Category Archives: Memories

Books, Memories, Witchcraft

Thoughts after reading the recently released biography of Scott Cunningham

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A Kindle snapshot of the cover of Christine Cunningham Ashworth’s biography about her brother, Scott.

Hello dear readers! #ChangingPathsBookChallenge is over and it’s time to get back to my Monday and Friday posting schedule.

Today, I thought I’d hare a few thoughts about Scott Cunningham and the biography his younger sister published recently, as I just finished reading it. I’ve already posted a review of the book over on GoodReads. However, I tried to keep that short and focused on the book itself. This post will talk more about my experiences and thoughts from engaging with Scott’s books myself as well as my thoughts on the biography.

Like so many people who came to witchcraft in the 1990s, the first book on the subject I read was Cunningham’s WIcca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner. And while I now consider my own witchcraft decidedly non-Wiccan, Scott’s book will always a special place in my heart. As he did for so many other witches, Cunningham got me started on my journey, and to that, I owe him a debt of gratitude. I will not forget my roots despite having moved beyond them. And in many ways, I think that Scott would approve. And honestly, based on her book, I think his sister would agree with my assessment.

By the time I read Scott’s book, he had been dead for roughly 5 years, something I did not know at the time. One of the things that came as a surprise to me while reading Christine’s book was that Scott’s life had been claimed by AIDS. I had known that Scott was gay — and often felt a certain amount of affection for and solidarity with him because of our shared sexual orientation — but knew no details about his personal life beyond that. For me, one of the hardest parts of reading this biography was hearing the tragic way his life ended and how his health faded away at the time. I admire Christina’s willingness to face the pain of reliving those moments of her brother’s life so that she could share them with us.

I’m considering digging out my copy of Scott’s book and reading it again. It’s been nearly thirty years since I read it and I think it might be interesting to see how the book strikes me now. Also, I feel like doing so would be another chance to re-engage him in a dialogue of sorts.

At any rate, I remember you, Scott Cunningham. You will always be a cherished mentor and a spiritual forebear to me. Hail to you.

Family, Memories

#ChangingPathsChallenge2024: People I Admire

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My mother, graduating from nursing school at age 58.

There are a large number of people that I admire. For this post, however, I’m going to focus on my mother, Donna Harris. For those who may not know, she passed away this past January mere hours after her 77th birthday ended.1

My mother was a wonderful woman, a devoted wife, and a loving mother of three children. She worked most of my life as a healthcare worker. She became a nurse’s aid when I was in early elementary school. She provided home health care, then switched to working in a hospital, and eventually became a registered nurse a few years before she retired.2 She was devoted to her patients and excellent at her job. I’ve often shared with people at my amusement over how she was a confirmed mathphobe. However, when it came time to do the calculations involved in properly administering certain medications, she was a champ. I often joked that despite the fact she hated and feared high school algebra, she could solve any algebra problem as long as it was phrased as a word problem about administering medications.

She loved all three of us kids dearly and showed a commitment to that love even when each of us sometimes made loving us difficult. I know that she struggled with me coming out as gay and it was at least a decade before she could talk about it without things getting emotional or tense. But by the time that my husband and I married, she embraced him as part of the family and did everything to make him welcome. I’m not sure how she dealt with the fact that I left Christianity and chose to devote myself to Freyja and the other Norse deities. To be honest, I’m not sure how much she knew about my religious inclinations, as it was something we didn’t really talk about.3 But again, I always knew that she loved me no matter what.

As I write this post, I’m sitting her and thinking I’d love to pour out a bit of mead for her if I had any. I’m not sure how she’d feel about it. But I hope that she knows that I love her and admire both what she did for me and how she helped shape the person I am today. She is most definitely among my revered ancestors.

The funeral home director who took care of having my mother cremated also wrote this lovely obituary for her based on information he received from my father.

(This post is part of #ChangingPathsChallenge2024. For for information on the challenge and a list of topics, please see this post by Yvonne Aburrow.)

Footnotes

  1. In many ways, I feel like this post is a long overdue eulogy for her, as I am still completely aghast at the church service that masqueraded as her memorial service back in February. ↩︎
  2. I’ve always felt it tragic that a work-related back injury basically forced her into early retirement. Becoming a nurse had been Mom’s dream since I was teenager and I wish she had been able to enjoy the fruits of that dream and her labors to make it come true for at least a few more years. ↩︎
  3. Hey, I figured navigating my sexuality was hard enough. Why make things even more difficult? ↩︎
Memories, Religion, Sexuality, Spiritual Development

Should I stay or should I go? Exploring a journal prompt from chapter 2 of “Changing Paths”

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[Content Warning: Mentions of suicidal ideation, religion trauma,]

Hello dear readers! It’s Friday morning so that means once again exploring a journal prompt from the wonderful book, Changing Paths by non-binary witch Yvonne Aburrow. This week’s prompt comes from chapter two, which is titled “Leaving Your Religion.”1 Today’s chosen prompt reads as follows:

Imagine yourself staying in your current situation, and fully inhabiting that choice. Fully experience all the emotions involved in that choice. Now imagine yourself leaving your current situation, and fully experience what that choice will be like. What feelings arise from that choice?

For this prompt, I’m going to hop into the wayback machine and share with you how I was feeling around the time I left Christianity, which was in early November 1998. I feel it’ll make for a far more interesting and instructive read that if I tried answering this question about my current religious path.

In the autumn of 1998, I was going through a bunch of emotional turmoil. I had come out as a gay man two and a half years ago and decided to accept that I was gay and that it was okay to pursue a romantic and sexual relationship with another man. I had even entered into such a relationship, which had just ended around this time due to a variety of reasons (which mostly boiled down to it was an unhealthy relationship and I probably wasn’t really ready for a relationship at the time.)

I had left my church in late August of that same year, but I still considered myself a Christian. I was still committed to Jesus, and thought he was the only way to heaven, though I was struggling with the thought that God would send some of my friends who I had recently come to rely on for support (I’ll talk more about them in a little bit) to hell just for not believing in Jesus.

I was also dealing with the religious trauma of growing up gay in a religious environment that told me gay people were bad little sinners who made God sad and/or angry as well as the emotional results of repressing my feelings for roughly a decade.2

I was also dealing with a lot of guilt at the time, and not just about being gay.3 I grew up in a church that really pushed the whole theology about people being sinners and unable to do anything for themselves about their retched state. So I had some serious self-esteem issues over my lack of perfection. So the fact that i had just watched my first relationship explode and watched the dissolution of dear friendship at the time — both of which I was largely responsible for — left me feeling extremely guilty and worthless. I also felt a great deal of guilt over the dissolution of my relationship because I was still operating under purity culture ideals, which told me that I should only ever have sex with one person (even if it was another guy), who would then be my lifetime partner. So I had failed in a great way in my mind and considered it a great moral failing.

This led to my second crisis and I realized that my feelings were slowly leading me to self-destruction. It became obvious to me that If I remained with the religion I was brought up, i wasn’t going to survive. So for the second time in my life, I chose survival over my religious indoctrination. I started looking at other religions.

So I found a religious tradition that saw me as inherently valuable rather than retched and in need of grace. I found a religion that looked at my flaws and told me that sure, I was flawed, but I could be so much better. Not only that, this new religion provided me motivation and the sense that such self-improvement was worthwhile rather than a hopelessly Sisyphean task.

As a result, I felt valued4 and hopeful. I felt freedom. I knew that this change was the right one for me. And I’ve never regretted it, no matter how difficult the transition and subsequent journey became.

Footnotes

  1. I would note that this chapter is not about how to leave your religion, but provides insights into the kinds of questions and ideas you might want to explore when trying to decide if it’s time to leave. It’s entirely possible you could read this chapter and come to the conclusion that you want to stick it out instead. ↩︎
  2. At one point, I realized that I did not emotionally feel like I was 24, which was my biological age at the time. When I considered how old I felt, I realized that I seemed to be emotionally fourteen trying to live in the adult world. I’m not sure when exactly it happened, but I’m glad my emotional development eventually caught up with my body. I now fully feel like a guy about to turn fifty. (How I feel about being about to turn fifty is a whole other conversation.) ↩︎
  3. To be honest, being gay was the one thing I didn’t feel guilty about. My coming out experience two and a half years prior had been its own crisis that almost did not end well. As a result, I don’t think I’ve ever looked back and wondered “what if I was right the first time and my feelings toward other guys are sinful. I will note, however, that there were other issues surrounding my sexuality. For example, see my reaction to the dissolution of my first relationship, which is describe later in this post. ↩︎
  4. There’s a reason one of my favorite personal slogans is “Jesus loved me. Freyja taught me to love myself.” ↩︎
Memories, Witchcraft

Witchy Questions: What is the first spell you ever preformed? Successful or not.

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This post was inspired by Question #40 from this list.

The first spell that I clearly remember casting, ironically enough, was a spell to help a friend find a new home. They had been looking for a while. I decided to do a spell using a poppet and a small planter, the kind that you might use to get seedlings started. The planter represented my friend’s perfect home, which I cleansed with incense smoke and then blessed by sprinkling various herbs (I forget which ones) into it. Then I set the poppet, representing my friend, into it, showing her finding and buying the home.

She made an offer on a house and had it accepted about three days later. I don’t generally brag about the magic I do, but I was quite proud of this one. Probably because it was my first real effort at doing magic.

Memories, Witchcraft

Witchy Questions: What is something you wish someone had told you when you first started?

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This post was inspired by Question #31 from this list.

I feel like my journey into the Craft was pretty perfect. Or at least perfectly planned. Sure, there’s part of me who wonders if I could have taken a more direct route to where I wound up if someone had, for example, suggested I read Gerald Gardner’s books sooner. But then I wonder, would I have been ready for his books any sooner? Or would that have turned me off and sent me down an even more circuitous route than the one I eventually took. And would I have missed important things by bypassing my forays into eclectic Wicca (and possibly Druidry)? How would I have met Freyja if I had somehow skipped over my friend Mike pushing me toward Asatru?

If anything, the lesson I could have benefited from had it come right from the beginning is to just trust the journey and have faith that I and those who worked with me would get me to where I needed to go no matter what.

Memories, Witchcraft

Witchy Questions: Have you ever used ouija?

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This post was inspired by Question #28 from this list.

When I was in junior high school, I attended an overnight event at my school. I think it was some sort of fundraiser. One of the other students decided to bring a ouija board. I got curious and decided to play along. At the time, I thought it was silly, harmless fun. I didn’t really believe we were talking with spirits (but thought it would be cool if I turned out to be wrong about that). I think the teachers in attendance were mostly amuses and perhaps a little concerned that it might get out of hand or cause trouble. But for the mot part, I think we all found it silly fun with just a hint of “what if” in the back of our minds.

These days, I’m not inclined to use a ouija board. If I have need to talk with spirits, I tend to prefer to go to them on their turf. Or I prefer to communicate more directly as a medium or even attend a seance.

One of the big issues I see with the ouija board — and people’s fascination with “talking to ghosts” is that it’s treated like a game. Too many people just decide to see what ghost shows up and start asking them random questions. I often wonder if the average spirit finds this as annoying as I might find random people stopping me on the street or calling me at random “just to see what happens.”

It wasn’t until I started hanging out with my friends Belinda, Michele (may she rest in peace), and Char that I got an appreciation for mediumship. I attended and participated in seances that they conducted and saw how messages from a loved one can be helpful and healing. Of course, I also appreciated that they — especially Char — reminded people that death doesn’t necessarily turn someone into an enlightened soul, and discretion and discernment must be utilized when dealing with messages from beyond.

But mostly, I still like to leave those on the other side of death alone unless I have a compelling reason to speak with them.

Memories, Personal Development, Witchcraft

Witchy Questions: What got you interested in witchcraft?

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This post was inspired by Question #26 from this list.

I have written at least two posts about my journey into the Craft and what led to me to it. In those, I talk about how the idea of magic and energy really resonated with me, as it confirmed an idea about the world that I had always imagined and wished to be true. Also, i was interested in the idea that my psychic abilities — most notably my empathy — could be better controlled, as other people’s emotions were almost literally driving me up the wall at a time. And I have talked about how I found in witchcraft a system of morality that allowed me to better love and encourage myself to become a better person by believing that it was actually possible to do exactly that.

There’s another part to that last one. One I’ve never really talked about. When I first started out, i saw witchcraft as a way to get forgiveness. Not from a deity, mind you, but from two people who I had deeply hurt, to the point that they both chose to leave my life. At the time, I thought i couldn’t live without them in my life, and witchcraft was a way to get them back.

I wasn’t looking to cast a spell on them — I understood immediately that such an act would be unethical — but was engaging in magical thinking of the kind that psychologists like to talk about. I had this weird idea that by getting into witchcraft, I could work on being a better person and eventually earn the opportunity to get both of them back in my life.

Fortunately for me, I eventually wised up. I realized that there was no way to “earn” their love and presence in my life. I came to understand that the best thing I could do for both them and myself is silently wish them wellness and healing from the hurt I caused and let them be. I also learned that I actually could live without having them in my life and allowed myself to heal as well.

I’ve thought about this recently due to listening to some witches complain about new witches and auditing some of their reasons for getting into witchcraft. Well, I had at least one shitty motive of my own for getting started, and yet I grew and here I am. So once again, I find myself wondering if we should just let those with less-than-perfect reasons continue their journey and trust both them and the universe to work it all out.

Memories, Meta-Blogging, Online Life

I Miss Diary Communities

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I got my start blogging over at OpenDiary.com. Of course, we didn’t call it blogging there. We called it writing in an online diary. But a lot of us tended to approach our online diaries like we were bloggers. A lot of us eventually created our own blogs somewhere else. Essentially, we had opinions and other thoughts we wanted to share with others, and we enjoyed getting feedback and starting dialogues over what we had to say.

To be honest, online diary sites, and especially OpenDiary, had features that made that a lot easier than it seems to be on more traditional blogs. Those sites were all about community and had tools and features that encouraged interaction between members in the community. There was the constantly updating “Recent Entries” list on the front page that let you know at a glance what your fellow online diarists had said recently. Then there were friend lists where you got a notification when one of your friends posted a new entry. There was also the Reader’s Choice, which was a small listing of people that a certain number of community members thought were worth reading. It was an interesting feature that had all the merits and problems that you’d expect from a system that promoted content based on popular vote, but it was still a way to promote content and encourage interaction.

My favorite feature was Diary Circles, which were pages dedicated to specific topics. When you wrote an entry, you could submit it to be listed in up to three different relevant circles. (It had to be relevant. People who submitted their angel food cake recipe to the Sports circle were shot down pretty fast.) That way, people who were interested in that particular topic could see and read your entry.

All of these things drove dialogue and debate. For the Religion and Spirituality circle — one of my favorite haunts — there was probably more of the latter than the former. Though I did forge some amazing friendships and there was a group of us that loved talking and exploring things together. That group consisted of atheists, Christians, Pagans, and Hindus. Our discussions were fascinating and amazing.

For various reasons, we all left OpenDiary for another site. Eventually we left that site for reasons that motivate me to not even name it. I moved to this site, though I also dabbled with blogs over on Blogger.com. and LiveJournal Other friends moved to LiveJournal, Blogger, Typepad, WordPress.com, or Blogger.com. Some of us are still blogging, though sometimes sporadically. I can’t speak for the others, but I still miss the online diary sites.

Running my own blog on my own hosted site means I don’t get all those fancy community-building features that encourage the same level of interaction and dialogue. It shows in my lack of comments — though there are also things I could probably do to fix that. And even a lot of the sites dedicated to helping you set up a blog seem to suffer. Sure, LiveJournal has LJ Communities and WordPress.Com has search tools to find other hosted blogs with similar interests. But it’s still not the same.

Some days, I would just kill for a Diary Circle or Editor’s Choice feature or one of those other gems that online diary sites were (and presumably are) so good at providing.

So, dear readers, are any of you bloggers or former bloggers? Have you migrated your blogging over the years? Does your current host offer features you didn’t have when you were hosted elsewhere? Or have you lost features you now miss due to a move? In general, how has your blogging experience changed and/or remained the same as time went by?

Gender and Sexuality, Introspection, Memories, Religion, Sexuality

Growing up evangelical and my family’s approach to discussing sexuality: A personal reflection

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[Content Note: Sexuality, evangelical approaches to (not) teaching kids about sexuality, brief mention of exploring my own body as a young child]

Twitter user @TheVictoryTori tweeted a great question earlier today:

[tweet 1118517593839755266]

I offered my own experiences in a thread and got into a short conversation with Tori.  I want to rehash and expand upon those thoughts here, because this is an area I struggle with to really recall and understand just what I was taught and how.

My parents were not against sex education.  They didn’t really believe in abstinence-only education. Sure, they wanted and expected my siblings and I to remain celibate until we got married. But they didn’t think that keeping us from learning about how sex and condoms work was the way to ensure that happened.

My family — and my church, for that matter — were also not deeply into the purity culture. We didn’t get inundated with books about the importance of remaining celibate until marriage. I don’t recall hearing many lectures about how having sex  would make us used up tissues, previously chewed chewing gum, glasses of water that had been spit into, or any of the other harmful metaphors other evangelical kids have been stewed in while growing up. (One of my junior/senior high Sunday school teachers may have invoked one of those metaphors once upon a time, but that’s it.)

Instead, the messaging I received was more subtle and often even unspoken. It created a sense that sex and all things sexual simply were not talked about and a sense of discomfort was left over the entire topic.

To give a concrete example, I bring up a memory from…early elementary school age (I think? Maybe a little younger?) My parents, my sister, and I were all in the living room, watching television. I was sitting on the floor cross-legged with my hands in my lap. At one point (I don’t remember why I originally did it), I ran the edge of my thumb along the head of my penis through my pajama bottoms. It felt pleasant, so I did it again. I repeated this several times, enjoying the sensation each time. After a couple minutes, my mother noticed and said sternly, “Jarred.  Stop that.”

My sister, having no idea what was going on, asked what I had done?  My mother simply said, “Don’t worry about it.”  And that was the end of the conversation.  There was no follow-up conversation after the fact.

In hindsight, I suppose (and hope) the message my mother meant to get across was that touching myself there in the middle of the living room in front of everyone wasn’t appropriate, and I should really do that sort of thing in private. (Indeed, I’ve met many parents since who do a great job of affirming their children’s desire to explore their own bodies while gently reminding them that it’s a thing best done in private.”)  But to a young boy in the early-to-mid single digits, my take-away was more like “touching myself there is bad.”

I’ll also note that my parents never really talked about this part of my body.  Other than how to make sure I got it cleaned well. So my understanding of my own penis that I got from my parents could really be summarized as (1) it’s where my pee comes out, (2) I need to make sure it’s clean, and (3) I shouldn’t touch it (except to clean it, of course).  So I think this left me feeling like that part of my body was “dirty.”

Then in fifth grade, we watched a health video that talked about puberty and sexual reproduction. I learned about how men’s bodies produce sperm which fertilize the eggs that women produce, which then becomes a baby, which the woman then gives birth to nine months later. (I don’t think the film really got into fetal development or the various stages therein. But hey, it was just supposed to be a video to give us a basic understanding of how our own bodies work and reproduction.) When I went home, I mentioned to my mother (I think) that we had watched the video, and she nodded and said an off-handed remark that if I had any questions, I could ask her.  I never asked her anything. That was partly because I had no questions and partly because the way she said it made it seem like it would be an uncomfortable and awkward conversation that she really didn’t want to have anyway.

We ended up watching the same video in sixth grade as well.  This time, as I mentioned on Twitter, I noticed something I hadn’t the previous year. The video explained (and demonstrated with crude animated drawings) just how the sperm managed to get from the man’s body into the woman’s body. (My brain at the time: “He sticks his [penis] where?!?!”) I found the revelation shocking, disturbing, and maybe somewhat traumatizing (given my understanding of my own penis as I discussed above, who can blame me?). Of course, a number of classmates noticed my shock and discomfort, and they found it amusing and took a few (mercifully brief) seconds to tease me about it.

I  never did talk to anyone about my reaction or my feelings. Again, I didn’t feel comfortable talking to my parents, given the general “we don’t talk about this” vibe I always got in the rare instances the topic had come up.

And that “we don’t talk about that” vibe and what I had internalized about my own genitals kept with me. It affected how I felt about myself when I discovered masturbation as a teen, given the intense sense of guilt that I was doing something wrong, but knowing it felt way too good to ever stop. It also meant that anything I learned about non penis-in-vagina sexual activity came from classmates rather than my family (and my school’s sex education department sure wasn’t going to cover it!).

So that’s what my own experiences growing up and learning about/discovering my sexuality. As I said, it wasn’t so much any explicit messaging that was a problem for me, but the unintended messages I took away combined with a lack of feeling like I could truly talk about these things.

In closing, I hope this post wasn’t too personal or explicit for anyone.


Family, Love, Memories

Then and Now: Weddings

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Occasionally, I read through all blog posts just to see what I wrote (and if applicable, what people had to say in reply). During my most recently perusal, I rediscovered a post where considered what I might want to do for my wedding. Seeing as I just recently (16 months ago this coming Wednesday!) got married, I thought it would be good to take another look at that post and compared it to what actually happened.

It turns out that after dating many (mostly non-devout) Christian or non-theistic men, I found Hubby, who is a Witch like me.  So we ended up getting a handfasting like I wanted. Also, while members of my family became much more open to my relationships and might have come to a wedding, we decided to keep the whole thing private.  We asked the members of our coven to perform the handfasting and be the sole attendees of it as well.  Out of the six coven members (including Hubby and myself) at the time, five of us were able to make it for the big day.  We all met at one coven member’s cabin in the woods and performed the rite at one of the outdoor altars that had been constructed in the woods.  We wrote our own vows.  I don’t think I remember any of mine and very few of Hubby’s.  I will say that Hubby was creative and crafted vows that were both sweet and funny.

After the rite itself, we built a nice bonfire in the “front yard” and set our vows on fire as an offering to the gods.  Then we celebrated with food we all cooked together and some fireworks.

It also turned out that we had enough people that we were able to treat the handfasting as our marriage ceremony.  The person who presided over the rite signed the marriage license and the other two acted as witnesses.  So we didn’t have to do a civil ceremony afterward.

Overall, it turned out almost exactly as I wanted, but even better.