The Things I Learned From Chaos Magick.

Nothing is Real and Everything is Permitted. 

I am 14 years old, and kneeling at my altar. On it are effigies of Sekhmet and Anubis. At some point in time these spirits have presented themselves to me in dreams and visions - and for all I knew (or cared) the images they presented were wholly valid. I did not stop to run these spirits through the wringer and make them declare themselves to me. I did not test or argue with them. I accepted that the faces they gave to me were the faces they wanted me to see.

I went forward with the knowledge that at any point in time I could be proven wrong, and that the flexibility of my paradigm would allow for that without fundamental damage to it.  And for probably ten years the flexibility was never tested. And then one day I evoked "My Mother", and her face was hard, and her hair was not ringlets of black mane, but serpents. And a bolt went through my heart "This is a Gorgon, not a Kemetic goddess." And I looked to "My Father" - and I no longer saw a Jackal-headed man. I saw a man wearing a wolf-skin.

"Well, fuck" I said "Are y'all still okay with being called Sekhmet and Anubis... or... ?"