself would be a sin in the eyes of the church that I was hours from joining, not a good way to start. Further, I do not believe that Mary was a virgin, nor do I believe that Christ literally rose from the dead, these are key to the faith, without them it’s just words. I couldn't in good conscience proceed.

Additionally, the sacrifices required were simply too great. Had I believed, then I would have made them without a moment’s hesitation, but I didn’t. I would have had to accept that my relationship of eight years with my partner was sinful on at least three counts and unlikely to change. I don’t believe that it is and have no intention of coercing her to salve the churches requirements. I would have had to silently judge various friends and relations, not outwardly perhaps, but inwardly saying that their lifestyle choices were some sort of abomination damning them to hell. I don’t believe this and couldn’t in good conscience subscribe to a church that does, as if a group of celibate men had anything valid to say on the love lives of the rest of us. Lastly, and most importantly, I would have had to confess that the church, with all the blood of countless innocents on its hands, centuries of political machinations, persecutions and lives ruined, was yet the body of Christ, God’s embassy on earth. Going back to my childhood trauma, if this is the kind of God they worship, I want no part in it.

So, the spell broken. I have arrived at a fairly sophisticated understanding of Catholic doctrine, and appreciate the good things done by individual religious, monks, nuns and priests, but can’t reconcile that with the church itself, unable to fully admit its own sin or own it. I cannot offer absolution for a church that clings to bronze age moral standards for its flock whilst repeatedly ignoring the gospels and failing to meet its own standards. Saying one is sorry in the confessional is worthless if it is not followed by reform, and that reform seems nowhere in sight. The abuses continue, the moral judgement of those who hide their own sins still terrorise the lives of children brought up in fear of hellfire. The idea of eternal torment for infractions such as loving the wrong person or even simply not believing enough, without any consideration of the nuance of life, by a 'loving God', strikes me as a form of insanity. An infinitely loving God would not behave in that way, therefore how can I accept the theory without embracing insanity and a sort of willful schizophrenia? 

While the church has done some good, it has also failed to own its own sins and exists in a state of hypocrisy. I cannot in good conscience have any part in Christianity, much less Catholicism, cults of death and opposition, denying the unity in an eternal binary; good vs evil, light vs dark, self vs not-self.

The spell is broken. I feel like the last two years was a balancing act over an abyss. Yet even then, in part of my mind I was aware that this was an act of meta-programming, revisiting childhood events and cultural programming, to salvage what was worth saving and exorcising the rest. I now realise that it would have been impossible without the total commitment. I suppose some of the brethren will have considered me lost to Christianity, although I kept largely quiet on the matter for obvious reasons. That’s ok, it looked like that to me too. Had I taken it as an academic exercise it would have had no power to really bring about change.

So now, my books of liturgy are on sale, and those that I cannot sell will end up in second-hand bookstores. I will keep a Benedictine prayer book and a bible for reference, part of a fully stocked library. The rest can go. I will replace my rosary with simple prayer beads of the Buddhist persuasion. I will once again wear the robe of an initiate, that marks me out as a heretic in the eyes of the church. Life now has taken on a more natural aspect. Gone is the scrupulosity, the worry that this or that casual act is a sin that I need to confess to some priest. I will focus instead on my career, both magickal and earthly, following the way of the universal, not weighing down God with mans ideas of him, not the rules and regulations of their organisations. Woods and fields are my church, my bedroom at daybreak my temple, communion in a slice of toast or a piece of cheese, and no requirement to be ‘without sin’ in order to partake, the universe gives freely to all and does not cast judgement.

Free of dogma, once again, and for all, understanding the self, its motivations and inner drives yet no longer led by them. While life isn’t any different outwardly, inwardly there is an easiness, as a previously unacknowledged weight is lifted, that tied me to old ways of thinking and being. I do not thing I can ever be fully as I would have been had I never had the childhood indoctrination that I had, but I have received the brand of the Order on my brow and that remains. I will probably still use turns of phrase that might offend the religion-phobic, but so be it. Learning to see through these barriers, to dare these ordeals and arise, time and time again, victorious over one’s own demons, is the task of each one of us on the path.

Love is the law, love under will.