"The way home
is always the way home,
So you can rip that map to shreds, dear."

— Snow Patrol, Life on Earth

https://open.spotify.com/track/0Cr8sOkVQqYexxiT7xRwRk

#Recovery2025 #exmo #exmormon #ReligiousTrauma #exvie #exvangelical #spirituality

This other couple. They looked a bit more alty, some piercings, pink hair, but not too alty.

At one point the guy starts looking around the room. She pauses and she's like, What? He's like, "I'm looking for a bone." (I guess they have some bones around the house — like I said, alty.) Then he reaches under the camera and produces a wooden stick with some decorations. Turns out it's an African pipe. Unsure if it's for smoking or playing, but he tries to play it. As she starts the video again, he sort of just...... cradles it in his arms.

I'm serious y'all, Heilung is a mirror that just shows you all this stuff working in the deeply repressed collective unconscious of white people. These forbidden roots in us that are screaming to be heard, they just have no voice.

#Heilung #Music #rewilding #Decolonize #decolonization #AbuseCulture #paganism #ReligiousTrauma #exmo #exmormon #exvie #exvangelical #genealogy

I'm serious you could do a whole study on "white people first time reacting to Heilung on YouTube" that would completely expose everything about how whiteness works... and use these lessons to find the secret antidote.

A couple of notable moments today.

Two incredibly stereotypical middle class liberal white women watched Krigsgaldr, and the first words out of her mouth was: "Can you imagine if they work in an office during the day? Like 'hey Helga, what are you doing after work?' 'Oh I'm in a band, want to come see us?'"

She went immediately to the most familiar thing she knew and how harshly it contrasted with what she saw on screen. She had no other symbols or language to describe what she experienced. (Whereas I'd at least had some Wicca and Celtic lore under my belt for my first watching.)

Notably also is how they talked about the ancestral music of the "people of Norway and Europe," and I'm like THEY'RE YOUR ANCESTRAL PEOPLE TOO!!! (I left a comment to that effect, with fewer caps.)

It's like white Americans, we just sprung from nothing. No sense of connection to anything prior to 1776. That's part of the myth of whiteness. Yet still they *felt* their connection, even if they couldn't own it yet.

🧵

#Heilung #Music #rewilding #Decolonize #decolonization #AbuseCulture #paganism #ReligiousTrauma #exmo #exmormon #exvie #exvangelical #genealogy

One category I haven't searched for in all the reaction videos I've watched is "White Evangelicals React to Heilung."

I doubt I'd find any? But if I did...🍿

#Heilung #Music #rewilding #Decolonize #decolonization #AbuseCulture #paganism #ReligiousTrauma #exmo #exmormon #exvie #exvangelical #genealogy

@neurovagrant Looking at that food storage area makes me think that this was built by Mormons. #exmo

Want to hear my voice?? Just a reminder that I did a podcast recently with @mattsheffield

https://plus.flux.community/p/as-evangelicalism-grows-increasingly

As Evangelicalism grows increasingly unhinged, where is Mormonism going?

#exmo #exomormon #ReligiousTrauma #exvie #exvangelical

I'm going to gay the pray away I'm Exmo so there's alot of ideas yes in that area of the temple if any of yall want to share some ideas I'm very open #mormon #exmo

Hey, I did a thing with @mattsheffield! He and I discuss Mormonism in the current political climate, for your ears.

Topics:
- Challenges of free will and information control
- Mormonism created new doctrinal controversies while solving for classical Christian dilemmas
- Centralization and doctrinal evolution in Mormonism
- Intellectual Mormonism’s conflicted epistemology
- Sweeping embarrassing doctrines under the rug doesn’t make them disappear
- Scientific claims and the Book of Mormon
- Spiritual polygamy remains an actual practice in today’s Mormonism
- Former Mormons and active progressive Mormons are reconciling
- Reclaiming self-worth and autonomy

#exmo #ExMormon #ReligiousTrauma #exvie #exvangelical #podcast
https://mastodon.social/@mattsheffield/114722780919807783

I wish I could show you inside my head, the maps of cultures, societies, timelines, history, organizations, themes and metaphors, collective symbols, worldviews, human psychology, all of it intersecting across each other like multidimensional cells in a Petri dish.

I *can* put this stuff into words, like in this thread, but there's so much I just don't have energy to go into. Or, sometimes that particular view that I'm looking at it isn't quite yet formed.

Stuff enough useless knowledge in there for 50 years and some patterns do start to emerge.

🧵

#FolkHorror #Heilung #Music #rewilding #Decolonize #decolonization #AbuseCulture #paganism #ReligiousTrauma #exmo #exmormon #exvie #exvangelical #genealogy

A lot of typos and errors in this thread. I was fighting with my phone's autocarrot for just about every word the entire thread.

It's readable though.

🧵

#FolkHorror #Heilung #Music #rewilding #Decolonize #decolonization #AbuseCulture #paganism #ReligiousTrauma #exmo #exmormon #exvie #exvangelical #genealogy

I'm also recalling that I explore these themes, in my novel Emerald City Dreamer and its unpublished sequels, before I had much of this language or these models to describe it.

It's about faeries and faerie hunters, based on Celtic and Scandinavian faerie lore. Fae lore is one remaining piece of pre-Christian animistic religion that managed to "survive", though barely intact.

I explore those themes via the hunters' perspective and the fae, trying to capture the spirit of actual lore rather than a rationalized version of fairies. These are capricious beings with alternative kinds of reason and morality than humans can understand. Just like nature, the Fae are neither "good" or "bad," they just are. I also explore themes of fae eradication by the advent of iron, Christianity, and later science.

In later books, I explore how colonization affected indigenous spirits in the Seattle region, in that the presence of European humans changed them against their will. And that's why all the fae in Seattle are somehow Celtic and Scandinavian.

I guess I've been thinking about this stuff for long time. And I've been pissed about the loss of Celtic culture for a long time. Because I've gone looking and it's more question marks than periods.

🧵

#FolkHorror #Heilung #Music #rewilding #Decolonize #decolonization #AbuseCulture #paganism #ReligiousTrauma #exmo #exmormon #exvie #exvangelical #genealogy

Regarding folk horror, which is absolutely dealing with these themes in really interesting ways (paganism vs Christianity, Christianity vs science, science vs paganism), there's a great documentary about folk horror on Shudder that should make sense. My lost contribution was just further exploration of what it had to say, via movies I was watching at the time.

It's called Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched. A must if you're a horror fan.

#FolkHorror #Heilung #Music #rewilding #Decolonize #decolonization #AbuseCulture #paganism #ReligiousTrauma #exmo #exmormon #exvie #exvangelical #genealogy

There's also the side quest into folk horror tropes, which ties nicely into this, but I've already written most of that thesis someplace else. Probably on here. Somewhere.

[I tried to find it but alas. Perhaps I wrote that on my first instance, .lol, which is all but dead... the archive is really hard to read and search, and then I'd have to repost it. A whole project.]

🧵

#Heilung #Music #rewilding #Decolonize #decolonization #AbuseCulture #paganism #ReligiousTrauma #exmo #exmormon #exvie #exvangelical #genealogy

It's actually two games set at different times in the same fantasy world that is loosely based on Europe. Only, instead of being set in the Iron Age, they are set in the Bronze Age.

The games are King of Dragon Pass and Six Ages. These are old games but have been ported to modem systems including mobile. They really hold up. (I played them on iPad.)

These are story-based games in which you run a tribe. Each year is broken into four seasonal turns. Magic is real, but it's not a "rational" system like most games set in the Christianized fantasy worlds. There's no mana and no assured outcomes. Because it is a system based upon appealing to the gods. Each of which has a certain personality, realm of influence, relationship with the other gods, and backstory.

Each season you are presented with various events that require you to make choices. Maybe the neighboring tribe brings a territory dispute, or an earthquake destroys your huts, or an emissary from a further tribe brings you a lavish gift. Your decision will have impacts later in the game. You can also allocate resources, explore, raid, build, etc. and there's a system for holding rituals with huge benefits — but it's a story-driven ritual, and if you haven't learned the pantheon lore, you WILL fail.

It's a hard game. But super interesting. And educational. It puts you in a pre-colonized mindset. You ARE at the mercy of the elements, and the morality in these situations has no relation to modern moral luxuries (like you might have to marry someone off to prevent a war).

So along with Heilung, I recommend these two games for white folks trying to decolonize in a way that actually connects us to our past.

🧵

#Heilung #Music #rewilding #Decolonize #decolonization #AbuseCulture #paganism #ReligiousTrauma #exmo #exmormon #exvie #exvangelical #genealogy

Did I mention this could be a thesis?

Have you ever noticed that most fantasy settings are medieval? What's with that?

They happen to be set in a time just after the Christian conquest had been completed.

It doesn't matter if the worldbuilding includes *specifically* Christian elements or not. The majority seem to begin just after the time our ancestors were actively "civilized." Subdued.

There seems to be a yearning within our creative subconscious towards a more natural, sustainable, or even pre-Christian life, but alongside it is a barrier that says GO NO FURTHER THAN THIS.

As the tropes go, any "tribal" elements in western fantasy settings are racially-coded and off-limits. The only folk practicing the old ways are the ugly barbaric evil trolls/goblins (POC) or the beautiful elusive incomprehensible elves — neither of which is for you, (white, civilized) human.

Obviously there are exceptions to this, but these are the central tropes going back to Tolkien. And these are the deep intergenerational conditioning and traumas that the white collective subconscious has been chewing on for the last century.

But there IS a game that I think passed this barrier in a way similar to Heilung...

🧵

#Heilung #Music #rewilding #Decolonize #decolonization #AbuseCulture #paganism #ReligiousTrauma #exmo #exmormon #exvie #exvangelical #genealogy

If you're white, your ancestors lived in a tribe. There's no good in remaining divorced from that.

🧵

#Heilung #Music #rewilding #Decolonize #decolonization #AbuseCulture #paganism #ReligiousTrauma #exmo #exmormon #exvie #exvangelical #genealogy

Now look, I love literacy and science as much as the next guy. I'd be pretty upset to lose my internet

But we do need to live more sustainably. And we do need to connect with nature and our own feelings and instincts. And we do need to stop oppressing people who don't conform to the "whiteness" construct. And a lot of other things.

I have NO IDEA where this line of personal growth is headed, nor where it could head if all of us figure these things out. But having a plan? That's very.... colonized. That's very controlling, dominating reality, and trying to be the boss of everything.

I'm hearing this call and I'm fearlessly following it where it goes. Like Cedric says in The Last Unicorn: Magic, magic do as you will!

And I'm sharing what I learn on the way.

They tried to destroy it, but they didn't quite succeed. There *is* an ethnic identity waiting for us on the other side of this bland, soulless, plastic, vampiric, artificial whiteness.

🧵

#Heilung #Music #rewilding #Decolonize #decolonization #AbuseCulture #paganism #ReligiousTrauma #exmo #exmormon #exvie #exvangelical #genealogy

Because the secular post-Christian stance is still couched in the worldview of colonization, right? Our whole story is still that pre-Christian western Europeans were "uncivilized" "barbaric" "savages." Their beliefs were superstitious and backward. Their lives were nasty, brutish, and short. We have better tools and understandings now. We don't have anything to learn from them!

So when do we get to uncover what was ours?

That's what Heilung offers.

My fellow whites: Do you see how much there is to gain by decolonizing? By unpacking our superior attitudes not only towards BIPOC but also towards our own deep, unrecorded, and sullied history? Do you see how deeply biased we are against OUR OWN grandmothers 25 generations back? They who had lived their traditions for thousands of years?

🧵

#Heilung #Music #rewilding #Decolonize #decolonization #AbuseCulture #paganism #ReligiousTrauma #exmo #exmormon #exvie #exvangelical #genealogy

And I know neopaganism is a thing, and I've practiced it both solo and with others, but Heilung really puts in the work, the research, the energy, the spectacle, to make it feel real what it might have been like to sit around a fire where the elders were preparing for a raid, acting out a divine scene, or appealing to the harvest spirits, knowing you're at the mercy of inhuman powers far beyond your control and understanding.

There are many paths out of authoritarian Christianity. And those paths have shifted over the centuries. Time was, your only other option wasn't atheism, it was deism, an enlightenment version of god as a scientist-creator who abandoned the universe after creating it. Now it's atheism, and from there you may end up at suburban paganism-lite, or a secular philosophy. Or you can look to various world religions.

Every one of these routes is some form of colonized or colonizing.

But Heilung is *decolonized*.

There is nothing about the culture Heilung displays on screen that is stolen from some entirely different People. (Obviously they had trade with and raided one another and nearby regions, but they didn't systemically *colonize* the way The Roman Empire and later Roman Christianity did.) Heilung gives us something that is 100% ours.

Their name means "Healing," and I could write a thesis on why that is true for me.

It takes me beyond deconstructing, into reconstructing, a space I'm less comfortable with.

🧵

#Heilung #Music #rewilding #Decolonize #decolonization #AbuseCulture #paganism #ReligiousTrauma #exmo #exmormon #exvie #exvangelical