My Name Is Legion

It's crowded in my office today.

A passer-by, looking in, would see only me sitting here, apparently alone. No crowd at all. Yet right here, at hand, are several visitors. We are not strangers. Several are unwelcome. I've ordered a couple of them Out! -- which usually works; but this time, they ain't leaving, which tells me that I must engage them somehow before they'll leave me in peace.

Standing right in front of me is Rage.Rage is hugging me close, so close that it's hard to see beyond Rage. Rage colors the world with Rage colors, the clotted purple of throbbing veins, the flushed red of inflammation. Rage is in-my-face and stinks like pus and burning blood. Rage is obscuring my vision; I look for my friends, for the faces of the people I love, and I cannot see them clearly, only distorted and ugly through that awful red-purple miasm.

Somewhere beyond Rage is Fear. As usual, Fear is hiding behind Rage, but Rage is so close and so hot that she illuminates Fear, so I can't help but glimpse Fear, too. Fear is an ugly shade of yellowish-green, with an oily iridescence which causes it to shift and mutate. Fear has a cloyingly sweet smell that is at once attracting and repelling.

I don't like it when these two come to visit. I don't like the way they make my body feel. I don't like their intimacies, the way they won't leave me alone, the dangers they pose.

Over in the corner, observing all, is Lady GreenFlame. "Wait a minute," I hear you say. "I thought YOU were GreenFlame." Well ... yes. And no. Lady GreenFlame is a persona. She is a servant of my Holy Guardian Angel. She is the ritual garb that my High Holy Self wears; but more than that, she is an athame of Goddess and a wand of  God. But she is not the totality of Me; she is my evolving Self.

I want her to banish Rage and Fear, but she's strangely still, which mollifies Rage, who was vocally against Lady GreenFlame's presence to begin with. She says: "You must hear them. You must listen to them. They have valuable things to say. It's how they say it that is harmful. Listen, and then purify it. And only then pass it on."

Rage and Fear are grumbling at this; Rage in particular doesn't want anything to do with purifying her words, but they agree to the compromise. Here is what Rage had to say, once GreenFlame got hold of it and purified it:

"Controlling assault weapons is not the same as banning all guns. The idea that there is a "slippery slope" and once you control one kind of very lethal gun, the government will not only ban all guns but will come into your house and rip away your children and ban your religion is beyond far-fetched; it just IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. The good people who believe such things have drunk the NRA's Kool-Aid and are deceived and deluded by their own Rage and Fear.The people to really fear are the ones who run the NRA. The right wing are not pro-freedom. They are pro-fear, and pro-rage, and pro-violence, and much more pro-control than the government.

"Besides which, the government is US. You and Me. We The People. The Government is not going to do anything unless the representatives we send to them okay it. This fear of the government is a phobia.

"You can preach gun safety and responsibility all you want, but the undisputable fact is that we are not a responsible people. We are a fallible people and we will continue to be so, as always. For us to even approach gun safety infallibility would require us to live in a constant state of vigilance. Humans cannot be trusted to live in a constant state of vigilance. It is contrary to the way we are wired. And when we *do* live like that, it is very toxic, very detrimental to us. Good, vigilant people are all prone to weak moments and it just takes one weak moment for a nutcase to get hold of an assault weapon that is momentarily available, and to go create a horror like Sandy Hook or Aurora.Therefore, even the smartest and best-meaning people cannot be trusted to live in a constant state of vigilance about the guns in our house.

"Carefulness is not going to work. Arming every last human in the US creates an air of increased violence and vigilance that will truly, literally create PTSD in every single one of us. This is a psychologically unrealistic and highly unhealthy response to this problem. I shudder to think of a culture of children raised in schools with every adult packin'. RAGE is especially outRAGEd that you all can't understand this critical point.

"The Second Amendment is very ambiguously worded. Many of us interpret the Second Amendment to speak to the rights of forming a militia for national defense, not to individual gun ownership. Don't assume your interpretation is correct. Also, don't assume every one of our Founding Fathers would have thought that citizens owning weapons of mass destruction was a good idea. They lived in a world that was very far removed from our technology.

"Having assault weapons legal to own over the past few years has not made our society safer. Show me objective statistics that demonstrate how general assault weapon ownership has made us safer. Objective meaning, not funded by either the right wing or the left wing.

"Also (Rage demands to say), it is horrible especially that my FEMALE FRIENDS are devoting all this attention to forwarding NRA-sponsored pix of assault weapons while in the state of Texas, a judge has upheld the "right" of Texas to refuse all federal funds for Planned Parenthood. These are not funds that would have gone toward a single abortion. They are funds for low-income women to get pap smears and mammograms and basic gynecological care. Now these women have no place else to go. The problem, as Texas sees it, is that *some* Planned Parenthoods in other places accept private money to perform abortions. Therefore, all Planned Parenthood services and funds are tainted.

"The upshot is that this will not prevent a SINGLE abortion, not a single one, but it is guaranteed that WOMEN WILL DIE. There will be WOMEN WHO DIE from breast cancer, uterine cancer, cervical cancer, and ovarian cancer BECAUSE THEY COULD NOT GO GET THESE SIMPLE TESTS from Planned Parenthood. CHILDREN WILL LOSE THEIR MOTHERS. Husbands will lose their wives. As women, we know what it feels like when we find a lump or have abnormal spotting or pain. Imagine what it feels like to have these symptoms and not to have access to affordable care for them.

"But none of my young women friends, my priestess friends have said a damn word about this. They are too busy drinking that NRA Kool-Aid. And I am very, very, VERY disappointed in them."

RAGE steps aside. GreenFlame and I look toward Pain. What does Pain have to say?

Pain says, "Rage's last few words carried my voice. I grieve for the next group of innocents who will be slaughtered by an assault weapon. I grieve for the women who will suffer and die with so few fellow women advocating for them. I grieve that our culture is eagerly and rapidly growing more violent and more irrational. I do not have to imagine what the women in Texas are going to feel; I already feel for them. My Pain is sorrow, and I grow every day."

I sat back and looked at Lady GreenFlame. I asked, "What counsel do you have, Wise Lady?"

She said:

"There is an old ritual called the Abramelin ritual. In it, the would-be Mage secludes himself for six months and undertakes a progressively rigid series of fasts, devotions, meditations, and invocations, all designed to lead to the "Knowledge and Conversation of" his "Holy Guardian Angel" -- his High Self, his Divine Self.

"The first act the new Mage does after achieving this Sublime Vision is to evoke and bind all the Princes of Hell: Satan, Belial, Leviathan, and others. Why go from the state of Grace to evoking its very opposite? To remove their influence from his life. Because if he doesn't, the Power and Grace that his vision has given him will also strengthen those demons in his life. Never forget: where there is a lot of Light, there is a lot of Shadow. Anna, this is the key: you can't suppress, deny, or ignore your demons. As you grow in me, and as I grow in you, you have to evoke and bind them, and then they become your servants, and not vice versa."

And now it's night, and Rage and Pain have stepped away -- we are all going to have to get used to this new relationship we have. Greenflame slumbers, and so must I.