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