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If the 20th marked the beginning of the natural new year, the days following mark the beginning of a new life. Friday was the moment when day and night stood in perfect balance, and today is the day when the scales begin to tip towards our next frontier. Hopefully, in the same way that the celestial scales tip towards the daylight, the scales that govern our lives will also tip towards the metaphorical light as well.

What’s most interesting to me is that I already had a rough draft written for this post today that I was ready to hit send on as soon as I cleaned it up (it was mostly leftovers from the previous post that didn’t make sense adding to the tail end of it as it was already plenty long and it changed the topic of conversation completely). After coming home from visiting a few friends just now, I suddenly felt a need to rework the vast majority of what I’d written, as some new thoughts began brewing in my system.

What was meant to be only about new steps moving forward for the Rune Academy project left me actually mulling over quite a few more things that have occurred over the past few years. Let’s look at it from the perspective of… if yesterday’s post was about the physical aspects of the past few years of my life, let this post be about the spiritual aspects. I have endless opinions about exactly the sort of thing that this project started off as. To the point where I can’t really continue in the same trajectory as it began, specifically with regards to spirituality and teaching magical types of knowledge, as if the project was some sort of mystical school, the likes of which you can find literally in any corner of the internet you go crawling into.

And I do remember years ago making a post about how I no longer wanted to pursue the idea of yet another magical school because it was so overdone, but also so dry and clinical that it left me with absolutely no room for creativity. While working on this website was a joy, working on the lessons, digital structures they’d be presented within, and gamification of trying to get users to come back by implementing badges and streaks was genuinely making me dislike most parts of the project. There were a few moments when I almost didn’t want to continue at all, especially since what I was really itching to do was tell a story, share some of my personal experiences, and express my artistic side. What I really wanted was to make an impact, which “yet another course on the internet” doesn’t really provide to anyone anymore, no matter how much people like to say that it does. I wanted to create a world, not get caught up in what other people told me I ought to be doing. And I have a big problem with getting excited, going 100% at 100 mph, realizing it’s not sustainable or not worth the hassle, and quickly burning out after realizing all of that time and energy spent was a waste. What ended up happening was that the people I told my ideas to gave me advice, I blindly followed that advice, even though in my gut, I knew it wasn’t the best course of action for what I ideally wanted to achieve. But in exploring those options still allowed me to learn more about what I DIDN’T want to be doing. To the point that I’m now staunchly against including certain features in the project just because I’ve already tried them and hated them. In hindsight, I don’t regret any decisions I’ve ever made within this project, as with life as a whole. This is because I fully understand that everything was a useful learning experience, the knowledge gained from which has been used multidisciplinarily across many areas of my life.

What I’ve slowly begun to realize over the years is that the projects that are really worthwhile keep coming back to me and stay in the back of my mind daily. So much so that they meld themselves into my personality. There have been, and still are, many moments in my daily life when something funny or astounding occurs, prompting me to immediately start a workflow in my mind to see how I can translate it into something magical for users to experience in the world of Rune Academy. I end up accumulating stacks of scribbled scratch paper, filled to the brim with ideas (and now is the time for me to go through them all). Since it’s been going on for years, almost automatically within me, even when I didn’t have physical access to my computers to work on the project, I know it won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. So I might as well throw myself full force into it. Why not?

And now especially, I think I’ve come to some final conclusions about what I want the project to be, especially when taking the core reasoning behind it into account. My path before me is now clearer than ever before, and I’m more confident moving forward with many of my decisions.

A million years ago, when I first came up with the name, I only wanted to pass along to others the knowledge I was personally excited about gaining after years of learning and studying what seemed to me to be “forbidden topics” – basically something fun and exciting that it was rare to find others talking about. But as the years went on, the knowledge itself became more widespread, less “forbidden”, and incredibly easy to access via social media. There was no reason for anyone to ever go on a separate website, which arguably ran slower than most social media, as they have prioritized bandwidth, and that got updated far slower, because it was mostly just me, with whoever else was listed as being “part of the team” being more cheerleader than anything else. The project has always been run and contributed to “solo-dev style” by yours truly, no matter how many people I included in the “about-us” section. Perhaps it was due to insecurities stemming from other aspects of my life that I wanted it to seem more official and more solidly grounded. Perhaps I was projecting the wish to have a project to work on with my friends that could bring us all together more. I would genuinely have some fun times working with those friends on the project whenever they felt like humoring me and doing something interesting for a night. But those moments were far and few in between, and at the end of the day, they would go back to their lives and forget everything we worked on, while I would go back to mine, and the project would still be my entire life, consuming and exciting me at all times.

I’ve since removed mentions of the original people from the “About Us” page, as nothing has really been contributed in any meaningful way to the project in its current state, and I’ve implemented rolling credits for everyone who has actually helped me. No photographs now, and the names are only included as far as those participating feel comfortable sharing. If anyone doesn’t feel comfortable being included, they simply won’t be (it hasn’t happened yet, but I’m not opposed to allowing for full anonymity, as I enjoy privacy myself). I’m eternally grateful to all who have helped me thus far, even in the smallest ways.

Now, when it came to realizing exactly what I actually wanted to do, which is create a rich story and fantasy world built on my own experiences and inner world, I was more than happy to drop the “learning platform” portion of the project within the blink of an eye. It really got to me after a while that I was simply aggregating information and repackaging it in my own theme to present to others. Sure, I was learning a lot along the way as well, but that’s not what I wanted Rune Academy to be about. I also didn’t feel comfortable giving the weight I did to some of the topics when I didn’t fully embrace them myself, simply because it was what people expected. It felt very inauthentic, but I was worried that what I was creating wasn’t enough and wouldn’t be received well. It was a difficult decision, as the sunk cost fallacy can affect anyone, but in hindsight, it was very quick, considering how long I tend to mull over all other decisions in my life. I’m trying to operate from a place of greater authenticity to myself and my vision now. I’m trying to believe in myself more. Especially since, when I uploaded my art to TikTok as my first video on there, it exploded. That definitely got me excited, but it also actually confused me. Because of the place that I was in my life, surrounded by the people that I was, I felt like I’d never measure up or get anywhere with my art or the worlds I wanted to create. So seeing the opposite as true for the first time in a very long time actually helped me to start seeing life through a slightly different lens.

Leaning away from the plain teaching model was also spurred forward by a few hard realizations. Namely, those that had to do with the state of most religious/spiritual/pagan communities out there in the world today (which are some of the circles that I fell into while trying to create the learning platform). The first realization was that every single one of the communities I came across was fundamentally the same with regards to human behavior in the “us vs them” department. And as someone who’s been a member, and in some cases an “extended guest”, across a massive number of these groups, I can tell you that I’ve casually observed, as well as experienced, animosity towards what was deemed “the other” in every single one of the communities that I’ve been to. So much so that I’m now on the path of vehemently rejecting belonging to any group or system of belief, and fully being on my own path, even though it’s the loneliest option. I guess over time, you get used to it and simply stop trying to look for, reach out, and attempt to forge new connections. Too many disappointments along the way.

This was a massive spiritual roller-coaster of a transformation that overtook me over the past few years as well. More than in my entire life up to that point. It was concentrated, powerful, and extremely eye-opening. Everything genuinely came rushing at me all at once, exerting exponential pressure.

It basically started by very slowly stepping away from lifelong church indoctrination, including the last main time I was part of a cult-like “Bible-study group” that multiple friends had to help me get out of, sometime before the pandemic began. This all had its start shortly after I left college after fully leaving that group, and realizing I hated how every religious group (specifically within Christianity and Catholocism) came together on the surface level to say “we’re all one” and “we all believe in the same God”, but then inwardly hated on other groups and used predatory tactic to “steal” members from other groups to join their own. Namely, when they all, without fail, used the same spiel of saying that other churches teach their followers to worship wrongly, and that by worshipping in such ways, their followers will all go to hell. However, they are the only ones that will go to heaven, as backed by x,y,z passages as proof. This exact thing happened to me on multiple occasions as I church-hopped in efforts of finding one that let me just be without a constant threat to my immortal soul constantly looming over me. Now, keep in mind that while I was church-hopping, I was also exploring various alternative spiritualities and practices to help me find meaning in my life. And at every turn, I had to keep it a secret under threat of going to hell… which weighed very heavily on my conscience, especially since I’d often gain more meaning from my own private “extra-curricular” spiritual practices than from interaction with many of the groups I’d been part of.

I’ve heard it all, from the fact that the Eastern Orthodox church I grew up in, with its beautifully decorated altars and icons, which were all idol-worshipping and evil and going to hell (and they wouldn’t listen to my nonsense about the history of why it is that way)… (I can’t even imagine how they’d react to the fact that most of Eastern Europe still simultaneously did fortune-telling and believed in house spirits, etc., while also practicing their Christianity), to the fact that the Charismatic/Pentacostal churches that convinced me of the former part were all evil and going to hell because they allow demons to possess and speak through them (and they wouldn’t listen to my nonsense about being “overcome by the holy spirit”), to the unnamed Korean church group (because I genuinely don’t think they had a name as I’ve never heard it mentioned) that tried to tell me that unless I devoted my every waking moment to Bible study and God, even to the point of asking me to take leave of absense from my job, breaking up with my boyfriend, and losing all of my friends for their hearts not being in the right place, I was going to personally be one of the worst tortured in hell for knowing what I must do to get into heaven and vehemently refusing to do it. That was the last group I ever joined, as then I realized how dangerous hopping from group to group could be, and not just to my mental health. They all blew up my phone like crazy, made me feel unsafe, and then completely shunned me, to the degree that when I’d see one of them in the street, they’d look right through me as if I was a ghost, because that’s exactly what they taught. That anyone not in the group was a dead man walking and hell-bound, in the eyes of the Lord. I’m forever grateful to my friends for helping me out of that, as that group found me at a very vulnerable moment after just moving back home from college and not really having many local friends or much of a support system to lean on. All of these experiences still taught me a lot and shaped me into the person I am today. And I’m still grateful for all of them.

I’ve never discriminated in where I got my information from. Before that very last group that made me swear off joining any such groups ever again, I fell into Creationist crowds that preached a Young Earth and basically worshipped Kent Hovind and his long sermons about how the Bible should be taken literally as the literal word of God, instead of parables. They found evidence of a dinosaur footprint and a human footprint fossilized in the same place, and believe in a flat Earth with an ice dome over it that all melted during the great flood. I’m still grateful for getting wrapped up in that and for the endless hours of videos I was made to watch on the subject, as my experience with them taught me that indoctrination exists, as people can be considered brainwashed in any direction, if they believe something too strongly, especially when evidence can be taken to construct whatever argument you’d like if it’s presented cleverly enough…. but it also taught me that I shouldn’t simply believe everything that is taught to me in schools either as most of the modern education system was created to crank out the perfect little factory worker, to get people used to a prison-like system from an early age, and to stop people from thinking for themselves and simply following orders. The fact that theories of all sorts exist in the first place, such as the Great-Ice-Wall theory, the Hollow-Earth theory, etc., and that people who dare to question and think outside the box are all treated very poorly by society, is more proof that indoctrination and mass control are very, very real historically as well as currently. And in today’s day and age, the new “Age of Aquarius,” as astrologers put it, where all the world’s terrible secrets are being made public, and the world is starting to shift its mindset on a massively global scale, many conspiracy theorists are actually being proven right. Which is actually kind of scary.

And, upon realizing that most of the themes of my life are centered on avoiding such “control” and on controlling people and situations, I wanted to be as free as I could be and started venturing into areas where society dictated I shouldn’t go. I was part of two All-Black Bible-Study groups (with maybe 2 or 3 white people in each). One, I was an active member of when I was in college and went to their cookouts, slept over their women’s only house, and actively proselytized with them on campus, and the other one I was much more loosely affiliated with, as, at that later time in my life, I was no longer trying to get too deep into any more such groups. What was interesting was that, as with all groups everywhere, they still contradicted each other. The first, I want to say “main” group, understood Jesus to be a Middle Eastern man, who loved the world so much that he wanted to spread God’s word to everyone on the planet, no matter the race. They had a lot of controlling customs about how men and women should interact and what could and couldn’t be worn to prevent brothers from straying, etc. But it wasn’t that bad all in all. From my understanding, it’s pretty standard for most serious churches. My absolute favorite part of being in that group was the singing… and that’s taking into consideration that the food at the cookouts was stellar. The singing was the part that made me understand what true trance was, and the effect crowds get at concerts, singing along with whoever the performer is… and why megachurches get the effects they do out of their members. We were a very small group, but every single person in that group had amazing singing talents. And I always sang in the choir at my Eastern Orthodox church, so this was the experience that I wouldn’t change for the world, as it was my absolute favorite. Especially when we got into the group flow state, and the song took on a new life, continuing endlessly as every single person in the group improvised on it. Genuinely, this group was the best experience I’ve ever had out of all of them, specifically for the sheer connection I felt with the divine through these singing trances that I’ve never gotten with any other group. I will forever be grateful to have experienced that and will forever be chasing that feeling again. And maybe that’s why I tried to get close to the second group. But that one was very different.

The second group, I kind of stayed on the outskirts of. They taught me a lot in our short contact, and explained to me that Jesus was originally black and that the colonizer race lied to everyone about how Jesus was white (they specifically were outraged by the blond-blue-eyed Jesus theory, and completely disregarded that Jesus was a brown, Middle-Eastern man). There was also a few interesting, uncomfortable moments where they attempted to forcibly get me to understand that by my being white, I should carry white guilt about my anscestors enslaving theirs… even though my entire family line never left Eastern Europe and my parents and I were literally the first of our entire lineage lay eyes on, let alone interact with, any race other than “Generic Eastern European” for generations. This, they actually had me prove on my 23andMe DNA app, which was interesting because it showed I’m 99.9% from the same area, since my ancestors were too poor to ever move from one spot (and WW2-related reasons, etc.). And this led to more uncomfortable interactions about “pure-bloodedness” that genuinely angered me. There were awkward moments when nobody knew how to proceed, which also spoke to the indoctrination in the situation, and once you stepped outside the script, people didn’t really know how to react. I began to understand, with each interaction, that others were trying to jam narratives about what I should be thinking into my own head, based on someone else’s mold of who I should be as a person. Which is yet another theme of control in my life. This experience taught me to be more wary of interactions, as just because I look a certain way, a lot can be assumed about me. As it can be with anybody. And this is because society pre-programs certain information about others into everyone’s minds. Also, unfortunately, it taught me to stay in my lane. As I would be taught over and over again after I left, when the idea of searching for anything Christian-adjacent was entirely off the table. Because, believe it or not, the witchy, pagan circles behave entirely the same way.

My interactions with that group were about when I began to consume more “de-programming” content in the form of “Bible studies” that actually focused on more of the stuff that regular churches don’t teach, such as the fact that most of what we believe today was invented by them as a form of controlling the masses and isn’t actually in the good book at all (such as the entire concept of hell as it’s been historically taught). I learned about just how contradictory the Bible is to itself, and just how much violence and, when viewed from an objective standpoint, extremely messed-up scenarios are hidden within it that aren’t normally spoken about or known by the average Christian… or worse… glorified. This led me to explore other systems of belief, which I’ve always been interested in on many levels, and consume more psychological works that examined themes at both macro and micro scales. This included everything from population control and basic mass human psychology in general to aggression on the individual interpersonal scale by narcissistic personalities and how they gain power and control. This made me realize that everything is much deeper than most people believe, that almost nothing in life is black and white, and the more someone tries to tell you that they know all the answers, or tries to force you into ways of how something MUST be done, the more they’re worthy of staying the hell away from.

And the more I started trying to find others that I could connect with who wanted to specifically get away from mass organized religion and take back some of their own autonomy regarding their thoughts, beliefs, spiritual practices, and ways of connecting with the divine, the more I fell into and started exploring the more alternative side of life. I would notice the same micro-aggressions made towards different groups of people, the same way that I noticed within the Christian groups. Everyone came together in the fact that they shunned organized religion and that they were free within their disorganization, but in trying to get people to join their systems of belief, they would get preachy and begin proselytizing in exactly the same way that was happening among the people they were vowing to no longer be like. This was beyond annoying to me, as I was still actively trying to get away from all of that. And saying I was an atheist was not an option, as I’m genuinely a very spiritual person to my core, and I’ve had many spiritual experiences that helped me survive a lot of difficult moments and helped shape me into the person that I am today.

One of the most annoying things about going into the void and exploring all the avenues of alternative spirituality was that everyone was so gate-keepy while genuinely not knowing what they were talking about. And believe me, as someone who’s been around the bend spiritually, it was very easy to tell when someone was just being loud for the sake of just being loud. As most of this world exists predominantly on social media, where all such movements gain their strength and audience, it was very obvious that most creators were using their alternative spirituality as a way of getting clout and attention on various platforms. The crazier the opinions they expressed, the more attention they would get. The harder they stood behind certain ideals or causes, the more they could get the backing of others and avoid getting cancelled. The thing is, you never knew which ideal or cause would get cancelled next. It was overall very toxic and hard to find someone who was purely chill and laid-back, just looking to have a meaningful time without taking a hard stance on anything or going to war for any cause.

Any type of spirituality I wanted to explore, more of which were via book recommendations, came with heavy caveats that if I wasn’t of a certain race or ancestry, I was not allowed to practice it or even get too deep into learning it. There was sometimes a beautiful sense of curiosity among different practitioners of different paths about what everyone was doing, and they’d get into deep conversations about why they do certain things the way they do, but then turn around and talk absolute filth about those same practices in different, later contexts. One of the cases that stands out to me the most is the case of Wicca, which sparked the entire movement of alternative spirituality. I remember secretly getting together at friends’ houses when I was a kid to call forth some goddess or another while playing and pretending to do rituals, and it was exciting because it was so new and taboo. The people of the Wiccan churches worked very hard to bring Wicca forward in society, to be accepted as a major religion, and to pave the way for all other spiritual practices. Today, it seems almost like an eye-roll whenever someone says they’re Wiccan, at least from what I’d seen from the reactions of spiritual practitioners online. And many go so far as to rant about and cancel Wiccans due to cultural appropriation and misinformation regarding ancient ancestral practices. Many of which are very similar across cultures, and if Wiccans hadn’t paved the way for these alternative expressions to be allowed within the broader context of society, they wouldn’t have the luxury of moaning and groaning about it in the present day. This is also not including the fact that by trying to adhere to the natural ways of the world, Wiccans excluded all trans people by speaking only to the male and female energies, which actually many religions in the world do, but the only reason they’re excluded from the “attacks” is that they’re much older (think yin and yang, solar and lunar energies, and the basic concepts of day and night).

And all religions, due to cultural diffusion, are, in some ways, derivatives of one another. Just as languages are. Everything evolves, and if you go learning about old gods across multiple cultures, you can see how ideas spread, linked up, and evolved as the cultures evolved alongside them. Thor is to Perun what Svarog is to Hepheistus. But the roles have either a greater or lesser presence among the people who told stories about them and worshipped them. Svarog, for example, is one of the main gods of creation in most Slavic traditions, whereas in Greece Hepheistus is only a side character. And many cultures happen to share similar traditions, such as the Sweat Lodges of Native American traditions and Banyas and Saunas across all of Eastern Europe and Scandanavia, the Sweat Lodges of Native American traditions maintained more of their sacred aspects whereas the sacred aspects of purification in the other cultures gave way to more social aspects, as the colder climates made if far more necessary to partake in the heating/sweating/pruging that happens within more frequently to help cure various viruses/infections. One particularly infuriating interaction I had was when I was planning on doing some posts about the house/banya spirits of Eastern Europe alongside all of the other spirits that the people retained their beliefs in throughout Christian control, and someone smart-ass came down on me that my white-ass shouldn’t be appropriating Native American sweat lodges.

Many such interactions led me to believe that everyone must “stay in their lane” when it comes to being inclusive and accommodating different forms of spirituality. That sometimes means that, in expressing our appreciation of different traditions, we’re not allowed to talk about or even learn much about them if we’re not part of the groups sanctioned to practice them. Sure, there are level-headed people who can hold interesting discussions on a plethora of topics, but the vast majority of people I’ve personally come into contact with screamed every gate-keepy message on the planet that they obviously learned from others when, at one point or another, they tried to explore something new themselves.

This was one of the things (among many others) that genuinely made me not want to be part of the community anymore, nor to post any more educational content, and to fully shift my focus to creating my own world. Social media breeds an outrage culture in spiritual circles in much the same way it does in political circles, etc. And the more you go deeper into certain topics, the more niche they become, the more entrenched you get into various “wars” people have amongst themselves in efforts to achieve greater self-importance. Very similar traditions can pop up all over the world and have different names. The more I read books from different traditions, the more I realize the same themes are presented to all of humanity to learn, hold dear, and guide them. There’s always a trickster, a wise guide, a mother figure, a damsel in distress, a hero, etc. These are archetypes as old as time. But the connections are not allowed to be made, studied, or talked about because a massive number of people will go up in arms over likes, views, and clout. And yes, I may be over-dramatizing it a bit, but these are genuine takeaways I’ve gotten from many of my interactions and observations of interactions between people in these circles. And the fact that many of the comments I’ve read may be bots, in a very dead-internet-theory sort of way, is another story altogether. I’m going to have to make a completely different post about my thoughts on all of that and AI in general after this. Because it won’t fit here, and I’m going to have to get through all of my heated opinions here first before I even start thinking about anything in that one.

Our ancestors used to believe in all of these gods before Christianity & Abrahamic religions (which are all also derivatives of each other) conquered/took over everything, while incorporating aspects of each pagan culture they conquered into themselves. It all goes back to the “conqueror religion” archetype and themes of control. Wicca drew on many aspects of other religions and sought to create something more nature-based. This, in turn, paved the way for people to explore the religions and belief systems of their ancestors. I’m not a fan of Wicca, but I can acknowledge the big role it played in allowing what we have today to unfold. And I can acknowledge that it has many of the same traits of Christianity. Mainly in the fact that it tried to imitate the structures of organized religion, as do many other groups that try to start their own “churches”. It tried to take a lot from a variety of places and create an all-encompassing system of belief that contains a little bit of everything for its followers in very much the same way that Christianity kept a lot of pagan practices so that people wouldn’t feel like they’d be getting a bad deal when converting away from their ancestral practices. That’s the whole theme of appropriation that everyone is so angry with.

Whereas cultural diffusion and celebration of certain ideas of the past, and allowing them to grow and spread and evolve to become part of the timeless architecture of all of humanity (not just certain groups), used to be what was all the rage in the past, what appears to be most important now is the hyper-individuality of preserving the customs of extremely distinct groups and proving how different and unique they all are over and over again and keeping them sacred to the point of attacking anyone who gets too close. Especially by self-righteously offended members of groups who are in no way adjacent to the groups they’re defending. And I’m not taking any sides in these arguments; I’m simply observing where the trajectories are pointing and explaining what got me so annoyed and made me want to leave the scene. It was basically the interactions with uneducated people who were actively attempting to block the education of others. I felt like I needed to avoid talking about and posting about the topics that actually interested me the most, which was mainly finding all of the similarities between all of the cultures out there and proving that on many levels, “we’re all one”.

This wasn’t just the simple “your beliefs will send you to hell, you need to believe this instead to save your soul” over and over again. This was a much more involved, hyper-focused-on-details, nitpicking-to-an-infuriating-degree phenomenon. I needed to be extremely careful with how I worded anything, or people with something to prove would start making outrage content out of the smallest things. And it didn’t even necessarily happen to me too frequently, but it made posting anything difficult because of the threat of someone absolutely losing their shit over something minor, since I’ve seen it frequently enough on other profiles. We now indeed live in a time when unique and different people with unique and different beliefs are all vying for attention in an endless echo chamber of millions of others who are equally different and unique.

Another interesting phenomenon I experienced, both in the Christian circles and in the alternative spiritual ones, that proved to me that people will sadly never change, was all of the spiritual warfare. In Christianity, it’s an open conversation that we’re always in the middle of a spiritual war with Satan and the Devil and with the forces of light v/s evil and heaven v/s hell. Alternative spiritual circles actually mostly evolve away from this and fully embrace the idea that darkness and light are both necessary parts of life and humanity, and that we need to embrace and integrate both to be an equally balanced person, not suppressing anything in a very psychologically healthy way. What they had was a different sort of spiritual warfare. When I was exploring more of the alternative side earlier on, I joined two groups with people from all over the world who were internet friends who created their own circles/covens and met up via Zoom every so often. The latter (time-wise) group I interacted with was a lot more stoic and spoke more about the self and self-improvement, and was honestly a joy to get together with. I genuinely miss them. The 1st one I ever joined had a much more heavily rambunctious group of friends who lived for and created a lot of drama for no other reason I could gather other than proof of self-importance and alleviation of boredom. They actively created curses and hexes and sent them to other groups that had some of the same prior members who’d branched off for one reason or another. It was a wild and entertaining mess, very reminiscent of witch hunts in early colonial America. Members would complain of ailments and random aches and maladies that they swore up and down were caused by curses cast on them by members of other groups. The entire group would all then band together in grand gestures of camaraderie and do rituals to lift curses and heal their brethren. Similar to how some mega-churches do with pastors who have immaculate control of the “powers of the Holy Spirit” and heal members right there on the stage, live on television… but this would involve sigil and candle magic. It all left me with a very strong sense of how powerful the mind can be in belief, but that we’re all ultimately the same, and that no matter where we venture or what new systems of belief we think we create, we all end up pretty much replaying the same, either lesser-evolved or more-evolved versions of the same scripts. Very much the same way that astrologers say there are more and lesser evolved versions of each sign, which is why they’re all so different. Each person can choose to be the greater or lesser evolved version of themselves at any moment. It doesn’t really matter what system of belief, organized or disorganized, they choose to follow.

I think the main conclusion that I’m at right now is that I no longer want to say I’m part of any group at all. I’m not someone that can be categorized, especially with my varied interests that are very expansive in their breadth and depth across a plethora of topics, not just spirituality. I mean everything from ecological preservation and more eco-friendly/alternative types of architecture such as fully off-grid Earthships and Earth-Bag homes and being a fully self-sufficient country bumpkin hermit in the middle of nowhere to the complete other end of the spectrum with game development, virtual reality, electrification, AI and where that whole future is headed. I don’t want to fit into any mold any longer. I don’t want to be told what I should and shouldn’t do or think anymore, and what mold I should fit into. I care deeply about the well-being of my plants and animals AND I also care deeply about the well-being of my machines and computers. If I had my way, the perfect world would be fully solar-punk with sunshine and clean energy and computers and neon lights co-habituating perfectly and harmoniously in massive greenhouse living spaces with at-home orchards and vegetable patches and fresh eggs from attached chicken coops. That’s too much of a daydream in today’s day and age though, where such freedom can only remain a day-dream.

This, trying to constantly escape from the grasp of organized religions and organizations of all sorts, has lately been the bane of my existence. Anywhere we turn, there seems to be some large corporation holding a tight grip over some aspect of our lives. MEGA-everything and BIG-everything are spying on our every move and trying to sell us something at every turn. I try to get away from it all, but it’s so hard. I wanted to include a lot of my thoughts on AI as well as big corporations like Google and Meta, and whatever Elon Musk is doing in this one, but it’ll have to wait for another time. This post is already too long, and I didn’t even get to most of what I wanted to cover. It’s been very freeing to be less aggressively private and actually share these pieces of myself with the outside world. I came to the conclusion that I need to get all of these thoughts out of me so they don’t eat me alive anymore, and so that theres a record of this out there and the reasoning and story behind why my project is that way that it is and why I’m the way that I am as well. For anyone who’s interested.

Most importantly, I realize now, which I never really put much importance on before, that I need to share all of my work that I’m doing on the project with the world to almost legitimize it… and I’ll go over all of this in the following post… but with what’s happening with AI now and the sheer amount of people that are questioning basic reality is insane to me. What I used to believe was that I needed to quietly work in the shadows and keep my head down, then come out with something major that would surprise and wow everyone out of nowhere. I’m realizing that that’s definitely not the way to go here. That I can include the people who care in every aspect of the process and make them feel like they’re a part of it all right alongside me. So they don’t have to question whether I actually made something or not, or whether my own silly little human brain is capable of expressing all of its education on a sheet of paper (or computer screen) without the help of AI. Yes, I’ll go on and on and on forever, but it’s who I am. I’m not concise, and I have a lot to say with all of the stories that I want to tell. If I’m too much for you, go find you someone who is less.

But that’s exactly the reason why this world-building project is so important to me. Because I have a LOT to say and show and express. Ever since I was small, I wanted to create and create non-stop. And this project as had many rocky starts, but now that I’m finally settled on my medium, I’m going through with it at full force and I want to share every moment of it. Not hide any of it any longer.

Happy vernal equinox to all of you reading. This post might be a bit long, but I’m pouring my heart and soul into it, so it should be worth the time, especially for those friends I’ve made from faraway places who have been wondering where I’ve disappeared to. Today marks the first true day of spring, the moment when light and darkness stand in perfect balance right before the days begin to stretch longer and warmer.

This day has long been understood as the beginning of the natural new year. Long ago, rulers and empires reshaped our calendar systems based on the whims of their egos, shifting the new year to a point in the dead of winter that feels disconnected from the natural world. Before modern calendars fixed January as the starting point of the year, civilizations looked to the sky and the seasons to understand time. The zodiac cycle begins here, with the first sign, Aries, a mixture of wailing newborn baby and conquering pioneer, being the herald of a new dawning day and rising alongside the rebirth of the earth itself.

This is a powerful turning point for nature, the cosmos, and all of us, whether we subscribe to the idea of large celestial bodies affecting us via their gravitational pulls or not. We can all feel it even if we’re not looking for it. The air starts smelling different, the ground softens beneath our feet, one particular bird starts squawking right outside our window and waking us up at 4 o’clock every morning, and everything that’s been waiting beneath the surface begins to stir and pop up with bright little green buds.

I, too, am trying to (re)start a little something new here. Hopefully, this time around, it works out. And I think timing it with the vernal equinox, for me at least, adds more meaning and significance.

After a very difficult stretch, I find myself revisiting this wonderful Rune Academy worldbuilding project after what seems like a million years. Too long a time has passed, and it’s still here exactly as I left it, waiting patiently… but the me that’s coming back to it is completely changed. I have sooo much to tell you. What seems like an entire life story to share. So much to get back to and reclaim. SO many changes to make.

I’d like to take this moment to set intentions for the coming year ahead. In a way that’s normally reserved for January 1st, as on the actual day of the 1st I was too sick to make heads or tales of most things. I’d like to now set resolutions that feel aligned with where I actually am and who I’ve become, not where I thought I should be months ago. To turn over a new leaf…

I’m a full proponent of the idea that we need to set goals for not what we’ll get when we reach them, but who’ll we become by the time we do. Especially since I myself feel I’ve grown over the past few years of unprecedented turmoil in not just my life, but the greater world as well. Everything is meant to mold and shape us in the best ways possible. Or at the very least, in the way that’ll force us into the avenues that’ll allow for the greatest soul growth to occur. And boy has that growth been forced upon that soul.

I don’t know about anyone else, but the past few years have been especially hard for me. And not just the years that encompassed the global pandemic, but also the years after. Life has felt like a constant storm of events, one after another, barely giving me room to breathe. One of the new rules for me this year, as part of the turning over a new leaf ritual so to speak, is to be more open and transparent about the situations that I’ve been faced with. As keeping everything hidden to deal with alone has always led to only heartache. And with the wonderful new support system in my life that’s slowly teaching me that it’s okay to need someone to lean on, and it’s okay to ask for help and not try to take everything on myself… I’m taking this new leap of faith. And it might not be a big deal to anyone else, but I’ve always been one to describe myself as an aggressively private person, and it’s a big deal to me to finally let it all out.

There have been the obvious financial hardships that I’m sure every single one of us can relate to. There have been family health problems on multiple levels, the most heartbreaking of which have turned into family tragedy and violent death. This led to multiple mental health struggles amongst everyone who was witness and who dealt with the aftermath, me personally being dealt the hand of PTSD, insomnia, anxiety, and panic disorder to deal with. Most of which, after many years since the event, I can proudly say are very well managed. All thanks to the wonderful people that dragged me in like a beat up stray off the street and nursed me back to health.

That being said, the event in question led to a multitude of situations that allowed for a plethora of people in my life to unfortunately as well as fortunately show their true colors. Especially when faced with delicate decisions that had to be made when similar difficult situations emerged again with different skins. This all led to a breakdown of communications that were already in piss poor condition (I see this only in hindsight, after having been thoroughly exposed to the wonderful opposite). Afterwards came a nerve wracking divorce and ultimatums that forced impossible decisions, the first of which was a 24 hour eviction. Of which I’m eternally grateful to my father and brother for jumping in to help me move literally my entire life (including some insanely massive machinery) to a variety of different storage locations and homes within the span of “you need to be out of here by morning”. I’m also thankful to my job for allowing me the leave of absence and for dealing with my mental state afterwards. My job has been pretty much the only stable thing in my life (up until recently) to ground me since the beginning of the pandemic.

Afterwards came months and years of what can only be described as couch surfing and housing insecurities. I’m eternally grateful to everyone who’s ever allowed me a place to rest my head and store my crap, even if it meant commuting for over 2 to 3 hours to work across state lines (this is regarding multiple people) and even if it mean my stuff getting water damaged to the point of throwing it away (I didn’t need it anyway, and more can always be easily accumulated-the relationships with the people are always more important).

What follows is the time in my life that I can only define by my unwillingness to be myself or put myself first, and live entirely for others, in a sometimes harmful and thoroughly exhausting (to the self) way. I turned entirely away from myself, my inner turmoil and problems, and threw myself into everything that I could to involve myself with others and help with their problems. To give context, both of my parents experienced failing health, my father putting his entirely on hold in order to financially support my mother through chemo, which I’d also occasionally help out with paying for wherever I could alongside with taking her to appointments across multiple state lines. This meant they could not retire in today’s broken healthcare system, as it was draining them financially. This is when my brother asked to open a brick and mortar business with me, which led to me trying to support my little brother and help improve the family situation, hoping to give him and my sister a chance to go to college, which they hopefully will eventually be able to do. But this ended up landing me in triple figure sums of debt and working paycheck to paycheck.

Trying to get everything under control while dealing with extreme mental health struggles (PTSD fueled panic attacks, insomnia, and nightmares) became part of daily life. And then I reached a point where I could no longer afford healthcare. I had to choose between health insurance and car insurance… And without my car, I could no longer get to work so the decision was obvious. I had no access to medication, and began experiencing a complete loss of self. I did not want to be myself anymore or occasionally just be.

But I needed to keep going for my family, making sure that they would have a future one day. I needed to be able to distract myself from myself and my own situation… one where I actively rejected what humanity told me was the golden ticket to what I’m supposed to be doing with myself to fit into societal norms. I surrounded myself with people who were from incredibly varied walks of life to add something meaningful to my life while also attempting to get back what I purposely lost. I was in possibly the worst possible mental state to be dating anybody, but I knew that I needed to be surrounded by people to heal, or I’d slowly go inside spiraling within myself.

I’m grateful for every single one of the people who fluttered in and out of my life during these few years. I dated casually for a short while, to learn as much as I could as quickly as I could in order to seemingly catch up and make up for the years I’d lost being trapped in a failing marriage. This phase didn’t last long as it exhausted me quickly to a point of near total burn out. Especially when considering that I almost vehemently refused to be myself in most interactions. I wasn’t comfortable with myself and rejected who I was as a person, which caused me to wander down avenues and into circles I’d never been anywhere near in my entire life, pretending to be people I’ve never been like.

There were stalkers that rose up amongst the few that I dated in that time period…usually people I made aware I no longer wanted to see them. Some would understand that the dates went nowhere and accepted it as graciously as possible.I’ll always be grateful for them. Some were heartbreaking, as we’d become friends and life simply began unfolding in ways that no longer included them. Some would lash out and send me videos of defiling items I’d accidentally left behind in places I’d visited. Some would make sure I knew they were still coming around by leaving unsavory things for me to find on my car and scaring the shit out of my family and I as well as putting my entire workplace on high alert. Some caused me to delete most of my social media presence or go silent by making new account after new account to message me after being endlessly blocked and never allowing me a moment of peace for months at a time. Most were people I attempted to date, some who I’d literally gone on only one or two dates with. Most gave up after a few weeks or months. Some caused me to change my phone number and couch I slept on multiple times within the span of a few months.

I can say that I’m still grateful for these people, as they’ve taught me invaluable lessons across all of our interactions, no matter how painful. Some of which were as specific as never pretending to be somebody I wasn’t, especially since it was usually someone much more confident than I really was (in efforts to “fake it til I make it” in reinventing myself), as it opened people up to treating me much harsher than I’d ever been treated before because they assumed I was strong enough to take it. Actual filth and verbal abuse I’d never experienced before in my life.

Another harsh lesson was never accepting financial aid under the pretense of good-will, no matter how desperate in the moment and how kind the person offering. You never know what people are really thinking when they want to appear generous in the moment. The story flipped once I met someone that was perfect for me in every possible way and I no longer wanted to date casually. What helped pay rent in one moment of kindness became grounds for hounding and ended with my family and I scrambling to find money only to realize we were spread too thin amongst all the debts to come up with the funds to stop the harassment. That being said, I’m grateful for the wonderful man that I have in my life now that is understanding and occasionally lets me borrow from him to help pay for rent and loan payments as I slowly work on my debts while living paycheck to paycheck. I’ll never stop thanking the universe for how it’s turned my life around by adding him to it ever.

I think the lesson that caught me the most off guard is the lesson about who my real friends are. This is completely not taking into account friends that have tried making money off me by attempting to get me to sign contracts that would get me to pay them royalties for the rest of their lives for services rendered once (specifically renovating some floors). That’s an entirely separate and strange beast that I honestly think back on with absolute absurdity now…

What hit me harder than it should have was this… During the very tragic moment in my life where we had experienced a violent death in the family while I was still living with my ex husband, all of my friends came together to support me through my darkest moments and provided me with so much love I don’t know what to do with myself. When I started to seemingly flourish from the outside, while actually maniacally trying to force positive change by over exerting myself from the inside, they seemed to take a few steps back because they saw that I no longer needed the level of support that I did when I was at my worst. I was, at best, some entertainment with my latest attempts at reinventing myself, and at worst, I was a massive headache for having a life too chaotic to keep up with. When I announced that I was opening a shop with my brother for my family, they wondered whether I’d hit the lottery and asked what I was hiding from them. They didn’t seem to accept the answer that I simply took a massive risk for the hopes of having a worthwhile reward while going into massive amounts of debt. Because it meant that any of them could do it too, only the choice was what separated us, but they chose to see us as separate anyway. Unless I reached out to them, it was suddenly rare that I would get reached out first. I’d be invited to gatherings out of politeness, but then never be given further details and I’d be left with looking at photos of everyone having a good time while never having had the chance to join them in the first place. After expressing these feelings, however, things have gotten better, but due to having these experiences in the first place, I feel I see people differently now anyway.

Some lessons that I learned were very broad and simple, such as just how much stress can I take all at once? Like… am I able to help with setting up, financially supporting, and running a business, while working full-time at my own job that helps fund everything, while constantly stressing about money, while attempting to date and appear normal functioning to greater society, while being slammed with harassment on every social media platform I visit including LinkedIn and my personal emails (and receiving explicit videos in my text messages), while also worrying about falling asleep while driving on my often 2 hour+ commutes into work, while also trying to reconnect with friends (and actually not lose them), while ALSO attempting to not forget about the projects I have that are the true products of my inner passions and dreams.

And I can say all of this only in hindsight, with the peaceful mind of a solid and stable foundation that I’m slowly building up brick by brick with the aforementioned someone perfect for me in every possible way. I can only look back on this now as a terrible nightmare with some fascinating and beautiful moments sprinkled in between.

It was absolutely not all bad. I have a lot to be grateful for experience-wise with what’s happened over the past few years. I’ve made friends and lost friends, but the memories stay with me forever. I’ve gained a variety of new skills such as snowboarding and basic machine repair thanks to the time that I’ve spent with the variety of people I’ve come into contact with. I’ve gotten closer with my little brother and sister through swapping stories of escapades and shenanigans. I love them. And choosing gratitude every single day while working on my mental and physical health has been invaluable.

For the first time in my life since living in my very first apartment all alone in college, I now live in an incredible space with the love of my life that we picked out for ourselves entirely of our own accord. I love our apartment and how comfortable and beautiful it is, and feel inspired every second of every day here as I’ve fully decorated it myself to be the perfect nest for us. I love how the light shines in through every single window at all hours of the day and night and I love watching all of our plants flourishing and changing throughout the seasons. I’m grateful for this home, and I’m grateful for the man I share it with.

He’s taught me a plethora of wonderful lessons on how I should be treated and how to truly love myself. That I am enough just the way that I am, and that if anyone thinks I’m “too much” should go find them someone who’s less. He’s reminded me that I have endless skills and talents and that I should use them to make those dreams I once had to a reality. And every single day he keeps on reminding me. He’s listened to all of my pains and woes and I’ve done the same for him. We’ve supported each other through dark moments and incredibly powerful joyous moments and, through the sheer level of honest and effective communication, we’ve come to know and understand each other better, faster, and more deeply in a shorter period of time than I’ve seen people do in years. He’s my rock, my grounding energy, an incredible role model to me, and genuinely my best friend. I love him.

And alongside him, I’m also grateful for a number of other incredible role-models, who’ve shown me what it’s like to actually exist within a beautifully calm, and peaceful relationship. Namely, an elderly couple who bicker (in a cute way) all the time but with so much love, are at the top of that list. They allowed me to be a guest in their home for a while during my couch-surfing days. Seeing their relationship modeled for me day in and day out, and the slowing down of life I experienced while in their constant presence, especially in the critical moments immediately after leaving my ex when riddled with the worst effects of PTSD, was the difference between me being able to slowly get myself together and start the difficult journey to healing, and completely falling apart. I have genuinely never been more grateful to anybody and the roof they provided over my head, especially considering that early on I used to pace and sob endlessly. They allowed me space to truly release and heal. I love them.

Truth be told, this post was supposed to go in a completely different direction , where I spoke about more of my thoughts on the current state of the world in my opinions on things such as AI and my actual resolutions for this new leaf I’m trying to turn over. But that’s likely going to have to be something for my next post which should be the part two to this. When I start writing, it’s very hard for me to stop, especially once the thoughts all come spilling out onto the page. I guess the part two will come soon. I need to sleep now.

Since I’ve started writing this update, a lot has happened. I’m no longer physically living in the exact location as before and can no longer be found spending my time with the same group of people. (My P.O Box stays the same as it’s not yet too much of a hassle for me to drive there.) This massive rift and move, coupled with the incredible stress in my home/family life situations caused by factors outside of anybody’s control and constantly keeping up with news regarding what’s happening in my ancestral home overseas, has broken my brain for a bit. After more months of turmoil and anxiety than I can count on both hands, life has finally offered me a fresh start, so I can now sit down and write for a bit.

It’s been hard trying to get anything done, but you have to keep chugging along and doing at least a crawl on your worst days. When I started this project, I made a pact with myself that I would have no zero-days, and I meant it… even if that means just writing down a tiny note on a napkin for something I have to do later. Unfortunately, I’ve been so busy lately that most of my days have been looking like near-zero days. Still, I have to celebrate even the small wins to keep myself going.

So, since the last update, I’ve added:

• A Music and Audio Roadmap for the project.
• Buttons to help out on all of the roadmaps.
• Added more content in general to all roadmaps and updated all progress bars with new progress.

Now that these snap updates are out of the way, I’d like to talk about what’s happening overseas a little bit and my fears about everything, and how I just tried to do my part.

I’m sure we all remember when we first heard about Russia invading Ukraine in the same way that we all remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when The Twin Towers fell. Like the shot heard around the world. Same impact. At least for those of us who have family there and who legitimately thought this would signal the beginning of World War 3.

Russia attacked Ukraine on February 24th, 2022. As of me writing this now, the war has been going on there for about 100 days.

The night it happened, I woke up from a crazy nightmare to a series of events that I still clearly remember to this day. It was 3 or 4 am or so, and when I looked at my phone, I saw backlogged messages from my mom throughout the night saying that her car alarm wouldn’t stop going off, and she wasn’t sure what was happening with it. It prevented her from sleeping all night, and suddenly, she looked at her phone and learned that war had begun and that Russia had invaded our brother to the south. Later, they discovered that the windshield had broken on the car with no real reason why, and it cracking under cold/pressure changes all night was what kept setting the alarm off. So maybe it was some omen or something.

I don’t really have a point in telling anyone this, just to share what happened amidst us learning the war had begun.

Since that day, Ukrainian troops have fought back bravely. Many people were lost, and many friends were gained. I’ve watched able-bodied people leave the States to go and fight to help protect their homeland. I’ve watched elderly people who’ve worked their entire lives here in the States to be able to retire back in their home country comfortably, don army gear, and fight for the beautiful land to which they’d returned after a lifetime away. I’ve lost contact with people, with no clue whether they’re safe or not/ alive or not. I’ve watched update after update from people who attempted to evacuate and stand their ground, hiding away in cities and towns amid bombardment. I’ve exchanged words of helplessness with friends and family regarding how we didn’t know what was going on and still don’t. I’ve watched attempts to contact friends and family in Ukraine with no reply. The same with attempts to reach those in Belarus, but this time, with the connection cutting out as soon as any mention of war was made. It’s been a wild ride.

Also since that day, I’ve watched communities here in the US come together in support of the troops there. For safety reasons, I won’t be going into any specifics on anything nor give any correct names on anything. But since that day, the government of Belarus has asked the Belarusian people to partake in something many of the Belarusian people themselves have been vehemently against. I’ve watched people leave here to help out with the war efforts there and I’ve watched them form battalions and fight alongside Ukrainian troops. Here’s an image of such a battalion that recently became incredibly popular online.

The people in this photo are from all over the place, but the guy front-and-center has the Belarusian flag displayed loudly and proudly. Because of his awesome mustache, he became known as “Warstache,” “Belarustache,” or “Freedomstache,” and he’s reached a level of fame that already has artists creating tributes (click here to see an example). If you’d like to learn more about his story and the conversation about everything, feel free to click here.

We here in the States among the community also began helping and supporting a battalion very similar to this one. We can’t do much, but we hold fundraisers every once in a while to help raise money for anything they may need. All we can really hope to do is offer monetary aid. At the latest fundraiser, we held an auction in partnership with a local Belarusan museum and historians’ center (one I’ll get into much later, as I’m actually exploring partnering with them for certain aspects of my project). Representatives from the organization Razom for Ukraine were also there to show their support and friendship with the community. At that auction event, details were given about the battalion we’re sponsoring, their current state of morale, and the exact breakdown of how all of the money was being used. It was incredibly disheartening to hear just how expensive some of the defensive and offensive gear is. I wish I could have given more, but I concretely gave as much as I could afford. I wish I were able to afford more.

All items auctioned off at the event were donated to the museum after the passing of some prominent Belarusian figures here in the US Belarusian community. Many beautiful traditional Slavic embroidery pieces were from their personal collections and pieces they’d made themselves. At least, those were the items that caught my attention the most. On top of everything else, these items belonged to the very same people who helped raise me when I was a child. Who helped shape my understanding of the world and what it should be like and what to strive to make it be like. They belonged to and were made by the people who gave me some of the best memories I’ve ever had in my life. I couldn’t stand to see these items be won by anyone else.

There’s a shirt in there that’s just a regular print t-shirt that I’m not sure if I actually got at the auction or not. Maybe for this one time we can just pretend that I did.

As you can see, the pieces are all absolutely beautiful and masterfully crafted. They’ll all be carefully preserved and digitized in some way or another to be a part of the virtual project here as a tribute to the people who’d created them, as well as the remaining members of the battalion still fighting aggression overseas in the homeland and those of them that have passed. At the very least, the memories they bring forth are absolutely irreplaceable. I just wish I had more money to give to the cause.

That’ll be it for the update for now. I have a lot to figure out regarding many things and a bit of rebuilding and reconnecting to do in my life as a whole.

I wish everyone love and peace.

-K