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Blessings for the road

06:25 / 10.01.09

I have learned and grown through the discussions here on Barbelith and I have gratitude to you who have put in effort to educate, to inform, to entertain, to inspire, and to help.

Thankyou. May you be blessed with abundance, wisdom, skill, and peace-making abilities.

I've heard that the name 'Barbelith' refers to an interdimensional placenta. If that's the case then maybe the end of Barbelith here is just that placenta being accessed from other places in space/time. Or perhaps it's the birth of the baby?

My hope for you is that you find yourself easily able to propagate the very best of what you have received through Barbelith, in any other situation you find yourself. May you never lack for joy, may you always be fed and watered at need, may you always have shelter and comfort and the convivial company you need. May all the help you need come to you. May everything you need to know, be revealed to you.

15:29 / 12.01.09

You're swell.

and the rest of you, too.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

15:47 / 12.01.09

I don't know who's likely to be reading this, but I didn't want my last few interactions with Barbelith to be shouty and horrible.

When it was good, the 'lith was very, very good. The last couple of years have been a downhill slide but initially I benefitted enormously from this place.

Magically I came on a lot faster and a lot further than I would have done without the interactions I've enjoyed here. I've been supported, challenged, instructed and inspired. The whole way I think about magic and my own practice has benefitted from the input of the Temple crew. At its high point, this was about the best public forum of its kind on the internet.

On a sociopolitical level, the impact on me was even greater. If I have any kind of cultural awareness, if I ever check my privileges, it's often because of something one of the members taught or showed me. People who had absolutely no responsibility to educate me were prepared to sit down and patiently help me through 101 stuff they must have been sick to death of, often in the face of resistance from me. The amount that I have been taught about eg. gender and identity politics--things I simply didn't have any exposure to--I would never have learned otherwise. It's not so much about specific items, facts and figures, but habits of thought and evaluation that have been nurtured in me. It was never perfect, but being challenged and seeing others challenged on expressions of internalised prejudice was enormously beneficial.

Anyway I hope that everyone here gets what they need from somewhere, on or offline. Fare you well wherever you fare.

16:17 / 13.01.09

I've been a solitary practitioner for a long, long time.

Barbelith gave me a magical community of sorts and a lot to think about. People here exposed me to new ideas and challenged a lot of preconceptions I didn't even know I had. And even being forced to articulate and defend my own beliefs and opinions taught me more than I expected.

So thanks. And I hope to see some of you around, including in person, in the future.

17:56 / 13.01.09

I am not a solitary, and I pretty well never have been. But sometimes the local community can become an echo chamber, it's just the way humans are.

Even if the same may seem true here from time to time, I find it very useful to have two very different perspectives from which to draw.

I have valued the friendships and learning in my time here, and will continue to do so with those friendships that remain, and learning that can be had with them elsewhere.

To quote one of my favorite blessing songs by Fred Small:

May the rain run off your shoulders
When you're caught in a storm
When the frost comes a callin'
May it find you safe and warm
May your place be set
May your promises be kept
May you never forget
You are loved

--Ember--

20:11 / 13.01.09

I am grateful, enormously so, for the conversations I've had on here. I can honestly say that this forum has shaped me. So much of what is good in me has come about through being given the chance to dialogue.
Without being overly weepy, I feel I owe a lot of what I am now to the kindnesses/cruelties that the people of Lithland gifted me.

You have, as a group, offered to buy me pizza when I was homeless, talked me gently and compassionately through what it turned out was depression, edited reviews of my theatrical performances out of existence, and a talked me out of several very dangerous things.

So I wish goodness back on all of you. I pray that you all know deep joy and friendship. And I hope that all the wheels set turning here keep rolling onto better, cooler things.

I LOVE YOU GUYS!

nyarlathotep's shoe horn

21:24 / 14.01.09

my thanks for the many challenges to my unseen presumptions.

(now glaringly obvious in the rear-view, possibly larger than it appears).

harmonic series

01:38 / 21.01.09

While I rarely post, I often have turned to the Temple to read the questions and writings of fellow minds. I am in a community that often ostracizes those interested in the occult. This board has reminded me that everywhere, somewhere, I am among friends.

And, of course, I learned from The Invisibles that the past is the future is the present is the futupast is the presnstfuturast and on and on and in and in and out of the undergrounds and that

The Initiation never ends.

I wish that we may all fulfill our happiest possible destiny.

Best wishes for then, from now and into again.

-HS