Convocation

Here I commit myself to small works of healing and recovery. Here I link those small works to my spiritual work with the Exu and Pomba Gira spirits to whom I have committed myself. Here I acknowledge the healing mission of those spirits in a world of harms and commit the small works toward large works of healing and recovery.

"a weird old witch who loves (and sometimes writes) weird new games."

That's the placeholder text over on my itch page. Quickly written and a touch silly, it nonetheless establishes the link for me between my spiritual life and the creative work I undertake here. My spiritual values inform the way I nourish my creativity, and sometimes my creative work provides me with new insight into my spiritual world.

But.

But. My games are not rituals or invocations or spiritual what-have-you's of any sort. They are creative projects, developed within the fabric of personal reflection and responsiveness. My spiritual work nourishes me, nourishes that fabric, but it isn't of the same substance as creative work.

Quite the opposite of bringing spiritual elements to games: I won't use the substance of my spiritual practices in games, nor will I engage deeply with games that do. I find fusing the spiritual and creative violates something fundamental in my work, disconnects me from my center. I don't often object to games using such things, but I won't engage deeply with them. If you want to use Tarot cards in your resolution system, go ahead. But I won't be playing your game. If you want to build your game world on some tumbledown Kabbalism, okay, but I'm not playing in it.

My creative work grows from a place of injury and healing where my spirituality also thrives, but they remain distinct.

And let's not forget the "weird" in my silly little itch bio.

Creatively, the weird excites and inspires me perhaps more than any other form. From the gothic to the pulpy, the cosmic to fantastic, the weird formed a crucible where what began in dissociative escape from an abusive childhood became a container in which I discovered my own creativity.

Through weird literature and games I also discovered that the crucible involved more than just my own autobiography and opened onto so much history. My creative reflection on, and responsiveness to, my experience will include this history.