Typing Up Loose Ends

Connections and such

This page is an attempt to tie up loose ends by covering (and linking to longer pages that cover) topics related to Aristasia from the broader cultural milieu, as well as some other things. So far, there isn’t terribly much here - expect more later. I’m itching to finish writing the page (yes, a whole separate page!) on Gerherd’s pseudohistory of the Great Goddess, for example, and I will most definitely talk about present day movements (and their predecessors) which seek to follow the religion of Filianism/Déanism outside of Aristasian contexts.

There's other stuff that will (ultimately) be linked here as well, including some personal thoughts on my own involvement in Aristasia, a section on the age-related "games" that went on in Aristasian "life theatre", and probably some more as well. If there's anything you, personally, think should be added, send it my way. I am open to actual contributions to this section of the site (only); as in, I'll publish your own thoughts here, given proper vetting. You can contact me here, of course.

This page, as of May 3rd, 2024, contains only two sections - on the relationship between Aristasia and the otherkin concept, and on Aristasia and plural identities. Both are based on answers I gave to questions I received about the movement over the past few months here and elsewhere, so I assume these things are of interest. I figured I'd put these on here since they were (mostly) already written, and then add more later. The next part will probably be the section on extra-Aristasian Déanism, which I might... need help writing.

Otherkinity and Exiles

Fun fact! Otherkin doesn’t have much to do with gender, and when I say here that someone “identifies as an elf” or that their “kintype is a badger” I don’t mean that they believe they’re “elf gender” or “badger gender” or that they use neopronouns based on those identities or whatever. They also don’t demand litter boxes in restrooms. Turn off Fox News and stop reading the Daily Mail, please.

Otherkin is a term dating back several decades. It initially referred to anyone who identified as a mythological creature or animal, and I believe it was coined by folks who identified as elves. The definition quickly expanded to include those who felt they were spiritually wolves animals, as well as other mythic beings (I knew a phoenix once, etc). More often than not, (early on, at least) reincarnation played a role in these beliefs. One was assumed to have had a past life as one’s kintype (a term for the sort of creature one identifies as).

Sound familiar? This site is tagged as #otherkin on neocities and in other (pun intended) directories for quite the simplest reason: Aristasians are, or rather, were, otherkin. They considered themselves otherkin. They professed to be such almost immediately upon hearing the word from people on Livejournal. If one takes the definition of otherkin as it is commonly understood online colloquially, some Aristasians have long considered themselves otherkin of a sort, too.

They just lacked that particular terminology. Words are, after all, only coined or adopted insofar as they are needed and encountered. Initially, Aristasians seem to have never encountered a word for their own feelings of otherness; they thus coined the term intermorph. They did best to explain their experiences in their own terms. There was a lot of jokes and talk about being “alien” and “foreign” in this world, way before any mention of otherkin. This led to the concept of Aristasia Pura as a real place, from which the stories and lore of this movement were channeled.

As soon as they found a word that was more succinct and (at least slightly) more widely-understood, they adopted it. This was in the mid-to-late-2000s. Earlier than that (and yes, this, too, was during my personal involvement, on and off), the two communities tended to bump into each other occasionally, but not enough to really notice each other. In otherkin parlance, there’s talk of awakening, or realizing one feels otherkin. Perhaps the collective “awakening” of the Aristasians occurred just a bit prior to their discovery of the actual term “otherkin.”

The introduction of the term to the Aristasian community was inevitable, I expect. Given both communities share similar feelings of otherness, I honestly found it rather surprising the term wasn’t discovered and used earlier. It was discovered by the Aristasians around the time when the otherkin community had entered a period of extreme skepticism, though. If you posted about your experience of otherkinity in an otherkin-specific venue online, you would be expected to rigorously defend your conclusions about yourself. This was seen as healthy, but was, in retrospect, ridiculous posturing. Still, most otherkin, happening upon Aristasian posts, met them with this same aggressive questioning that they usually provided.

Given how controversial Aristasia was from the beginning, most of those communities concluded the posts were bizarre “cult recruitment” attempts. In actuality, I believe the Aristasian interest in the otherkin concept was quite genuine. Still, otherkin were harsh with them, if I remember, and even more so than they usually were with each other at the time. This cold and unfriendly approach to newcomers in otherkin communities has since faded, thankfully.

I firmly believe that a warmer welcome from the otherkin community would’ve benefited the Aristasians in many ways. It sounds cranky given how bonkers the otherkin concept reads to most people, I realize. It’s just that I’ve noticed something. Hanging around otherkin (or furries, too, and there is an overlap, of course) tends to quickly halt any kind of right-wing radicalization going on with a person. I’m not sure if it would’ve ultimately helped strip the (by then rather vestigial) cultish aspects, too, but it might’ve, had the otherkin engaged in understanding dialogue rather than simply attacking.

Either way, Aristasians themselves at one point went as far as to suggest the (apt) title of “femmekin” for their particular kintype. They also occupied the otherkin subdomain on Wordpress.com, oddly enough. The posts are still there. Some otherkin continue to use the term, I think, on places like Tumblr. In these cases, by “femmekin” they typically don’t mean Aristasian or “intermorph” exactly these days, but something similar - I do plan to post more about this once I’ve researched a bit more. Oh, and some otherkin using the term are non-humanoid, and have furry-like kintypes - perhaps search online for “Sai Furthe” for more on this, heh.

In other areas of the internet, people have suggested that the Aristasian discovery of otherkin as a concept was a tipping point that caused massive changes in the movement. This is untrue.The earliest mentions we get of the word "otherkin" dates to the summer of 2007, if I remember right, when the matter was mentioned on an Aristasian web forum and the aforementioned blog created.

This is more than three whole years after Operation Bridgehead (the actual tipping point). True, Bridgehead was arguably the point at which the idea of Aristasia Pura as a real place really got going. I suspect, though, that the idea was older than that, and also know that the term otherkin wasn't used prior to that summer.

Regardless of my own personal views on otherkinity and alterhumanity (I’m more than sympathetic, let me be honest here), I try to adopt a neutral tone about these matters whenever possible. One of the things that drives me up walls about portrayals of alterhumanity is that often tone is used to induce assumptions when the concept gets presented to a person, either for or against the idea. I’m hoping not to do that.

An extremely patient livestreamer once privately asked me if anyone had ever told me I was an “Exile Aristasian;” ie, a reincarnated intermorphic otherkin. I had deep feelings of otherness at the time, and arguably always have. If someone had told me that, I would’ve eaten it up. I would’ve adored the idea that any one of my Aristasian personae were real. After all, they were all quite sparkly. If you feel othered in any way, being told you’re special can feel great, even if it’s in a decidedly unhealthy ideologically-motivated context like Aristasia.

Amongst the Aristasians, though, Exiles seemed to be individuals who had both earned a certain amount of trust by supporting the dominant narrative (both in terms of the aforementioned ideology, and in terms of worldbuilding). I joked with the livestreamer that being a therian is a bit different because “well now, I can take you to a river and show you a mustelid! I can’t show you an intermorph!” That’s not the real difference, though.

In the rest of the otherkin community - and even amongst fictionfolk (a related grouping), you don’t see this impetus towards a particular ideology. Typically, it’s just “Oh, I’m a squirrel, actually. I look human, but my soul? I’m a squirrel. I was physically one before,” or something like that. In the case of fictionfolk, their identities surely influence their lives, but a sort of barrier still exists and they acknowledge they’re not living that identity here and now. This might be in part why the otherkin were so cold to the group. It’s a pity, because I think the Aristasians could’ve learned from the otherkin community in a good way.

Plurality and Personae

I want to begin by saying that I, myself, am not multiple or plural, It isn’t my purview to really speak overmuch on such matters, especially not authoritatively. I can, however, compare my experiences in Aristasia with what I do understand of those situations, having done what research (and absorbed as much ambient knowledge) that I can.

Aristasian personae (the roles we took on during “life theatre”) had almost no similarity to “alters” or “headmates” within any sort of multiple or plural identity configuration. This comparison was made by Emily Louise’s (mostly excellent) livestream on Aristasian precursor groups a while back, just briefly, as an off-hand comment. I’d also received (even before that) several contacts about this very subject, especially asking if I “lost time” or remembered what my Aristasian personae had done during all this. Some folks on Facebook (yes, I do have a small profile on there) were directly asking if a comparison could be made with plurality. I wanted to address it here, where it seems to fit most appropriately.

As far as I know, none of us (for example) “lost time” while in persona. We also didn’t usually hold conversations with our personae as some plural folk do with other selves (I do hope my terminology isn’t a butchering). I have reason to believe that a couple maids did (for example) log onto Second Life or another program in several windows (somehow…) at once to portray multiple avatars interacting in text. I also think some might’ve written letters, notes, or comments between themselves, publicly as their Aristasian personae. Both of these were rare, though, and seemed altogether different than the communication one sees in a system.

I certainly know that I myself was fully aware after slipping out of my Aristasian personae what had transpired. This was something that other Aristasians (at least in their books, like Children of the Void implied) experienced as well, so it likely wasn’t something exclusive to me. There’s a passage in that one (for example) that references a pette whose personae include both a schoolgirl and an authority figure. It mentions that one knows what the other does. There was, from what I can tell, no “lost time” or memory oddities for any of us.

Granted, as I understand it, “lost time” (though well-known) is not an easily-understood feature of being plural or multiple (unsure of correct term). It also isn’t the only feature, nor is it always present? Again, I’m researching, but I’m not an expert, nor sure about much of this. With that in mind, there’s some more I can say, but I still believe (so far) the two are not terribly comparable.

I must say, though. The feeling of being within the personae was indeed one of radical difference from my daily self. This was on a level far, far beyond your usual roleplaying game (ie, Dungeons & Dragons or Pathfinder or something). It might just be because I have less frame of reference (I joined one D&D campaign for two sessions three years ago, then quit). I can’t imagine anyone (except maybe the most pretentious D&D player ever) clutching a character sheet and (for example) referring to their characters as their “manifestations” like Miss Martindale did with her persona as Miss Tyrrell back in 1993, though.

I can, myself, understand why she used the word - it did feel like my real self in medias res; my mindset would change in a remarkable way, as would my diction and even (I’ve been told) my way of carrying myself offline when interrupted mid-chat. True, this did initially begin as a sheer roleplaying exercise, but quickly (and I mean quite quickly) slipped into something much more, that persists to this day. I enjoyed it, too, beginning when I was scarcely a teenager and had first discovered the movement; it was thrilling to bring forth myself as a schoolgirl, as a pippsie (bright, young flapper-ish type), as an aging craftsmaid or other variation.

Even now it’s something I wish I could still experience. I even briefly considered splitting the work on this site into two “halves;” one was to simply be me within an Aristasian-esque persona meant to subvert things in a funny way. I decided against it because I’m questioning if this is healthy. Either way, you may (not) be surprised to know that other online venues where I write don’t really sound like this, for example - the mere auspices of Aristasia as a concept sink me into this mindset, though I’m not quite taking on a persona.

The thing is, though? This was very clearly induced as part of the experience of being within the group initially, rather than occurring within the individual themselves. It wasn’t induced through trauma, either, so I wouldn’t call it a traumagenic dissociative experience (and would hesitate to call it dissociative at all). It was simply that identity “games” and exploration were such a fixture, so expected and accepted that, assuming enough time spent with the movement, one couldn’t help but embrace them. I credit the Aristasian lack of boundaries with their “life theatre”, as well as some of their spiritual pushes, for that. I’ve often said that Aristasia is a disturbingly-liminal space insofar as it exists in the eerie twilight between spirituality and fiction; that definitely played a role (pun not intended).

The spirituality aspect made the fiction aspect more crucial, more important, more central and more serious, and easier to take within oneself. Conversely, the fiction aspect made the spiritual aspect more alluring, and provided a strong scaffolding for ideology that would’ve otherwise struggled to gain a spiritual foothold.

The idea of different “manifestations” (to use Miss Martindale’s odd terminology) within one body facilitated both. It allowed us to live (often without acknowledging it) the ideology within the scaffolding of the fictional world, and to experience it in as many ways as we wanted. Together, all these factors lent themselves to extreme exploration of the concept of unusual ways to structure the self, whether one was plural or not.

I doubt many plural folk would count this as plural, though do correct me if I’m wrong, and it is quite possible that Aristasia did include a few plural pettes in the mix at some point. The group was very active on Livejournal, which was a haven for plurality back then, and I know the two communities bounced a bit, as did several others that were desperately intriguing to a kid like me.

They fished for otherkin; that’s well-documented, and I do recall some otherkin and adjacent sorts joining (briefly); there was a lot of overlap at the time between that and the plural community, too. This wasn’t a harmonious overlap, always. I saw a lot of conflict when a few showed up; they, like me (from the very beginning) didn’t quite “fit in” with Aristasia, despite trying really hard. I remember the otherkin (and plural folk) who did develop a passing interest in Aristasia ultimately left off it because they themselves just couldn't fit into the "game" of it. They didn't seem too fond of "life theatre" or the weird balance of restraint (and lack of it) therein. I don't blame them (in some ways) in retrospect. Still, it was a thing, and I met new people and encountered new concepts from interacting.

Years and years later (seven or eight), after I'd left the group, the Aristasian personae “games” (or exploring, “life theatre,” whatever one calls it) did ultimately make me question for a while if I might be plural, though. It was simply that I could not quite shake it entirely, hard to explain. This wasn’t, in retrospect, so much Aristasia as some of the groups that, like I said, bounced around against Aristasia and some the ideas I absorbed from them after leaving Aristasia. I tried to frame my Aristasian experiences in light of those. After some self-examination, I ultimately decided I likely wasn’t plural, nor did I fully understand what that meant, and dropped the issue.

One other (important, I think) thing, though. I’m agnostic on matters like the (potential) existence of endogenous multiple systems (ie, those without trauma, existing naturally, I suppose). This is also true of many other issues, both about that, and traumagenic multiplicity.

I simply do not know enough about the subject matter to have an informed opinion. I’m, as I’ve said, not plural myself etc, either. It is best for me to abstain from commenting on any so-called “syscourse” as they’re apparently calling it, for those reasons. I can compare my own Aristasian experiences to experiences I’ve heard and read about from plural folks, but that’s all. I welcome comments, questions, and comparative replies.

Age Games

Most sections on this site do not include content warnings. The site itself has a blanket warning that much of this topic, in all of its complexity, has the potential to disturb. This seems sufficient for most of it. In this case, though, I feel compelled to mention that this page contains a mention of the sexualization of minors. It does not mention SA, though. Keep that in mind reading forward.

This section primarily discusses age regression and related "games" in Aristasia specifically, with some references to other stuff I encountered. I, personally, do not believe all “age” games are inherently gross or creepy. It was something I engaged in (with great zeal, actually) from about a month into my online experiences with Aristasia, right up until my exodus from the group. The concept isn’t bad with proper boundaries, I tentatively suspect, but am still thinking about what form those boundaries ought take.

Nowadays, I don’t go in for that kind of game, but I’m not necessarily opposed to it. I still suspect it differs depending on the situation. Anyways, I rather enjoyed the practice of taking on younger (and, rarely, older) personae when participating in Aristasia. This was part of Aristasian “life theatre” online and (according to their websites) offline as well. Considering "life theatre" was a huge draw for me initially...

It also happened in other online spaces, which made it seem more palatable/normal to me at the time. It’s also worth noting that (as I’ve mentioned all over this site), I found Aristasia at an awfully young age (thirteen) and lied to them about my physical age initially. This might’ve played a role (pun intended) in my accepting such things out of hand.

Teenies

It was common in Aristasia-in-Virtualia (Second Life) for some of us to take on avatars that were schoolgirls, or otherwise younger than our actual age. As the page on “teenie” (teenaged) Aristasian personae from around that time says,

Teenies are teenaged personae (in Virtualia represented by teenaged avatars). This continues an Aristasian tradition that long predates Elektraspace.

In the earliest Aristasian communities in Telluria, schools were part of life and many Aristasians, regardless of physical age, had teenaged personae. The reasoning behind this was that in entering a new world, one needed to re-learn, if not from the beginning, then from something near the beginning.

There was also an idea prevalent among some that their true, innocent childhood had been stolen by the Pit and needed to be replaced.

This phenomenon is not nearly so universal in Aristasia in Elektraspace, which is why the model used is of a College rather than a girls' school.

One of the reasons for this is that we have found that multiple personae are much less common in Elektraspace. Most girls have only one persona, and since they are adult, that persona will be adult (though not necessarily that same "age" as the physical body).

Nevertheless we do find a significant minority of girls who have gravitated toward teenaged personae for a number of reasons. Some are not much older than teenaged (in some cases no older) and wish to "do the last part of childhood again" - since it is often the last part that the Pit tends to spoil most significantly.

In some cases it is because a girl - for whatever reasons - feels more comfortable and 'real' interacting with others as a child

Aristasia-Central on “Teenies” at Sai Thamë College, archived September of 2011.

Escape from Adulthood?

Here’s the part some miss, though: taking on child personae wasn’t that odd in Second Life as a whole, not just in Aristasian spaces. There were guides at the time, I remember, for making child or teen avatars and finding places to chill within the game that were fun. This wasn’t common but it wasn’t rare, either. You can read the official guide about this here, written by Linden Labs (the game’s creators) themselves.

There are a great many reasons to play a child within Second Life, and it is plenty likely that every person playing a child might have their own reasons. Here are six.

1. A way to recapture some of the spirit of youth. Much like the old Twilight Zone episode, "Kick The Can," it allows one to 'be' a child, and run and jump, and play unencumbered with the responsibilities of adulthood.
2. "Re-imagining" bad childhoods. Many SL kids have faced childhoods filled with illness or disability. Many (by no means all) were victims of sexual or other abuses as a child, and this is allowing them to "rewrite" some of those childhood experiences with much healthier ones.
3. Related to the above, many may also want to have childhoods they could not, with all the toys and goodies they may have been denied for some reason. Always wanted that Easy Bake Oven? Go buy or make it in SL. Want the big swingset, or a pony, or whatever? All yours for a few pennies.
4. For fun. It can be a fun type of character to play, allowing for a childlike innocence and whimsey to come to the forefront, and providing for many opportunities to be "silly" that might not otherwise feel comfortable in an adult avatar.
5. A few may feel more comfortable in the role of a child, for whatever reason. While some of these might fall under various "philia" subsets (adult babies, for example), not all do.
6. Some may simply enjoy the roleplaying challenge of playing a kid, which isn't always as easy as one might think.
7. Some avatars may specifically create a child avatar to "escape" from the sexual content in other areas of Second Life. This may include victims of RL child abuse or it may not.

From the Second Life wiki, on Child Avatars.

People chose to do this for different reasons, and I read articles about how it was a sort of gaming “getaway” from adulthood for some. A lot of the time it was part of some convoluted RPG where the child was an alien hybrid Chosen One spawn or whatever, I don’t even know, though - as YA Fantasy/Sci-fi Trope as possible. There’s no problem with revisiting your childhood in some sort of roleplay context - I don’t game but I have friends who regularly play younger characters (who are usually aliens or werewolf spawn something) in other contexts.

Aristasia’s take on this was a bit unique, though, as we’ll see. The melange of fiction, spirituality, reality, and roleplay that made Aristasia what it was at the time provided a structure for teenaged (and other) identities online (and apparently off). This isn’t the kind of thing you saw in your typical Second Life roleplay area, for example, and was assigned a great deal of significance on all levels.

Was it mandatory?

Over the years since the movement (or at least, its Second Life incarnation) faded, people began to assume or suggest that this had been a mandatory part of Aristasia at the time. Despite attempts to portray it as such, it really, really wasn’t. One girl who participated in Aristasian venues in Second Life wrote this in a (rather scathing) article detailing her exit from the movement (part one and two).

I am also embarrassed to mention that we "girls" were required to wear a school uniform for lectures: a rather juvenile-looking knee length number for the newer members or those who assumed teenage personae, and a proper ankle-length model for those of us who had been around longer.

Palais SL Magazine, May 2011

What the author refers to here is Sai Thamë Lay College, a sort of sorority (for lack of a better term) for Aristasians in Second Life around which lectures and events were organized. I really hate to say “I was there, this was wrong,” but… I attended some (but hardly all) events with the group at the time, and I’ve no memory of “newer members” being forced to wear a “juvenile-looking” number.

I do recall that if you touched a particular signpost at the Embassy in Second Life, you’d be gifted a free basic outfit suitable for Aristasia (which might well have been schoolgirlish - I can’t recall). This was common in many Second Life spaces with dress codes of any sort. While it hardly matters now given that she is exited this situation, it is also worth noting that I don’t actually recall her ever wearing (much) schoolgirl garb, either, but rather favoring a 1920s adult style.

So, I will say this: there was never (from what I saw and experienced) any (directly) forced age regression in Aristasia-in-Virtualia (Second Life) or otherwise online. Does that mean that everything was copacetic and fine, healthy boundaries? Not necessarily, and I’ll talk about that in a minute. First, let’s address a bigger question - the possible sexualization of minors?

Sexualizing Minors?

My major involvement occurred after “discipline” had exited the equation. The author, in another part of the article quoted above, quips that she had to “write lines” for accidentally rezzing (spawning, essentially) a hatbox during a sermon in Second Life. I don’t remember this, or similar things, ever happening. Tacitly, it’s possible it happened when I wasn’t there, but doesn’t fit with the kind of things I usually saw happening.

There also wasn’t any kind of sexual element (at least online) that I was able to see at that point. In a few cases I ran into, though - it was definitely a sexual thing in Second Life outside of Aristasia. This involved cartoon avatars that looked like actual young children.

Second Life’s owners, Linden Labs, tried to prevent this aspect, but it happened anyways. Because of course it did. Ugh. I know this because when seeking accessories for my own (chelana, Trentish) schoolgirl avvie for Aristasia, I wandered into a place obviously made for such interactions.

This was disturbing because within the game, these avatars (including my own) looked like actual children. They weren’t “adults dressed up,” but cartoon children, so the idea that people elsewhere in the game sexualized them was gross. Most of us have a visceral antipathy towards the sexualization of minors, even cartoon avatars, and with good reason - it’s evil, and we palpate that.

It was a thing, but didn’t bleed into Aristasia’s spaces in the game, where discussing sexual matters seemed totally forbidden by the time I was actively involved in Virtualia (Aristasian Second Life endeavors). I recall, at one point, someone purchased (yes, you do buy things in Second Life, with real money, after a fashion) a piano. The piano had some kind of fetish-y or sexualized pose options embedded in it, and everyone was forbidden to touch it until said coding was properly removed, for example.

Sexualizing Regression?

That said, earlier incarnations of the group (the Wildfire Club, for example) certainly did sexualize the idea of (physical, non-cartoon, human) adult ladies dressed as schoolgirls, and I do want to address that. I’m not knowledgeable about “ageplay” as a sexual “kink” or how regression works there. It’s not something I quite “get” like I can understand some other “kinks” probably work. I suppose if everyone in a scenario is consenting and actual adults, and they somehow enjoy being put in those roles during those situations, I shouldn’t judge, despite not quite understanding?

Did these earlier, more sexualized Aristasian and Aristasian precursor groups actually involve proper boundaries and consent, though? I wasn’t there physically; I have no way of knowing for sure, and anything I might say would be either hearsay or what I had gleaned from their own websites. I can’t pass judgment.

I never saw any talk of actual children in an online Aristasian context (or any, really, outside of people roleplaying as them), and there were certainly never any sexualized images of children. Sometimes a cute pink anime girl picture got posted that looked a little young-ish. Given how (well, let’s be honest) young I was at the time, I might’ve lacked the discernment to pick up on some things, but it didn’t seem like a sexualization of children, but rather, of adult women.

Within early Aristasia, though, all sexualized (often photographic) depictions I saw were of older women. It was often implied that these women took on a younger role because, insofar as they were entering the “new world” of Aristasia, they were child-like. This still, though, led to spanking and skimpy knickers. It looked rather ridiculous to me when I first saw sites like the Wildfire Club’s main page, and I skipped over it mostly (I was, again, in my early to mid-teens at the time, myself).

There were some (republished) older books by (non-Aristasian) authors that (I guess) the Wildfire Club bought the copyright for, and some of them (ie, Happy Tears) are pretty disturbing. Some of the characters in the Aristasian books could be said to have been portrayed as minors, or at least as awfully young. I didn’t see physical depictions of this, and frankly, I couldn’t make it through many of those books because the spanking aspects made them so awfully dull.

My thoughts? The earlier Aristasian sexual (or other) fetish aspect here stems (for most) not from an actual sexualization of minors but from the very act of putting of the body and mind of an adult into the childlike role. This was perhaps similar to the practice of new recruits in earlier days allegedly (again, hearsay) acting as maids or serving girls for a time, beginning as the “lowest” since they were entering a “new world.” This is portrayed in some Aristasian literature.

It seems like a way of facilitating a power dynamic taken way too far, considering much of the early writing (Children of the Void, and much of the London Embassy’s creations) expressed that this was a constant, 24/7 lifestyle for them. That’s just my guess. I have no way of knowing; I experienced no sexual coercion or advances while in Aristasia, so I can’t speak to that aspect except to speculate.

I found the group, as I’ve said before, at age thirteen, ironically when I myself was a schoolgirl (but they didn’t know that). Perhaps I wasn’t the best judge back then, which no doubt affects my perspective on it now. I grew up in the 1990s and remember the whole (kind of cliché) goth schoolgirl Halloween costume trend that Gen X went all-in for, things like that. It just didn’t faze me back then running across images on Aristasian sites with girls selling similar things, and by the time I got a little older, they’d phased out that aspect almost completely.

Trust is an Issue

The thing is…

Boundaries are an issue with this, regardless of whether it’s sexual though, aren’t they? If you’re truly regressing, truly having that experience, or at very least deeply getting “into character,” you’re putting a lot of trust in the people around you, especially if it isn’t a structured roleplay situation where things are mediated by (I guess) dice or whatever. When you’re sliding into a child state, well…

Childhood, after all, is all about trusting adults, and hoping they don’t betray us and give us trauma.

Once again, were there proper boundaries and consent in Aristasian age games? I saw sort of boundaries insofar as personae were considered almost completely separate from each other, but part of oneself. In other words, if one had a personae that was a twenty-five year old blonde, and one who was a sixteen-year-old brunette, they were not only considered separate from each other, but also different manifestations of yourself.

If, as the sixteen-year-old, you did something ridiculous, the older blonde wasn’t going to be held responsible (unless it was something really bad, I can assume, but that never happened that I saw).

This is a boundary, but is it a helpful one? It does, seemingly, encourage a person to push responsibility for what they do (in a childlike state or otherwise) onto these personae. The personae were both “manifestations” of oneself (and thus real to a degree) but also obviously something one created (deciding where the character was from in Aristasia Pura, etc).

After Operation Bridgehead, there was talk of people actually being these personae, deep down, as more than just manifestations - a persona as their whole being, or their being wholly comprised of a clutch of (Aristasian-exclusive) personae. I can’t speak to that perspective on the self - philosophers have argued about what constitutes the “self” for millennia, after all. However, when all these personae are otherworldly children (a thing that happened)…

This is where the “plenary teenie” concept entered into the equation - a “plenary teenie” was someone with only young personae, and it was often implied that this extended into offline life (possibly constantly) as well. This is a bit worrisome, you must admit, isn’t it? The idea of someone never ever having an adult life?

Once the Exile Aristasian (aka Aristasian otherkin) concept entered the picture, this received complicated justification. In case you haven’t read about otherkin and the relationship between that and Aristasia, it’s part of it. Otherkin are people who, for whatever reason, consider themselves (usually spiritually) non-human. Some of them might simply say, “Oh, I was a golden retriever in a past life,” or something similar.

In Aristasia, though, this took the form of the “Exile Aristasian” concept, where one might be an intermorphic alien reincarnated from Aristasia Pura.

In a very few cases there are "plenary teenies" (known as "pleenies") - girls who really have never developed a grown up personality. This can happen for a variety of reasons. In rare cases it may be that a teenaged personality from the Motherland has been incarnated in a body and is simply not capable of growing along with that body.

The Aristasian 'teenie', however plenary she may be, is by no means intellectually backward. Most are extremely intelligent, but she will be childlike (sometimes even pre-teen) in other respects. If she is plenary, her tastes will be largely childlike - she really will have little interest in adult things. If she is simply teenaged in Aristasia she will have such tastes and outlooks within her persona.

Aristasia-Central on “Teenies” at Sai Thamë College, archived September of 2011.

In that case, these “plenary teenies” were said to have been girls who, having left the Motherland (Aristasia Pura) at a young age, lacked the opportunity to grow up. I don’t remember many specific “pleenie teenies,” but it was a thing, and really kind of disturbing, if you think about it in the wider context of the movement.

That, I believe, was way, way, way creepier in retrospect to me than any “sexy schoolgirl” vibes. The latter seemed dull and almost average to my ears in the 2000s, when movies like Cruel Intentions had my cousins dressing like Catholics despite attending public school.

This metaphysical idea that one shouldn’t, or couldn’t, or never would grow up, or that some people just weren’t destined to? Much more potentially harmful than consensual age games, if you give it some thought. Not saying the former can’t be harmful, but… the latter scares me, personally, more, in retrospect.

People in Aristasia, as far as I experienced, were never told that they were teenies or pushed into the role - they would profess it themselves, creating those personae. Still, Aristasia would create the scaffolding for that identity, even on deeper level (ie, spiritually, as Exile Aristasians), and thus, merits some responsibility for consequences.

I simply don’t know what those consequences were for those who went too far, or if anyone did. It seems likely, though.

Maidens and Magic?

Almost every post-Bridgehead story published, online or off, by the core group of Aristasians is speculative fiction. They all feature characters with magical powers. These typically took the form of fantasy powers like you might see in (especially) a children’s anime or a superhero comic.

They didn’t resemble IRL occult practices - many of which I’ve studied. In Goldenhead the protagonist becomes an anime schoolgirl with powers resembling Sailor Moon or Pretty Cure. In The Silver Vixen, well, it’s much more science fiction, involving spaceships and an “aethyr-crease.” This was all very distinct from anything like Wicca or ceremonial magic I’d seen in (for example) a Llewellyn or Weiser Publications book; it was clearly fantasy magic.

Aristasia and related movements seemed to have always had a complicated relationship with IRL occult practices (magic, Tarot, etc) though. Initially, there are documents which show Lux Madriana and the Silver Sisterhood selling courses in magic, teaching about faeries and spells, etc. This correspondence course taught magic, apparently. Later anecdotes describe teachings about faeries in the mid-1990s alongside their Romantia endeavors. This seems to have waned after a while.

I, within the company of Aristasians, felt actively discouraged from pursuing occult practices beyond simple devotions (lighting candles in prayer, etc). Nobody said “no, don’t do that,” but there was a tense silence at times. At one point, when I mentioned that I did fully intend to study magic, Tarot, etc, I was told by another pette to “please promise to only learn that which is sound.” By sound she meant wholesome, racinated, and good, of course, and they seemed skeptical that magic could be such, at least the kind I was pursuing.

It is true that the Aristasians continually seemed to portray ceremonial magic (or phenagulism, to use the Rahiralain term) in a negative light, with spellcasters and magicians as villains in their stories, too. We saw this in the video game, and also in Goldenhead. In the latter, the protagonists use fantasy-style magic; the villains are phenagulists or ceremonial magicians.

It’s not uncommon - plenty of people get spooked or scoff at the idea, I suppose, particularly if it’s magic of a ritual sort involving a wicked secret society. Kind of an ironic hangup, though, considering how Aristasia operated, isn’t it? It wasn’t formal but it did often feel like an occult secret society in an uneasy way.

By the time I showed up, I ended up messaging with someone on AOL (yes, when AOL was an ISP, if I remember right), a man. I had, at that point, heard the phrase Lux Madriana passed around, but wasn’t sure what it referenced beyond just an earlier incarnation of Déanism outside of Aristasia. I asked him about it, since he was male (thus not Aristasian) and obviously knew something about Déa.

He said the strangest things, and sent me links to a couple spurious sites that seemed equally ridiculous. His story of the Madrians stuck with their own party line about being a hidden matriarchal tradition within the British Isles, stretching back centuries if not further. Later, he explained that the remaining Madrians were being wiped out by “occult warfare.”

One site noted (and I do remember this phrasing) that it “sounded cranky,” but insisted it was a “very real thing.” The site explained that there was a separate, extremely hostile and patriarchal tradition attacking them. This, it said, caused the remaining Madrians to “act irrationally,” and had destroyed what remained of Lux Madriana. If I could find the site archived, I’d certainly link it.

Wow, that was weird to read. Despite my deep interest and belief in the occult, I didn’t believe much of the story, but it was interesting. Let’s just say I was fairly certain the person messaging me (and the website he sent me) was spewing nonsense. I may be an occultist, but some things just sound ridiculous, even at age fourteen-ish.

The disappearance of Lux Madriana is due to occult warfare. This sounds cranky but it's very real. There is a rival hereditary tradition which is patriarchal and extremely degenerate and ruthless. It is a very large, international organisation and they use magic to suppress the return to matriarchy. All Madrians are subject to extreme magical pressure which affects the way their minds work. All the decisions they make are influenced by this pressure which makes their decisions irrational.

A History of Aristasia-in-Telluria, archived 2013 and not very accurate, clearly…

I recall him linking me to an (all text, no images or real HTML) document supposedly supporting this claim. I am unable to find it now. I did, however, find it quoted here. Strangely, I now see that it mentions the tradition being “hereditary,” which does not track with Thelema, the Golden Dawn, or any other 20th century occult movement from that milieu.

References to “international organizations” actually disturb quite a bit, drawing to mind images of conspiracy theories about “the Cabal” and ultimately, antisemitism. Given the existing associations of the Madrians, this is something to consider. Terms like “degenerate” tend to (today) suggest the same, though they might not have had exactly the same connotations in the late 1990s.

In February of 2024, I came across a snippet of a letter on a rambling Livejournal post, suggesting somewhat extensive correspondence (read: a flame war) between the Madrians and some Thelemites, who are, of course ceremonial magicians. They also tend to make a huge deal out of Baphomet, something Mr. Occult Warfare on America Online did mention.. At least, they did when I was part of the Aleister Crowley fandom twelve years later.

As the Big Questions (what is to be done) germinate the Aristasian ultra-telluric rhodovision screens start pinging up a storm as a few of the very small number of people with a window on this hidden world (jardin clos) get a bee up their bonnet on "the problem of Crowley." Usually in these situations I keep my head down but this one is hilarious in context of other discussions. Alan Moore. Fashion Beauty, Fashion Beast. What late installments of Extraordinary Gentlemen tell us about the ends to which he applies his apparatus -- what he wants -- and what he rejects. These are not empty topics beyond our fannish ken but real matters of tactics and taste. Nemo versus the moonchild politics that project an Ayesha. Brian Jones versus Turner. P.L. Travers versus J.K. Rowling. North versus South.

“Bombasticus” on Livejournal, circa February 2017.

If you can’t tell from the above Livejournal, uhh, commentary (you can’t, probably), the topic was the oversexualization and treatment of women within Thelema, at least from a Madrian perspective. I’m not entirely sure, but this might’ve inspired Mr. Occult Warfare’s claim’s - after a long game of telephone whispers and weird people speculating, passing things around for two decades.

Crowley's argument, briefly, was to reject all sexual morality as a "superstition". and to declare that woman should realise herself as a primarily sexual being, whose "archetype" is the Great Whore.

Sister Angelina, presumably, from the Madrian Literature Circle, mid-1980s (?)

So much of Aristasia, particularly the precursors, was awful. Here, though, Soror Angelina is entirely on point, and I say that as someone who was deeply involved in Thelema for many years. Sister Angelina seems, in my estimation, to have an excellent grasp of Crowley's problems and why Thelema isn’t friendly to femininity in any form. Still, today, it is treated as a progressive occult movement on social media (up to a point), and plenty fall for that. I doubt, given the group’s history, that the Madrian Literature Circle took Crowley to task for his own fascist leanings, though…

No matter how the Aristasians felt about Thelemites, the Golden Dawn, or the New Age movement (how groosh!), it hardly mattered. Indeed, too much fussing about that would’ve been rather hypocritical! It became utterly apparent that a great deal of their spirituality, especially the Filianic and Janite traditions, drew heavily from those earlier systems. This was something you wouldn’t have ever seen admitted, of course, but it was true. Granted, this can be difficult to recognize if you’ve not already marinated yourself in occultism, but it’s undeniably there.

When I went to my university, I met a gentleman (a chappy-chap, as Aristasians called them - a man who preferred men) at a bookshop. He was around my age. He offered to teach me the basics of witchcraft, and was very knowledgeable. Sounds sketchy, right? Decent fellow, actually, and we’re still good acquaintances to this day. I studied with him for a while, and one thing? He found it surprising that I knew much of the system of planetary magic, correspondences, and such, yet under different names - those of the Janyati and others provided by Aristasia. Y’see, they had renamed things, and feminized them.

This page from 2008 gives an essay (quite short for an Aristasian piece) about the Janyati (planetary angels) of Aristasian religion. The article makes the usual claims about matriarchal prehistory even in our world, let alone Aristasia Pura, and describes the symbolism of the planets as a central feature of metaphysics prior to the 17th century. You find this table describing the symbolism of the angels.

You may notice that this lists the Tellurian (earthly, IRL) planetary equivalent of the angel in question, as well as their Ancient Greek equivalent (feminine, anyways).

The rest of the correspondences are exactly those taught in (some, though admittedly not all) mystery schools of the recent Western Traditions (like the Golden Dawn). They’re also a common feature of “DIY” magical operations involving the planets and planetary devotions. Below is just one more recent example…

Compare that to the Aristasian conception of Sai Thamë the Planetary Angel associated with Jupiter as the “Tellurian equivalent,” and you can see that it is much the same.

In other words, much of what describes the Janyati (for example) comes from existing occult sources that most competent researchers in that area would already know about. These include, primarily, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, but also the Fellowship of Isis (especially, it seems like), and yes, even Thelema at times.

Oddly, some of these earlier 20th-century occult groups heavily appropriated or involved Kabbalah, a Jewish occult tradition. You had people like Israel Regardie who taught it. Crowley himself did, or tried to, and it was a huge facet of the Golden Dawn curriculum. It remains a popular topic of occult books today, with huge sections in occult bookstores, a lot of them written by Thelemites.

I’ve read a bit of the newer, 20th century (Hermetic) material about it. I can definitely say that much of Aristasia’s religion fits (at least) with Hermetic depictions of the lower parts of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. That’s Hermetic, though. Not Jewish - the two are distinct, and the former is rather appropriated and different, I’m told. I wouldn’t know if Jewish Kabbalah was referenced here; couldn’t really recognize it.

It’s very possible the later, newer Aristasians did not know, nor care, that their symbol-set had passed from places like the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The same is very much true of modern eclectic Wicca, yet few Neowiccans really mind or give it much research, sadly.

It is also possible that the Madrians specifically would have argued that this intricate ecosystem of symbolism and meaning was inherent in nature, having been (re)discovered by the Golden Dawn, and thus wasn’t something beholden to that particular Order itself. This perennial view of symbol-sets is rather common in occultism. We see some of this in the article on the Janyati, when they claim this was all common knowledge prior to rationalism.

It’s not odd to, for example, hear people in pagan communities argue that all religions and spiritual systems are, at base, the same, and their symbols easily interchangeable with the same meanings and designations. If you’re paying attention to the world around you and other cultures, you know that isn’t true, but it sounds nice and friendly, doesn’t it? C’est la vie.

It’s also an idea that people like Aleister Crowley, many of his precursors and direct successors, tapped into to justify treating occult practices and magic as a cultural buffet. The Aristasians definitely did that with spirituality, but not magic. As I explained earlier, though, I got the “vibe” from the Aristasians the magic, or at least the ceremonial sort, was to be somewhat discouraged or at very least approached with immense caution.

It felt weird, as someone who (also) led a (complicated) offline life dripping in occultism. Here, we had a complete apparatus, an entire symbol-set of femininity that could be, I reasoned (at the time) wielded magically. Yet it wasn’t a facet of their teachings. What a pity, reasoned the Carroll-reading burgeoning chaos mage (ugh)…