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spn-romantica · 3 years

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So I watched SPN for years, right up until the end of S11, when they brought back Mary. I heard that S15 would be the last season, and I was like ‘oh ok I’ll rewatch (for like the 8th time) and finish SPN then’ BUT THEN 15x18 happened and I was violently pulled back into the SPN fandom. I still haven’t caught up fully watching yet, but I’ve read so much discourse now...and I have thoughts. Hypotheses currently. I’ll wait to finish the whole show for real to call any of this theories but, I wanted to record my thoughts.

They’re about Chuck. As a villain. Which weirds me out. As an antagonist? Sure. As evil? No. Can’t envision it. I just finished my rewatch of S5 and, damn, but if Chuck is the ultimate villain, S5 reads very differently. :0

But I recently saw a post comparing Dean’s reaction in 1x18 (I believe) to his in 10x05 (for sure) about when someone mentions his mother’s death. In 1x18, it’s Sam when they were children and Dean gets angry. In 10x05, it’s a group of high school girls and Dean just bops his head along to the song. The post was framing it as 10x05 not understanding Dean’s thoughts about his mother, but I think that both episodes understand Dean. When Dean is a child, the trauma over his mother’s murder is still fresh. By 10x05, the event is 70 years in the past. Of course it still affects Dean. Of course. You never really get over something like that. But I’d argue that after 70 years, Dean has moved through the stages of grief to acceptance. It still hurts, but like an old ache, not a fresh, still-bleeding wound.

Interestingly, 10x05 is when we see Chuck, after a long absence. He’s watching the play, probably happy that someone loves his work enough to even make a musical, but he is also watching the Winchesters. The actual episodes of the show, aka the books Chuck writes, are what Chuck knows/cares about regarding the Winchesters. Despite being God, I’d argue he doesn’t pay attention to every second and all the little minutia of the boys’ lives. So, here in 10x05, we have confirmation that Chuck is around to see that Dean has healed from his mother’s death.

Later, in S11, Dean acts as therapist/life counsellor to Chuck/God, regarding Amara and Lucifer. And it works! Dean teaches God about family and about healing. Why does God listen to Dean Winchester, a random human? Perhaps it is because of S1-5. Perhaps it is because Dean and Sam were part of God’s test, as God himself describes it in 5x22.

What was the test? Was it God’s experiment about choice and free will? About freedom vs peace? Or, perhaps, was God trying to understand sibling relationships? He and Amara are two faces of the same coin. They are siblings, but with very different outlooks and it caused a rift between them, caused Chuck to seal Amara away before she could destroy his creations. Chuck regretted this, but saw it as a necessary betrayal. But then, some time later, Chuck’s angelic children experience their own betrayal and sibling rift. Lucifer tries to turn the angels against God, rebel and reject God. He makes demons, for sure, and maybe even Hell. But why? God figures that Lucifer was maybe jealous of the new baby (humans) like others in the show postulates. Or maybe Lucifer had beef specifically with Michael, because humans are little more than amoebas from an angelic perspective. Aside from Castiel, Anna and a handful of other angels, angels consistently view humans as humans might view dust mites. Maybe humans were the cause of the rift between Michael and Lucifer, but it was Michael and Lucifer’s relationship that needed fixing in the end, regardless.

So God is left with the sad conclusion that maybe close siblings will inevitably betray each other and be unable to forgive and heal. He wants to heal with Amara. But he also wants Michael and Lucifer to be able to heal. (It doesn’t occur to God that maybe Lucifer’s problem was never with humanity or Michael; it was with God.)

So God has research to do, to see if it’s possible for siblings to experience such deep betrayal and still heal. He turns to his little hairless apes, the only sentient species on Earth with potential to parallel the angels. He starts testing siblings. Cain and Abel are first up. Needless to say, but the betrayal was too strong and left no room for healing. But on down the line of Cain, God continues testing. Eventually, we come to Sam and Dean.

God has scheduled Michael and Lucifer’s family counselling session for 2010. All the data up to this point says it can only end badly. Maybe it’ll half-kill the Earth, but it’s finally time for Michael and Lucifer to meet and for one of them to die. God isn’t happy about this conclusion, but it’s what the data says. So, finally, the last test subjects, the last in the line who will be the vessels for Michael and Lucifer’s showdown, arrive. Sam and Dean Winchester are to be the last sibling test. The conclusion seems foregone at this point, but there is no point in cancelling the last bit of the test after so long, so it continues. God watches. And Sam and Dean surprise God. Siblings after siblings had failed for millennia to heal. Betrayals too strong, healing too little, too late. But Sam and Dean. no matter how badly they hurt each other, find a way to come back together and heal. They don’t give up on each other, despite millennia of data to the contrary. Still, the angels and demons push and push at Sam and Dean until their rift is as wide and as deep as Michael and Lucifer’s, as God’s and Amara’s (in late S4). It seems, despite the brothers’ best efforts earlier on, it’s all for naught.

But there is a further element of randomness, something God couldn’t foresee. Castiel. God hasn’t had occasion for romantic love in his own experience, so he is entirely blind to what choices Castiel is likely to make. He provides an element of randomness to the experiment, an essential part that gives Dean the ultimate chance to go back to Sam and begin to heal (4x22).

Throughout S5, Sam and Dean heal. There is hurt, still, of course, but they love each other and forgive each other. By 5x22, they’ve surprised everyone. Even the angels have given up on turning them against each other, and have shrugged and settled for using Nick and Adam as the vessels for the showdown. Sam and Dean passed their test. They were siblings who betrayed each other and healed from it. God reconsiders how family counselling will go with Michael and Lucifer. He figured it would be the Apocalypse, the end of the problems between Michael and Lucifer, as one of them dies, as had always happened before. But, Sam and Dean showed God, that though it is rare, it is possible to heal. So God gives Sam and Dean an out. He gives Sam the strength to seize back control from Lucifer, should things go south.

Finally, the showdown arrives. Michael and Lucifer meet. They talk things out. To God’s surprise, Lucifer reveals that he never had a problem with Michael. He had forgiven Michael long ago. But Michael couldn’t forgive Lucifer. He had to be a ‘good son’ and do what he thought God wanted him to do. But Michael didn’t realise, that God doesn’t give orders. Free will all the way, baby! But the whole thing comes as a surprise. Apparently, all this time, the problem relationship wasn’t siblings, it was parents.

Oops.

Good thing God had a back-up plan.

Sam throws himself and Lucifer (and Michael and Adam) into the Cage. Michael and Lucifer have an eternity to figure things out between each other now. But that’s beside the point. The point is, now, that God has to start testing all over again. Not how to fix sibling relationships, but how to fix parent-child relationships.

God restores Castiel, perhaps for a few reasons because God exists outside of time, but originally it may have been just for one. He likes Castiel. He is impressed that Castiel invented free will for himself, broke free of angelic programming (multiple times over), and did it all for love. It’s novel. It’s interesting. God might even think it’s sweet. But God has had time later, and thought about it, and he has a plan. And Castiel is essential.

But Dean Winchester is the key.

Sam and Dean’s relationship with their own father has been strained, but both boys find a way to forgive John his flaws and failings, and love him. Whenever they do get a chance to see him again, post his death, they don’t hate him. They’ve healed. John’s relationship with Sam and Dean is one point of data, Abraham and Isaac another. There are many data points that God can reflect back on and consider.

But as S6 through S10 roll on, God watches Sam and Dean and Castiel. He even watches Crowley and Rowena for another data point. Dean is his main focus, however. (This is a little meta, but as the story focuses more on Dean than Sam post S5, it ties in. Prior to S6, both Sam and Dean were essential - the sibling test. Now, post S5, the parent test, Dean is the most essential. Of course, Sam and Castiel are important too. But Dean is key.)

Dean is a good father. He was a good father to Sam, even when he was only 6 years old himself. He was a good father to Ben. He was willing to die for Bobby John. He’s always good with kids. Not only that, but Dean is blunt enough, brave enough, and crazy enough to tell God to God’s face what he thinks. God needs Dean’s advice, his perspective and opinion on family relationships, but he also needs to see what Dean would do if he were in God’s shoes.

[Edit (1/04/21): After seeing Michael and Lucifer (mostly) heal, and after seeing Sam and Dean heal their relationship, God finally has hope for him and Amara. So God logically wants to retrieve Amara from her prison. But how? Well, he could just wander on up to Cain and do it himself, but what would Amara say? “So I see you’ve come crawling back, eh, Chucky?” She wouldn’t be impressed with God. She wouldn’t understand, because she’s hopeless too. SO how to give her hope? How to make her see that she and God can be okay again? Why, stick her near Dean Winchester, of course! So God sets things up for Dean to get and lose the Mark of Cain, thereby ensuring that Amara will feel a connection to Dean and stick around him/keep him alive long enough for Dean to work his life-coach magic.]

In S11, God and Amara heal their relationship because of the hope Sam and Dean gave God, and also the direct advice Dean gives God. God and Lucifer, not so much.

God needs more data. He needs to see what Dean would do. In comes Castiel’s relevance. God sets things up so that Lucifer can have a son. A nephil. Jack. And God points Castiel in Jack’s direction, trusting Castiel’s ability for unconditional love to keep Jack alive long enough for the experiment. Castiel becomes Jack’s father. But Castiel will never betray Jack, the way God betrayed Lucifer. And, besides, Castiel isn’t the target of this experiment. But it is Castiel’s relationship with Dean Winchester that provides the link needed to get the experiment rolling.

Because Jack is Castiel’s son, he is therefore Sam and Dean’s nephew. Except, God has been watching Castiel and Dean. And, frankly, their romantic love for each other is so obvious even God cannot miss it. Through Castiel, Dean sees Jack as his son too. He loves Jack, exactly like a son. In this way, Dean parallels God, and Jack parallels Lucifer.

But God knows Dean would not easily turn on any child, let alone his own child. So God had a plan for that too. One that Amara helped him with.

They brought back Mary Winchester.

Mary is the one person in existence whose loss would hurt Dean enough to spur him to action. So, she was brought back to die. It was a matter of only a few years of gentle prodding to get everything in position. Jack causes Mary’s death. Dean is faced with a horrible decision. If Jack can kill Mary, what’s to say that Sam and Castiel wouldn’t be next? Mary’s death is like everything beginning all over again for Dean as well. Her first death set off a chain reaction, a series of unfortunate events that spanned decades and nearly caused the ruination of not only Dean’s life, but Sam’s and John’s and even the world. That scar, which had healed as well as it could after 70 years, that God saw was healed in 10x05, has been violently opened up again. It’s the only thing that could force Dean’s hand, that could get him to betray Jack and try to kill him. If Jack had killed Sam or Castiel, it wouldn’t have had the same effect. Both Sam and Castiel had died and come back so many times, and while it would hurt Dean and make him doubt Jack, their deaths would be a sacrifice that Dean would feel obligated to respect, to give Jack a second chance like they would both want. (And God has been laying the groundwork for Dean, convincing him that Jack is evil, will be evil like Lucifer, can’t be allowed to live. All things God has thought about Lucifer over time. Was Lucifer inherently evil? Was their rift inevitable?)

So, here it is. The big test. Will Dean kill Jack? Will he betray Jack and cause an unhealable rift? Or will he find a way to heal, like he did with Sam against all the odds?

And, once again, Dean impresses God. He refuses to kill Jack.

But now we’re in the endgame. Sam, Dean and Castiel are aware that Jack’s life was only on the line because of God. It’s not something they can forgive, or understand. They’re all God’s guinea pigs, and while he loves his guinea pigs, he knows he’s hurt them in the name of science, of knowledge. or healing, and God can’t undo what he’s done. Free will is linear, after all. So it is time for the Winchesters, Castiel and Jack included, to be done with God. God is done with them, too. It’s time for them to be free and at peace. The experiments are done. God has decided not to kill Lucifer. He has decided to try to heal. He can get Lucifer out of the Empty and talk and try to fix things. He has forever to fix things, now that he knows he can. (The last element of this, Jack forgiving Dean for trying to kill him, is something I have limited knowledge of, but I am under the impression happens so... To be added in the edit once I finish the series.)

But the only way the Winchesters will be able to rest, is if they think God, the last and greatest villain, is out of the way. They know they’ve been manipulated their whole lives, first towards the sibling experiment and now the parent experiment, so they need to think God is gone so they can feel secure in their free will once more. Truthfully, God never took their free will. He set them up in situations, maybe even gave a bio-chemical nudge of anger (Dean) or attraction (Sam and Eileen) every now and then. But the choices were always theirs. Still, God knows they won’t see it that way. So he sets things up so that they can defeat him.

He lets them win. He wants them to win. They cannot defeat God, after all. It’s not God’s time, and Death is the only one who can claim God in the end, as the two embrace as friends and walk to the next existence. But the Winchesters need this, and so God allows it. A last gift, to the beings who have been such help, hope and inspiration to him.

With an eye for an eventual S16, 15x20 is written to be ‘an ending’ but also one that could easily be reframed as a bad dream.

For example...

Unfortunately, after Jack, suped up on a extra Grace God lent him, restores the Earth and expends all the Grace (”giving up the mantle of God so that their is no God, no plans, only Free Will”), and Dean, Sam and Jack head back to the Bunker to regroup and gather the ingredients to do the spell to rescue Castiel from the Empty, they’re jumped by monsters who are angry with how much God has fucked with them on behalf of the Winchesters. 15x20 is all a djinn dream Dean is trapped in.

16x01 is Dean waking himself up from the djinn dream, Sam and Jack escaping their own monsters, and then the end of 16x01 is Dean saying something about waking Castiel up from his own dreams in the Empty. The rest of S16 sees the boys save Castiel, reunite with Eileen, start a monster-hunting Bobby Singer/Men of Letters-esque organisation, Dean and Castiel getting together and getting married on Valentine’s Day, Jack getting to live a normal life, going to school, making friends, etc.

If their is no S16 ever (which would be criminal), then 15x20 makes no sense, unless it is plainly a recount of an old, hopeless ending written by God. However you spin it, 15x20 is not the way it seems (like owls).

All things being said, God is an antagonist, but he’s not evil. He’s an asshole, sure, but he never once worked against the Winchesters, never bet against them, never tried to erase or end them. He wanted them to win. He wanted to see the fruits of free will be love, second chances, hope, forgiveness, healing, and happiness, not just betrayal, pain, selfishness, jealousy, disappointment, and hopelessness.

Why is the ending he shows Becky ‘hopeless’? Because God is. He has spent his long existence losing his most loved family members. Amara, Lucifer. How can things end well for God, when they can’t even end well for humans? But Sam and Dean defy the script, again and again. They surprise God, defying the statistics, defying the hypotheses, throwing the experiment into disarray. Giving God hope. Sam and Dean were okay. Dean and Jack were okay. If God had a romantic love, he would find hope from Dean and Castiel being okay. But when God wrote the book he showed Becky, he was writing what he thought would happen. In the end, surely, not even Dean can be enough to hold Sam and Cas and Jack together. But in the end, as we see, as God sees, he is proven wrong and he’s happy to be wrong. He’s hopeful. And he can leave Dean, Sam, Castiel and Jack, and all the angels and all the humans, to rule the Earth and the Heavens. He doesn’t need to learn anything more from them, so he heads to the Empty, with Amara, with Lucifer, with Death (Billie or not, Death is there for God in the end), and they can all depart for a better existence of their own.

If you read all of this, thanks! I eagerly anticipate watching the remaining 10 seasons so I can come back and edit the heck outta this, but until then, if y’all have any thoughts, I’d be interested to hear them~

TLDR: God is a morally bankrupt scientist and the Winchesters are his guinea pigs, but he’s not evil and he does love his guinea pigs, even if he could really treat them nicer.

#supernatural #spn #dean winchester #sam winchester #jack kline #castiel #god #chuck #amara #lucifer #mary winchester #destiel #deancas #this is what i get for living on spn tumblr in a post s15 world while rewatching s5 and having memories ranging from hq to 8bit about s1-s11 #be kind i haven't finished my rewatch/finished the show so i probably have stuff wrong #what if god isn't evil just has no inherent moral compass because he has to teach himself everything #and he's taken to using the winchesters as his guinea pigs/life counsellors

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incarnateirony · 4 years

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S15 Remaster: Grace, Souls, Conversion; Effects of the Fall; The Journey of Man; Self-Godhood and Free Will.

Alright, so over in another thread (x) @curioussubjects evoked an interesting take about the effects of the fall vs grace/souls and the meaning of the two, and I remembered having an old post that was a bit of a mess from early S13 where I applied Qabbalistic concepts to SPN not long before the actual... Qabbalistic and Hermetic elements started manifesting (The Shadow, the Empty/Ain Soph, etc) and before I pretty much started flipping theological shit.

The other thread was already becoming titanic with a hodge podge of other philosophical musings between users (I think @winchestersingerautorepair and @thecoffeebrain-blog are still pending to add their additions to it once life clears them), so we sort of mutually agreed to save this discourse for another thread while I took some time to remaster and update the old talking points.

It's a fundamental point that is generally vaguely brushed over, or often has modern concepts plugged into it in streamlined media form rather than exploration: What makes a soul, what makes existence, what makes meaning in our lives.

This, in fact, is the fundamental question and exploration *of* the soul, which Dabb's SPN seems to be tackling fairly directly.

So let's explore the differences and transitional conversions of grace and soul as we've witnessed in SPN. I'll be starting with my take, but of course, as all philosophical discussions go, this is best a conversation of shared concepts.

Also uh, this post was kinda on-request but is literally ridonculously long. Fuck Andrew Dabb for being the only person on the face of the goddamn planet that can make me write infinite words about esoteric philosophy about a TV show.

So this conversation gets a bit difficult to even know where to begin. I'm going to notch a few notes for everybody to keep in mind: Season 6: Death can not destroy souls. Souls are the most powerful known force in the universe, and he who has the most Is Become God. Season 13: Only god can create new angels, they are the biological definition of an asexually reproductive species (as opposed to sexual orientation identity) -- they are unable to create among themselves, and must be created by a supreme force in command of the grace that creates them. This will passively brush over the oft-discussed topic of angel sexuality as well, but that is far from the core point. Season 14: God calls souls "complicated" to handwave away making new ones. Season 15: Yet again, Belphegor tried to consume souls to become a great power, reflecting S6/7 Castiel's arc.

Now that I've sort of dropped those as a lead-in of applicable concepts, I'd like to move forward.

Now as per my S13 listing, we've all seen this fandom turn over and try to apply human sexuality and identity labels to angels over and over again and, while I understand that and mean no offense to that in general, I feel like approaching it from that angle of the human perspective and lens makes a great deal of the substantiative qualities of SPN's discussion of the human soul vanish into the aether. How are these things related? Let's talk!

Sex isn’t the only part of this discussion. As they are wavelength lifeforms, rather than biological, they aren’t really dependent on biological functions. Many of their native elements pass to their vessels: They don’t eat, sleep, or have general body functions… normally.

Their senses are all sorts of different, too. They see in the astral, they taste and smell in molecular compounds, and especially early-vessel-claiming, they seem to have next to no actual pain response. It’s like, well, some giant wave form stuffed in a meat sack they use like a marionette more than having genuine attachment to. Early on angels could waltz through gunfire without flinching and take a knife to the chest with a very bland look of, “Really?”

When it comes to discussing angels and grace, I'm going to pull some sections from the linked post at the start of this:

We know the biblical concept that all things are made by grace; we know Chuck controls his fake construct, but not the free will of the human soul. Consider Gabriel’s constructed worlds where he can manipulate the fake people inside it and snap them away in veils of blue, they’re just pieces of a machine. “I’m the cage.” The human body is part of the sandbox, but the soul is something beyond it.

If angels are living aspects of grace, wavelengths of celestial intent for Chuck’s machinations, the programs that keep the matrix in order – and fallen angels are the rogue programs – they’re still relatively connected to being just… an animated, if intelligent rock or any other piece of the universe. To use more Matrix terms: Just more lines of code. But Castiel’s break in that was contact with his profound bond with Dean that left a mark on him, a brand, just like Balthazar’s soul claims. This tie was powerful enough to be stronger than even Amara’s connection to Dean, for example.

The human soul is the essence of the one true good, realistically – The One Thing that exists, truly, by which all other things come, the Prima Materia – “What Jack did wasn’t evil, it was the absence of good.” – this is actually a hermetic concept but that’s a whole other bag of words, that’s how I quoted that line before the episode aired from the title alone but MOVING ON

If we look at Eileen for example, her ghost is still deaf. Her body/cage/vessel in life never introduced her consciousness, her humanity, to the tactile sense of sound as it exists within Chuck’s sandbox, ergo her spirit doesn’t know it. But it is the soul, like the sleeper, seeking the meaning of its existence and where it is home that commands the body, and leaves the body, and ends up in chuck’s other matrixes of control like heaven and hell that keep people distracted, keep humans from returning to the primordial man that rivals or maybe even betters God.

That all said, human Cas for example suddenly had the full awareness of experience, rather than an autonomous sentient part of the universe chained to divine intent, free or not; that freedom and liberty came by way of the human soul. (Per metatron, Season 8 finale, “When you die and your soul comes to heaven,”) But with his tie to Dean, and humanity, and a soul his hands laid on, the extraction of his grace also left… but what? A soul born of Dean, really.

Whenever his grace came back, that universal power and awareness, he lost those senses, but he didn’t lose many of the attributes that came with. In fact he pined for them.

Also if we go Jungian with the inky man/shadow as the primordial man or spirit of man, Anthropos, while it didn’t reflect Lucifer, Billie, or soulless Jack it reflected Castiel.

I’ve held the theory that Castiel still has a soul like the nucleus of an egg buried beneath a titanic presence of universal power.

I’d also further endorse this by pointing out while metatron cited Cas having a soul in the S8 finale, when Jack lost his, neither Dean nor Cas thought Cas could empathize as well as Sam could.

In example, Castiel is the only one the Shadow reflected, not Billie, not Soulless Jack, not Lucifer, just Castiel; I’ve even gone so far as to speculate that the smiley attempt at communication was the sort of subconscious borg having the essence of Jack’s soul trying to communicate with his spirit/mind otherwise alert based on consumed grace in the Empty. Speculation, yes, but… potentially loudly resonant.

The journey of man to self-godhood is a complex and tangled affair, traveling through facets of the self represented by a wide array of *ideas* we have begun to face in the show (including color schemes Dabb has actively employed)

If you venture into my shorthand visual post about The Shadow, Anima, Animus, and the Self (x) you'll find how the show has chosen to address this. Similarly, the masculine and feminine paths of universal progenation would be worth a cursory read (x).

Similarly, @winchestersingerautorepair recently sent me a chart from a 1973 book titled "The Colors of Love" discussing Hellenistic use of color in association (which, minding alchemy's growth path through time, is hugely relevant). As Maeve said, "John Allen Lee is the mvp by the way. Hes at the crossroads of psychology and LGBT concepts of love and sexuality, and has a fascinating career and life story."

Before I fully locked on to just how loud Dabb was being in his use of alchemy rather than casually tapping on it, you may remember a series of color metas I built specifically on these very colors (and, let's face it, black light doesn't exist, but blue does, and has similar psychological associations). Click this (x) to go to my color metas on tumblr regarding Optimism, which follows this path. Unfortunately my Nihilism one is either untagged or I only posted it on Pillowfort. But you’ll take note I just sort of avoided/dodged/ignored established fanon color meta in favor of other stuff, just a heads up there if you’re expecting me to follow anyone else’s pre-existing fanon -- it ain’t there.

This is all an aside to the actual question of *souls*, but an important framework to how Dabb is choosing to explore the journey of the soul through its many aspects of Being.

To defer back to what I quoted from my other post about Gabriel's universes: What makes humanity different from the moving bodies performing functions of controlled story, rather than guided elements, inside Gabriel's world? If we were to, say, drift into Doctor Sexyverse, or Cop Proceduralverse, nobody seemed to flinch or even be aware of Sam and Dean breaking the script, they continued on their own paths until Sam and Dean "played their parts". But what made Sam and Dean *different* from them?

Explaining freedom to angels is "a bit like teaching poetry to a fish," said Castiel, now bound to humanity since laying his hands on the human soul in hell that, even the S8 DVD commentary mentions, is how he has come to know, love and, as they say, be "enamored with" humanity. We have seen it now-- blank stares of confusion from breaking their course of action, their function. Their predesigned purpose that they were wavelengths of intent for within the machine. They aren't all so different from Gabriel's creations in the end, with Doctor Sexy's Nurses being not too unlike angels to Chuck. They are there for a path and a reason, and should they be somehow interrupted from that function, they seem to lose all purpose.

To convert this to another method of understanding than "matrix code", in case that isn't sinking in with anyone, think of angels as forces of nature. The hurricane means no malice, it simply exists as a function of or even result of universal laws, and often evokes great rebalancing effects that change the course of history for a huge amount of humans and other creatures that it's basically oblivious to. The hurricane does not understand your feelings much less care about them. It is here to do what it does until it is done with what it does. This very concept is why so many ancient gods are primitive archetypes of natural forces.

If we cease trying to box angels into human perceptions for the want to identify with them in such a representation-light landscape, the field opens up to something infinitely more complicated. Such as: what makes Castiel so different? I've already addressed that, of course, in this post, but let's pitch that as a conversational hook again.

"You want to know why we're meant to stay away from those humans? It's not because we're a danger to them. It's because they're a danger to us."

Now BECAUSE sexuality is the angle this fandom has heavily thrown its discussion chips into beyond the other senses, I'm going to move forward into that topical field:

Anna, talking to Dean, lists a long flurry of reasons to become human, among which sex was stapled. In later seasons, Cas comes up with a different list, but it’s more reflective of his emotive view of humanity, and doesn’t include the sex. Either way, it actually leaves interesting take on the human soul’s function (which is also a silent part of something I’ll get to later** ) as per the trinity of mind-soul-body sometimes called “The Threefold Nature of Man” in a lot of classic mysticism. **

So why would Anna include sex in the list if others can enjoy it? There’s various reasons of taking this into consideration, and I consider most headcanon potentials valid since… you know, there’s really no clear statement on this.

- Most angels have a copilot and that’s just creepy AF - It could be subliminal commentary of wanting to enjoy a native drive for it rather than a learned one, since affections and emotions are also canonically attached to the human condition (as well as the 3fold Nature discussed later). - It could have to do with gradual humanization effects (will discuss shortly) - Misc other.

Barring our specific presumption of why this hangs in the air, the detail is that it simply *does*. Perhaps the truth is between all of these, with each angel unto their own.

Anna lurked, invisibly, on earth observing men as long as she knew. Now, gradual humanization effects is a complete headcanon proposal associated around all elements to be covered in this discussion. That is to say, most angels that have exhibited sexual behavior and enjoyment of various goods have either been fallen or in their vessels for a LONG TIME, perhaps gradually removing the disassociation from the body and gaining familiarity with its functions.

Yes, we can evoke Balthazar’s sexual activity, but we must also evoke his appreciation for wine and food and music and all of the other things that we have canonically, even mechanically witnessed in Castiel (inability to appreciate food or drink, in example, as an angel.) So WHAT makes Balthazar different that he CAN experience all of these things (beyond the potential of Plothole AF)? There is literally something he has that other angels don’t. The second Cas clicks back to angel, he can’t appreciate food anymore and beer does nothing for him, but Balthazar can enjoy alcohol? There is LITERALLY a difference of template of EVERYTHING going on here, not just sexuality. We can postulate it all we want, but the only one that immediately comes to mind is “gradual humanization”, as we haven’t the FOGGIEST idea how long he has had his vessel. Unless we assume various appreciations of his are Just An Act, but then why not assume it’s performance behavior on the sexuality too? Pick one or the other, don’t run the line on both. (Also if you want to be under the assumption that despite terminal soul dealing it was his first vessel run, I’m going to leave this as a note, and a REMINDER of his meddling in attachment to, handling, trade and use of human souls for his own means, and tuck this aside until we GET to the meaning of human souls.)

The VERY SAME can be said of Gabriel. And Gabriel we KNOW has been on earth as Gabe for a VERY. LONG. TIME. His sweet tooth is what got him busted. Again, it’s not just about his sexuality, it’s his entire composition is somehow DIFFERENT from otherwise canonical function of angels.

Again I point out there’s also a big ??????? on Naomi because again… 400 year old Crowley in Mesopotamia. We have no educated way to even ADDRESS that one because… is it a time warp? WTH??? Even Mark called this a plothole. Literally we have to headcanon how they were even there together before we headcanon what was even going on in a big old pillar of ridiculous headcanon, so I’m going to float that off in a box labeled with a question mark and admit, it’s just random AF. The “fling” is also implied and unclear. So I mean- we’ll just… note that and keep moving on why it’s never impacted my perception of this much.

How long fallen was Lucifer?

Hannah brings an obvious question to mind in challenge to all of my surrounding premises, but this is literally where “choice of experimentation within a vessel” comes into play, as with all of them. I’m human now, this seems like a fun thing to humans, let me try the thing; that’s all I’ve ever read that as. You may have your read of it otherwise, but angels try a lot of things. And I’ll bring this up during canon talk.

The concept of humanization-with-time does have some further established presence of S13. When Lucifer is still an angel but largely drained of his grace, he too begins feeling compulsions of hunger, cold, and basic human instinct he was previously immune to. Diminished power, and the closer one comes to being of Soul Rather than Grace, the more they seem to resonate. Anna carved out her grace to fully enjoy humanity and was born into it, experiencing its gifts of awareness. Cas can no longer fully enjoy humanity as an angel. We don’t know what Balthazar’s status is. And so on. But it appears that by VARIOUS METHODS, such as the depletion of grace or just being a long-assed time to attach to a specific vessel, they do end up ATTAINING various behaviors.

Preparing to speak on Humanized Angels.

What really triggered this premise to me was the recurring humanization of Castiel. And again, this goes far beyond just sexuality preferences. I’m going to do a brief break to get to that ** I marked above about the threefold nature of man before expanding.

** Mind-Soul-Body trinity:

Angels have the mind/spirit (grace) and body, but lack a soul; grace is closer to their natural body’s composition than molecular and transmits a wavelength thought into whatever sack they’re using to operate. But there’s a disconnect here in classic mind-soul-body structure (which is sometimes alternately listed as Body-Spirit-Soul, with Soul as the mind instead, and Spirit in place of the alternate listing of Soul? People swap these terms interchangeably but you’ll find a common pull). There’s multiple takes on this. For example, we’ll go with the standard accepted biblical take as a first ideation of it, considering the various judeochristian influences of SPN.

Please NOTE I’m going to list several variations of this, and have no hard cast “this is the exact model” they’re using, as much as “this is a recurring theme in religion and philosophy”, which, while SPN is rarely 100% accurate to any one specific model, they often call on.

The EXACT itterations of this vary, and there’s no real saying which exact respective “silent ven diagram” they’re using, but as if a triple circle overlapped with Mind, Body, Spirit with the balance we as humans know at the core. Removing a rung of this strips out major overlap of function.

The inner spirit, insight, will and memory reaching from spirit/mind to body by WAY of the soul, for the spirit to engage the human senses within the constructed universe

CASTIEL

Well, perhaps I’ve been down here with them for too long. There’s seemingly nothing but chaos. But not all bad comes from it. Art. Hope. Love. Dreams.

HANNAH

But t-those are human things.

CASTIEL

Yes.

To fully understand this chart, I again point to (as earlier in this post) this previous post about primordials, explaining the chain (x), Anima Animus and the Shadow (x) and also its association with the paths on way to enlightenment at the source of creation which is explored, for a particular path, right here (x)

Just another way to stack out this chart, including the adventure of Anima and Animus, as well as the id/ego/superego I’ll discuss soon; However, you can see the literal concept is the same. There’s an inner mind, a central essence of the inner court that reflects close to the aspects of Humanity Cas told Hannah, and then the “living room” of the body, and the senses. Same deal. Again, "I'm the cage."

You see a running theme here?

The Soul is essentially commonly received as a vehicle between the higher mind and the body (as well as possessing aspects of our emotion, and sense of self, such as how Sam lost parts of himself without his soul) That, without which, we are lacking various critical anchors of the human experience that we often see lacking in angels.

This therein raises the challenge, “But Soulless Sam was ALL ABOUT the sex.”

That’s where species difference comes in.

We’ll talk psychology a bit, wherein we have the psychological variances of id, ego and superego rather than just body-soul-mind/spirit. They essentially perform the same functions (base instinct drive, early personality function, learned and refined function with choices etc, to boil it down to super-simplistics).

“According to this Freudian model of the psyche, the id is the set of uncoordinated instinctual trends; the super-ego plays the critical and moralizing role; and the ego is the organized, realistic part that mediates between the desires of the id and the super-ego.” – Freud, Sigmund. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. XIX. Translated from the German under the General Editorship of James Strachey. In collaboration with Anna Freud. Assisted by Alix Strachey and Alan Tyson, Vintage, 1999. [Reprint.] ISBN 0-09-929622-5

A Sam with no soul has his base species survival instinct but his acting mind. A Cas with no soul has HIS base species survival instinct (in lack of sexual reproduction as much as potential learned appreciation under the above spoken methods) for an id, if any, and a curiously arranged body until other elements come into play. The ego and superego, such as the application of a soul, leaves room for the gradual inclusion of preferences to anything within this model, such as angels developing their own ORIENTATION once having a vehicle by which to come through.

There’s a few other points to notice about the transition. The Mind/Spirit is capable of questions and doubts, or faith. “I’m not a hammer, as you call it; I have questions, I have doubts.” - S4 Castiel.

The mind is capable to think and to reason, but complex emotions are a challenge to it without a soul, which also filters our thoughts and memories from upper mind into the body, wherein we gain connectivity to the physical senses and the realm we experience.

But the universe -- the wavelengths of intent that make it function -- simply can not experience itself, any more than any other code running on your computer can experience itself. It is you, the human, that experiences the results of that code, and views and understands it and reaches out to aspects of life through it. Grace, should all things be made by it and through Chuck, as the thing that creates this code/intent of angels -- it simply is, and runs, and functions.

So BACK TO THE HUMANIZATION OF ANGELS,

Castiel has humanized or near-humanized three times and we're pending on a fourth. Briefly in the hospital, he was braindead (lacking Jimmy’s brain function, but instead having his own mind) while his heart remained pumping, meaning the body/vessel was alive, but the remaining grace WAS in fact functioning in place of a mind.

CASTIEL 5.21 I just woke up here. The doctors were fairly surprised. They thought I was brain-dead. (…) CASTIEL You could say my batteries are – are drained. DEAN What do you mean? You’re out of angel mojo? CASTIEL I’m saying that I am thirsty and my head aches. I have a bug bite that itches no matter how much I scratch it, and I’m saying that I’m just incredibly… DEAN Human. Wow. Sorry.

However, it was depleted, and this is addressed in effect later on by Metatron removing grace. As grace is removed,

METATRON 8.23 And now something wonderful is going to happen, for me and for you. I want you to live this new life to the fullest. Find a wife. Make babies. And when you die and your soul comes to Heaven, find me. Tell me your story.

Now Castiel goes on to return to himself by going all cannibal and whatnot, but that’s its own story. The simple fact of it is, with the mind housed in a vessel, but the grace attached to it depleted, the body seems to generate something like, equivalent to, or equal to a human soul in its function.

Now to reflect back

2014!CASTIEL 5.04 So, in this way. We’re each a fragment of total perception—just, uh, one compartment in that dragonfly eye of group mind. Now, the key to this total, shared perception—it’s, um, it’s surprisingly physical. 2014!CASTIEL spots DEAN. 2014!CASTIEL Oh. Excuse me, ladies. I think I need to confer with our fearless leader for a minute. Why not go get washed up for the orgy? The WOMEN leave. 2014!CASTIEL You’re all so beautiful. 2014!CASTIEL stands and stretches his back, grunting. DEAN What are you, a hippie? 2014!CASTIEL I thought you’d gotten over trying to label me. (…) 2014!CASTIEL I wish I could just, uh, strap on my wings, but I’m sorry, no dice. DEAN What, are you stoned? 2014!CASTIEL Uh, generally, yeah. DEAN What happened to you? 2014!CASTIEL Life. (…) 2014!CASTIEL You want some? DEAN Amphetamines? 2014!CASTIEL It’s the perfect antidote to that absinthe. DEAN Mmm. Don’t get me wrong, Cas. I, uh. I’m happy that the stick is out of your ass, but—what’s going on—w-with the drugs and the orgies and the love-guru crap? 2014!CASTIEL laughs. DEAN What’s so funny? 2014!CASTIEL Dean, I’m not an angel anymore. DEAN What? 2014!CASTIEL Yeah, I went mortal. DEAN What do you mean? How? 2014!CASTIEL I think it had something to do with the other angels leaving. But when they bailed, my mojo just kind of— psshhew!—drained away. And now, you know, I’m practically human. I mean, Dean, I’m all but useless. Last year, broke my foot, laid up for two months. DEAN Wow. 2014!CASTIEL Yeah. DEAN So, you’re human. Well, welcome to the club. 2014!CASTIEL Thanks. Except I used to belong to a much better club. And now I’m powerless. I’m hapless, I’m hopeless. I mean, why the hell not bury myself in women and decadence, right? It’s the end, baby. That’s what decadence is for. Why not bang a few gongs before the lights go out? But then that’s, that’s just how I roll.

Now, we can try to extrapolate that it’s “all the drugs,” but drugs or not, while decadence includes MORAL decline, it also is this:

dec·a·dence ˈdekədəns/Submit noun moral or cultural decline as characterized by excessive indulgence in pleasure or luxury.

And Cas doesn’t get words wrong (unless he’s trying to make an awkward conversation starter with Dean as what’s almost a routine for them, always in idioms and never in definition). In fact, he has a very on-point vocabulary. How often does someone evoke “Insouciant”?

Calling it decadence defines this as a luxury to Castiel. The entire episode is like One Giant Exposition of the differences: being breakable, prone to decadence, bang a few gongs on the way out. Yes, it includes drugs; hell, he’s now subject to being INFLUENCED by drugs, contrary to being able to drink down the entire bar before “starting to feel something” or needing to drink the whole liquor store before the grace stopped implicitly filtering it enough for him to stagger in on Sam. At some point, Castiel decided these were ALL his coping mechanisms, but this is an adaptation of some period of humanization between late 2009 and 2014.

This could be considered a one-off of Zachariah’s manipulation or whatever if we choose to ignore Edlund saying it was a real universe, but then we get the SAME THING hitting us again in season 9, if under a different, immediate scope rather than “end result.”

9.01 CASTIEL looks at his bloody palm. CASTIEL It hurts. (…) MAN How about we get you some water, hmm? CASTIEL I, uh, I don’t drink water. (…) CASTIEL It’s okay. I don’t eat.

and

9.03 CASTIEL (Chewing on the toothpaste) I’ll be moving on tonight after work. It’s time. The MAN nods and hangs up his towel. CASTIEL Can I ask you something? MAN Sure. CASTIEL walks into one of the bathroom stalls. CASTIEL Do you ever tire of urinating? I’ll never get used to it. (…) HOMELESS MAN You’re new at this, aren’t you? CASTIEL Food… sleep, or passing gas, it’s all very strange. And it’s occurred to me that one day I’m gonna die. CASTIEL and the HOMELESS MAN just look at each other curiously. CASTIEL Well… I better try falling asleep. It’s quite a process, isn’t it? (…)

Now, we’re going to take to the raw moment of Castiel and April,

She kisses him gently on the cheek, but stays close and eventually kisses him on the lips. CASTIEL seems surprised at first but then joins in.

Cas is surprised… and then joins in. Castiel did not expect this, but falls into it of his own action. No force was implied, and the moment leading into it was all of a few seconds, rather than any persistence or insistence.

A few more bits,

APRIL So, that was okay? CASTIEL Very much so. Um… what I did, that was, uh… correct? APRIL Very much so. CASTIEL (Smiling) (…) APRIL So what happens next for you? CASTIEL More of this, I hope. They smile and start making out again.

I don’t exactly get the feeling that she’s entirely leading this situation on all by herself, to the dismay of several gatekeeper ship or sexuality stans.

More elements with regards to humanity in this episode,

CASTIEL I am really enjoying this place. Plentiful food. Good water pressure. Things I never even considered before. There really is a lot to being human, isn’t there? DEAN It ain’t all just burritos and strippers, my friend. CASTIEL Yeah. I understand what you’re saying. SAM You do? CASTIEL Yes, there’s more to humanity than survival. You… look for purpose, and you must not be defeated by anger or despair. Or hedonism, for that matter. DEAN Where does hedonism come into it? CASTIEL Well, my time with April was very educational. SAM Yeah. I mean, I would think that getting killed is something. CASTIEL And having sex. DEAN chokes on his burrito for a second. DEAN You had sex with April? SAM Yeah, that would be where the hedonism comes in.

This isn’t just Castiel talking about having sex for the first time. This is Castiel acknowledging the allure of hedonism for the first time (…not minding the timewarp of 5.04, which didn’t happen Because AU.)

And here, also 9.03, before meeting April CASTIEL is once again wandering through the noise and the people. He is trying to take everything in – he glances from a hot dog stand to a woman’s breasts to a supermarket. The whole place is noisy and crowded and confusing. He is overwhelmed.

In 9.03, among this onslaught of Castiel’s change in visual, sound, sensory, and other instinctual acknowledgment of a change in the senses (see back to the 3Fold Nature and the acquisition of a human soul), we also get Castiel rubbernecking at a woman’s chest for the first time, before encountering April; the transcript doesn’t do the moment proper justice with the pure level of focus directors and editors called to it. In fact, we get slow camera pan and a rubberneck that might as well have ended with him walking-flipping into a trashcan blindside.

With all of these stacked connotations aside, I find it difficult to interpret anything but it being installed as a yet-again evocation of a difference in function.

Episodes 1 and 3, the first two episodes Castiel is in during season 9 after losing his grace at the end of season 8, DELUGE us with a current of differences of all of his sensory faculties.

Once his state is “corrected,” (for lack of a better term - Castiel seems to yearn for his humanity back through the show) the show makes a point of showing us a reversal as applicable,

SAM What? What are you talking about? CASTIEL When I was human, you know, I had to eat constantly. It was kind of annoying. SAM Yeah, a lot of human things are pretty annoying. CASTIEL But…I enjoyed the taste of food – particularly peanut butter with grape jelly, not jam. Jam I found unsettling. SAM [sitting on the table next to CASTIEL] So, what? Now you can’t taste PB and J? CASTIEL No, I-I taste every molecule. SAM Not the sum of its parts, huh? CASTIEL It’s overwhelming. It’s disgusting. [looks longingly at the sandwich] I miss you, PB and J.

Once again, paradigm shift. What he once appreciated, amidst the VAST wash of senses they told us about, just seems… null now. Something is missing, and something is different. Again, the universe can no longer experience ITSELF.

Now, I’m going to fall back a bit to cover what would possibly be framed as an argument against all of this, but frankly builds into it,

Back in season 6, Meg was UNABASHEDLY FLIRTING WITH CASTIEL and trying to prompt him to “move some furniture around,” and, in a learned “last night on earth” move, Castiel makes a motion in 6.10

Meg grabs Castiel by the neck and kisses him, at the same time removing his sword. Castiel pushes her up against the wall and returns the kiss with interest. MEG: What was that? CASTIEL: I learned that from the pizza man.

NOTICE. LEARNED THAT.

With FORWARD PROMPTING from Meg, and existing example (porn), Castiel did in fact make a move. That is to say, “learned behaviors” and “personal orientation” beyond “species reproductive instinct”. But as made clear by April, this never led anywhere particular, never completed, and while he expressed wanting repeats with April during being human, this is the only actual example we have of it.

In short: throughout the show, Castiel finds new things and tests new things. These new things become bizarre little childlike obsessions at times even. This one… obviously a little less childlike. (clears throat) But again, this is a process of “learned motion.” (though I’m somewhat disturbed that canonically Emmanuel-Cas sees her face and is absolutely horrified at her appearance, meaning this is also not likely even by nature of physical/spiritual attraction as much as personal, almost a demisexual trait with experimental curiosity which, as an independent idea beyond “holy shit she’s a demon”, is a healthy phase.)

But by way of learned motion/acquired taste and function, we then have the question of “why doesn’t Cas repeat this if he clearly enjoyed season 9?” Well, I can name a few. We can go over the fact that Cas simply doesn’t explore social venues that make it ready. Or we can mention his seeming lack of compulsion for it which ...is a topic of this post. Or we can simply reflect to the *challenges* of hedonism and what it will, in this post, continue to implicitly adventure as the cage and trappings of the human body and experience within what we call “life”, which the human soul extends well beyond.

But it leads us to an interesting series of questions about Castiel and Dean’s seemingly changed interactions in season 12, on a subliminal level.

And no, I’m not implying they’re boning. When Dean is no longer getting strung across a variety of cosmic elements to save him directly from the crosshairs of, or from himself, we’re getting this weird vibe of gruff jealousy, bickering, and infighting. As if Castiel, settling in more among them, is channeling increased humanity. Despite being an angel in some crippled capacity still, personality traits acquired from his human period are still there, leading to believe the soul element never ENTIRELY disappeared, as much as with further ding-dang-donged up grace, we have to wonder - is this almost a sliding scale? Or can both run mutually when one doesn’t overshadow the other? The exact specifics of this mechanic would be unclear.

But all of these complexities is why I find it nearly impossible to, in my head, reduce it to the simple “well some like it and-” because I have always read an intentional base-beat of differentiation between the human and angelic experience including, but not limited to, sex.

There’s a subtle hint of some osmosis of this in what I mentioned above with Hannah. “Perhaps I’ve been with them too long.”

CASTIEL

Well, perhaps I’ve been down here with them for too long. There’s seemingly nothing but chaos. But not all bad comes from it. Art. Hope. Love. Dreams.

HANNAH

But t-those are human things.

CASTIEL

Yes.

And so why I find it impossible to just address “angel sexuality” as its own topic. This may just be my brain at work, but I don’t see all of this effort in dividing their experiences, in a show that addresses theology and concepts like the human soul, to be arbitrary and random and I just see SO much beautiful complexity IN the shift of his sexual behaviors, among other operations. It’s not just about Castiel’s sexuality, it’s about addressing the complex creatures that are humans, and what builds us at a core. Frankly, from that end, it doesn’t matter if Cas is bi, ace, straight or pan – Castiel has been human, and wants to be so again. And it, along with other things littered throughout the show, have given us great insights on the soul, or the lack thereof, and all of these beautiful building blocks.

And so to roll away from approaching sexuality so heavily, and instead ball and bundle that up as part of the human experience within the body, the reflection of the human soul, I hook again: The universe can not experience itself more than Windows OS can experience itself; it requires the essence of man to experience the result of the work of grace and by which it finds many things of itself, even within the trappings of a human life.

The fact that humans are afterwards caged elsewhere is a whole other discussion me and others have been holding in the original linked post, so let's step away from that and instead go back to the concept of, far and away beyond sexuality, what makes a soul, and how is it different from the created universe.

If we were to apply these concepts -- angels, bodies of grace, as parts of the universe and how it functions -- versus the irrevocable free will fundamental to the human soul, dividing bodies from just being roving parts of the construct like Gabriel's realms -- to our dialogue in regards to Castiel as our seeming oddball with a crack in his chassis, "And the universe came to humanity, and laid hands on humanity, and fell in love with humanity to come to know it; it abandoned its own purpose and functions due to this connection to the concept of the human soul, and began to live and dream and love as a man, rebelling against its predesigned function; and one day, the orphic child of both the universe and man looked through the eyes of the universe to first see man, and itself was born from the universe unto man, to live and learn as a man and hold its dominion of both human sovereignty and creator of grace, mastering both realms." in regards to Jack's very creation, and why he is such a huge threat to Chuck's power and control of his realm.

As a powerful creature of grace, he can take and reroute those elements without issue by authoritative command of the independent liberty of the human soul, free thinking and not just a Doctor Sexy Nurse in motion.

But the question is conversion, which we've seen in both directions, be it Castiel acquiring a human soul or Jack converting humans into angels with his command of both of these dominions. The best I could liken it to is AC/DC energy conversion. It is worth noting, however -- grace can be drained without permission, it is not tied to freedom. Humanity is the body of choice: be that humans choosing to surrender that in the name of glory and power to simply become part of universal functions, which isn't so different from choosing to burn one's own soul away in the name of spells, magic or other power; or the human spirit attached to its cage of a body and life still needing to concede and give permission to be taken BY the forces of the universe, surrendering the potential impact of their own choices within their own moving cage to what the universe would will of it.

Ironically, if you use an AC inverter to power a computer or television, the power supply in the device is converting the 120-volt alternating current into a much lower voltage direct current. The sensitive electronic circuits in these devices need low, regulated voltages to work, so you're actually converting DC to AC so it can be changed back into DC again. You can't use straight direct current without the AC to DC inverter because the device's power supply needs the AC power in order to properly step down and regulate the voltage. That is to say, in conversion parts are lost, but they can still be transmitted; so while Castiel was subject to the human experience, he still struggled with parts like dreaming. It was a young, small spark of a soul, converted from another energy form, and likely with his connection to Dean acting as the inverter.

Demons go to the empty; demons are former human souls that corrupted and lost the light that made them inherently "good." That which defines them. They have collapsed to the pressures of Chuck's universes and let their flame go out. But realistically, that's also antagonized by other human souls in hell trying to escape their own torment.

It has been seen, time and again, that the only thing that can destroy a human soul is... the human soul.

*takes a breath*

And now to explore what @curioussubjects has been saying about The Shadow as a recycling Bin of souls, which would predate the universe and even Chuck, I simply repeat this segment, to help master-off this post:

If we take the Shadow as the reflection of the collective soul, which then becomes the substantiative Prima Materia through which all things come (x), including even the potential of Chuck and Amara as manifestations of the primitive concept of masculine and feminine, light and dark as among the first thoughts in the cosmos. But in such by it all things are born, even the universe or the gods, in this proposed theory. It is the primitive self asking (per the far-above chart), first–well, WTF, why am I thinking, but after that – who are they, and then who am I, and then eventually who are you, before the end of the soul’s journey on its path is Who Art Thou, long ventured within the constructed realm to learn what it means that we even exist.

Those first thoughts then create the totemic pillars of creation by which it can explore the very meaning of existence, even if its own thoughts have made cages and trappings for itself in the expansion of infinite time, but those cages are themselves the vehicles of higher learning and experience, and without those cages, the rest is for naught.

This is the nature of the Prima Materia, the One Thing by which all comes which I linked above. If the soul and Prima Materia are synonymous, then while the universe comes by grace, then all things -- even grace -- come by way of the raw template of the collective soul, which then structures all resulting thought and experience through an infinite series of independent human experience that defines who were are, independent to ourselves, beyond the vat of primitive consciousness that binds us.

The question even comes, why not just reset time? But I am good with who I am. I am good with who you are. This isn't just a story. It's our lives. So god or no god, you go to hell.

And so the reincarnate journey of the man, through the many deaths and rebirths of Sam and Dean and lessons gained within the universe, begins to lock on to the meaning of the independent self in what it means in full, beyond the challenges sent by the creator that may very well be a reflection of our own primal thoughts, our doubts, our fears, our internalized challenges not too unlike the Shadow which again I raise, and point back to the above-linked protogenic discussion of the masculine and feminine paths: In this premise, are Chuck and Amara anything less than the Animus and Anima of humanity, should the Shadow be their forefather?

The path of alchemy, before it became pursuit of literal gold, was about self completion and sovereignty. The phases I have listed above, as well as a brief overview of Dabb's use of it, but if anyone wants a visual aide in these, check out these three videos (x) (x) (x) and remember that Chuck desperately wants them to believe that nothing Gold can stay, should it complete this path; because should man become Gold, they also become God, and he has no authority here. Because in the end, if we abandon the cages -- be it human bodies or heaven -- in here, in this headspace that is Chuck's, we're all just projections of the primitive man trying to find our independent meaning in life. So in here, we're all the same. So in here, Chuck's all talk. And Chuck's afraid, and even wounded by elements of his own creation fallen into the free hands of man.

And so to FULLY hook back, the effects of the fall --

To be detached in various tiers from the divine spheres of constructed intent, and surrendered unto man, or touched by man, or tied to man, or even converted unto man simply seems to be removing the lines of code that defines the constructed universe and instead leaves only the experience of soul, be it directly gained or by proxy. And with that comes many things -- be that the oft-discussed sexuality of angels or any of their other senses, but also their ability like Castiel to understand "complex" ideas like independent thought and function that is otherwise like "explaining poetry to fish" to his kin. I remind you of Agent Smith in the Matrix, who was essentially infected with the power of the One that completely started warping the laws of the universe and, eventually, left the universe, to become the body of man outside of the universe.

It is the universe falling into man, as man at some point seems to have fallen into the universe. And their child now waits beyond the universe, holding council with Death and the Inky Man over what to do from here.

The human experience is double-sided. By it we learn, experience, and exist; but as chuck designed the sandbox, so too did he the bodies as cages. So be that "hedonism" or anything else, these are limitations and bindings. It is not the limits themselves, as much as what we learn in facing them, that becomes who we are as people, and what meaning we bring to our own existence. And this, some angels themselves have chosen to convert and surrender themselves to, some more successfully than others, but the ultimate point between all of them is "Free Will", whether they like PBJ, sex, or good water pressure at the same time -- something that only comes from divorcing themselves from the divine spheres, when otherwise they're numb to bullets or a knife through the heart. The universe simply operates. Man experiences. The universe learns more of itself only by way of man, as man learns the universe.

There are those who fall that do not embrace humanity, but instead explore their creation. These are rogue programs, but still limited in their function. Be that angling out a line at a river, or just needling humanity as lesser ants. But these do not come to the same essence of humanity that those who choose to fall into it and truly experience it do. They still lack a great deal of motivation or purpose, as in breaking away from their programming without gaining genuine compulsion to want, to seek, to find, they find fascinations between their own strips of code that immerse themselves in, and sit, and observe, still not too unlike Anna before completely divorcing herself from her grace.

It is humanity, be it indirect or direct, that proxies the ability to experience, desire, and enjoy, and that more than anything is the nature of man and his power. It is the path of the Soul between Gevurah and Hesed; from the divine spheres descending, passive intellect and active intellect from the different pillars, and hidden higher learnings, reach by way of Spirit and Mind towards the individual self, strapped across passive and active emotion to learn the individual self. From the angle of man, in the material world, and the body as a manifestation of it, our ego, identity, and other evolutions of the mind TOWARDS the self of individuality lead from Tiferet, by path of the soul, into those emotions to climb the tree towards the divine self. Hell, I'll repost the chart so you don't have to scroll.

Castiel, the consciousness of the divine, with active spirit and mind, and intellect, descended towards the individual self within the realm of ego and super ego, and learned of them through Dean Winchester, while hedging at the sphere of emotional complexes and the identity of the self by which he chose to fall into the world and humanity, into and below and between the cross paths of the soul, and in those paths attained a soul. Dean Winchester, on the other hand, was lifted to explore the upper spheres in reverse, to understand the divine self gradually, and with time, as we now prepare to face within season 15.

Man is freedom. And some fall into it. But man can conquer the tree of his own ironic fashioning. The only absolute is what thou wills of it.

The rest is commentary.

Let there be gold. But all that is gold does not glimmer.

#supernatural #spn #meta #my meta #mine #pagan life #souls #angels #the fall #tree of life #spirit #mind #body #physical realm #hermeticism #qabbalah

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