My first communion

Dear Diary,

The weekend of my First Communion had finally arrived. On one hand, I was incredibly excited about welcoming the Living Christ within me, the greatest honour a human could receive. On the other hand, I was terrified at the thought of confessing my sins to the priest. 

On Saturday, before our confessions, the priest instructed us to confess our gravest sins, not the small or trivial ones. He made it clear he didn’t want to hear about things like “killing an insect,” which he deemed irrelevant and not a real sin. 

“Whoever conceals their sins will not prosper, but the one who confesses and renounces them will find mercy. Proverbs 28:13,” said the priest. 

“Ah, the Church,” Luz whispered near my ear, “always providing me with quality entertainment.” 

I said nothing, trying to focus on the priest’s words. “Remember, this is why it’s so important to confess everything, even your darkest thoughts, because, as the Word of Our Lord Jesus Christ says, the wages of sin is death.” 

“Isn’t it curious,” Luz mused, “how the priest is particularly interested in hearing the most sordid confessions from children? He wants to know all about what little Augusto does when no one’s looking,” he added with a quiet chuckle, “and then subtly threatens them with the promise of death.” I remained still, waiting for my turn to enter the confessional, but Luz’s words echoed in my mind. 

Why did the priest want to know those details? What would he do with that information? What would he do if he knew what I thought? 

When my turn came, I couldn’t manage a proper confession. I stumbled over my words, said nothing about Luz, and avoided mentioning my dark thoughts. I did exactly what the priest told us not to do… I talked about insects. I left the confessional feeling disappointed in myself. 

“You did the right thing,” Luz reassured me. “I wouldn’t tell that drunkard anything. His sins outweigh those of everyone here, adults included.” That night, I prayed to Mary, Mother of God, asking her to take my true confessions to the God so I could be ready to receive the grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ. 

I recited twelve extra Hail Marys, one for every year I’d been alive, and then cried until I fell asleep.

The next day, everything went smoothly during the ceremony. We knew all the hymns and followed every instruction perfectly. I promised myself I would be the best version of myself. But as the day went on, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was all just a beautifully rehearsed performance.

I tried to feel something, anything, but my heart stayed silent.

At one point, someone read from the Apostle Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, 11:28-29:“Let a person examine themselves before eating of the bread and drinking of the cup. For those who eat and drink without discerning the body of Christ eat and drink judgment on themselves.”

I stared at the statue of Mary, her serene face offering no answers.

"Mother, what did I do wrong?”

This was the same Church I’d loved so much, the one that had moved me to tears countless times. I’d crowned her with flowers during May processions.

The Church hadn’t changed. But I had.

Luz walked beside me as I approached the altar. When the priest said, “The Body of Christ,” Luz stood just behind his left shoulder, watching closely.

“Amen,” I said, my voice clear, and accepted the Body of the Lord on my tongue.

Luz’s eyes stayed on me as I walked slowly back to my pew. I closed my eyes, waiting for a spark of something holy, a rush of connection or a sign.

But nothing came.

That wasn’t the Body of Christ… it was just a plain, dry wafer.

Excerpt from my book Virgo Sun, the first volume of my Dear Diaries series.

Originally published in Portuguese as part of a 666-page book, I decided to restructure Dear Diaries into separate volumes, allowing each period of my life to have its own space and identity.

Virgo Sun focuses on my early childhood: the years before Chaos Magic, before occult study, and before the person many of you know today had fully emerged.

It is now finally available in English.

“Tender, strange, funny, painful, and at times unexpectedly dark, Virgo Sun is more than a memoir of a Christian childhood. It is the beginning of an intellectual and spiritual rebellion.

Readers familiar with Lua Astor’s later work in Chaos Magic will encounter something especially revealing here: not the fully formed occultist, but the child who came before her, deeply devotional, intensely imaginative, fascinated by the sacred, and already incapable of accepting an answer simply because an adult told her it was true.”

In many ways, this is the prehistory of everything that came later.