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  • Become a Raelian Pagan instead.

  • For me, it was when questions I had couldn't be answered. I started searching around 15 and didn't find better answers. In my mid-20s, I found a faith that at least made sense, and had human-type gods. I began there and created my own path. This path stresses self-responsibility and independent thought. It encouraged me to do the right thing, even if it wasn't the popular thing to do. It has given me a chance to understand at my own level.

  • Kind of a natural evelution I think. I grew up in a more secular household but did attend church with a grandmother for a number of years early on and then was a missionette (now called national girls ministries apparently) through my pre-teens. It just didn't really mesh with me so spent a number of years just being, not really looking and not really belonging to any religion or spirituality. Around the time I turned 20 (1990) I ran across what was being peddled as Wicca and it just shifted from there. Ive been calling myself an eclectic pagan spiritualist for a few decades now, no specific tradition or spiritual path but my own.

  • I actually didn't become Pagan.  I just realized that I was.

    Since early childhood, the woods were my refuge. I was lucky enough to have untouched woods behind my house and I always played there, making fairy forts and talking to the animals. A little later in life, the woods were my refuge when things were going bad. I always found peace there. And heard the trees and animals talking in my head.  I'd have long conversations with what I know now as dryads.  My first introduction to any kind of spirituality was Native and African "folktales". Then, in third grade, I had a year of greek history and mythology. This was before I'd ever been in a church or really heard anything about the bible. So I was an indoctrinated pagan who just believed in Gaia, mother earth and was  not sure about anything else. Then I took a comparative religions class. And all of a sudden, I had a name for what I was. I was pagan. Always have been and always will be.

  • Thanks very much for asking about this subject. Here is the first page of my book “Compassionate Tarot Companion”.  Complete free download . . www.stoneriley.com/grab94

    .. .. ..

    In America in the late 1970's thru early 1980's, it was the decade i escaped alive from the Army Medical Corps, escaped alive from a month in Army Jail, signed up for a leadership role among the Neo-Pagans, and made a Tarot deck as activist equipment.

    I have felt myself to be a Soldier Of The Lady ever since.

    Now grown old, i have become a poet blogger too, and from that blog these pages are emerging.

    It's all largely in opposition to this brutal civili­zation we live in, but that opposition led me to the love of Humankind.

    My earliest memory of feeling the fullness of my love was in a Neo-Pagan introductory class. Students were asked to list differences between our religion and the Christianity around us. I thought and wrote: “We are pro-human.”

    I had been a non-commissioned officer in the medical corps. I had led my field ambulance squad into pacifist resistance against the godawful racist class­ist imperial war, and the army found a way to kill one of my guys for it. Of course that was in my mind when i wrote “We are pro-human.”

    In that decade and those since, i've created lots of poems and 3 Tarot decks, much of it as activist equip­ment.

  • Well I started off just being interested in the idea of being pagan.  I started looking at crystal books and then one day I was walking and I hit a patch of dirt.  I felt a bolt of energy go through my body and a sudden yearning to touch a plant.  I touched a flower and it was like the flower said hi to me.  I wrapped my hand around a tree trunk and smelled a fresh pine smell.  I experimented with this and found that each tree has its own "signature," and I even get images when I touch a tree, not just smell something.  

    I talked with a man who lives in my building about what was going on and he wanted to train me in wicca.  He's a supposed guardian.  It was all good and fine until one weekend when there was a damn ritual in my apartment and something about portals.  I found that there was....something...in my apartment (possibly a demon) and I had to cleanse it.  I think it's gone now and I've been though the process of moving things around.  

    And this last week there was another incident in a friend's apartment with some kind of entitiy and another portal.  My friend thinks the guardian was somehow involved in making a portal in his apartment.

    And here I am now.  I would really like to know what was going on during these experiences, but I also want to learn more about wicca, hence why I enrolled at the school.   Does anyone have experience in this kind of stuff?  Any advice?

  • It really is a family thing with me my grandmother taught me things when I was a child. It is just who I am. 😁

  • Once I get the ages/dates written down I'll do this.  To say that my personal spiritual/religious paths (as I see these a seperate things) throughout my life has been complex is very much an understatement.   

  • I was brought up Roman Catholic, and my parents were strict. There were many things I didn't know why we did and I podered over the Bible. I read it over and over. I saw over and over again that Jesus spread the message of Love and Light, but the people of my faith didn't seem to represent that. I started questioning my catholic faith around the age of 12, but It wasn't till 14 that I completely split  from the faith. I went to priests and nuns who I asked my questions and they all gave me different answers, and they pretty much told me that something was wrong with me for having these questions and that if I continued on this path I would go to hell. I thought about it and wondered why such a loving god would torture children with hell. At that point my family was already odd. My mom had tarot cards that were out of use, and no one was allowed to touch, but my dad wanted her to do it for a Halloween party, she rufused. I wanted to learn though, but I couldn't find where she had hid the cards, but I did find a book about modern witches, I snuck it out and read it. I was fasinated. I looked up stuff and learned about energy transfer. I was a wierd kid in my catholic school, I saw spirits and sometimes saw clips of the future and a bunch of physic stuff like that, but once I somewhat learned about it, I learned about how to control the energy I sensed, and I practiced. I went around the house and expiremented with what I had learned, and I felt something different, I looked through the cabinet that I felt the wierd energy coming from and I found her tarot cards. I started messing with them and it was amazing. I started looking up meanings and I stumbled across more and more information. From there I found Paganism, and I read every online source I could find. As I read more and more, I became more and more Pagan, and much later, I became a priestess.

    • I would love to know what religion you are a Priestess in.   As we know Paganism is very diverse.  I always find it interesting to read how people were brought to this path.   Each story is different but most share similar themes. 

      Thank you for being so open about what led you to where you are. 

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