Happy Friday, readers. Today, I continue blogging my way through Changing Paths by Yvonne Aburrow. The chapter I’ll be discussing is chapter seven, which is titled “Syncretism and Blending Paths.” And once again, I’ll be free-styling it, as the prompts provided at the end of the chapter don’t really apply to me. They’re mostly geared toward people who are trying to blend two religious traditions or considering it, and that doesn’t quite feel like it applies to me.

The closest I get to blending two religious traditions is the fact that I’m a polytheistic witch and devotee of Freyja who also happens to attend online service at a progressive Christian church. But I don’t consider myself Christian and there’s very little about Christian cosmology or theology that appeals to me.¹

About the only time I really considered following two separate traditions, they were both Pagan traditions. In fact, I’d say they were both witchcraft traditions. Back when I considered seeking initiation into the Alexandrian tradition,² I already had a working relationship with Freyja and had no intentions of giving that up.³ So had I gone through with initiation, I would have been in service to both the Alexandrian deities and mysteries and Freyja and the relationship I had with her.

In other ways, I do feel like I’m a bit syncretic in my practice anyway. After all, my journey to my current spiritual practice took me through a few different traditions,⁴ and I feel like I picked up a little something from each one that I still carry with me. And as I’ve mentioned before, as a Norse Pagan witch, I seem to fall somewhere between witchcraft and Heathen reconstructionism. And I’d say those two influences are about evenly matched. In some ways, I’m still trying to harmonize them as I flesh out and expand upon the details of my practice. But the influences from the other traditions seem so small to me that I wouldn’t consider myself to be practicing any of them.

Footnotes

1. You might wonder why I attend a church at all then, dear reader. It’s a fair question. The only answer I can give is that the online live chat during the service is awesome and I enjoy he conversations we have there while listening to the music and sermons. Also, I find that the pastor there preaches some great values and principles that mimic my own despite the fact that I prefer to express them through a different mythology and theological framework. ↩︎
2. I think this is the third time I’ve mentioned this. Am I talking about it too much? Is it something I should actually do a separate post about someday? I’ll have to ponder these questions. ↩︎
3. In the Yahoo Group where we discussed British Traditional Wicca, another seeker mentioned they already had a commitment to another deity and asked if they would be expected to give that up. At least one of the elders (I forget which tradition) seemed almost aghast at the idea and commented that if the seeker did so, they weren’t sure they’d want to initiate that seeker. Setting aside commitments is not something that crowd takes lightly, it seems. ↩︎
4. In order: Non-initiatory Wicca, Druidry, Asatru, Norse Pagan witchcraft (which I never fully left despite exploring another path later), and initiatory Wicca. ↩︎