Polarity & Gay Men

If our ancestors were right, and gay men were actually lucky in love, as I have said in previous posts, why are so many of us today so unlucky in love?

In modern gay male culture, sex is readily available.  Whether you find it on an internet porn site, you go on a "dating" app, or you go old school and hit up a bar or club.  Friendships are less easy to find, and, depending on how jaded you've become, you might be tempted to think that relationships are less available than a unicorn farting rainbows and glitter.

The old saying "energy follows thought" seems to apply here.  Whether relationships actually are a thing of myth and legend or we just think they are, the modern gay male preoccupation with this "lack mentality" around meaningful relationships isn't helping us navigate a way around the problem.  That said, it also doesn't help that our collective perception is validated and reinforced on a regular basis.

There is good news though!

Our ancestors were not wrong.  Gay men have always been (and still are) lucky in love.  The problem is that we have been disconnected from our spiritual roots, and, like a tree whose roots have rotted in the soil, we cannot survive without a healthy root system.  It is imperative that gay men reclaim their power as magical workers, not just for ourselves, individually, but collectively, as a community.

Within the canon of occult literature, there is some wonderful occult wisdom that can be used to help us do just that.  The first bit of wisdom stems from the Universal Law of Polarity.

Understandably, many gay men (especially magical gay men) rail against the concept of polarity, because it has been used against us as a weapon.  Too often polarity is used as a euphemism for heteronormativity.  However, it would be a mistake for us to maintain our aversion to this awesome and powerful concept.  When understood correctly, the Law of Polarity can be used to empower gay men.  It is actually the key to healing ourselves from this gaping wound so many of us experience around love.

Franz Bardon, along with many other wonderful occultists, talks about the concept of the magnetic and electric fluids.  For the record, fluid is probably a bad choice of wording for this concept, because what we are really talking about here are forces.  However, for better or worse, the occultists from Bardon's era chose to use the word fluid.  Don't let it trip you up.

According to Bardon, in his book Initiation into Hermetics, these fluids have the elements as their source.  The electric fluid originates from the Fire element, while the magnetic fluid has its origin in the Water element.  By gaining control of these two fluids/forces, Bardon assures us, that the magician can achieve everything in all spheres, regardless of whether he is dealing with the mental, astral, or material world.  The thing that our ancestors gave us (gay men) credit for was the very thing that Bardon is encouraging the magician to develop: the ability to balance and wield these two opposites.

For the record, we, as gay men, have not lost that ability.  If you want proof of that fact, just look at the modern Gay Male Community.  How many Gay men play with gender?  How many Gay men embrace (or even play up) their feminine sides?  The Drag Queen, the makeup artist, the twink, the fashion designer, the boy walking around with a murse (or man-bag), the club kid who mixes male and female fashion to create a unique image--the list goes on.

We have however lost the wisdom of how to use this ability to balance both polar opposites within ourselves to the full extent of its potential, but hope is not lost.  The information is still out there.  We only have to search for it, recognize it when we find it, and use it.

(Next time, we'll go into the second piece of occult wisdom that will help us heal this wound of the heart.)

When Good Luck Turns Bad … Confronting the Modern Gay Man's Struggle

After my last post, I struggled a little bit.

Everywhere I turned, I ran into documents that talked about the good luck that gay men brought their lovers.  Many of my followers on Facebook chimed in with their own personal stories about the luck that they brought their ex-boyfriends.  However, that joke about the gay second date kept nagging at me.
 
You know the one.  "What's a lesbian second date?  A U-haul and adopting cats!"  And then the follow up: "What's a gay man's second date?  What's a second date?!"

Though it's just a joke, like most jokes, it has a ring of truth to it.

If gay men are supposed to be lucky in love, and, according to all my research into historical accounts on this topic, we are (not just for our lovers, but for ourselves as well), where was the love in our modern gay culture?

Why are so many gay men so unhappily alone so much of their lives?

Now, something you most likely don't know about me is my overwhelming desire to be married.  I'm in a relationship, but I'm not married, and, to me, there is a value-difference.  I can't explain it.

I don't know where this desire comes from.  Maybe it was watching my aunt approach her thirtieth birthday  as an unmarried woman when I was just a child, and hearing her say things like, "I'm not going to be an old maid!"  Maybe it was the fact that I watched her strong-arm her then boyfriend/my future uncle into proposing in just enough time to avoid the chiming of that dreaded biological clock.  Maybe it was facing the idea of gay death (also thirty, for the record) in my own dating life.  Maybe it was growing up knowing that I wasn't allowed to be legally married and then watching as the Supreme Court confirmed our right to express our commitment to each other in this way.  I don't really know.  I'm still working through this on a very deep, very real and personal level, but what I do know is, regardless of whether you want to walk down the aisle right along with me or you just want to connect on a deep, soul level with another man who wants the same things you want, most gay men today struggle with love.

So, if our ancestors are right and gay men are lucky in love (not just for our lovers but also for ourselves), why are so many modern gay men seemingly so unlucky in love?

Good Fortune from the Gala

It was the summer of 2007, and my friends were calling me like crazy to see if I had seen my ex on HGTV's second season of Design Star.  I hadn't.  I was living blissfully unaware of that ex's existence, but once I heard that he was on TV, it was like trying not to think about a red car after being told not to do it.  I found myself having to check in and see how he was doing.

This ex broke my heart, and, though I dated him way back in 2004, I had only recently begun to get over him at that time.  Watching him on the TV was painful.  It brought back all the hurt and the loss that I had felt when we broke up, and I instantly regretted tuning into the show, but, after the same thing happened a few more times with other exes, I began to ask questions.

In 2010, another ex became famous on season 7 of Project Runway.  He gave me permission to use his name to lend credibility to this post.  If you would like to know more about him, his name is Jonathon Joseph Peters, and he is currently living in New England.  He is an amazing designer, and I highly recommend that you check out his work.  After hooking up with a bridal dress designer while he was visiting friends in Philadelphia, his success skyrocketed.  The year before we connected he was unknown.  A year after our romantic adventure, his low-end dress sold for $10,000, and his face was on billboards in New York City.  The other examples are less about fame and more about career success, and you probably wouldn't know the men if I listed them off, but I have quite a few exes who have achieved professional and personal success after we broke up.  After we broke up in 2007, another ex (who shall remain nameless, because he has requested it), got a promotion to store manager of a local Panera, which jettisoned his salary from $10 an hour to $62,000 a year.

Noticing a pattern, I started to ask myself what exactly was going on?

It wasn't until I earned my Third Degree in Wicca and I started studying the male mysteries that I began to understand this phenomenon.

As far back as Mesopotamia they understood this connection between good fortune and sexual intercourse with gay men.  There are Babylonian religious texts used specifically for divining the future which gave predictions based on sexual acts.

"If a man has intercourse with the hindquarters of his equal (another man), that man will be foremost among his brothers and colleagues."

"If a man has intercourse with a male cult prostitute, trouble will leave him."

"If a man has intercourse with a male courtier, for one whole year the worry which plagued him will vanish."

It does seem that the Babylonians felt that there needed to be some training for the gay man in question to be able to confer this level of good fortune to his partner, though.  Admittedly, there are also some negative predictions regarding sex with other men in Babylonian sacred texts:

"If a man yearns to express his manhood while in prison and thus, like a male cult prostitute, mating with men becomes his desire, he will experience evil."

"If a man has intercourse with a male slave, care will seize him."

While the homosexual behavior itself is not derailed in these documents, there does seem to be etiquette requirements for engaging in these practices, many of which revolve around the social status of the partners involved.  Whether priest or noble-born, it doesn't seem to matter, but it is clear that ordinary citizens were not qualified to bestow these blessings just through homosexual interactions.

Personally, I had not formally begun my training into the High Priesthood of the Old Religion at the point in my personal history that we are talking about here, but I had been studying the Craft and practicing independently for a little over a decade.  So, it's entirely possible that I might have accidentally stumbled upon something that unlocked this hidden mystery for me.  I don't generally like to think about past lives or talk about them in conversation, because the whole thing is a bit too trite for my tastes, but it is entirely possible that my part (whatever it was) in my partners' successes was due to the fact that I had been an initiated witch in a previous life.  I can't rule that out either.

Ultimately, regardless of why this thing had happened, it was incredibly interesting to see this personal quality bore out time and time again in the history of gay men as magical workers for their communities.  It helped me to feel that I was on the right path, and it gave me a sense of pride and purpose.

Have you personally noticed something similar?  If so, the path of the gay male witch might be calling you!