Content Warnings for Transphobia, Suicide Attempt, and Christian Trauma.
I grew up in rural Nebraska in a not-very-devout protestant family. My adoptive mother was a methodist, and my adoptive father was one of those conservative episcopalians who would later leave the episcopalian church when they started being supportive of gay marriage and gay priests. I, however, was the devout kid. I helped acolyte at the episcopalian church we went to. I prayed each night and morning. I read my bible. Heck, even though I joke about it a lot, I enjoyed the silly lutheran bible camp I got sent to each summeer beyond the "I get to help cook food for everyone" stuff that happened after I started getting into fights.
So, when the events that I should be writing about in Thunderbird came to pass, I got sat down in the church library by the priest and explained to, in detail, how this was a sin and shouldn't be indulged. And when I expressed my gender issues (after all, he was the priest, the font of wisdom!) I was told, point blank, that if that were true I was posessed and evil.
That didn't vibe with what I had been taught. But also, he had been the guy teaching me. So like so many trans youth I feel into a depression, and as I lost all of my friends, grew distant from my father and my siblings, was told by the pastor of my church that I was an abomination, I resolved to get it over with. If God had made me to go to hell, might as well get there.
I decided that the best way to kill myself was to jump in the Missouri river during the stormy season, when the downcurrents were supposed to be strong. So I grabbed a coat, cut it open, stuffed it with woodchips and rocks, and started the walk north into the city where there was a walkable bridge across the river.
A storm came.
I took shelter from the storm in a construction site for the new freeway expansion, inside of one of those concrete tubes that they turn into the support pillers for the interchange. And as cold winds blew, lightning flashed, and rain pelted the concrete, the scared, depressed, suicidal 14 year old that I was begged for any god to help.
Three showed up. They didn't give me their names, but I have met each of them in my syncretic practice (in the reverse order they showed up, funnily enough!). But they came, and they offered lessons.
The first was an ancient, twisted, bent old woman, with skin as dark as burnt wood who smelled of cigarettes and rot. She held me, stroked my head, and assured me that I was just as those gods who make people made me. She told me that misfortune would come, as it comes to everyone, and that it was always an opportunity. A chance to be free. A chance to rebuild how you want to. That good fortune was often a trap, binding you to ways and means that might not be the best ones for someone to grow, to learn, to become better. She never told me things would be better. Just that at times they were this bad for everyone.
Next came a tall, spindly man, birdlike, with a long bent nose. He is the one who told me things could be better--if I made them so. He told me that the world runs on patterns, and that a patient person can see them, learn them, and use them to build a life where they're comfortable. Happy, even. I asked him if I could even escape the trap of being 'boy'. He told me that first I would have to understand what 'boy' was. That with understanding of the world came the power to change it, even if only your own little part of it.
The last one came in fury. Beautiful, cruel, and harpy winged. She tore away the birdlike man, and pulled me from the black crone's arms. She berated me. Called me a coward. She told me that I already knew better than this. I knew better than to give up, to sob in a concrete tube while planning to cast myself into a river. She warned me that nothing I could build would go unopposed--for both nature and other people oppose everything that anyone builds. Rot sets into logs. Conflicting ideas lead to argumentation, conflict, strife. She mocked me. Called me fool. After all, she said, I already knew this. And I knew the answer. But she didn't say it. Instead she clawed at my face until swung my fist at her. Then she laughed.
I went home, and started high school a month later. Shortly after I learned the name of the last goddess who came to me: Hateful Eris, Goddess of Strife, Champion of the Oppressed, Mother of Monsters. But digging through books on Greek Myth, I never found the others. But I did learn about ideas of reincarnation, of sacrifice, of the gods.
I met the buddhists. Learned of samsara, of the unity of the universe, of the ubiquity of suffering and attachment. But I could not help but see the unstated assumption: Suffering is to be avoided. By this point I'd already found myself being forged again from the broken pieces of my suffering. I couldn't grant that.
I went to university. I met norse pagans, satanists, muslims, and neo-kemeitcs who let me learn the name of the second god who visited me: Ibis-Headed Thoth, God of Mathematics, Architecture, Writing, Wisdom, and Magic. The Ibis Head was a very kind way to put it. I met Lakota wise women, learned to recognize the spirits in the stones, the rivers, the cars, computers. Spirits very much alike in being to us. I met many more Gods in this time. I had the chance to dance with loa in New Orleans, to see the vibrancy of life. I also saw friends get murdered for being trans, and detransitioned for a time. (Over a decade....)
I met a Chinese woman, a Confucian Catholic. I fell in love. Married. Tried to be the good man. Had two kids. Met God again, now clearly of a different sort than the spirits of daily life or the gods that come give blessings when you call with proper sacrifice. And as things crumbled, I saw the wisdom of the three gods who came to me play out again: good fortune is a trap; misfortune an opportunity. Understanding is power. And the only route to happiness is to fight for it.
I retransitioned, and once again lost all of my friends--this time not out of hatred, as much as out of their offense that I hadn't trusted them to share this in the decade of detransition. As with a lot of trans people, I started making friends not with people my age, but with people who were at the same stage of transition as I was. Which, in an interesting twist, meant a lot of desi trans women in their late teens and early twenties. Women who were religious hobbiests--not really syncretic like I was, but more trying to understand christianity and judaism. I also became friends with a Jewish trans gal, and dated a Muslim woman. Through them I saw God reflected again, and ended up in many religious discussions. Discussions which led to multiple people saying I was reinventing Hinduism.
So, I started looking into that. I'm not sure that I would make the same claim that those gals did in late night group chats in the late part of 2020 as many of my newest batch of friends lay dieing. But I did finally learn the name of the first goddess who came to me in the storm of my youth: Dhumavati, Goddess of Lonliness, Unfullfilled Desires, Inauspicious Things, and Savor from All Troubles.
So that's why I'm Syncretic. I've met the gods of many faiths, offered appropriate sacrifices, received blessings. Heck, in my daily life since I was 14 I've done my best to honor three gods from three different faiths, whose names I didn't even learn until later. I've seen wisdom and folly in every worldview. Enough so that I can't help but feel that everyone is right. Not in some "all roads lead to heaven" sort of way -- I no longer believe in Heaven or Hell, beyond them being states of mind/being, or possibly union-with-God vs everyday life. I want to learn though. To dance with every god I can. To meet more of every type of person, every other flavor of cell in God (I think the way I talk about God is a big reason that I get accussed of reinventing Hinduism: after all it just takes experiencing the world with open arms to realize that the distinctions between us are, while vitally important, absolute delusion. How we are one and distinct from all of nature, all of humanity, all of fantasy. From God, who is all, contains all, creates all. But this is moving to the "what I believe" stuff that I want on a different page.)
When I was in college and played with the Chaos Magicians, they would say "Nothing is True; Everything is Permitted". They have it backwards.