An Unexpected Occult Initiation. My Fasting Experience.

1. Introduction

The first time I did a week-long fast was in the the summer of 2014. For a week I ate nothing and drank only water. I had a vague understanding that fasting could induce spiritual effects, so I was experimenting out of curiousity. To mydisappointment, the only psychic change that I noticed was a slight sharpening in mental imagery. But otherwise the experience was empowering and even kind of nice. Fighting against food cravings was surprisingly easy and with all the time that was freed from things relating to eating, I read through a pile of books that had been accumulating on my desk. The worst part of this experience was the constant shivering due to the decrease in metabolic activity.

So when I decided to fast again in the spring of 2022 I was not expecting any special internal experiences. I simply wanted to try and address certain health issues that I had. To my surprise this fast turned out to be one of the most intsense experiences I've ever had in my life. For almost two weeks, whenever I would go rest – which I often needed to do – I would drift into an altered state of consiousness. Behind my closed eyelids I was experiencing an earthmoving journey into a realm of pain, healing and transformation. I’ve never attended an occult initiation ritual, but after the experience I felt like I had just been through one.

In this essay I detail this journey into the underworld. I give an account the effects it had on me, both physichally but especially psychically. I describe the psychic space I entered in and what kind of situations I faced while in there. I offer my interpretations of those events as well as personal reflections based upon them.

Before I go into the experiences I had, I will explain what type of fast I was doing. Since I was fasting to confront my health issues, I thought that a juice fast would be gentler for my body than a complete water fast. I made the decision to drink juices also because I was now living with other people. I needed to convince them that I wouldn't be withering away in a week of not eating, and for them knowing that I'd be at least drinking juices easened their worry. So I bought a 5-day juice fasting package, and decided I’d do a 6-day juice fast plus one water day in the middle.

These innocent juices are not related to the events described in this essay. File: Fredericknoronha. All image files in this essay are either public domain, memetic, or licenced under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license unless otherwise noted. Licences extend to the edits made by me.

The course of the fast following. Before the proper fasting began I for four days ate gradually smaller portions of solid food. Once the fast began I drank juices, herbal tea and water. I gradually lessened the amount I was drinking for three days. In the middle of the week was the water day. This was followed by three days of drinking increasing amounts of the aforementioned liquids. I ended the fast with a four days of conditioning during which I gradually increased the portions of solid food I ate.

In the case a fellow astro-nerd happens to be read this, I’d like to point their attention to the appendix in which are listed the main astrological transit that coincided with this fast.

2. The Space Between Dreaming and Awake

The most intense experiences I had during this fast happened when I went to rest in quiet, closed my eyes and paid attention to what was happening in the darkness behind my eyelids. This practice and the space existing there are not unfamiliar for me, but the intensity of the experience was unusual.

In this space behind eyelids I've come to see figures that are made of faint, coloured (usually blue) light. Sometimes – though not very often – these spaces turn into more dream-like or ”realistic” in their appearance. They differ from ordinary dreams in that I am fully conscious when I enter into them; that they usually don't have a “storyline” going on; and that the things happening there don’t usually feel like to be related to my personal life. That is not to say that they can't have deeply personal meaning to me, though. While partially this space seems to be a creation of my unconsciousness, overall it has the feeling a pre-existing place which will continue on even without me.

I am not very versed in the psychedelics, I've tried ”magic truffels” two times in my life. The space I experienced in those instances was the place of darkness inhabited by figures of light I describe above. The difference to ”normal” experience was the depth and intensity of the experience. With truffels, the ligh-figures were more vivid; other consciousness than mine were more explicitly independent in their existence; and the content of those trips didn't feel to be about me personally pretty much at all, although the impact they had was personal.

This inner space I am trying to describe can metaphorically be compared to an ocean. The experiences I had before the truffels were like kneeling at the waterfront and submerging my face under the water's surface. The truffel experiences, in contrast, were like entering into the strange depths of the ocean. The first trip felt almost literally like I was quickly sinking into an oceanic trench.

After my truffels experiences, the bright colours used in some Hindu artwork can give me a slight nausea. They remind me of the lights in the truffels experience, and the nausea of sinkinf into the depths. ”Sri Sri Kali” (late 19th century), Kansaripara Art Studio.

Over the years this internal space has become more familiar to me. Nowdays my ”ordinary” experiences could be compared to taking a swim in the ocean. The experiences I had during this fast, then, were more akin to this ”swimming” than to the extreme ”sinking” of the truffels. During the fast, however, diving beneath the surface became easy for me – and the dives I took became deeper and deeper.

I must at this point admit I initially felt a little hesitancy over sharing my experiences publicly. For as the mushroom told me on my second trip: ”Fools babble”. I took it to mean that certain experiences should only be shared among the initiated. I’ve thus been rather sparing even in private conversations about these type of experiences. However, this time I do feel a very strong need to share what I’ve experienced, so here it goes.

In an attempt to avoid asinine foolishness, I will omit the parts and details of my experience that were very personal to me; those that involved personal information about other people than myself; or those which simply felt like they were not meant to be shared. The experience was so vast anyway that going into the finer details of it would make this essay even more painstakingly long than it already is.

I also wish to clarify that I do not make any claims about the ”reality” of things that happened to me. I am simply describing what the experiences were like to me, how I interperted them and what kinds of reflections they inspired. It is upon the reader's judgement to decide what amount of reality, if any, ought to be ascribed to experiences like this.

3. Altered Experience of the Body

While fasting, one ought to cease smoking as well as drinking coffee and alcohol. I don't use any of these substances at this point in my life anyway, but I do drink teas that have caffeine in then. While there wasn't any recommendations regarding these products, I decided that I'd drink only herbal teas during the fast. Quite interestingly, it was making this decision which marked the beginning of my ”trip”.

I soon became very tired and went to rest. As I laid on my bed, I felt like some ”program” encoded within my body was activating itself. Or more precisely, my body was de-activating many of its normal functions. From the state of ”eating” I was entering into the mode of ”fasting”; and from the state of ”health” into the mode of ”sickness”. I realized that it waould be these inherent programmings which woud make for my body possible to begin the radical healing.

This state of sickness was unfamiliar for me. I've been lucky to have had quite good basic health up to this point in my life. Even if I'd have a health problem, I always had the underlying sense of ”health”. But now I felt that my body was sick. This was not exactly pleasant state to be in, but it was an interesting one. It made think that perhaps there would've been times when I should’ve been in this state, but my unconscious fear of sickness had prevented it up to now.

The result of this state of sickness was that I'd often feel tired. I also was in pain — at somet points of time, in quite a lot of pain. (It is not recommended to use painkillers during fast, and I personally don’t like to use them anyway.) I don't remember having any pains in my previous fast and only mild tiredness due to the lack of food. Now I spent hours every day in bed, suffering many bodily pains and mentally drifting in the space between dreaming and awake.

When I entered the altered state of consciousness described in the chapter before, I would often experience very strongly different parts of my body. In my minds eye I would often ”see” the organ that was in pain, and what the problem or sickness in that organ was. And the problems were manifold! Some of them appeared to be mostly ”material” in nature, while in many cases the root cause appeared to be ”energetic”.

I have experienced before this how these subtler energies run through my body. However, in my previous experiences I had percieved them to reside in the mental or spiritual space; while now they were more in contact with the materiality of my body. These energies appeared to be associated to emotions but not exactly identical with them. As I reflected more deeply on the nature of this energy, I came to the conclusion that our emotions arise from the interaction happening between these subtler energies and the material body. An uninterrupted flow of energy seems to be experienced as bodily health and subtle emotional states; while the dfficult or obstructed movement of energy result in coarser emotions and, sooner or later, into bodily sickness.

Chakras and energy channels of the body. File: dockedship, licenced under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic licence.

It became evident to me that there were major blockages in me which restricted the healthy flow of this energy. A major part of the healing process was about addressing these issues. I would focus attention to the affected area — which in some cases in itself would start the healing process — but if that was not enough, I'd start to do subtle adjustments within my body. I saw this happen before my mind's eye, but I also felt it in my material body.

I recognized that the emotion that was most severely affecting me was fear. I had been hurt emotionally in my past, and the fear of being hurt more had led me to curl up and away from the world. I now saw how important it was for me to let go of this harmful emotion. While I ought to not to be overly harsh on my past self — after all, the emotional wound was very real for me — from now should not be acting from a place of cowardice, but from the place of courage. Doing this would not only result into better health, but more fulfilling life overall.

Further reflection led me to the unpleasant insight that I had not been as committed to honesty as I had previsouly thought I was. I had to face the fact that over the years I had told many small white lies in an attempt to avoid emotionally difficult situations. I had justified those lies to myself by convincing myself that I was acting from good intentions, or that the lies were so small that they were negligible in meaning. But the truth was that I had been lying; and me telling myself otherwise was lying too. Each one of those little lies had stayed with me, accumulating atop of one another, until they had turned into this sickness that was now possessing my body.

It was difficult to admit to myself that I was a liar. After all, I had prided myself on my commitment to truth and on how important value honesty was to me. And in all honesty, I had fancied that this made me a better person than most. Now I had to admit to myself that I was full of bullshit. Actual honesty, as well as how to be less arrogant and more humble, turned out to be a lesson that I need to take home from this experience.

In the middle of the fast I experienced some really worrisome things related to my bodily health. I became afraid that I might be actually seriously ill. I remembered a dream that I had over a year ago in which I was gravely ill. My condition kept worsening over the duration of the dream and, just before waking up, I felt how my internal organs shut down as death was imminent. This dream felt very shocking at the time, but I interpreted the dream as a symbolic representation of the emotional turmoils I was going through. Now a fear descended upon me – perhaps that interpretation had just been wishful thinking, and perhaps the dream had been literal in meaning...

The fear of life-threatening sickness lead me to a very intense and tranformative space. I'll recount details of its psychic aspects later in this essay. On the bodily level, I experienced how my body was fighting the disease both on the cellular and the energetic level. At the most intense stage of this process, I felt nauseous and overall horrible. A thourough cleansing – including sauna, nasal irrigation and an enema – eventually changed it into a light, refreshed and energetic one.

I should note that, indeed, not all of the bodily experiences were horrible during this fast. At some points I would feel quite good, similar to what I felt after the thorough cleansing. Unlike the almost constant slight shivering I experienced in my first fast, I would now only occasionally feel so cold that I’d shiver. On the psychological level, the realization that my body isn't as dependent on the external sources of energy as I usually think it be, felt quite empowering.

Interestinly enough, my cravings for food were much stronger in this juice fast than they were in my water fast. This was propably because this time I was constantly seeing other people’s food. However, I could fend off these temptations quite easily by thinking how upset my stomach would be if I'd cave in.

During and especially immediately after the fast my sense of taste and smell sharpened. Food – fresh veggies especially – tasted awesome once I started to eat again.

4. Miscellaneous Psychic Changes

My descend into the highly altered state of consciousness began with seeing in the darkness behind my eyelids bright, geomterically arranger lights. I was surprised to see them – I had actually forgotten that there sometimes was such lights in this space. These lights were the first clue to me that this experience might be about to go much deeper than what I had anticipated.

Some lights were jewel-like in appearance, similar to this picture. The patterns were much simpler than this, though. Kaleidoscopes. File:ﻯναოթ€ռ and crop by me.

I soon noticed that I didn't now want to listen to the music that I usually enjoy, such as heavy rock. Neither did I want to watch any videos on YouTube – a habit to which I was previously addicted to. These things simply started to feel ”toxic” to my psyche. Instead, I felt the need to experience more ”pure” things. My perception of beauty sharpened. The change in my taste of music lingered on for some days after the fast before returning closer to my previous state of normalcy. Happily, I haven’t returned to my habit of YT overconsumption. This was yet anoteher result of the fast that I had not anticipated at all, but which in itself would’ve been enough of a justification to do this fast.

On some days of the fast I was feeling emotionally very sensitive. Throughout it I'd experience wide range of emotions, ranging from the fear of death to a sense of delicate spiritual beauty. This aspect of the fast will hopefully be transmitted to the reader through the way I write about my experiences.

There were changes in my patterns of sleep. My day rythm changed so that I would go to bed earlier and also wake up earlier. At the first half of my fast, my dreams were more vivid in colour and I could remember several dreams per night. This change was not extraordinary, but a noticable change to the ”baseline” of dreaming I had had for a while. On several nights, I had dreams that foreshadowed things that would happen later on that day. While this kind of dreams are not completely unusual for me, them clustering together like this was highly unusual.

In the latter phase of the fast my dreams returned to their ”baseline”. I had in fact some trouble sleeping at this point. Experiencing sleeplesness is not unusual during fasting. However, my sleeping difficulties were in large part due to the fact that my head was now buzzing with numerous ideas for future projects. All that excitement made it difficult for me to calm down enough to sleep.

However, the biggest psychic changes I experienced happened in the imaginative space between sleeping and awakeness. The rest of this essay will be dedicated to describing things that happened in this psychic space.

5. Energy Parasites

At the onset of this psychic experience, I met on two different occasions parasitic humanoid entities. They were feigning friendliness so as to get close to me. I've met this kind of entities before in this internal space, but I've always managed to ward them off before they could attach themselves to me. Perhaps it was due to my weakened condition of fasting/sickness, but these ones were succesfull in tricking me into letting them near my psychic-space body. Once they were close enough, they would tenaciously attach themselves to my chakras (energy centers of the body).

Seven Chakras. File: RootOfAllLight.

I was more annoyed than afraid when this happened. I could sense that these creatures were not of an immediate danger to me. However, they were so strongly holding onto me that detaching them was extreamily difficult. The first one managed to attach itself to my crown chakra which, I suppose, has the most delicious type of energy from the perspective of energy-parasites. I could feel how it moved its fingers gently inside my psychic-body's scull; how it was in awe of this pure white light it was getting access to. This energetic probing felt rather disgusting to me. I tried to pull the hand out of me and push the creature away from me, but I was not powerful enough to succeed. If I managed to get one of its multiple hands off me, another hand would immediately attach itself to somewhere else.

Then I spontaneously did something that I surprised myself with: in the name of Jesus Christ, I commanded the creature to leave me. I felt the power of His sacred name; how golden light was shining from somewhere behind me. The entity had no choice but to detach itself, get away and stay away from me.

I was quite impressed and awed by this event. I came to understand that the Christian phrase ”there is power in the name of Jesus Christ” was not only a metaphorical way to describe the psychological effects faith can have on people. It was also a factual statement about spiritual power. It was in His powerful name that I commanded the second parasitic humanoid to leave, too.

In fact, the sacred name turned out to be extreamely useful on many occasions. For it turned out that there were plenty of parasitic spirit entities living inside my body. Before this experience I didn’t really know that such things even existed. These entities would either resemble animals or, more commonly, be just kind of blobs. They were in most cases black in colour and usually about the size of a dog (that is, ranging from quite small to relatively big).

I guess these parasites could be called ”demonic”. But if we imagine a painting depicting Hell, these creatures would not be the horrifying ones terrorizing, torturing and bloodily feasting on the poor lost souls. These would be the strange one flying around causing jump-scares and a general sense of unease for the wanderers in Hell.

”The Fall of Rebel Angels” from ”The Flood Panels” (c. 1514) by Hieronymus Bosch.

That is not to say that these entitites were not dangerous. On the contrary, they in part were the cause for the pains that I was experiencing. They were eating away my body, my energy and my spirit. During the fast I would on many occasion imagine myself pulling these creatures out from my (physical) body, often banishing them away with the sacred name of Jesus Christ. However, these parasites were so numerous that while I must've pulled them out in tens, many were still left in me.

6. The Past and the Future of Relationships

After I had for some time been pulling demonic entities out of my body, other stuff started to come out of me too. Quite a lot of dark goo and liquid needed to be expelled; I think this was how stagnated emotional energy appeared to me in this psychic realm. In the grimmer moments I pulled out blackened, charred, burning and even still living human bodies out of me. I interperted them to represent the different unfulfilled hopes and dreams, as well as unused potentialities, of my past. Most of them were related to my past romantic relationships, and some of the things they represented I hadn’t been consicious of before this event. I then buried these bodies, either under a burial mound or down to a grave, so that I wouldn't anymore be clinging to them or them to me. I imagined planting flowers in those graves, in a hope that perhaps something beautiful would grow out of these painful things of my past.

An important aspect of my healing process was addressing my past sexual relationships, as I realized that I was still energetically entangled to the men of my past. I saw those men standing before me, staring blankly to somewhere far away; they were in this psychic space, but they themselves were unconscious of this fact. I felt the need to forgive them, as well as to ask them to forgive me. This was relieving even though it happened just within myself. I then gave each of them back a piece of white shining light. This light was a part of them that had been left with me. Giving those pieces back to them would make it possible for us all to move on and have healthy, fullfilling and sustainable sexual relationships in the future.

Speaking of the white light of souls, during this fast I tried on two occasions to do astral travel. (Or maybe I was just sleeping, because I saw my soul leaving my body etc. from the perspective of outside observer.) I have done some astral travel before, although I didn’t associate this concept to these experiences before this one. The first time I tried to now travel, though, I was unable to leave my body – the sickness in me was like a heavy black weight pressing me down and preventing me from leaving.

File: Viogfernos.

The second time around my health was propably getting better, for the blockage was gone and I was able to leave. I decided that what I wanted to do was to see my soul mate, since I had come to deeply yearn for a soul with whom I could share the adventure of life. I don't know if this thought made me fly very fast, or whether space itself was compressed; but landscapes went blurrily past me and in couple of seconds I saw myself hovering in the air amid some apartment buildings. I knew that my soul mate was in one of the apartments and I could enter in to see who he was. But...

I began to hesitate. Was it really a good idea for me to try to fish for such information before the time was ripe? Doing such things just to relieve my curiosity could be inviting some bad karma in my life. Besides, what if I'd feel disappointment upon seeing this man? After all, he might not fit into my current preconceptions of what kind of man he ought to be. Perhaps it would be better to just let life lead us together. I decided that I wouldn't go see him, and immediately I was back in my body.

Some days later I went to meet my ex-partner, with whom I am still on friendly terms. On the way to his flat I saw some apartment buildings that looked somewhat like the ones I had seen on my astral travel. An uneasy thought came to me – maybe my ex is my soul mate? This would be rather depressing prospect, for our relationship was a mismatch of wants and needs, constant hurtful misunderstandings resulting in unnecessary conflicts, and sickeningly toxic emotional patterns. Of course our relationship had good aspects in it too, but breaking up did make life much better for both of us.

However, this relationship did teach me many lessons. I came to learn how plentiful are the shortcomings of my charachter; and I had to learn how to love another person who has plentiful shortcomings of his own. Maybe, I thought, this relationship was the it of this lifetime. Maybe our souls had made a pact before our birth to learn these hard but important lessons from one another. After all, where it is written that having a soul mate would mean ”happily ever after”?

While these ponderings felt rather discouraging, there was an intriguing entity encounter that gave contra-indications to this line of thinking. For around the most intense point of my fasting experience I saw an elf from a space of green light. This elf had a bristle beard; he was contemplatively biting his tobacco pipe as he observed me from his dimension. I got the feeling that he was into matchmaking, and arranging unexpected meetings for to-be-lovers; that he was kinda tricksterous but fairly well-meaning charachter, with who-knows-how-long experience in this little hobby of his. I took this encounter to mean that I should keep my heart and eyes open so as to be ready if/when life will be bring that adventure along.

Curious coincidence: a friend of mine sent me this picture as a humorous reference to a certain conversation we had had. I was immediately struck by the resemblance of the statue to the green space elf. While I am obviously talking about the face and attire of the statue, the symbolic associations seem quite fitting too (no pun intended). The statue of the Roman fertility god Priapus, late 1st century C.E.

This meetings with an elf was an intriguing one also because it was not the first time I met an entity from the green space. I once chewed dried Salvia Divinorum leaves, and – while that experience overall was relatively mild – I felt like I was being observed by an entity from this very same green space. (And with the exclusion of some weed, this is the extent of my psychedelic experiences.)

7. Meeting Jesus Christ and Facing Religious Trauma

I recounted before how very helpful the name of Jesus Christ was in banishing parasitic entities away from me. In the middle of my fast – when I was struggling with the intense bodily pains and the fear of death – I decided that I would try pray for Him. So I did, asking Jesus Christ to heal me...

And there He was, sitting right next to me.

This picture is actually quite representative of how I visually experienced Him, the faint-light quality excluded. Now that I think about it, this meeting visually happened in my room darkened by my eyelids, and not in the darkness behind my eyelids — which is quite interesting, if not simply a trick of memory. Artistic image of Jesus from multiple sources, including the Shroud of Turin (XIV century). File: Monozigote.

I was in awe of His precense. He was no less than agape itself - the Universal Compassion personified. He was a being of higher order of consciousness; of higher order of existence. He had trancsended the limitatations of human being and become an Ascended, Enlightened Master. But despite these supreme qualities of His, there was nothing pompous about Him. His precense was gentle, humble and deeply loving.

He placed His hand gently through my body to the place where I felt the pain to reside. The materiality of my body was no limit to Him – going through my skin and flesh was to Him like moving through air is for us. I could see how His hand was moving within me and I felt how that was healing my body. While the hand in my body in itself was not painful, the act of healing was. Despite these pains I felt deeply grateful that He had heard me and came to help.

I saw Him on several occasions during my fast. I'd call for Him in my mind, and He would be next to me. He'd heal my body, pull demonic entities out of me, or just be there. However, as my condition started to get better I noticed that it became more and more difficult to keep my perception of Him clear. If I was not sharply paying attention to Him, then my own imaginations would quickly overshadow His image. I feel that this clarity of perception is really important point to remember — the lack of it is propably the reason why there are so many contradictions and misunderstanings about these spiritul realms.

Since I felt such gratefulness for the healing I had recieved, I promised to Him that I would do a painting of Him. That way I could express to others as well that there truly is power in His name, and that He truly has the power to heal the suffering. But when I later pondered over this promise, I felt a bit... embarrassed. Upon reflecting on this emotion I understood it to be arising from the fact that in this post-Christian society, Jesus has patently gone out of fashion. What worried me was that if I’d be associating myself with Christianity, I would make myself seem ”uncool”.

It didn't take much reflection to see that this was rather childish way to look at things. Why was I worrying over superficial perceptions that strangers might have of me? This sentiment was made even more silly by the fact that I myself have a high respect for many individuals who openly express their faith in Jesus Christ. Indeed, what matters is that I stick to the truth; find the courage to express myself honestly; and keep the promises that I make.

What I should worry over is that I haven't drawn human faces in ages.

But while I did have this immense gratitutde towards Jesus Christ, I also felt some inner contradiction about this event. In my mind I explained to Him that, even thought I was grateful for how much He was helping me, I could not convert into Christianity. I had seen too much; I knew too much. Besides, (I was feeling kind of vulnerable now,) I wanted to practice astrology, and stuff...

While he did not say anything – in fact, He spoke no words at all during this experience – I felt gentle amusement radiating from Him. He was like a parent who was patiently sitting next to a sick child, listening as the child explains in a very serious manner how she believes the world works. But the child does not have the necessary life experience, nor the psychological maturity, to properly understand the things she is talking about. The quietly smiling parent gazes at the child, allowing the child to share these sincere but misplaced beliefs, and lets his presence to tell that there is nothing to worry about...

When I later reflected on this experience, I realized that He never asked nor expected from me anything. The promise about painting came to be because I wanted to give something back to Him. Indeed, demanding something in return for love (or acting in self-sacrificing manner so as to manipulate someone through their sense of guilt do things that the manipulator wants) would not be true love, but a petty game araising from fear and greed. Love is a gift, in the deepest sense of the word; and Jesus Christ sitting next to me was an expression of Perfected Love.

"Figure of Christ" (1884) by Heinrich Hofmann.

When I later reflected on this experience, I understood that my thoughts about needing to convert came from personal past experiences. I come from a Christian family, and over the years I have heard countless stories about people who’ve met Jesus. Often He would heal them — spiritually or bodily — after which He would ask that person to follow Him. Upon this request the healed person would give their life to Jesus, and this decicion would mark their rebirth into Christianity. The miserable sinner would now turn into a faithful believer, who from that on would joyously spread the gospel of Jesus. These archetypal stories were the reason why I presupposed that upon personally meeting Jesus Christ I'd need to convert back to Christianity.

In the Christian circles of my childhood there was a rather strict insistence that Christianity was the only Turth; and that the only right way to be a Christian was the one that this specific sect proclaimed to be the right one. This would eventually become a source of religious trauma for me, since at the age of twelve I came to realize that I was an atheist. But I didn't want my loved ones to be needlessly worrying over my supposedly eternal soul going to Hell; nor did I want to be converted back to Christianity; but neither was I courageous enough to speak my truth and risk rejection. So I'd go to church, sit next to the true believers, and keep my thoughts to myself. I was pretending to be something I was not, and this resulted into harrowing feelings of fraudelence. After some time I ”solved” this internal incongruity by ceasing to go to the church.

Meeting Jesus Christ made me understand the depth of this wound I have within myself. To this day, I've felt more or less anxious and stressed out when attending a religious gathering or service. The discordanance of feeling like a fraud, along with an oppressive sense of guilt, are still pressing down on me. If I'd just be the good little girl who loves Jesus, then everyone would be happy...

I now recognized this thought was in me, and how it was a rigid internalization of the excpectations of the authority figures in my childhood. But I now also saw how those expectations, as suffocating as they eventually came to feel like, were stemming from a deep love felt towards me. Yet, submission to those expectations would've meant sacrificing my will, my thoughts, my feelings – indeed, myself – onto the altar of pleasing others. My rebellion against Christianity, then, was an unconscious attempt to tear away from the (parental) identifications of childhood and to take the first steps towards individualization.

Nine years ago, I experienced God and ceased to be an atheist. Part of my spiritual process since then has been about slowly bridging the chasm I feel towards Christianity, the religion of my childhood. For I know that there is encoded certain deep truths and exquisite values within this religion; I've also personally known many Christians who express in themselves the joy, compassion and selfless sacrifice that Christianity at its best promotes. In fact, part of me deeply yearns to go to this place of light – a part of me wants to say ”yes” to all that love that has been sent to my way.

As painful as it is, I also feel that I cannot stay in those open, loving arms. I can give back a warm hug; but then I need to gently step away. For I feel I couldn’t be whole as a Christian. There are parts of the human being — parts of me — that are deemed unacceptable within the Christianity that I know. For to be a ”good Christian”, one needs to cut the ”bad Pagan” out of oneself. To be ”of light”, one needs to deny or destruct “the dark”. I've felt in myself, and seen in others, how this can lead to psychological and spiritual repression and regression; horrid emotional states; and outright sickness of the soul.

For some people, this struggle to quell the darkness appears to be the one they need to engage into — if it truly works for them, then I am happy for them. Some people, on the other hand, turn away form the light and indulge into the darkness — and while I guess that in some big scheme of things all roads need to a traveller, I myself don’t want to end up wandering those Hellish landscapes. So with regards to myself, I feel that denying either of these sides within me would leave me but a stump of the human being I could be.

For I am both Eve and Lilith — Apollo and Dionysus — the Virgin Mary and the Whore Babalon — the God and the Beast. I wish to caress the highest Heavens with my branches, while simultaneously intertwine my roots with the depths of Earth. I do not seek no longer to escape from those powers within me, but to find the equilibrium and harness them to their highest extent. To do this, I need to develop a trunk of such great strenght that it will be able to transmit through it the energies of both of these realms — their delights as well as their terrors.

But with all this babbling about Christianity I've wandered far away from Jesus Christ sitting next to my sick bed. After all, His Love didn't have any expectations attached to it. For me to expect such love in this realm of human limitations – even from those who profess to be His followers – would be... well, a good example of what I am trying to say.

(Please note that this song has nothing to do with my personal experience of meeting Jesus Christ — I sensed no sexual qualities in Him whatsoever.) —— I first heard this song back in my teenage years. I didn't think it was that good back then — that it had been made mainly to offend devoted Christians. I now stumbled upon it again while writing this section and to my surprise — despite the humorous elements in it — the song sounded numinous to my ears. It represented so well the thoughts I was having about the contradictory yet conjoinable qualities between the carnal and the spiritual. It also expresses beautifully how apparent acts of sacrilege can actually hide a deep yearning for the sacred. ”Christian Woman” (1993) by Type O Negative.

8. Conclusion

As is hopefully evindent by this point, this fasting experience had quite transformative effects on me. Indeed, it feels like I went through some sort of naturally occured occult initiation.

I for some time have considered myself to be a student of the occult. However, I haven't felt it right to call myself an occultist. As I was arising from the depths of consciousness I had sunken in, I felt like I had earned the right to use this vocational title. It was as if I was standing outside the gates of university, clutching the freshly printed papers of graduation in my hands, and with bright eyes looking towards my future career. (I guess this essay serves as my thesis.) I felt great excitement — and a bit of anxiety. From this point on, I’d need to let go of the fear and weakness within me. The time had come for me to take decisive action; to put into good use the knowledge I thus far have gathered. I need to bring forth the uncharted destiny that is awaiting for me.

I also made the decision to take on another pseydonym — Lilith.

In a Jewish lore, Lilith was the first wife of Adam. God made the two of them from the same clay and she was his equal. Their marriage was unhappy, as they were constantly fighting. She refused to submit under him and he refused to submit under her. After Adam tried forcefully to take control of the relationship, Lilith left the Paradise — shouting profanities at Adam as she slammed shut the pearly gates behind her — and turned into a terrible demoness.

Of course, Adam wasn't happy how things turned out with this ex-wife of his but now that she had left he was feeling sad and lonely. So God created Eve from Adam's rib. This meant Eve was not his equal but subservient to him. But even this wasn’t enough to end Adam’s marital woes. As everybody knows, there was that incident with the apple…

Despite this marriage crisis of Biblical proportions, the most-of-the-time servile Eve is still married to Adam. Considering Adam's tendency to blame on his women the difficulties he faces in life, their relationship dynamics propably feel quite tormentous for her. (“God said to not eat from that tree, but noooo, you just never listen do you, you just had to do things your way and pull me into this mess you created…”)

Meanwhile, the rebellious Lilith is bitterly killing neonates, having meaningless one-night stands with sleeping human men and it’s-hard-to-explain relationships with demonic bad boys. I don’t think she’s very happy with her life, either.

In fact, they all could be much happier than this. I think it's about time for these two women to befriend and – over a cup of hellishly spicy yet heavenly good herbal tea – have an in-depth discussion about how to proceed from this on…

Adam: *sweating intesifies*

For the expression of the Godhead within, I will be using the name of Eve; and when I feel the need to express the Devilish within, I will use the name of Lilith. Eve symbolizes the rising Sun — the light of consciousness triumphantly dispelling the darkness of unconsciousness. Lilith symbolizes the setting Sun — the sinking of diurnal consciousness into the nocturnal realm of unconscious. While they are opposites to one another, they are also inseparable parts of the same cycle.

But returning back to the realm of matter, this fast has already made a really positive impact on my life. I've been feeling stronger in both body and mind; as well as more energetic, enthusiastic and joyful. The pains I experienced before have lessened in intensity, though not completely ceased. The experience made me to admit that I have to see a doctor in the case there really is something seriously wrong in my body.

I plan on doing another fast again at some point in the near future, and hopefully it will help my body and soul to heal further. But I can't do it just yet - I need some time to collect myself up again. After all, there might be awaiting further entrances into the underworld...

APPENDIX

Here are listed the main astrological transits that occured during my fast 27.3. - 10.4.2022. The timings between different parts of fasting fell naturally in alignment with the transits once I decided to start the proper fast on the day of a New Moon.

1. The conditioning for the fast began when Mercury, my Ascendant ruler, in a combusted state entered into my 8th house Aries.

2. On the day when the juice fast began, the New Moon occured close to Mercury.

3. Two days later Mercury went through the Heart of the Sun. This was the last day of juices before my one water day.

4. The most intense experiences occured when Mars approached exact conjuction to Saturn in my 6th house Aquarius.

5. On the day that the malefics perfected their conjunction, and Venus moved from Aquarius to Pisces, I started to drink juices again.

6. On the last day of fasting Mercury sextiled Saturn.

7. The following day Mercury sextiled Mars and conjuncted my natal Jupiter; I started to eat solid food again.

8. On the last day of the conditioning, Mercury squared Pluto and came out of the combustion.

9. As Mercury moved into my 9th house Taurus, the fast was over.

Astrological sign Virgo at the Wisconsin State Capitol. File: AnotherGypsy.