Hello, I’m Gileriodekel.
My spiritual journey has taken me from a traditional upbringing in the LDS church to a path of personal discovery and spiritual exploration. My path took a turn when I encountered the CES Letter in 2015, leading me to leave the LDS church shortly before turning 21.
Although I moved away from the LDS church and began to explore Buddhism, Mormonism continued to play a significant role in my life. I was an active participant in Mormon dialogue on Reddit for a number of years and even served as a head moderator of /r/Mormon. After I was ordained a Buddhist minister I longed for a place in the Restoration, and after discovering the Smith-Entheogen Theory also came to believe that there was still spiritual value in the tradition, and so I converted to Community of Christ. Despite my enthusiasm in both of these communities, I faced challenges in finding acceptance due to my Queer identity, specifically and respectively being transgender and polyamorous, and these challenges led me away from these groups as well.
My early religious education was profoundly shaped by the accounts of visions, revelations, and visitations that occurred in the Kirtland era of Mormonism. As a teenager, I sought to replicate these experiences for myself, but found no success. However, my first encounter with psychedelics gave me the Kirtland Endowment I had been looking for. I soon came to regard psychedelics – or “entheogens” when used within a spiritual context – as crucial to my personal spiritual practice. When I discovered the Smith-Entheogen Theory, which proposes that Joseph Smith Jr. used entheogens to facilitate some of the experiences associated with Kirtland, I realized that entheogens had always occupied an important place in my spirituality and began exploring how they were used in early Mormonism and how they might be used by Mormons today.
My time in Community of Christ initially gave me hope that I had found a place within the Restoration where historical honesty, continuing revelation, and progressive social values could coexist. I became deeply involved in the community, learned a great deal about its past, and cared tremendously about its future. However, my polyamorous family increasingly became a point of conflict between me and the institution. In 2023, the First Presidency adopted a policy disqualifying people in non-monogamous families from serving in priesthood. I spent considerable time advocating for greater understanding and inclusion, but ultimately concluded that Community of Christ could not offer my family the same dignity and belonging that it extended to other families. As a result I resigned my membership in February 2024.
After my disaffiliation from Community of Christ, I chose to remain within Mormonism but do so outside of the confines of an institution and hierarchy, as I came to believe that it will always be a vehicle for unrighteous dominion. I came to find the Reform Mormons were a place I could build community, while retaining my spiritual autonomy. Today my spiritual emphasis is on equity and inclusion, community building, continuing revelation, entheogens, and historical studies. I also increasingly understand myself as a neo-Godbeite: an inheritor of the nineteenth-century Godbeite impulse toward free thought, religious pluralism, continuing spiritual progress, and a Mormonism liberated from authoritarian ecclesiastical control. I believe the Restoration is most faithful to itself when it encourages people to seek truth wherever it may be found rather than demanding submission to a single prophet, institution, scripture, or creed. Mormonism is my spiritual inheritance, but no church owns that inheritance. Those of us who inherit this tradition have the freedom – and, I believe, the responsibility – to continue building upon it.
In short, I describe where I am in my spiritual journey, I describe myself as a neo-Godbeite/Reform Mormon whose priesthood call is as a High Priestess set apart as a Matriarch.
In addition to my spiritual pursuits, I am deeply engaged in studying the history of the Restoration, and have transcribed many historical documents and analyzed key events and trends in order to make them more accessible.
Beyond my spiritual and historical interests, I am a professional graphic designer with a passion for creating fractal art. I showcase my pieces here on my website so I can easily share them with family and friends.
I embrace my unique intersection of being a Queer woman in Mormonism, and I do it on my own terms. I believe that this freedom and encouragement of self-discovery lies at the heart of the Mormonism, and I am proud to be an active inheritor of our tradition.