Tag: Santa Muerte

Crow Radio Episode 10: Ancestor Gossip and Sparkle

Lilith talks candidly about ancestors, the thinning veil, visiting with the dead, ancestor gossip, Santa Muerte, All Souls’ Day and Day of the Dead, and setting boundaries with ancestors we do not want to hear from. She also wanders through naps, charm bracelets, online culture, art and emotion, digital collage, littles, the shadow and higher self, arguments about art, different modes of creating, and finding sparkle in the dark.


Disclaimer: I speak from my own lived experiences, perspectives, and what I’ve learned along the way. I may share thoughts, suggestions, or things that have helped me, but I am not a mental health or medical professional. This podcast is not a replacement for therapy, medical care, or professional mental health support. Please take what is useful to you and seek appropriate professional support when you need it.

The God Seat

From the Wild Collective Heart series: Part 38

Content Warning: Dissociation/DID, trauma, coercive power dynamics, spiritual abuse, manipulation of consent, possession fears, and spiritual themes involving deities, spirits, spell work, sex magic, and spiritual bindings.


When our ex Dom came back around, it had been months. I’d married Loki and been connecting with deity and learning from them. He was not happy at all and straight away told me, “You know this can’t work, don’t you?” He meant our relationship with him as our Dom now that Loki and the Gods had taken their place in my heart and life.

Something we’d been learning during this time period was that we’d placed our Dom as our God, just like our father was the first god we ever knew. And we were being shown that seat in our heart was not for a mortal. I can deeply love and be devoted to a man, of course, but it’s far easier if they are aware of their own limitations and not trying to keep that God seat in my heart, but supporting me in keeping it for Loki. I had hoped our Dom would do that. But he used an old trigger and went into convincing me the pagans I’d read were led by demons and my gods were in the middle of spiritually possessing me. Our fear of possession is stronger than most, I think. It’s what created half my system, that fear of becoming spiritually compromised and basically tortured from the inside out. We didn’t know a human being could possess us just as much as a spirit, though, and actually, he was very much angry that his possession was now being flipped on its head.

We were so fearful that we took down all of our gods’ altars and sat in an empty room, staring at blank walls, waiting for punishment from them. None came to punish us. Instead, they understood it, and Loki told us he’d be back in one year.

My ex Dom took over telling me how to dress and how to spend my days again. He didn’t want me wearing protective metal and said it was jarring to the flesh. Whose? His? I bet, but that’s hindsight speaking. He would support some things, like me remaining in certain energies that he could manipulate. Death, dead ends, and draining myself to fuel him and his life. I didn’t learn until recently what he actually was. Not everyone wearing flesh is all human.

During one of our low periods, I learned how to do a candle spell with Santa Muerte that she guided me in, and with it, I learned that night from a terrifying and vivid dream that he’d been casting obsession, dominance, and sex magic on me all that time. I laughed and told him my findings and told him, “Why would you do that when I willingly am here serving you?” He said nothing. How chilling it is to me now that all he heard was the spells hitting and working. He didn’t have to say anything. Even my seeing it couldn’t unbind me. His binds were so thoroughly hooked all throughout my system as long as I stayed in the trauma energies I was used to.

He needed our consent, and we’d given it to him every time we interacted with him and said yes to him in our actions and our words. In our subspaces, he’d have us giving him more and more consent. He was extremely greedy. Like, extremely. I’ve run into greed before, but nothing like this. He’d trained me that his greed meant his desire for me, and so I registered it as attraction and good. He got away with the most. Worst of all, he got me to abuse myself and cast on myself for him without my being aware of it.

-Lilith

Trusting Calm

From the Wild Collective Heart series: Part 35

Content Warning: Dissociation/DID, childhood trauma, coercive power dynamics, spiritual abuse, trauma-related experiences, and spiritual themes involving deities, death, spirits, energy work, and spiritual bindings.


Odin led us to read many Pagan books about him and the other gods and devotions to them. We learned that our natural way of belief is very accepted in the Pagan community. There were people who would fully understand our spirituality and heart. And so we found community for the first time in our life.

This was on a long stretch away from our ex Dom. I muse sometimes that the gods kept him busy to help me and my system restore our choice in the matter. Odin took the lead with us for a little while, preparing us to be married to Loki. He spoke to us at daily coffee, and we really connected to Odin on the tree. We could understand his death deeply, and he helped us to see we were still up on our own tree and it was time to come down from there.

It’s a strange thing, when all you’ve known is extremes, coming down to earth and placing your feet on land can be very terrifying and overwhelming. Trusting calm seems the opposite to safety. It would take a while longer for us to make that ground. But Odin was there for all parts of me that needed a safe father to turn to. He connected with us at the cemetery, and for a few years two ravens followed us into the cemetery and out again on our visits, lifting our hearts.

We had started these visits as a devotion to Santa Muerte, and we were swiftly taught that a cemetery is an appropriate place to leave our grief without it stagnating in us and without it being harmful to others. We went there to grieve and to gain perspective anew. We went to connect with the dead of our land and honor cycles. We still do. And then Odin shared with us that he can walk death realms. He died, after all. We were very excited to learn this because we go between those realms by sheer survival instinct, and he was helping us not to feel ashamed for it. He called it death walking.

-Star

Hel came to us after we became less fearful of Saint Death and dying as a passage of life, and we could tolerate her presence then. She taught us that the copper collar was too strong to wear at our throat. It was painful to us energetically because copper is a natural transmuter of energy between spirit and our plane.

So, our ex Dom was really live-wiring us to his spirits right around the throat chakra. We now believe he wanted to block and maim our voice, and back then it was very hard to see, even with Hel’s help. Our third eye had bindings on it, programs we had to heal both on this plane and the spiritual plane, and that takes time.

-Lilith