In Nomine Patres

In Nomine
My Exploration of Yahweh, Christ and the Holy Spirit

I have explored myself and my relationship with the Christian Triple-God known as Yahweh, His Son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit since I was born. I grew up in a Catholic household, was taught the Sign of the Cross, the Our Father, The Hail Mary, the Stations of the Cross and many deep aspects of the Catholic Mysteries of Faith. “Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again.” How true, even for a person who turned away from the path of Catholicism, and Christianity as a whole.

However, I am more in touch with, understanding of and existing with Christ now, than I was as a Catholic. Many of whom I say this to do not understand, regard my words with fear and revulsion or, understandably, confusion. “How can you, a Pagan, possibly have a more deep and meaningful relationship with Jesus Christ? You don’t worship Him!” That, I think, is the point. To be a Christian is to be a follower of Christ, to walk His footsteps (in the spirit in which He did) and to emulate, not idolize, him.

I stopped being a practicing Catholic in the October of 2004. I had researched Wicca and Paganism with interest in high school for the four earlier years. At the time, since I lived in a Catholic household and had a tight schedule of school and after-school activities, I had no opportunity to pursue my understanding or exploration of it. I knew what little websites could tell me in little half-hour or so bursts when I could get into the library for non-homework or activity-related reasons. I went to college, moved into a dorm, and swiftly found a group of people whom were interested in the exploration of Wicca.

I remember reading Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner, and its opening of my mind, like movies and books before it, to the world of possibilities around me. I leapt into the Wiccan faith with fervor, which eventually materialized into a general eclectic Pagan faith guided by many of Wicca’s principles. I wanted every piece of knowledge I could get a hold of on the subjects of the occult, Paganism, and the like. This fervor continues, I do not want to stop learning, but it has eventually lead me back to Christ in most interesting ways, whether I wished it or no, for someone in some book I have been drawn to has had something to say about the Divine figure. Some would say this is a calling back to my old faith, but I see it as perhaps an augmentation or continuation of my developing faith and spiritual life.

In Christ I can see the God as much as I can see the God in Lughnasadh, Osiris, Baldur, or any number of Sacrificed Kings or Sacrificed Gods. Through Christ’s eyes comes a unique perspective, as assuredly unique as His Sacrifice is through the eyes of Osiris or Lughnasadh. In my studies of the occult and inner transformation, Christ and the others’ whom went His way before Him each to their own cultures, has come again and again to my attention. Perhaps it is that I wish to help others with my gifts/talents/power/etc. that I gain from my studies? Perhaps I am among few who believes this world is worth saving and would do so? I do not know. These thoughts are not here to indulge in delusions of grandeur, only wondering.

When Christ came back into my life, it was very sudden, and very painful for me, both for the time in my life and in the experience of it.
I was in a guided meditation, and was perfumed by attendants awaiting me on either side of a door leading into a Temple in Egypt, perhaps the Necropolis. I entered to the Temple, bowed low to Anubis whom was at the other end of Temple, seated. He rose with a Kris-bladed ceremonial knife in His right hand, an Ankh in the other. He approached me, asked for my left hand palm up and gashed both his and mine own left hand. After clasping and feeling the raw power of the Egyptian God pound through me, He smiled, and said there was more for me to do. He pointed me toward the door to the Temple, and after the attendants again perfumed me I was thrown into another place, from hot sands to a cold mountaintop.

I looked on and there was Odin, the All-Father, awaiting me. He asked me if I would accept the gift He was to give me, though I would have to suffer for it. I agreed and with no more words, chains bound me suddenly to the mountainside and he plucked out my left eye, took a clump of his flesh and placed it in where my eye had been, a wolf’s eye, gold colored, now there. Odin then asked Thor, whom I had not seen till then to step forward. Then, with a war cry that made me physically shake (I was told later) Thor sealed shut my wound with His Hammer, Mjollnir and I felt my face sear with lighting as He made my face whole. As I fell to the cold mountain snow, the chains no longer about me, Odin looked into my eyes and said I had one more to visit on this trip.

I could feel the hot sands beneath my feet. I had been in prison all night, and at last could see the sun. I saw it for a long while as the Roman soldiers beat me. I did not realize it at the time, but I was in the place of Christ. I won’t relay the story here, since most know it or can find it very easily. Suffice it to say, it was the most painful and harsh of the three and I could hear Christ weep as I suffered as He did. When it finally ended in my death on the Cross, I returned to my body.

From these lessons, I have learned much and am still learning.

Now I talk to Christ on a daily basis, let Him know what is going on in my life.
In talking to Him, I also listen and there is a constant that He pushes in conversation.

In my understanding, Jesus only gave two commands, “Love thy neighbor as thyself” and “Love thy God with all thy strength, thy will, thy soul!” From what I understand, He said this would satisfy the entire list of Commandments.

Well, to love your neighbor as yourself, first off, requires you to love yourself. You need to truly, deeply love you for whom You are. No exceptions, no excuses. “Well, I like myself but-“ really does not cut it. You need to love yourself, even if that loving means you need to change things about yourself. To love my body I feel I need to lose weight, otherwise, my weight will eventually lead me to diabetes and a harder-to-live life. It would not sound very loving if I condemned another to this, so I won’t do this to myself.

Considering my above-guided meditation, I have come out stronger in person and character, and with a deeper understanding of myself, and many aspects in my life from the suffering that I went through. Would a loving person place hirself in this situation? To gain the knowledge and understanding to stop harmful cycles in their life, to gain a better understanding of hirself, or to further oneself in life, sometimes suffering is necessary.

To “love God with all thy strength, thy will, thy soul” would seem to me to extend the above idea of loving with all you have to God, and moving the rest of your life in accordance to the expansion of that love. The root of the teaching here by Jesus, is love, that all the things in your life should be bent to giving (and I would think, thereby the reception) of that love.

Ask any parent; it is not easy to watch your child fall when they try to walk. Watching my son do so, cry and then pick himself back up is not easy. He will learn, though, and I must love him enough to allow him to learn. Perhaps one day he will give me a lesson in love like this when I foul something up, or when I need to learn something. However, I do not let him try to walk because of my own gain, love my son enough to work for himself and to have the freedom to choose, even at this young age, whether or not he will walk.

So I think it is sometimes with God. Perhaps He watches above us with sad eyes as we, determinedly pick ourselves back up and try again after being smacked down by life for the umpteenth time. Perhaps He weeps as humanity as a collective whole rips the planet He fashioned (and in my Pagan beliefs, alongside the Goddess) apart.