When I was training to be a Priestess around the age of 20, I got involved in online role-playing games.  There were several of us in our training group in college together, and all of us found escape and enjoyment in the early MUSH games online (MUSH stands for Multi-User Shared Hallucination).

These MUSH games were primarily storytelling-based, in which each person/player creates a character and describes them for the other players.  You “see” these other characters by typing in a command that allows you to read the description.  This description pops up due to some basic code couching the description.  For example, I might code:

@desc me Sitara’s long black hair is probably the only stereotypical Witch thing about her… and that she got through genetics and not a Clairol bottle.

When you went to look at me, you’d see everthing after the @desc me.  In this way, people could create their own virtual reality characters, looking and acting however they’d want them to.  It’s primitive compared to the games we have now, but still just as intriguing.  Once you have the characters in place, you literally make up stories through dialogue by “acting out” your characters and scenes.  Since there isn’t much prompting by some outside storyteller, you have to come up with the interesting stuff, which leads to lots of opportunities for angsty young people to create characters with all kinds of faults, flaws, wounds, grudges, and bad habits ripe for being acted out in a virtual reality world.

In the case of this MUSH, we were roleplaying in a world based around Wendy Pini’s Elfquest graphic novels (Elfquest art by Wendy at left so you get a visual of what I’m talking about).  Elfquest remains one of my favorite comics to this day, in fact, because its themes are so pagan friendly.  Anyway, in this MUSH, I created a number of characters — seven, I believe — each of them with background, history, description, story arc, you-name-it.

To this day, I don’t remember all of them.  I do remember a couple, though.  One of the characters was a Wolf-Rider Chieftainess into which, it seems, all the best parts of me went.  Another character was a High Elf into which, it seems, many twisted parts of me went — she was, naturally, a villian.  The other characters were parts of my personality that I wanted to try on as more than just a quirk or interest, and so they aren’t as memorable, nor did I put as much time into them as I did the first two.

Being young and irresponsible, I fell pretty deeply into these games, neglecting a lot of my real-world responsibilities.  In the beginning, it wasn’t too bad.  Matter of fact, I met someone very special from N. Ireland who came to visit me and we had a couple of wonderful, almost-fairy-tale like weeks (for me, anyway) before he broke my heart and went back across the pond.  A couple of other subsequent heartbreaks followed and secured my spiral-down into the blackest depression of my life.  It was during this down-spiral that I gave more to my online-life than my actual life.

Now, during this time, I was still studying the Craft and growing stronger in my usage of it.  I’ve always been a talented magician when it comes to putting will and focus into a working and creating the spell framework for that energy.  Combine that natural tendency to shake things up on the magickal level with spending large amounts of time online roleplaying and what do you get?  Something very dangerous.

When I created multiple characters online, I did what most people do:  either create an uber-good person with all the best and most admirable traits I either have or long to have, or create an uber-bad/tortured character through which I can live out my angst.  In my case, I did both with a range of other characters to catch up what I missed with the main two.  Rarely does anyone play themselves online — otherwise, you’d have a far greater number of slothful, socially-inept, wider-girth-than-described characters running around online.  The simple fact that everyone’s a super-model or a vixen or a bad boy rogue or a paladin (light or dark) kinda proves me out here.  Everyone is special online.  No one chooses to be a “nobody special” — unless that, too, is a character trend to elevate “loners” into an elite breed and thus, again, into “specialness”.

When people create a character from scratch, something of themselves has to go into that character to give it life and breath.  The more of yourself you put into that character, the more life it has.  The more energy you then feed it by playing that character and living/acting as that character, the more real it becomes.  People on the MUSH had sex (virtually) and got married (virtually), and no surprise to find out that many of us carried it on into real life as well.  I mean, if your character is basically you on some level and someone else’s character is basically them on some level, is it too hard to imagine intimacy and affection occurring?  Nope — happens all the time.

The problem, however, is magickal folks — especially naturally gifted magickal folks — create more than just a character if they aren’t careful.  In my case, I had created astral forms of each of my characters, empowered them as if they were magickal creations.  In fact, in many ways, they were.

My “best of the best” character was my Ideal Self in many ways.  Looking at who I am now, I do embody many of that character’s traits that I, back then, only imagined I could ever one day possibly possess.  She was inspiring and brave, witty and sensual, wise and playful, and those people who were in her Holt (Elfquest word for tribe/village) loved her and looked to her because she was worth following and listening to.  The number of traits I share with that created character are staggering — I grew into myself.

My “nastybad” character was definitely my Shadow Self.  She was cunning and self-serving, highly manipulative and took real pleasure in twisting someone’s trust around on them.  She was a tortured soul, her life begun in abuse and shame and neglect, and better left alone.  She was a “lost cause”, and the scent of her futility drew saviours by the handfuls who wanted to redeem her and show her the worth that lay within — really just a form of worship with her at the center.  And in my darkest, most secret part of me, I’m also like this character.  I am capable of vile and horribly unethical things.  Like many with power, as good as my good side is, my dark side is of equal strength:  I just don’t choose to let it out to play as much.

Like Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter series, I had split myself into about seven different parts, nestling aspects of myself within these MUSH characters.  The MUSH itself was my magickal spell, the characters themselves elaborate horcruxes.  I have to say that, at the time, I wasn’t conscious of what I was doing or how skillfully I had succeeded.

But my High Priestess and High Priest figured it out.  Students were complaining that my “characters” were showing up in their dreams.  In the case of the evil character, she was actually stalking and terrorizing at least one person (or so they claimed).  It was obvious that I was losing grip on reality — not taking care of my mundane matters or myself very well, living online in a game.

The real danger is that my personality was growing thin.  I’m reminded of the quote from LOTR: Fellowship Of The Ring when Bilbo says to Gandalf, “I feel stretched thin, like butter spread over too much bread”.  That was me.  There wasn’t as much depth to me anymore.   All my best parts were in that Otherworld of the MUSH.

It was a dangerous situation.  Not only was I haunting people with astral projections of myself, I was doing it unconsciously, these creations having full minds of their own.  I was also very close to a self-induced disassociative split in my personality and, being mired in a deep depression anyway, no personal vantage for preserving the person I was over these characters that didn’t even exist (but that were, at that moment, the only source of joy in my life).

My Teachers intervened at this point.  They called me to a meeting and laid a geas on me.  A geas is something like a taboo, but it’s a restriction laid upon a person by another that promises dire consequences should it not be followed.  The geas was simple in scope:  immediately stop roleplaying online and do no magick for a year and a day.  The consequences of failing to complete the geas was that I would be dismissed from training.  During that year and a day, I was prohibited from coming to class, speaking with my former friends about anything magickally related, doing ritual, anything in which magick was done.

There were a number of points as to why this geas was chosen.  For one, it removed me from the drug of choice (the MUSH) so I could recover.  Secondly, it immediately required me to put a stop to all magickal practice so I would not continue to “bleed out” into the astral realm.  Next, it forced me into isolation so that any implosion that occurred would not ripple out into the other students (and in hindsight, it also allowed my teachers to basically wash their hands of me and any trauma I endured while I completed the geas).  And lastly, I suppose it would determine my mettle once and for all, wouldn’t it?  Either the MUSH was more important, or the Craft was.

Well, that day, I gave my word to accept the geas.  I understood what was explained to me, what I’d been doing, how dangerous it was.  I truly did want to study the Craft,  and so I gave my word to complete the geas and return in a year and a day.

That began one of the hardest trials of my life.   I went home and tried to figure out a way to remove myself from the MUSH with the knowledge I had been given.  I wasn’t given any guidance on how to take care of myself in this, so the choices I made were all intuition.  I decided that, since the characters themselves were living pieces of me, the only way I could reclaim them would be to sacrifice the characters (kill them off) and ritually take those parts back into myself.  In the Chieftainess’ character’s case, I didn’t want to kill off my ideal self, so I arranged for her to “walk off into the sunset” to be presumed dead in the storyline, but in reality, I just brought her completely back into myself.  The evil character had to be stopped more deliberately, so I engineered her demise and reintegration.  All in all, it was seven rituals timed over the course of a month.  I said goodbye to my online friends and logged off, never to return.

During this time, I also was isolated from all my Craft friends and my HPS and HP.  No support on a magickal level or spiritual level was given and I didn’t feel it was my place to ask.  During that year, my father was attacked and nearly murdered.  He was lying in the ICU and I remember sitting by his bedside watching him die, knowing I’d given my word to do no magick.  It was then that I learned how to surrender to the Lady’s will, to be a Witch of my word — for when there is real need, the Goddess knows the heart of Her child and prayers are heard.  But oh, I was tempted.  That was my father lying there, his throat cut, stabbed eight times, barely hanging on.  Still, I kept my word.  My father did eventually recover, but not through any magick done by my hand.

The year passed.  Feet firmly in the mundane again, I returned to my HPS and HP.  This is where the story turns bitter.  I honestly believe my HP was surprised to see me.  His eyebrows were in his hairline when I walked through the door that day over a year later.  I relayed what I’d done, what I’d been through, and asked to return because I’d completed my geas.  In one of the most painful blows I’ve ever been dealt, my HP (who was as much a father to me as my own) told me that I’d failed, that I’d not completed my task because I hadn’t stepped away from the MUSH on the very day the geas was given.  The way I’d gone about doing it was the only safe way I could think of without guidance and it had worked, however, it wasn’t what he would have done and so, he denied me return.  My HPS agreed that I’d completed my task — as she put it, ‘above and beyond’ what was expected and that I’d shown wisdom and good thought in how I had approached the problem.  So, she was willing to teach me again, but my HP washed his hands of me.

Among the betrayals in my life, the rejection of my HP was one of the hardest I’ve had to bear.  However, in hindsight, it has toughened me into a Witch like no other.  His approval withdrawn, I was forced to become stronger and to know my own truth even when someone “in authority” would try and tell me I didn’t do something correctly.  I saw what happens when the young upstart student proves the guru wrong and that my HP did have an ego and I bruised it just a bit by not just giving up — and so, I don’t underestimate those I teach now.  I learned through the geas period how to stand completely alone with no spiritual guide or counselor against mental illness, trauma, and social isolation.  I ended up removed from the “glamour” that surrounded the remaining life and passing of my HP, seeing him as more human than cult-of-personality figure.

I also work with Serpent medicine, a fact I did not discover until after my HP had passed on.  My HP worked this energy, and keeping me “broken” for a while (and his rejection did indeed “break” my heart and, temporarily, my love for the Craft) was a good thing.  I was just coming into my Serpent medicine around the time of the end of the geas.  Baby snakes are 100 times more deadly than adult ones because our venom is potent and we strike at anything and everything, releasing venom every time without pause and without measure.  Stomping on my little baby snake head kept that growth in check until I had some maturity behind me.  It allowed me to grow into my power.  Serpent/Snake medicine is hard medicine to handle.  It’s deep and even just a little bit of it is very very strong.  It also can cause social problems because the person with Serpent medicine naturally mirrors and draws out irrational fears in people who haven’t faced their own internal darkness (especially in those who BELIEVE they have already).  I had to mature in order to work with my own gifts.

To this day, you will not convince me that my HP knew what he was doing when he rejected me.  The remaining period of time I was in his life up until his death, he had nothing but scorn for me, as though I was the perpetual reminder of something he didn’t want to see.  I regret sometimes that I did not get the chance to say farewell to him — maybe a different ending would have been written.  But that is his karma to deal with, whatever it might be, as it was his wall.

What I do have to give credit to is their wisdom in putting me on the geas, even if  I believe their methods weren’t the best.  If I had been less stubborn or strong, I would have shattered.  However, I do feel that this story is a good illustration of the dangers that can come from mixing gaming and magick, virtual reality and the delicate mid-line that is walking a magickal path.

I feel we have to be careful as we edge further into the  electronic age and be aware that anything that takes mental focus and thought creates astral shape.  Even this blog, done via computer, is an astral entity of its own, fed regularly by me, petted and played with by those visiting.  It’s the reason I try to keep the content positive, a good work in the lives of others.  It affects your energy because you are taking in these words with your eyes and your mind.  Then you think about them and that causes synapses to fire and sometimes form and grow.  And this in turn changes you and how you interact with the world.

Virtual reality isn’t meant to take the place of this world.  The characters we play there, for safety’s sake, shouldn’t be us.  Nor should we create such deep bonds that we don’t know which world we’re living in.  My experiences were with a MUSH system that required me to imagine and create everything with my mind — perhaps that’s a lot more will used than when you can “see” your character on a computer screen as in Second Life.  I don’t know.

I just know what the Abyss looks like.  I’m putting up a sign.  There are no lifeguards on duty, folks.  The edge is shifty and the bottom is a long way down.   I suggest an alternate route and remind you to guide yourself by the following Star…

In which world do you want to serve as a Priest/ess of the Gods?  I hope it’s the one we ALL share.  That’s where you’d better spend your time.  The answers to life in a video game are nothing but a slip of code.  Real answers to real problems require real people living real lives.

I hope you have one.

Photo by Eddi 07 (via Flickr).