alterhuman/warlock

on warlockry

this is the bit of me you're probably going to see first. you might not come to the conclusion that i'm nonhuman from superficial interactions with me, but multiple people have pegged me as a warlock unprompted. it makes sense - archetropy is about doing much more than any other part of my identity. warlock is something i deliberately present as, because looking and being magical, and making people notice that, is part of its job.

the defining feature of my own personal experiece is the pact. my covenant is with the twin crocodile gods Sobek and Set, to fulfil a very specific mission in return for Their guidance and support in my life. it's a lot of work. it's at least 40 minutes out of my day every day of attending to the shrine, making offerings, doing heka. it's having at least three research projects on the go at any given time. it's a lot of work on myself, including extremely boring stuff like eating well and exercising. They want me to be healthy and capable, for They love me like a warrior loves his weapon as much as a father loves his child.

but it's not just the pact. i also see life, and relationships, in a very pragmatic and contractual way in general. i am selfish, i thirst for power and knowledge, and i'm always calculating how to gain something from an interaction. i don't think i'm evil for that. i think we all fundamentally work this way, and it's a natural part of being a living, self-preserving animal. i'm just operating closer to the metal — to use the programming term — than the average person. wizards can be assholes, and they can be villains, but they're not depicted as machiavellian in quite the same way warlocks are, and not so consistently. its largely negative connotations are part of the draw, to me.

while it's hard to avoid talking about myself in terms that relate to the d&d conception of warlocks, it must be said that my identification with the word is also deeply rooted in real history. the word rose to prominence in medieval scotland, where it was literally just the word for a male witch. wiccans these days will tell you it's a bad word for bad people — for etymologically, it means “oathbreaker”. they will not tell you that the oath to which it refers historically is the covenant with the christian god. they will also often say this while simultaneously martyrizing the witches who were their co-victims of the christian church. such as it is, they're only continuing the very tradition of persecuting people which they claim to condemn.

this is salt in the wound because scottish folk practitioners are frequently in tension with the wider pagan world in general. it's hard to overstate the extent to which the new age movement has erased, distorted, and outright fabricated so celtic myth and culture. if i am considered an enemy for calling that out in many places, then so be it. i claim the word warlock out of spite as much as anything else, and i think that's a very warlock thing to do.

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