While the Crescendo blares in my ears, I have been attending traditional 12-Step meetings as a means to build a sobriety practice. I attend two different meetings a week, an AA meeting and an NA meeting. I am relating to each meeting differently, but a common theme between them involves the inescapable Christian underpinnings of the philosophies and practices espoused commonly by both programs. These underpinnings grate on my ideology as a Theistic Luciferian and makes finding the value in the human experiences that others share exhausting.
Wretch
The Traditional 12-Step programs proceed from a place of powerlessness. It’s one of the actual 12-Steps that a practitioner declares himself powerless over the addictive substance now and forever. They request the practitioners to remind themselves of this state constantly, to measure themselves against this state forever, and to never even attempt to gain power over their addictions. Instead, the program encourages the practitioner to relinquish their personal power over to the care of a “God of their understanding,” their Higher Power.
The program contorts itself into knots over the “God of their understanding” phrase, allowing individual adherents to define their Higher Power for themselves, yet the practices and actions the program requests them to take are passively reflective of Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam). Chiefly, they teach that the individual is weak, helpless, and a wretch without the grace of a supernatural being and always will be until they accept the will of the “God of their understanding.”
Some have defined their Higher Power as chosen family, as the common fellowship of addicts, as any number of increasingly esoteric objects or situations, but it’s very clear reading between the lines that the “God of their understanding” really means an Abrahamic God of whatever sub-flavor you happen to adhere to (Catholic, Baptists, Episcopalian, etc.).
It certainly does not mean Odin, Anasasi, or Ganesh, at least not without some spiritual gymnastics needed to enact the tenets of the process.
Grating
And here’s where it grates for me. I don’t see the value in forever identifying as my weakest self, only so that an all-powerful deity figure can save me from my character defects. This is a Christian redemption mythological arc, not something I can get behind.
Having already made the mistake of giving my will and power over to a chemical substance — by this I mean, when I did Max Impact, I blacked out and literally acted without my own will being involved — I don’t see the point in further relinquishing my will to a spiritual being no matter how powerful. To me, this is only doubling down on the original mistake and should not be considered a viable solution to the problem of addiction.
If the problem is our powerlessness, then why chase further powerlessness? Why wallow in the problem? And why do it forever?
As a magickal pratitioner, I understand that our lives and, to an extent, our reality is created by our thinking. How we perceive any given thing dictates how our personal energy flows to it, interacts with it, and, in a sense, creates it. Magic generally takes great focus and a talent for conceptualizing what you want from the Universe in order to summon said effect. Rituals and traditions are designed to shunt your energy into a certain channel, to cast it into a certain mold in order to achieve a certain effect. The mantras and the magical implements (chalices, athames, sigils, pendants, etc.) used are like recipes to achieve a desired effect.
So, when I sit in these meetings and watch the same actions played out time and time again — recitation of passages from the Big Book, complete with the audience responding to certain quotes with pre-fabbed responses; reading aloud the literal 12-Steps and 12-Traditions, etc. — I can only think that I am once again in a Roman Catholic Mass participating in a religious practice that, well, grates. Sometimes it feels like a cult meeting and, in a way, it is.
As a magickal practitioner, I recognize all of this ritual and focus on powerlessness serves only to conjur the state of powerlessness over and over again; I can’t see how progress can be made in that state.
Disclaimer
I understand the aim here. The people who are hooked on narcotics and might be a single use away from a fatal experience need a hard line to keep them from using. Sometimes, I suppose, the cult-experience is a necessity to reduce suffering and maintain life. Okay. I get it.
Following Luciferian principles, I believe that a person’s choice is sacrosanct so, if these good-natured, sincere men need this cult to be healthy, then so be it. I respect those choices. But, in the same breath, I do not understand them and I cannot support them for myself.
Masterless
I’ve been struggling with the Grimoire of Belial for a bit. The wisdom imparted has taken it’s time sinking in, and, well, I have distracted myself with the Quiet Crisis. The grimoire itself promised momentous changes when Belial was engaged — in fact, it promises new and different such changes for each of the nine gatekeepers. It should not have been a surprise that something tumultuous would occur. The Quiet Crisis and it’s recent Crescendo qualifies as a tumult.
So, the progress through Belial’s gate stalled and I felt trapped in the barrier. Clearly, I needed to learn something that would let me finally pass through. I’m not sure I have, but sitting in the NA meeting this Sunday and listening to a group of ten or so men explain the value they received when they relinquished control over their lives to a “God of their understanding” crystallized a tenet of Belial’s wisdom: Become Masterless.
Sometimes, there’s value in seeing “what you are not” personified. Maybe this is the value of the Traditional 12-Step meetings for me. I have resisted getting a sponsor, because I don’t want to be socialized into performing the Traditional 12-steps, and I have resisted sharing in the meetings because ultimately I don’t feel like they’re going to want to hear what I have to say about their cult. But, nonetheless, I attend, I listen to the human experiences being related, and I strive to glean the nuggest of value out of it all.
In this case, I understood Belial’s wisdom. I should strive to become Masterless. I should not allow the chemical substance to rule my life. I should not follow the will of any given deity or of any given person. I should retain my power and utilize it without fear or shame. This power is intrinsically me and should be exercised; I’ve ignored it, back-pedaled away from it, sublimated it for far too long because of the fear I have of becoming my father, who exercised his toxic masculinity all over me.
My reaction to my personal power is based in trauma response. My father, in his anger, presented as a physical and emotional threat to me as a child. I reacted by becoming submissive to him in order to be safe; he taught me to be submissive to authoritative and abusive men was the way to be safe and accepted.
This fundamental lie has all but disintegrated under scrutiny. Once this trauma response had been identified through other work, it took only the NA meeting where others were actively enacting their trauma response to make my own patterns very clear.
I am meant to be without a Master. I am meant to be Worthless in their eyes.
And all it took for me to finally realize this was watching others wallow in their powerlessness for the aggrandizement of a deity whose religion hates them, whose followers abuse them ritually, and to agree to do that forever and constantly. I watched them, to some degree, capitulate to the same trauma my father enacted on me (although in very different contexts): they all agreed to submit.
Beyond this spiritual crisis, this plays out in my head sexually as I must now call my BDSM identity as a submissive/slave into question. I can’t become Masterless while literally seeking out a Master. My personal power has reignited and I must work to keep it lit. I have a pattern of it bursting into flame and enjoying the energy release, but then exhausting itself over time. I get assertive, have dominant moments, but end up afraid, meek, a sheep to other men. I have to find the balance and to find the right channel for my power that will keep it lit.
