Submission Call: GLBT Pagan Nonfiction

It sounds like you're getting quite good reception from beyond.

Also, thank you for helping take care of my people. It's good to see the audience networking around needed skills.

>>I don't have much of a "coming out pagan" story. My Mom is a New Ager, had been for decades before I was born. <<

Yeah, my parents have always been kind of quiet world-worshippers. My "coming out" was simply discovering the wider Pagan community.

>>Her comment to my being a Multiple was, "You chose a difficult life for yourself." <<

I suppose anything is possible, but in my experience, there are two branches of multiples -- the born and the made -- and neither of those is choice-constructed. The choice you get is whether to live as you are, or try to make yourself into something else.

>> beyond the fact she inherited my aunt's gift for seeing spirits. A gift either I don't have, or have but I scare away spirits.<<

Or possibly they just look at you and go, "Okay, that bus is already FULL. I'll just wait for the next one!"

>> I can apparently clear the room of certain kinds of negative energy just by entering the room. I sometimes exude my own negative energy, but anything negative not coming from me tends to flee. <<

Projective empathy works like that. Some types of energy manipulation and shamanic gifts also can.

>>Well her "chose a difficult life" comment was a reference to her belief that souls choose the challenges of their life. I still don't know what to think of that theory, I keep flip-flopping about it.<<

That premise is ... true, but incomplete. Souls do choose challenges, but not all challenges are chosen, because you're not the only player in the game and some of the others are griefers. Also, accidents do happen. And when you get right down to core nature, the definitives that identify a particular soul, those aren't subject to change no matter how damn inconvenient they might be in a given context. Then too, some things accrete -- functional multiples are often people with past-life experience and/or interdimensional gifts.

>>I believe my multiplicity is a thing natural since birth, since I was able to literally see and hear imaginary friends since before any of the bullying began. They were translucent, so I knew they were imaginary, but they otherwise felt so real, and deep, with lives of their own that they'd go back to when we were done playing together. I had a lot of fun at times just having conversations with them, where they'd tell me about their families.<<

I've always been able to access a variety of noncorporeal entities. We have houseghosts. There are plant and animal and other nature spirits all around. I have patron deities from assorted religions. And I can visit other worlds at will. *ponder* That's actually what ran my discernment through the roof: I'm always checking input for location and accuracy. So if someone starts spouting bullshit, the fact that they are standing beside me in a meat body will not save them from being mentally tossed into the Unreliable Narrator or Dangerous Voice circular file. Conversely if a perfectly practical suggestion sails over the transom from the universe next door, I have no qualms about testing it for effectiveness. Though I have learned to warn people that, if they are near me or spending a lot of time in my life, they need to be aware that my layer of reality is weirder than most and is capable of overriding consensus reality in ways that can be very disconcerting to people who are not used to such experiences.

>>I don't think they were spirits, unless clouds have people-like spirits (one of my best imaginary friends for many years was Mr. Cloud, a humanoid cumulous cloud).<<

That is actually possible, though not necessarily so in any given instance.

Among the spirits I regularly work with are Brother Cloud, Sister Wind, and Sister Rain (in winter, Sister Snow).

>>Though I like to think Shao'Kehn, the chaos Goddess who lives in my head, scares them off. <<

Quite possible! I've certainly had entities flee my brain in terror. Not to mention a few meat people that I had to scrape off a desk: "I TOLD you not to fall in."

>>Is it any wonder that my only published Traipah novel, a second finished unpublished novel, and a third in the works, feature Nokwahl, an Ah'Koi Bahnis who is a Reverse Empath (projective empath) who was raped and nearly killed as a child?<<

No surprise here.

I have countless characters, but only a small subset of them actually notice me, follow me back here, engage in meta-conversations, or stick around after the initial story is done. Most of them are oblivious, and most of the rest are just storytellers. But I do cherish the ones who become long-term companions on my journey. We've learned a lot from each other over the years.