(no subject)
In the spring of 1999, a girl living down the hall from me in the dorm snuck a book into my room under her shirt. She was scared to death the born-again Christians holding Bible study out in the hallway would see it. To this day I don’t know what she thought they would do about it, but it’s one of those details that sticks in the head, and it stills seems to me as melodramatic now as it felt then. She made sure the door was closed and locked before the slim volume was slid out of her shirt: a slim paperback book with a purple border around a drawing of a barefoot man in a yellowish white wrap robe, holding a smoking pot in front of a bench with some candles, plants, a bowl, a bell, and a goblet on it, trees and shrubs in the background. Wicca: A guide for the solitary practitioner, by Scott Cunningham.
I remember the night like it was yesterday. It was dark out, the sun had gone down quite some time before; there was laughter from the hall outside my door. We’d been talking with a couple other people earlier about the World Cultures series of classes required of all freshman. My friend’s instructor was apparently one of the professors in the Religion department; she’d been griping about how he related everything they read back to the Christian faith despite the fact that some of the materials, such as Tao Te Ching and the Epic of Gilgamesh, were in existence long before the rise of Judaism, much less the birth of Christ. She said it was hard for the non-Christian students like her to handle it, and she’d even been through several years of Catholic school as a child without as much difficulty.
I asked what her religion was and when she said she was Wiccan the light bulb went on over my head. I had been wanting to learn more about Wicca and witchcraft ever since reading a book about it from the public library a couple years before…a book I kept hidden under the couch the entire two weeks it was in the house, until I could return it. The subject fascinated me when I was younger, but I instinctively knew there was something about it that just wasn’t supposed to be mentioned. I never did get up the nerve to ask the one person in my high school who publicly proclaimed to be a witch about it. Now, here, was my second chance. And ask I did.
Enter the secrecy. Our university was a small, private, religiously affiliated school, for all that there was no required religious component of the curriculum. At least half the campus was vocal about their love of the great Messiah-hence the Bible study in the hall at ten on a Friday night, to be followed by a Veggie Tales marathon. My friend’s family did not know she wasn’t Christian, and the easiest way to make sure they never knew was to make sure no one (who wasn’t a good friend) with any remote chance of meeting them knew. So, she took precautions that I later learned hundreds, if not thousands, of people across the country and world also take to avoid losing jobs, child custody, friends, and even family: she hid everything she owned that remotely related to Wicca as a belief and practice that could not be otherwise explained. This book had no reasonable explanation in her mind, so she hid it.
We talked for a couple hours that night, her explaining the basic tenets and ideas, me asking questions and saying things like “I’ve always felt that was the case!” There was talk of duality of Divine-masculine and feminine, Lord and Lady, God and Goddess, that may take on a variety of names and aspects. There was talk of solar holidays following the agrarian calendar and lunar exploration looking into the self, bettering the self. Ways of practice were discussed: meditation, prayers, ceremonies, affirmations, devotionals, and, yes, magick, ever minding the Wiccan Rede, “An’ it harm none, do what thou wilt.” In hindsight, I can see it was many years before I fully comprehended that particular phrase.
My friend loaned me her book that was to be my introduction to Paganism (nature-based spiritualities) after I promised I, too, would keep it hidden. I read it in less than two days in the privacy of my locked, roommate-less dorm room. And it was like coming home.
I’d always had an affinity for mythology; now I know it was the old Gods calling me home. I’d always had an unexplainable, uncontrollable sense that helped me figure people out; now I know it is called Empathy and, after ten years, I am as fully in control of it as anyone possibly can be of that particular gift. I’d always felt that all aspects of life were connected together; within six months, I was wearing a symbol that fully expresses that fact: a five pointed star with a circle around it called a pentacle-each point representing one of the elements of life (air, fire, water, earth, and spirit), and each point connected to each of the other points, forming the lines of a star and a circle around it. I’d always been hyper and loved playing outside in the sun constantly moving, but I would sit mesmerized for time unending by a full moon and a sky full of stars in the night; it was the Goddess calling me to Her, and the constellations trying to awaken the genetic memory of the witch I was born to be.
I was Wiccan when I came home from that first year at a Methodist university. My faith in God and Goddess got me through the following year as my mom fought a battle against the cancer that finally claimed her, and my newfound control of my empathic gifts through visualization exercises learned from books about Wicca kept me sane in the hospital and, at the end, in the Hospice House where I was surrounded by dying and grieving people above and beyond my own family.. I saw the Goddess at the foot of my mother’s deathbed, waiting to take her to a better life beyond the veil; I introduced my mom to her, though at the time I unknowingly used the wrong name…but again, any given name is merely an aspect of the Divine, not the sole of the divinity itself. My faith in the Gods, Their guidance towards learning to control my gift of Empathy, and me finally understanding the concept of “personal responsibility” pulled me out of a decade long depression, mild with bouts of major/severe-severe enough once that I was suicidal, though no one knew it. I have worn a pentacle around my neck daily for all but two of the last ten years, and I only switched it out to a crescent moon (symbol associated with the divine feminine) because I got a job working at a Methodist run facility for juvenile offenders; they claimed to be an EOE, but I needed the job, and the job required taking the kids to church every Sunday morning, so I did not take any chances.
I was open with all my friends from the very beginning about my spirituality. Some of the first friends I made my freshman year of college drifted away (but then, it’s not very common for Pentecostals to willing mingle with Wiccans), but we hadn’t been particularly close and I made other friends quickly enough…oddly enough, none of them Pagan except the friend who introduced me to real Paganism. My new friends didn’t care; they lovingly called me “heathen”, I’d laugh and ask when the next crusade was scheduled to start. My first employers when I got out of college knew I was Wiccan because I asked for religious holidays off honestly-and got them-and volunteered to work the Christian/Jewish holidays as a trade off.
The only people I did not openly say “Hey, I’m Wiccan” to were my family; and while I did not come right out and say, I also did not hide it. I wore my pentacle on it’s short, 16” chain everyday, including when I was home visiting family. I meditated nightly, including when sharing a hotel room with my mother-and when asked, I told her what I was doing and why, just not where I learned to do it. When family members talked about psychic gifts or fortune-telling like reading tarot cards, I told what I knew about them at the time, even recommending some visualization/meditation techniques to clear one’s mind and allow psychic gifts to work; I also gave numerous tarot readings with a deck called “Sacred Circle Tarot”…given, I never really allowed the back of the box, the part that said something about this being the tarot deck for the dedicated Pagan practitioner, to be very visible, but that particular deck is not very subtle in its drawings or its interpretations about it being a deck for spiritually minded people. When family members talked about ghosts, I told them how to cleanse the negative energy away; I just didn’t say the same technique is used to cleanse an area where a Wiccan ceremony is about to take place as well. I knew exactly where to find the newest Sylvia Brown book at a bookstore one time (and let me be clear, I HATE Brown for her ethics and money-grubbing ways) for a family member, and apparently they never stopped to wonder how I knew to look in the New Age/Metaphysical section…and apparently, they missed me checking out the books about Paganism and magick on the shelves right next to Brown books…
I have not actively hid who I am; I’m not in-your-face about it, but I also do not hide. Why, then, did it come as such a shock to some people that I am Wiccan/Pagan and a witch and magician? And why exactly is it such a horrible thing? Why has a member of my family, who I actively tried to maintain a positive relationship over the years after my mom died so she wouldn’t feel completely alone and lost and so her daughter would know others in the family, decided that she must not talk to me? In fact, has not willingly talked to me in over a year? Even intentionally avoided my attempts at calling to answer any potential questions during the first six months of the exile. I am the same person I was two or three years ago. Yes, I am a different person than I was ten years ago; now, I am much stronger, much more confident in myself, love myself a whole lot more, am a whole lot more prepared to help others both mundanely and magically, and a whole lot less likely to keep my mouth shut when I see observe something is wrong. Such is the healthy progression of someone who walks a Pagan or otherwise magical path. How is any of that bad? How did I suddenly become something evil overnight with a single word? My personality is the same as it was the year and two before then; I still care.
I will never understand bigotry, prejudice, or hate in any form. I just thank the Gods I have friends who either share my faith, or who do not care what one’s faith is if one is a good person.
I have nothing but fond memories of coming home to my spirituality ten years ago, and now, I am a respected leader in the Pagan community of Indianapolis. I am High Priestess (HPS) of an ever-growing coven, and Magus of an ever-growing magical order. As HPS, I am the equivalent of any pastor, minister, preacher, priest, imam, or rabbi of any established church, cathedral, mosque, temple, or synagogue; my congregation just happens to be a little smaller and I don’t get paid for my service to the religious community; from my tradition, that would be highly unethical. I am respected by other such leaders in the Indianapolis Pagan community because I live what I preach, so to speak; I have my values, morals, and ethics, and I stand by them even when it gets difficult. I will not tolerate hate, spite, malicious gossip, oppression of any kind, dishonesty, blind faith, or unquestioning obedience; none of these has any hope of getting mankind to any kind of union with the divine and I am not afraid to say so, even when it means speaking out against others in the Pagan community. I encourage learning, free thought, free will, personal responsibility, unconditional regard, and freedom in general.
I am not ashamed of my faith; it is my home, and it is built on a solid foundation. I am not ashamed of my Gods; They love me unconditionally and help me to help myself. I am not ashamed of my gifts and skills in empathy, healing, and magic; not only have they kept me sane, they have also helped innumerable people over the years. I am not ashamed of my friends, who have become the family of my heart; they love and support me unconditionally, and give me a hand up or a shoulder to cry on when I need it. I have nothing but respect for those of my blood family who have not really changed how they interact with me; I hope they know I am open to answering any questions they may have when trying to comprehend my life’s path without proselytizing or trying to convert them away from their own faith.
I am not ashamed of who I am.
If someone else is ashamed of me, or uncomfortable with who I am, that is on them, not me. I now make a conscious choice to quit taking on guilt and blame that is undeserved. I hope that, in the process, hate is not passed on as a family value but if it is, I hold no responsibility for it; I’ve done my part to try and break that vicious cycle and I can do no more than that. I move on with my life, surprisingly freer of mind and spirit. I still will not be in-your-face with my faith-I don’t need to be-but I also will not go out of my way to hide it just because some ignoramous might get offended.
I am who I am, and I have no desire to be anyone else.
I remember the night like it was yesterday. It was dark out, the sun had gone down quite some time before; there was laughter from the hall outside my door. We’d been talking with a couple other people earlier about the World Cultures series of classes required of all freshman. My friend’s instructor was apparently one of the professors in the Religion department; she’d been griping about how he related everything they read back to the Christian faith despite the fact that some of the materials, such as Tao Te Ching and the Epic of Gilgamesh, were in existence long before the rise of Judaism, much less the birth of Christ. She said it was hard for the non-Christian students like her to handle it, and she’d even been through several years of Catholic school as a child without as much difficulty.
I asked what her religion was and when she said she was Wiccan the light bulb went on over my head. I had been wanting to learn more about Wicca and witchcraft ever since reading a book about it from the public library a couple years before…a book I kept hidden under the couch the entire two weeks it was in the house, until I could return it. The subject fascinated me when I was younger, but I instinctively knew there was something about it that just wasn’t supposed to be mentioned. I never did get up the nerve to ask the one person in my high school who publicly proclaimed to be a witch about it. Now, here, was my second chance. And ask I did.
Enter the secrecy. Our university was a small, private, religiously affiliated school, for all that there was no required religious component of the curriculum. At least half the campus was vocal about their love of the great Messiah-hence the Bible study in the hall at ten on a Friday night, to be followed by a Veggie Tales marathon. My friend’s family did not know she wasn’t Christian, and the easiest way to make sure they never knew was to make sure no one (who wasn’t a good friend) with any remote chance of meeting them knew. So, she took precautions that I later learned hundreds, if not thousands, of people across the country and world also take to avoid losing jobs, child custody, friends, and even family: she hid everything she owned that remotely related to Wicca as a belief and practice that could not be otherwise explained. This book had no reasonable explanation in her mind, so she hid it.
We talked for a couple hours that night, her explaining the basic tenets and ideas, me asking questions and saying things like “I’ve always felt that was the case!” There was talk of duality of Divine-masculine and feminine, Lord and Lady, God and Goddess, that may take on a variety of names and aspects. There was talk of solar holidays following the agrarian calendar and lunar exploration looking into the self, bettering the self. Ways of practice were discussed: meditation, prayers, ceremonies, affirmations, devotionals, and, yes, magick, ever minding the Wiccan Rede, “An’ it harm none, do what thou wilt.” In hindsight, I can see it was many years before I fully comprehended that particular phrase.
My friend loaned me her book that was to be my introduction to Paganism (nature-based spiritualities) after I promised I, too, would keep it hidden. I read it in less than two days in the privacy of my locked, roommate-less dorm room. And it was like coming home.
I’d always had an affinity for mythology; now I know it was the old Gods calling me home. I’d always had an unexplainable, uncontrollable sense that helped me figure people out; now I know it is called Empathy and, after ten years, I am as fully in control of it as anyone possibly can be of that particular gift. I’d always felt that all aspects of life were connected together; within six months, I was wearing a symbol that fully expresses that fact: a five pointed star with a circle around it called a pentacle-each point representing one of the elements of life (air, fire, water, earth, and spirit), and each point connected to each of the other points, forming the lines of a star and a circle around it. I’d always been hyper and loved playing outside in the sun constantly moving, but I would sit mesmerized for time unending by a full moon and a sky full of stars in the night; it was the Goddess calling me to Her, and the constellations trying to awaken the genetic memory of the witch I was born to be.
I was Wiccan when I came home from that first year at a Methodist university. My faith in God and Goddess got me through the following year as my mom fought a battle against the cancer that finally claimed her, and my newfound control of my empathic gifts through visualization exercises learned from books about Wicca kept me sane in the hospital and, at the end, in the Hospice House where I was surrounded by dying and grieving people above and beyond my own family.. I saw the Goddess at the foot of my mother’s deathbed, waiting to take her to a better life beyond the veil; I introduced my mom to her, though at the time I unknowingly used the wrong name…but again, any given name is merely an aspect of the Divine, not the sole of the divinity itself. My faith in the Gods, Their guidance towards learning to control my gift of Empathy, and me finally understanding the concept of “personal responsibility” pulled me out of a decade long depression, mild with bouts of major/severe-severe enough once that I was suicidal, though no one knew it. I have worn a pentacle around my neck daily for all but two of the last ten years, and I only switched it out to a crescent moon (symbol associated with the divine feminine) because I got a job working at a Methodist run facility for juvenile offenders; they claimed to be an EOE, but I needed the job, and the job required taking the kids to church every Sunday morning, so I did not take any chances.
I was open with all my friends from the very beginning about my spirituality. Some of the first friends I made my freshman year of college drifted away (but then, it’s not very common for Pentecostals to willing mingle with Wiccans), but we hadn’t been particularly close and I made other friends quickly enough…oddly enough, none of them Pagan except the friend who introduced me to real Paganism. My new friends didn’t care; they lovingly called me “heathen”, I’d laugh and ask when the next crusade was scheduled to start. My first employers when I got out of college knew I was Wiccan because I asked for religious holidays off honestly-and got them-and volunteered to work the Christian/Jewish holidays as a trade off.
The only people I did not openly say “Hey, I’m Wiccan” to were my family; and while I did not come right out and say, I also did not hide it. I wore my pentacle on it’s short, 16” chain everyday, including when I was home visiting family. I meditated nightly, including when sharing a hotel room with my mother-and when asked, I told her what I was doing and why, just not where I learned to do it. When family members talked about psychic gifts or fortune-telling like reading tarot cards, I told what I knew about them at the time, even recommending some visualization/meditation techniques to clear one’s mind and allow psychic gifts to work; I also gave numerous tarot readings with a deck called “Sacred Circle Tarot”…given, I never really allowed the back of the box, the part that said something about this being the tarot deck for the dedicated Pagan practitioner, to be very visible, but that particular deck is not very subtle in its drawings or its interpretations about it being a deck for spiritually minded people. When family members talked about ghosts, I told them how to cleanse the negative energy away; I just didn’t say the same technique is used to cleanse an area where a Wiccan ceremony is about to take place as well. I knew exactly where to find the newest Sylvia Brown book at a bookstore one time (and let me be clear, I HATE Brown for her ethics and money-grubbing ways) for a family member, and apparently they never stopped to wonder how I knew to look in the New Age/Metaphysical section…and apparently, they missed me checking out the books about Paganism and magick on the shelves right next to Brown books…
I have not actively hid who I am; I’m not in-your-face about it, but I also do not hide. Why, then, did it come as such a shock to some people that I am Wiccan/Pagan and a witch and magician? And why exactly is it such a horrible thing? Why has a member of my family, who I actively tried to maintain a positive relationship over the years after my mom died so she wouldn’t feel completely alone and lost and so her daughter would know others in the family, decided that she must not talk to me? In fact, has not willingly talked to me in over a year? Even intentionally avoided my attempts at calling to answer any potential questions during the first six months of the exile. I am the same person I was two or three years ago. Yes, I am a different person than I was ten years ago; now, I am much stronger, much more confident in myself, love myself a whole lot more, am a whole lot more prepared to help others both mundanely and magically, and a whole lot less likely to keep my mouth shut when I see observe something is wrong. Such is the healthy progression of someone who walks a Pagan or otherwise magical path. How is any of that bad? How did I suddenly become something evil overnight with a single word? My personality is the same as it was the year and two before then; I still care.
I will never understand bigotry, prejudice, or hate in any form. I just thank the Gods I have friends who either share my faith, or who do not care what one’s faith is if one is a good person.
I have nothing but fond memories of coming home to my spirituality ten years ago, and now, I am a respected leader in the Pagan community of Indianapolis. I am High Priestess (HPS) of an ever-growing coven, and Magus of an ever-growing magical order. As HPS, I am the equivalent of any pastor, minister, preacher, priest, imam, or rabbi of any established church, cathedral, mosque, temple, or synagogue; my congregation just happens to be a little smaller and I don’t get paid for my service to the religious community; from my tradition, that would be highly unethical. I am respected by other such leaders in the Indianapolis Pagan community because I live what I preach, so to speak; I have my values, morals, and ethics, and I stand by them even when it gets difficult. I will not tolerate hate, spite, malicious gossip, oppression of any kind, dishonesty, blind faith, or unquestioning obedience; none of these has any hope of getting mankind to any kind of union with the divine and I am not afraid to say so, even when it means speaking out against others in the Pagan community. I encourage learning, free thought, free will, personal responsibility, unconditional regard, and freedom in general.
I am not ashamed of my faith; it is my home, and it is built on a solid foundation. I am not ashamed of my Gods; They love me unconditionally and help me to help myself. I am not ashamed of my gifts and skills in empathy, healing, and magic; not only have they kept me sane, they have also helped innumerable people over the years. I am not ashamed of my friends, who have become the family of my heart; they love and support me unconditionally, and give me a hand up or a shoulder to cry on when I need it. I have nothing but respect for those of my blood family who have not really changed how they interact with me; I hope they know I am open to answering any questions they may have when trying to comprehend my life’s path without proselytizing or trying to convert them away from their own faith.
I am not ashamed of who I am.
If someone else is ashamed of me, or uncomfortable with who I am, that is on them, not me. I now make a conscious choice to quit taking on guilt and blame that is undeserved. I hope that, in the process, hate is not passed on as a family value but if it is, I hold no responsibility for it; I’ve done my part to try and break that vicious cycle and I can do no more than that. I move on with my life, surprisingly freer of mind and spirit. I still will not be in-your-face with my faith-I don’t need to be-but I also will not go out of my way to hide it just because some ignoramous might get offended.
I am who I am, and I have no desire to be anyone else.