5 weekly readings: perspectives on christianity & spirituality

bloody forays into mormonism, details on astrology, eggs locked up in vaults, saints / sinners, and complex relationships with faith

more reading recommendations:

discourse on our culture and girls
on finding and embracing ourselves
the magic of the night

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happy friday!

this week i finally began releasing a serial memoir about my own fundamentalist past:

the salvation chronicles: days in the life of a fanatical christian teenager

so obviously, i’ve been thinking a lot about religion.

usually i write lengthy introductions to these weekly recommendations. but i have been writing so much about religion in the last two weeks that i hardly want to take up any extra space on this post. better to leave more room for the voices below.

photo my own

even so, for those new to snowflakeangelbutterfly, my religious experience went something like this:

“jesus could come back at any moment,” my mom said.

when we least expect him to return, jesus will return, and all the signs suggested that he would return very soon.

“everyone who is a christian will just disappear,” she said. “pilots will just vanish out of planes. the planes will crash and all the passengers will die. drivers will just poof out of cars and crash into pedestrians in the street.”

obviously i wanted to know: will i disappear with the christians? how can i know?

“only god can know what’s in your heart,” she often told me.

the world in which i would be left behind was a terrifying one. my mom told me that there would be these demons who were hybrids between locusts and lions. people would be in such agony from how these demons tortured them that they would run to the tops of buildings and jump off to their deaths. but god would ensure they stayed alive no matter how many stories up they dove from. she told me how these people would be twitching around on the ground while the demons gruesomely tortured them, and i saw myself in the future: plummeting from a building into locusts. (my choice at 16: stop masturbating or burn in hell)

because of that intense trauma, when i stopped being a christian i entered into an extremist atheist phase during which my mind was totally closed to any aspects of reality beyond the strictly material.

i think that this atheist fanaticism was essential for me: i was so thoroughly brainwashed into fundamentalist christianity that my being needed to radically revolt.

that said, i am so grateful to have access to other perspectives and experiences on religion here on substack. in the last few years i’ve finally been embracing my witchy nature: astrology, tarot, manifesting, all of it excites me.

i am finally open minded. for real this time. well, at least i hope so lol

please enjoy these selections from five of my favorite substacks 💖

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“my brief and bloody foray into mormonism” by

Swamp Ruby

“the second woman, a member of the church and the reason the production was permitted access to the building, brought in what would be my costume. it was a long white dress she informed me was a temple dress. which, to my limited knowledge, is a dress the women wear to the temple which is a specific and significant and important thing in mormonism. so I asked if they would mind that I, a complete non-believer—worse, a lapsed catholic²—was to cut about in this important garment (I didn’t wear ‘garments’ underneath btw, I came in a bra and pants and I stayed in a bra and pants). she assured me this dress was about to be thrown out so no one would care. at no point in the lead up did anyone ask me what size clothes I wear or had anyone seen me in person but somehow the dress just so happened to be a perfect length and fit (???!!!). I wanted to ask more about who the dress belonged to and why it was getting thrown out and loads of stuff about the religion (I am, above all else, a nosy bastard), but she was the first mormon I had ever met and I didn’t know what would be offensive or touchy to ask about. so instead I asked her if she’d seen the Book of Mormon musical (which I had seen on the West End earlier that year and was just about all I knew about mormonism at the time) and what they generally think of it. apparently they think it’s funny (surprising, tbh) and they don’t mind that it exists and they often stand outside the theatre with real books of mormons (idk how to pluralise that so i’m just throwing spaghettis at walls). that’s what she told me, don’t shoot the messenger if any of that is wrong!!”

my brief and bloody foray into mormonism

“Dear Heavenly Father, my eggs are locked in a vault” by

Corey Banana

“I was born into a large family, my sweet mom-mom June married John Smith (yes that’s their real names) lol and had 7 children. 5 girls and 2 boys and their children went on to have children and so on and so on. I’m one of the few outside of my uncle who doesn’t have children. My family is Christian and I opted out of Christianity due to not caring what anyone thinks about how I live my life. My relationship with God is more important than going to church and gossiping about the pastor sleeping with so and so, yeah. If you were born into religious family who go to church and bible study you know the church is messier than high school locker rooms and hallways.”

Dear Heavenly Father, my eggs are locked in a vault

“astrology 101” by

brenna s.

“Astrology isn’t to be confused with astronomy. Astrology is the study of the influence of celestial bodies on human lives and events. Unfortunately, since the 18th century, it is largely considered pseudoscience. Astronomy is the study of everything outside the earth’s atmosphere and a natural science. But I believe we can’t have one without the other. Astrology use dates back many, many centuries and the lack of use in later centuries was due to, you guessed it, the church and Emperor Constantine declaring Christianity the legal state religion in 323 AD within the Roman Empire.

Astrology has different systems that you have likely heard of such as Western astrology or Chinese astrology. I use a system that dates back to the late Hellenistic period, the whole house system. In other house systems, the signs overlap with each other. With whole sign, the sky divides them up into 12 equal parts of 30° and each part is a sign. There is, of course, way more to it but the way I talk about astrology is with that system.”

(brenna: i’m also a capricorn! december 26!)

astrology 101 🪐

“saint first” by

Paisley

“Me and God, we’re still in communication, but the relationship has been fickle over the last few years. And during this time, I’ve found my own, new version of God in interesting and unsuspected people and places. But no matter where I am or what I’m doing, I find myself coming back to the same cornerstone: Worship.

I’m definitely not a Kim Burrell saint, but more of a Kirk Franklin sinner. IYKYK.

We’re dual people. We worship and we sin, sometimes at the same time. We drink and then find our place of deference. We cuss and then call on the name of Jesus. And then we find our way forward—whatever that looks like. And that’s okay. All of who we are is okay.”

Saint first

“why i’m not religious” by

Joyful Sarcasm

“But for me, the world was different. I had seen too much, understood too much, to find solace in the idea of a higher power with a plan. The randomness of the accident, the senselessness of it all, left me with a truth that I couldn’t reconcile with faith. Bad things happen. They happen to good people, to people who believe, to people who pray. There’s no rhyme or reason to it, and that’s the hardest part to accept.

I often wonder, had I not witnessed what I did, would I have faith? Would I find comfort in the idea that everything happens for a reason, that there’s a greater purpose behind the pain? Maybe. But my path led me to a different understanding, one where the world is what it is—a place of beauty and tragedy, light and darkness, without any higher plan or purpose.”

Why I’m Not Religious

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