Barbelith Underground > Temple > Fiction Suit: A User's Manual

<b>The term "godform" or the term "fiction suit"?</b>

Fiction suit. Though I use all sorts of terms interchangably, some have better connotations in some circumstances, as with anything.

This is a good catalyst to get me to think formally on this topic, thanks. Godforms/identity/masks and the matter of the relative 'truth' of them in actual practice has been a thread of thinking I've been let cook on a back burner for a number of years. Until just now, I've just sort of operated in regards to them on a subconscious hunch sort of level (which is how I get anything done, really.)
*stops writing for an hour to ponder*
I'm unused to having to communicate my thoughts to people who aren't trained in my personal metaphor alphabet. This takes some thought. I suspect it's going to come out as a rambly sort of stream-of-conscious list of ideas.
Playing with your identity is a possibly unhealthy thing if you go into with anything but full knowledge of the details, I think. Godforms are like bombs, dangerous to just pick up and toy with, fine and terribly useful in many situations if you know about demolitions. I don't think this is news to anyone, or at least I hope not. This thinking should apply to nearly any esoteric undertaking. It just seems that fiction suits or godforms (I'm going to use them interchangebly, I think, if I like to or not)
are especially dangerous to the unwise, as they can be picked up and used as an escape from identity instead of an extra one when the core is mastered. It can be used to hide from yourself, and this runs directly counter to what, for me, is the root of magic. You master what you have and learn to improve it, not flee from it and slap a patch over the bits you don't like.
See, I spent many years as a mask-wearer. A dishonest projection of self. A slick, idealized charlatan of a hipster named Machine. I don't think this is abnormal for most folks, most everyone spensds their teens uncomfortably trying to be what they think is cool. Machine, like many masks, got out of hand, though. I had no idea who I was or why I idealized the Machine's personality traits. I was holding a bomb with no demolitions training, so to speak. By wearing a fiction suit over an unrealized core self, I was rotting at the core. So, I stopped and became plain ol' Will for a few years. Mastering the 'factory suit' before getting any custom work done. (How can you reap the ample rewards of being whoever you want to be if you can master just one self?) Once I was Will well enough, a suit (Gator) organically developed over a period of a few more years. Gator grew a step at a time as a response to what my tribe needed and what facets of myself I could make to fit those needs. Gator grew to be my prime self, eventually, and I think maybe was too narrow to encompass all the things in my life. Machine, now A. Machine, just sort of reformed himself from the now-stable foundation I could provide, and he and Gator mooshed together into a binary unit. Two names for two aspects of the same suit. Like MPD, but controlled.

I hope this illustrates my point, and I'm happy to clarify if not, as always.