When I was about 3 years old, for some reason I remember telling my mother ‘Lets start going to church’ and while she was an athiest at the time she said ok. As a 3 year old I kinda think I got the idea from something I saw on tv, I didnt really know what I was talking about, My mom probably thought i’d get bored and never want to go back after the first time. It would seem god was working not on myself then actually my mother. That first sunday she heard a sermon, while us kids were in a puppet show, that apparently had her in tears- for reasons I dont know. This isn’t how I found christ however. I went to church as a kid every sunday until I was about 13 or so when I discovered Paganism. I went well out of my way then to ensure my mom wouldnt take me back to church, and I have to say she held up a good fight for it. I loved the occult, there was just so much more depth with it, I can do magic, I can know the secrets of kabbalah, I can become enlightened. My teen years could be sumed up in a never ending quest to find the truth, and i looked into everything in the mystery religions. There were times in the summer it would get so hot I made it rain. There were times in the winter I didnt want to go to school I would make it snow. Oh yeah these things actually do work, no illusion or tricks magic is quite real. However, even the pagan books would warn about using magic so frivolously as i was doing- and it was one particular day I called the rain and suddenly a tornado came down to a nearby town killing 19 people. I feel like i learned something that day a kind of responsibility, a certain scrutiny of my own intentions I admit I still carry today as a christian.
Years would pass I read about every mystic thing I could. My mother would try to stop me but I as a teenage boy it only fueled my rebelliousness. I eventually began talking to spirits and Gods in my meditations, dreams, and tarot cards. It was weird (looking back on it) I would stand there having a full out conversation with someone like nothing, meanwhile a voice in my mind would tell me what to say or how to say it. Goddeses and gods would come to me all the time asking me to proclaim my loyalty to them, or direction in how to serve. They revealed to me alot of mystery secrets enough for someday I would use to join the Theosophical Society. I swear alot of people would think I was an emo or goth or just weird after telling them I was a pagan teen, but to be honest I really was more a prep type. I got along with everyone- my personality has never been much else then very bubbly and charismatic. My friends at school was such a mix between Cheerleaders, nerds, those emo kids, D&D geeks, and just about everyone. I had some bullies now and then but I had a good ability to make friends even with my worst enemies. I think it’s a rare gift for someone practicing paganism, especially at such a depth I was involved with it- but there it is.
Pretty much as soon as I was 18 I moved out of moms house. I had $200 to my young name lived in highland town Baltimore and got a job as a deli guy at a grocery store. On my own I was free to do as I pleased, go where I pleased, read what I pleased, Drink and party as I pleased… The trouble is well, I was still a nerd at heart for mysticism, Never really indulged myself like that so much I was too “Spiritual” for that. Before, I didnt really need money, but at this time of my life yeah that changed. Would you be amazed that by 21 years old I did a Mercedes commercial, Modeled in new york, hung out with Paris Hilton in LA, Traveled Europe and the US completely free. Seriously, I never once had a dime yet it seemed everything I wanted just sorta happened just by thinking about it. It was by this time I was convinced I knew my stuff in magic. After my exciting youth I settled down in Buffalo, ny. It was when everything would change.
Here in Buffalo there was not a single job around, most of the city is on welfare, I didnt have any professional skills and it would seem “Wishing youre way in life” only goes so far. I had to live with an actor in his spare bedroom for $50 a month, which I struggled very hard for. What kind of place do you think you get for $50 a month you might wonder… I’ll tell you this I was getting the karmic bill from touring Europe alright. The actor wasnt so bad, we always hung out, went to theater parties all the time, mostly as a means just to eat. For some reason i couldnt even get food stamps, though i ment the income qulifications alright- neither me or my actor friend were really struggling to survive. He was pagan too, he introduced me to thngs like Lily Dale and the theosophical society. Buffalo, ny just had so much mystic culture in it, i think its what really drew me here in the first place. Some how my struggle to survive period didnt seem to bother me much. I could meditate my problems away, i had a good friend with me who always had free tickets to a show in town, and I found places to really re connect with mysticism. What more could i want?
I joined the theosophical society with ease. The master of the chapter was absolutely convinced he saw the spirit of Hathor with me, and indeed this was my patron goddess. He knew i was the rare type that knew how to talk to people, educate them on complicated subjects, was warm and inviting, and the kind of youthful charm that when used properly could influence everything around me at a slight touch. He would tell me these things many times, and the trouble is he wasnt lieing. I made my young career here giving lectures and presentations. I held meetings and people would come from 200 miles away in Canada just to hear me speak about the most boring things like ‘sacred geomancy’. I absorbed every book in the theosophical library, to the point they had to special order texts from ancient babylon with original texts. I would sit down and read these with a dictionary deciphering a long lost language. I think even now I can still read hieroglyphics from Mayans, Egyptians and Mesopotamia. The trouble with this so much of ancient texts is junk. the goal for me was to find the hidden secrets of ancient mystics and bring them to life now.
It would be about 2 years of this I had a meditation i remember still today that was so vivid and real and fresh in my mind, to this day it gives me chills. I was standing in a dark place when a shadow of an woman holding a cobra appeared. The woman didnt speak a word she stood likea statue as the snake danced in her hand. ‘Do not fear me jessie we are well aquainted i am in just a new form to you’ the snake said. “I am of the seven hathors, see how we change”. Indeed the woman phased forms between a cat woman, an alligator, isis, and a bull as the cobra said this. “I come here to give you a gift, The bite of Kafar” I asked the snake to spell it for me so I might look it up later. The snake was pleased to tell me because he knew the reason I asked was to verify he was a real spirit not something in my imagination. (I will get back to this later). “You have a thirst for knowledge which is why I want you to have this gift, but are you ready for what I can do for you? Here is a test of faith.” the snake said as he divided himself into a swarm of snakes that slithered all over my body. I could feel it was so real every snake just piled and swarmed on me and I wasnt afraid, this cobra had a certain familiarity but I was never aware of the concept of 7 hathors. “Here it is the bite of Khafar”. the snake bit my forehead, he then warned me to take it easy the next few days, let it settle in. The meditation went on to other things but entirely irrelevant for now. I soon learned Khafar ment the mind in ancient Hittite and that while it is part of an ancient dead language the word specifically refers to a special gift of wisdom. It apparently has only been mentioned twice in all known ancient Hittite writings. It would seem the cobra is not a new spirit… A christian reading this Im sure you have youre thoughts who this cobra actually is.
It would be now when I meditated the egyptian god Thoth would come to me. Rightly so I guess he was the god of Wisdom and mysteries. My career at theosophical lectures did well, I was able to buy my own house without a loan and seemingly everything would be great from now on right? Dead wrong… I began asking inconvenient questions and coming up with heretical ideas. Not just to my spirits in meditations but people around me. Things like ‘Permanence can only come from morality’ or “How can we create our own reality, but reality can still suck”. I lost alot of ‘friends’ very quickly around 23 with talk like this. I relized something then, These new age people they are not interested in the truth, they want a distraction. Here I was doing my best to learn credable mystery teachings, and everyone else was simply looking for something to shock and amaze them. my next question became ‘If all these people are just looking for something to distract themselves, then have I wasted my time seeking the truth”, the response from the master was this. “People will follow you anywhere as long as you tickle their ear, if you give them facts they get scared, if you question morality they get angry. It’s better to allow them to find their own truth and their own reality- its all relative anyway”. I asked him “Where is the line drawn? dont you realize with this logic the entire universe couldnt have any stable part, the proof is everywhere There is a not so relative of a reality”. Let me tell you this man was a democrat in the strictest sense. I suppose I alienated him so much with this argument I was kicked out of theosophy. Things were rough before but now I own a home without a job, in a city where labor is expendable and a job is hard to find.
The new chapter of my life would begin by me alienating every new age person i met and knew simply by asking questions i suppose i should never mention. Even my actor friend disowned me, For the first time in my life reality hit hard, very hard. I got a job as a bartender and lost it within 6 months due to management changes. I was fired from the dollar store because i spent too long with an old lady at the register who couldn’t find her checkbook. I was fired from a door to door job because no one wanted to buy the $8000 vacuum they wanted me to sell… Still for some reason i kept getting denied food stamps. It was like the world just shut its doors everywhere i went. Even my meditations just wernt working, my tarot cards wouldnt speak like they would… Suddenly i knew what reality was in the worst possible way. I couldnt even afford to buy roman noodles. I said to myself everyday I will come back into the sun and I wont sacrifice my dignity. I wont beg for food at the street corner, I wont loose my self. I can do this and i can do this with dignaty, pride, and never show my suffering. My new idea was give up on finding a job- its just pointless. I have a 4 bedroom house maybe i can rent to college students. so i did but this would prove more a challenge then i thought.
Many people lived in my house one of them however made it a point to take everything I owned, almost. I came home one day litterally all my furnature, books, bed tv everything was gone. I knew who did it, my other room mates had a constant complaint about this guy smokeing crack. Though I kicked him out it felt by this point just as well to loose all these things, i didnt have much to begin with. Soon I just felt like I was going insane. I had this hazy feeling, i just couldnt make proper sense of anything. Probably from only eating maybe once or twice a week. It was hard for me holding on to my self assurd dignaty, and not letting people see me suffer. soon everyone would ask me am I ok? i dont look good. a statement that just felt like knives, and yet i just coughed up a ‘yes im fine what do you mean?’ I just wanted to brush it off. Every day I had to decide do i pay the electric bill so my roomates dont sue to break the lease or do I eat. A year of this eventually put me in the psychward at the city’s worst possible hospital. Not worse as in ‘criminal’ just they are know to give the worst possible care to people. I was muttering like a schizophrenic, everything around me was a constant blur. The hospital would send therapist but they told me I wasnt allowed to eat because i was under ‘observation’. At the same time the whole psychiatric part of the hospital was so full there wasnt any beds. They had 7 beds with about 30 people stuffed in this little corner of the hospital. Me I was so hazy i didnt have a chance to think this was weird for some reason. For 3 days straight no food no sleep, Sometimes I thought I was back in France, others i thought i was 4 years old again. Eventually I initiated a riot with the staff- I had a sudden relization they werent accomidating because they were lazy not because of ‘observation’. I walked into the room with the other crazy people turned off the tv they were watching and demanded they got pisst for they way they were being treated. The crowd rushed to the nurses in an uproar i swear they looked as if they never expected it in a million years. the police came in and put everyone on lock down except me where they sat me aside to negotiate i suppose. I told them im in no condition to leave I relize this, I need help but this is not helping me. Starving us and lack of sleep it just makes things even more hazy, for the first time I just cried. I felt so pathetic, that here i was beging a hearltess nurse that thinks im giving him a lawsuit for food, and that i would even be in such a state from so much- AND i just cant keep my dignity anymore.
They reinstated me for 3 more days, feed us and gave me a private room. They also had me signed up for medicade because there was no way I could pay this hospital bill. I asked for a bible. I don’t know why It was just something in my state i really felt i needed to have it. For 3 days the nurses would try buttering me up suddenly they were all buddy buddy now. My head cleared up tremendously. I read the bible for those 3 days nonstop flipping the book just reading. and by the end of 3 days the hazy feeling was completely gone. Yet even here this story doesnt end with me coming to christ.
No I never sued the hospital for their mistreatment, But I later read they had to shut down the psych center because of the kinds of things i went through just 2 weeks after I left. I went on saying to myself I will forget the mystic religion. All I want now is money everything else is just stupid. I want no part of mysticism, no eastern philosophy, or anything new age. Im just going to be agnostic. and when I said that i had a dream, It was Hathor who came to talk to me. She told me I need to come back to her- I began asking questions like Show me who you really are give me youre one true form? She was so angered by me testing her this way, she scratched my belly with her claws (When I woke up I actually had huge claw like marks on my belly). Michael however came into this dream, he didnt say one word to me But I just felt like it was him- yet somehow I didnt know a thing about him I just knew. but anyway He came into the dream with a sword in hand, the goddess had divided hereself into a hundred snakes ready to rip me apart Michael slashed each head like a Hydra. Another angel came from behind me and pulled me away and told me don’t worry, everything will be ok now. I woke up and just heard singing like a choir, I felt like there were several angels in my bedroom and they were holding hands circling around me like a ring. I dont know how to describe it be honest but at this point I never felt clearer headed before in my life i knew i wasnt crazy. Still i kept my convictions. No more religion what so ever, for 4 years I saved my money. I learned the stock market during the recession. Oh yes I was either brave or stupid, But I knew I had to try it.
I got another job as a bartender, I kept my roommates income, I didnt spend one cent on anything I didnt need I put it all into stocks. I still wouldnt even buy furnature my house was empty. The recession was at it’s low I had the feeling it could only go up, I just have to stick with this plan. I learned everything I could about the markets, Investing, What kinds of things to look for, How to look for them… It seemed like I was suddenly learning a whole new language and a whole new lifestyle. I played a game with a friend. We would get random stock charts from the 80’s or before, without looking at them cover a piece of paper on the last half and try to predict what the stock was going to do. The idea was simple, No fooling around, I wanted real stocks to predict without knowing how they turned out and build a skill in the market. I was pretty good at it. Quickly all this paid off I made alot of money through the recession, I didn’t quite understand why the world was doom and gloom about it, if they only knew what I was teaching myself, well… I already learned about not trying to teach people things they didnt want to hear. I found some people like getting cought in pessimism almost as much as some people perfer being caught in optimism like the new age crowd. Eventually I started my own company here at home And well was bored alot. I could now work for myself I didnt need roomates or a bar tending job. I eventually went to collage for nursing just to have a plan b, but otherwise my days became uneventful. I started reading history. LOTS of history, American History, ancient History. I read science, philosophy, physics, math, I just read about everything on google that was possibly available. What did you think my inner nerd stopped?
There was a time I became so entrenched with WW2 and Nazi Germany I just loved it because it was just an unsolvable thing for me. So much of history in this period really is propaganda, what made it a puzzel was If i wanted to understand Nazi Germany I need to know everything about Germany in order to separate allied propaganda from Nazi propaganda in order to get facts. Yes I left no stone unturned I even delved into holocaust denial and took considerations from it. You might find this strange but Hitler is the one who showed me Jesus was the only one, there can be no middle ground. Here I was on months of study I saw what the communists were doing, I saw how people lived, I knew how Hitler fit into all this- Yet through all this chaos There was a very deliberate hand at work. Things played out in such a delegate way so that #1 Germany would be saved from communism by having Hitler, but at the same time #2 Hitler himself was brought to the shameful end of suicide in his bunker at just the right time so communist russia could never recover after he bombed them all the way to Moscow. If the communists succeed in taking Germany before Hitler showed up in Wiemar republic (Like they were going to, and was the plan) It would have spread through out Europe, AND today the whole world would be a one world Joesph Stalin styled government so easily. But while this hand left the Russians crippled so much so eventually communism would have to collapse. AND this delegate hand that was just so subtle, managed to get the bulk of Jews out of harms way into Israel. Such a balance here One dictator is no more powerful then the other, and each destroys the other in such a balanced way Evil cant take over the world. This deliberate hand worked in such subtle ways in WW2 there is so much detail in this realization, but it’s hardley worthwhile going into it here. However, his realization humbled me as it is now Im crying just thinking about it. I knew the Jews were the Christian gods people, and I’ve heard he works in mysterious ways.
I read the bible again. I discovered Jesus was not the jesus I heard about in sunday school as a kid. He wasnt a self righteous prood who could walk in the desert without getting his feet dirty wearing sandals. Jesus was a kind man actually very upbeat and at the same time very intelligent. Here was a man I always felt was too good for anyone, tossing around orders on how to be a slave to a boring church lady with no life but to complain about how evil everything was. That was not the Jesus I was reading about this time. I saw a man who would not have his guest humiliated by running out of wine at his own wedding. I saw a man who loved children and laughed with his disciples. I saw a man who wasnt afraid to stand up for himself or others. I saw a gracious host who feed the 5000 people who came to see him with bread and fish. I saw a real jesus. I saw a Jesus that loved the outcasts He avoided hypocrites and legalism, and with his popularity was himself an outcast. something tangible not fanciful. I can see why he was to be the judge of the earth, he was truely a righteous judge- a good man who lived as a man. He just felt real as i was studying through the book of Matthew. I was also surprised to learn there was 4 books about him in all (I didnt know this) each was a different perspective of his life from his apostles. I read on through the book of acts what the disciples did, How the life of christ spreed out. I went beyond that I read history books of christianity, the early church, I found myself picking Christianity apart to the point my thirst for knowledge just felt Quenched! It was november 6th 2013 I bowed my head and said; “Jesus, I see the power of you is so great, I feel as if all i have studied and been through was for this. I want you in my life and heart. I want you to baptize me with the fire of the holy spirit. Ask what ever you need from me, my home, my buisness, my cat, my everything its yours. my own life I surrender to you and your father. Take everything from I am youre servant….”
My prayer went on for 20-40 mins and I swear I was saying things i didnt even know was a christian concept like ‘baptize me with the fire of the holy spirit” I didnt even know i was required to surrender my everything to him. the words just flowed out of my soul and each second i was saying it felt like I was being filled with such…. i dont know how to put it…. like, a ‘weight’ was off of me. A kind of calm love, a freedom, a certain healing as if I could just forget everything and never worry again. Ive been reading the bible ever since. It’s like i dont want to read so much anymore to learn, I kinda just like reading the word of god. I really think God gave me the book nerd gift for me to have that prayer because ever since I just have no desire to know everything anymore. I know that wont make alot of sense to alot of people, but that side of me just felt fulfilled.
At first I was kind of closeted about my new found faith. It seemed like the whole world was coming in at me trying to get me to declair or denounce my faith to them. I tried evading the questions, gracefully pushing them aside or changing the topic… But it seemed the more i avoided it the more it came. even the most random people would confront me on it. My friends not even knowing about my prayer said I looked different, like I have this ‘Glow’ about me. literally just strangers on the bus would ask me why do they feel so calm sitting next to me and no body else. The time came when a friend of mine actually cornered me in about it. He would not let me change the topic, he refused to let me leave until I told him I believed in christ and serve the lord. It was that night I EXPLODED with the holy spirit!!! I went on and on up and down about Our father in Heaven, I told him bible stories and what they ment, I taught him what biblical marrage was, I told him how great and benevolent our lord jesus chrsit was and what he did for me!!! For hours he argued with me, and for hours I rebutled by praising god, completely stripped and unashamed. My friend walked out crying saying he doesnt know me anymore, how stupid I suddenly was, how selfish I was for not asking him. He was on the floor in tears asking ‘What about me, why abandon me’ in a fetal position… I swear the way he was acting that night was so strange, almost demonic, I touched him on the shoulder and told him be calm and leave. and it just I dont know my friend wasnt crying anymore. It’s almost as if god knew I needed to break out of my shell, so he sent a demon around to follow me. Or perhaps all the demons knew who I was to them and got word of the ‘Demon town Gossip’ I dont know but my shell just cracked open and I havnt been ashamed since.
So The story ends with this, Today I still love Christ, I still pray everyday, I do the best I can to follow the holy word. I have had my old dignity shredded and given a new one. I had my sanity stripped from me and given a new one. I had my friends taken away and given new ones. I have made friends with demons, and made them my enemy. I have known confusion and found a truth that quenched my thirst. I’ve even seen a literal spiritual war for my soul. My new life began the day I said that prayer to Jesus, It has been such a blessed one so far. looking at it all I think I was refined before I came to god. He was working in me even as I was lost, Today the devil himself is my Foot Stool!! This was my road to Christ my savior.
