My Christ Lilith

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC0o723hb0M&feature=related


When I was a c***d, my worldview, in all of its immaturity and unsophistication was similar to that of many other Catholics I think. I viewed the world in a very hierarchical manner, with God, Jesus, and the Church at the center of all things. I understood the Pope to be the highest representative of God, the direct concrete link between heaven and Earth. Underneath him was a bewildering and overlapping power structure that, for all intensive purposes, really only became relevant to me at the level of my own parish.

Within my parish came my own family. Confusing to me, my father didn’t particularly care for the Church, proclaiming himself an atheist, though my sister and I were always told by him that the Church provided guidance and structure (whatever the hell that meant!). My mother, still very rationalistic, tended toward the more mystical. She taught us that prayer was very real, that God did intercede on our behalf on Earth, that our priest was someone to look up to, etc. In one breath she would teach us about the Virgin Mary, the saints, and faith, while in the next we were being told about things like evolution, cells, ecosystems (again, whatever the hell those were!).

It was all extremely confusing. Unlike my sister, I took after my mother and put faith in the hidden mysteries of life. There was definitely a wider world outside of the Church to discover, but my beliefs were always centered and rooted in the idea of the Catholic God. It was only as I began being drawn toward sin, in particular sexual sin, that I began to seriously question my faith, the supremacy of the Church, the need to adhere to its dogma, its worldview, and the existence of God and soul altogether.

In this sense, it was sex and sin that liberated me from the prison of the mind that I considered the Catholic Church to be. As I became sexually active, with both myself and others, I grew more and more defiant to authority. Sexual gratification wasn’t just a means to feel good, it was the vessel through which I grew independent. When I would touch myself in private, God could still see me. At first I felt guilty and ashamed, yet over time I stopped praying for forgiveness, instead reveling in the fact that, maybe, there really was some angry God watching me. As my view of existence shifted from being centered around God and Church to around myself and my own understanding of morality, I came to associate sex and sexual freedom with freedom itself.

Yet having grown up with sex being so identified with sin, I must admit that the two are not entirely divorced from one another in my mind. No matter that I don’t believe in a judgmental God, or some predefined system of morality that I am obligated to follow, sex still has the feeling of being “naughty” or “wrong” or something to be done only in private. Sin still feels very real. As such, those things that I perceive as overtly sinful, things that are offensive to the Church and contrary to its mores are highly arousing to me.

Within reason, the more blasphemous something is, the more arousing it becomes. To take that which is holy and make it profane, to actively taint the religiously pure, is an act that transcends simple sexual gratification to me. It becomes a symbolic act of liberation all over again. It reasserts my independence from backward and illogical dogma; it reasserts me, as an individual, responsible only to myself, bound only by a moral code based upon my view of compassion, honor, and truth, all illuminated and understood by empathy, or love.

Sex led to wisdom in this way. Sex led me to salvation in this way. And even as I’ve come to call my sexual impulses by the name of “Lilith” in recent years, so Lilith has come to be the name of my Christ.

In coming to recognize such a thing as a Christ, however, everything religious has suddenly taken on a whole new meaning. In the process of discovering Lilith and understanding her to be a very real part of my makeup, in understanding her to be a very distinct part of my soul with the very specific function of liberating me from dogma and causing me to develop true compassion, I’m finding that the mysteries once bound by religion are very beautiful things when free. They are very real in their own way. Concepts like prayer, and salvation, and Christ, are all powerful means through which to understand ourselves and the world, “sin” standing out amongst them all as a guiding light.

So as I pray tonight to my Christ Lilith, as I kneel on the side of my bed to pay respect to the Spirit of Sin that led me astray from the Church and into the light, I do so, not with hands clasped, but with one arm d****d across my breasts, the other fallen down between my legs, allowing my fingers to caress and penetrate the truly sacred entrance to my being. I will invite Lilith into my heart, engage in holy communion with Her once again, and purify myself with Her lust.