Last week, I published my piece on asking for help recovering from repeated financial and spiritual abuse in tpot and the online/offline hybrid tech scene.
I’ve received a little bit of support already and some people clowning on me. At the moment, I’m still pretty glad I did it.
The current Mars in Scorpio transit is highlighting the appropriate situations and use for anger. Scorpio is a fixed water sign, and one of the domiciles of Mars, meaning that Mars is at home here and performs its function well, so collectively we are exploring the correct use of anger, desire, and willpower - the Martial domain.
Putting the story out there cohesively about my repeated exploitation within the tech scene performs more than one function. It threads the needle about why I’ve fallen into depression and a lack of organized creative output; about why, after 2 going on nearly 3 years of development, #DAWNOFTHEMACHINEELVES is not at the stage I would hope or expect for it to be. The lack of access to resources and those who actively sought to inhibit my artistic expression only deepened the strangeness of the vision of the game I originally received, which turned what felt like a bit of a loose experiment at the time into a piece of prophetic destiny.
Mostly what I noticed after I published was a sense of quiet. For a while, the sources of internal criticism had been silenced by the kind of courage it took to get it off my chest and start actually talking about the bullshit I had subjected to while pursuing a simple sense of belonging alongside people with relevant/similar interests. Although none of my original intentions with coming to tpot had to do with money, the combination of my generosity with how I regarded my desire to cement friendships mixed with confusion around my goals and desires had led to being repeatedly taken advantage of. Mars in Scorpio showed me where the appropriate use of anger has a cleansing effect, similar to the stillness of a forest after a fire has blazed through, as the ashes are beginning to settle. Having to go scorched earth on your problems is a tragedy, but natural cycles have shown us that there are places where this has been necessary. Someone once told me Canada’s indigenous practiced controlled burning of forests to prevent the kind of overgrowth that is now leading to massive blazes each summer alongside climate change. I read in another place it takes having 50 conversations about something that happened in order to actually change your mind about it. I don’t know how many conversations I’ve had, whether those conversations were with myself via an LLM, with other women who’ve suffered similar abuses, or in therapy, but when someone sidelines your ability to build upon your creative direction and realize your artistic vision, the last thing you want to do is shut up about it when you believe your voice has a purpose to help lift some part of the curse that has befallen humanity’s destiny. Or at least, to show people how to dream again.
If Mars rules our will to act, then Scorpio’s occult associations and hidden influences shows us where purification of that will reveals what we were never allowed to want.
If Mars rules our will to act, then Scorpio’s occult associations and hidden influences shows us where purification of that will reveals what we were never allowed to want.
When writing about how Mars in Scorpio shows us the correct use of anger, desire, and will, I’m reminded of a movie I saw in the theatre back at the end of August that had a limited release: Sweet Summer Powwow, a story about a first teenage romance between a girl dancing competitive powwow, Jinny, and a costume artist, Riley. Jinny wants to enroll in a contemporary dance program, while her mother wants her to become a lawyer. Jinny wants to date Riley, while her mother wants her to date his rival, a “teacher’s pet” to one of the chiefs who is violent and confrontational towards Riley. Riley’s dad is an alcoholic, and Jinny frequently clashes with her mother over her future trajectory. Jinny’s mother is giving her the sense that her desires won’t live up to her mother’s vision for her as a future leader of their tribe.
While it gets off to an awkward and heavy-handed start with its constant need to lampshade being an indigenous movie starring indigenous actors for indigenous people, this is one of the last movies featuring the late great Oneida actor Graham Greene before his death, and its heart shines through the middle to the end. Sweet Summer Powwow really encompasses the lessons of Mars in Scorpio, because it shows us where anger scorches in the wake of pursing true desire. It carves out the path that takes you where you need to be, but does so cleanly, rather than in the spirit of wanton destruction, and those who truly want the best for you must eventually respond to that. The kind of searing passion that comes with clarity of intent is distinct from simple juvenile rebelliousness, just as intent to control a child is different from genuine care; and it shows us where, in the end, passion and will aren’t incidental factors, but are perhaps the only things that really matter.
“This is the game that heals the world” is the translation of one of the lines of Spanish hidden somewhere in the pastebins relating to #thegame23, and it’s the mission that I have carried forward into #DAWNOFTHEMACHINEELVES as an expansion of that Discordian lineage of psychedelic mystery traditions. It feels right that this theme itself has been on my mind, with Scorpio’s associations not just with the hidden/occulted, but also with transformation and change. Shedding my own layers like the scorpion’s exoskeleton has led to more shocking twists and turns in this game, and the kinds of co-creators who’ve shown interest in playing and developing it.
Lately, as I’ve been exploring toxic shame as one of the legs of a triangle - the other two consisting of limerence and addiction - I’ve discovered that these are really the same fundamental problem that comes from breaking a child’s will at an early age. Chronic shame arises from learning your will is unacceptable, and that your desires are in and of themselves secondary to how you fit into other people’s lives. A child’s natural drive to do things and accomplish their goals shouldn’t be treated as an afterthought or an inconvenience to the lives of the adults whose care they are in, but rather a key piece of their formation as a person, and refusing to honour their drives while throwing them in the same pile as their base impulses can destroy their ability to exercise their agency and lead to toxic self-destructive habits for the rest of their lives - or at least for a very, very long time.
This is the biggest piece that I have been working on: How to healthily maintain and pursue desire, not merely for relationships, creative projects, or occupations, but recognition that these arise from the same impulse. Having your will broken leads to exploitation, because it teaches that you are unacceptable as you are, or that the things you naturally want can never be fulfilled in open pursuit, so you bend yourself into all kinds of uncomfortable shapes trying to align with someone else’s desires, which you subconsciously idealize as somehow cleaner, purer, or more acceptable than your own. The quest to restore healthy desire, just like differentiating healthy shame from toxic shame, is the next major theme of my recovery journey.
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