IC Inbox

[holyposition]

WELCOME TO THE SALTBURNT NETWORK

USERNAME:
t.laughlin

text ❖ audio ❖ video

Comments

[holyposition]

Doing sex magic in the hospital is weird.

And that's nice of you to offer, but you should save it for yourself. You're way worse off. It's fall, I can do turtlenecks for a while.

[ He'll be wrapping nothing around his neck that can be used as a strangulation aid anytime soon, thank you. ]

[semicharmed]

[ Matt huffs a laugh to himself at "you're way worse off." ]

I guess I should try to make a stronger case for myself here

but even where I come from, sex magic is weird no matter where you do it.

[holyposition]

I would hope so.

I mean, that can't be an efficient way to power...whatever it is you do.

[semicharmed]

It's prayer, Tim.

At the bottom, that's what it is.

[holyposition]

[ A little too close to home, equating sex with worship...he pretends he does not see it. ]

I don't understand.

[semicharmed]

I don't think every practitioner feels it like I do. But if you reach out to a higher power asking "please, I need help to make the changes I want to see"

I think I've said I wasn't raised with religion. But that's what it feels like to me. Fulfilling an obligation to others through a connection to something bigger.

[holyposition]

And that higher power is reached through sex? How?

Has that actually worked here? It looked like the belt just led you around in circles.

[semicharmed]

It's worked for charms that didn't directly tie to the game. And technically, I think Parisa's spell did work, it's just that the inquiry wasn't particularly probative.

[ A pause between messages. ]

Nobody 100% agrees on exactly how magic works, so this is colored by my personal experience. But it comes from human sentience + some element of ritual applied to an outcome, and for me, intimacy is like

a way of connecting to someone all at once, with everything. Mind, spirit, body, emotions. You can surpass the boundaries of yourself to make something that's bigger than you and your partner individually.

[holyposition]

So it's in place of a prayer, or lighting candles, or things like that.

I guess I can understand that. I've felt like that during sex.

[semicharmed]

In place of prayer, yeah. Or of channeling life energy, which is more or less how I cast on the daily. Some people use emotion or force of will.

You generate energy, and then things like candles and herbs and chalk lines help you shape your outcome.

[ Matt wants to tell Tim I think it's rarer than it should be, to feel like that. But even though he thinks he might be about to die, that feels a hair too presumptuous. Too intimate. He's already shared more about sex magic in the past fifteen minutes than he's told almost anyone in his life, except maybe Vincent. ]

[holyposition]

[ If it isn't love, then it must be sin. And if it is love, then it must be transcendent, consuming, self-sacrificing and without ego, devotion of the mind, body and soul. It has to be worship. That's how you're meant to love God. He never learned any other way. ]

So you have this powerful experience through physical intimacy, which allows you to do...all kinds of magic? It doesn't have to do with intimacy. You used it to track the belt.

[semicharmed]

Exactly. The powerful experience is more like a battery or something. Like how you can use a battery to power a vibrator or a car

for me, I try to honor the source of the power not necessarily in a specific application, but in trying to do good with it

[holyposition]

Like a battery. Okay.

I don’t have any supernatural ability myself, as you know, but I think I understand.

[semicharmed]

I know ... I'm sure I'm barely making any sense, but I appreciate you listening.

[holyposition]

No, I think it does.

I don't think I'll participate in your group thing, but I hope it works.

[semicharmed]

Ha, no worries. It's a very specific kinda thing.

I hope so too.