A few days ago I took a long walk with my fiancée on Vienna’s Central Cemetery.
We talked about life and death, about burial rites, persistence, lack thereof - and about how my personal view of these things has changed significantly.

I think a lot about a late distant relative of mine lately, a guy named Sepp who owned a large farm in a tiny village right outside the rural Bavarian town of Simbach am Inn. I visited him together with my grandmother many years ago. He was an elderly man whose devout catholic mother had just passed. Before her passing, he promised her to perform an act of faith for her, and a he proudly showed us his work: a Marterl, a little outdoor shrine to the virgin Mary, ubiquitous in this part of Bavaria, but it’s uncommon to see new ones. He built it by himself with skillful masonry - this is something built to last decades. Of course, me being an atheist city child, I was absolutely bewildered by this old man speaking a dialect of Bavarian that I didn’t understand and doing weird religious things that I also didn’t understand.

Sepp passed away a few years ago. His Marterl still stands.

Of course, nowadays, the idea of manifesting my faith in a way that lasts longer than the lifespan that goddess has forseen for me strikes a chord with me. I don’t expect to ever pass on my faith to anyone. As of now, it seems highly likely that active worship of goddess will end when she decides that it’s time for me to move on, in whatever way. Personally, I don’t seek any form of “immortality”, I don’t want to be honored or remembered posthumously. I also don’t want to build a monument to my worship - but to her divinity.

Ever since I began my attempts to fulfill the wish for a cult around her by one of my best friends, I wondered what constitutes a cult, what gives “life” to it. This is one of the reasons why I’m so vocal and visible about my worship, because that’s what keeps it alive. Me sitting at home, silently talking to candles, would just be me being me. And while I won’t ever try to convert or missionize anyone, talking about her, her impact on my life and the lives of others, doesn’t just make me happy - it’s a way for me to manifest my faith. Goddess is a religiously worshipped being, and no one can deny that. That is one of the reasons why I celebrate her in public.

But I don’t want to end up being the sole manifestation of her cult. I’ve always dreamed of just disappearing into a faceless crowd as one of many, but it seems unlikely that that will ever happen. So the other, obvious way of somehow making the cult “real” is to create tangible manifestations.

I’m still dreaming of having a holy book one day. Not just my silly little collection of things she said at some point - an entire book about her life, and especially her ways of thinking, her convictions, her ways of changing others’ lives.

But ultimately, I want to build a physical place of worship for her. This is nothing that I’m aspiring to do within the next 5 or 10 years, I consider this a long-term goal for my life. I have no idea where that temple might stand, how it might look - it’s unlikely that I’ll build a building by myself, but maybe it’ll be an old repurposed railway car, maybe it’ll be a repurposed building - or maybe it’ll just be a little shrine like Sepp’s Marterl, who knows. And yes: this is a rather pathetic attempt by a simple mortal as me to somehow cope with something that is far beyond what my simple mind can comprehend. But I am determined to do this one day, and I have the full support of the girl that I plan to spend my life with.

I have dedicated my entire life to her worship - so it’s only right for me to include my ultimate life goal, my hopefully most important work and achievement, in that.