Category Archives: Paganism

Paganism, Religion, Witchcraft

#ChangingPathsChallenge2024: Roots and Wings

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Years ago, a coven member asked me a question. She knew that my own witchcraft practice tended to be shamanistic in nature and she was starting to explore those practices herself. She inquired as to why it seems that most shamanic and shamanistic practices start the newcomer of with exploring the underworld. I considered this for a moment before giving her my opinion:

The underworld is often associated with the ancestors and the ancestors typically reside there. We owe our lives and our very beings to our ancestors, as they are the ones who both made us who we are and shaped the world into what we see now. To move forward, we need to grapple with this understanding and learn the wisdom of those who came before us.

Years later, I think that answer still fits, though I think it’s also incomplete. Our ancestors were imperfect. They made mistakes. We need to learn not only the wisdom of their successes, but the wisdom they learned from their mistakes. And perhaps we might learn lessons from their mistakes that they themselves still missed.

Once we are rooted in the past and understand the lessons we can learn, we are ready to soar beyond that past. We now understand the territory beneath and behind us, giving us a framework as we take flight and explore the world anew. In this way, we add to the wisdom of our ancestors, once more reshaping the world and trying to do a slightly better job than those who came before us.

And someday, we too shall pass into the underworld. We will become the ancestors who provide wisdom and roots for future generations preparing to spread their wings and take flight themselves.

(This post is part of #ChangingPathsChallenge2024. For more information about the challenge and a list of topics, check out this post by Yvonne Aburrow.)

Music, Paganism, Religion

#ChangingPathsChallenge2024: Songs

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Most of my life, I’ve had a tentative relationship with music. I did not listen to the radio or collect a lot of albums from my favorite musicians growing up. When we traveled in the car, if we weren’t listening to the radio (usually tuned to one of the Christian radio stations that dominate the twin tiers region), we listened to one of three tapes that my family collectively owned.

  • My mother’s “Best of the Statler Brothers” collection.
  • My sister’s “Beat the System” tape by Petra.
  • My “Ghostbusters” tape.

In fact, the only music that remained in my life were hymns at church and the songs we’d sing at Sunday school. Some of those are still implanted in my memory even though I haven’t sung them since 1998 (for the most part). Especially the Sunday school songs. I swear that the fastest way to trigger a former Sunday school teacher from an evangelical church is to start singing “Father Abraham.” (Warning: The link is neither for the feint of heart nor for those particularly susceptible to earworms.)

In college, I got introduced to the kind of worship songs put out by groups like Maranatha Music. I came to like these simple tunes as they were easy sing and fairly easy to remember. At lest the choruses were. I’d never remember all the words to even the first verse of “A Mighty Fortress is Our God,” but I could always remember how to sing “As The Deer.”

When I started exploring Paganism, I thought it would be nice to find music that reflected my new spiritual home. I had heard there were many Pagan chants used in ritual, but there weren’t any groups in my area that used them. (I did get introduced to a couple while attending Pagan conferences in Ontario province in the early 2000s.) I started looking at music that was not explicitly religious and found artists like Loreena McKennitt1 and Clannad, while not explicitly Pagan, had songs that at least seemed to hint at Pagan ideas.

While spending time with various Pagans in Ontario, I also discovered the music of a Pagan folk singer who went by the name Castalia.2 I instantly fell in love with her music and I’d consider her songs some of my favorite Pagan songs. Not that I know a lot of others, mind you. As I said, music has never been a huge part of my life.

I’d still love to learn some simple tunes or chants for ritual purposes, though.

(This post is part of #ChangingPathsBlogChallenge2024. See Yvonne Aburrow’s post announcing the challenge for more details and a list of topics.)

Footnotes

  1. The particularly observant reader might note that I seem to gravitate towards Canadian artists. I see it too, though I have no idea why that is! Maybe it’s because I basically live right on the border? ↩︎
  2. I was also fortunate enough to meet the artist herself at a couple of those Pagan conferences I mentioned and even have a couple brief conversations with her. ↩︎
Paganism, Religion, Spiritual Development, Witchcraft

#ChangingPathsChallenge2024: Wonder and Awe

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I know that a lot of people find the term problematic due to the connotations many people associate with it, but I love the term “baby witches.” I also love people to whom the term applies. But then, I also love babies.1

To me, I think of babies and I envision of little humans facing the world for the first time with curiosity and a sense of awe and wonder. Everything is new to them and they’re often eager to explore it and try to understand it. This is the similar to the way I feel when I interact with “baby witches.”

As someone who has been exploring the Craft for two and a half decades now, I love watching people come to it for the first time. I love to see the excitement and curiosity in their eyes. I love the awe they experience as they perform their first spell — and their sense of triumph when they reap the rewards of their first successful spell. I love the amount of concern and attention they often give to making sure they “get it right” when planning their first ritual.2 Like their infant counterparts, they are encountering this new world they’ve found with a sense of wonder.

That’s something that I sometimes have to work to recapture as a more experienced witch. It’s too easy to forget just how wondrous doing ritual and encountering the gods can be after a while. So I appreciate the “baby witches” in my life that show me what that’s like and inspire me to take a moment to rekindle that sense of awe and wonder.

(This post is part of #ChangingPathsChallenge2024. See Yvonne Aburrow’s post announcing the challenge for more details.)

Footnotes

  1. Until it comes time to change a dirty diaper. I changed my sister’s oldest daughter’s diaper once. After that, i decided that was not part of the job description for being an uncle. ↩︎
  2. I will seemingly contradict myself a tiny bit to offer this advice to less experienced witches: Try not to worry quite so much about “doing something wrong,” though. The Craft is a learning process rather than a high stakes game. You will make little mistakes, but the vast majority of them will be of little to no consequence. ↩︎
Animals, Paganism, Religion

#ChangingPathsChallenge2024: Animals and Birds

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Image taken from the Amazon page for the book.

I’ve always felt drawn to black bears. I’ve always felt I’ve been able to identify with them in many ways and that they had lessons to teach me. But my feelings about them were often different from how most Neo-Pagans (especially the men) who claim bears as their spirit animal1 view them.

I’m not someone who perceives myself as a fierce warrior. To me, I look at the bear and do not see the legendary rage of Viking berserkers, but the nurturing love of a mother bear. And sure, there’s nothing more fierce than a mama bear protecting her cubs from a real or perceived danger. But that’s not her “default mode of operation.”

Several years ago, i ran across a book called Among the Bears by Benjamin Kilham, pictured at the beginning of this post. Kilham was the first person to successfully rehabilitate orphaned black bear cubs and return them to the wild when they were older. In the book, he describes his experiences doing so, the lessons he learned, and the things he discovered about black bears along the way.

One of the things that Kilham learned while working with the first cubs he rehabilitated — a brother-sister pair who had been abandoned by their mother — was that black bears tend to be quite altruistic. By that, Kilham explains that he means that a black bear will put themselves in danger to help another living being, including one that belonged to a different species. i found myself fascinated by his recollection of the events that led up to this discovery. Furthermore, I realized that this was a man who had an understanding of bears that more closely matched my own.

I will note that part of the difference between myself and other people who feel attracted to bears is that I suspect most of them envision grizzly bears rather than black bears. However, I also wonder how many other Neo-Pagans and members of other modern religious movements take the time to learn to learn about the various animals they feel drawn to through sources outside of books on spirituality, such as what animal conservationists and biologists might have to say about them. I think that it’s well worth it to do so, as there’s so much more to learn.

(This post is part of #ChangingPathsBlogChallenge2024. See Yvonne Aburrow’s post announcing the challenge for more details.)

Footnotes

  1. I think it’s also important to note that the way many Neo-Pagans and other non-indigenous have glommed onto the term “spirit animal” is typically appropriative and otherwise problematic, so I prefer to avoid the use of that term. ↩︎
Paganism, Personal Development, Religion, Spiritual Development

#changingpathschallenge2024: Change

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I have a complicated relationship with Odin. When I started looking to build a relationship with various Norse gods, I had planned on avoiding Odin altogether. I thought Thor seemed like a much friendlier and jovial sort. And Thor was indeed friendly to me. But one night, he told me he couldn’t stay to talk with me because someone else wanted a word.

And after a beautiful moment of being transformed into a falcon1 by Freyja and an exhilarating flight over a gorgeous canyon, I found myself in the throne room of the Al.father himself, who accused me of avoiding him.. I had been caught red handed and called out. Odin and I had a brief conversation in which he explained to me why i needed the gifts and lessons he wanted to teach me. I saw the wisdom in his arguments and agreed — albeit somewhat reluctantly — to work with him.

Odin has never been a huge part of my life. But he comes around every now and then. And the thing is, life gets interesting whenever he does. Because in my experience Odin usually brings change with him. There got to be a point in my life where I would sense his presence anew in my life and would immediate want to scream, “What now, fucker?!”2

Change is never easy, nor is it comfortable. I recall reading somewhere that all change is stressful and even traumatic, even positive change. And while the changes that Odin brought and asked me to undergo were always a net benefit for me, I didn’t always like going through the process of change.

That’s normal, and sometimes the only way to endure it is to remember that change is vital to life. One of the defining characteristics of living things is that they grow, and growth always means change. I’ve also heard it suggested that if you are not growing, you’re dying (which is typically a much less pleasant form of change in its own right) or already dead.

As someone who wants to go on living — and hopefully living well — I’ve come to accept change. Even with all its discomfort and messiness. So after I’ve sighed and groused about Odin coming around with more change, I usually let out a breath and say, “Okay, bring it on, fucker. Let’s do this.”

(This post is a part of the #changingpathschallenge2024. See Yvonne Aburrow’s post for more information on the challenge and a list of keywords/prompts for it.)

Footnotes

  1. If it’s not obvious, I’m talking about things that I envisioned/experienced while in an altered state of conscience. I’m not claiming that I literally shape-shifted. ↩︎
  2. Yes, I occasionally swear at my deities. We have that kind of relationship. ↩︎
Paganism, Religion, Spiritual Development, Witchcraft

Different groups, different purposes: Free-styling it for chapter 9 of “Changing Paths”

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Back in the early 2000s, I had an online friend who was a member of a Unitarian Universalist church and an extremely active member in that church’s Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans (CUUPS) group. As I didn’t have much of a Pagan community at that time, I decided to look up my local (at the time) UU church and check them out. They had no CUUPS group, but I decided to check out a couple Sunday morning services.

I met some delightful people at that church and enjoyed talking with them. I found we shared a lot of values in common. i found the same thing when I decided to check out the UU church in Rochester when I moved up here. At both churches, I concluded that the people I met were amazing people I could sit down and have a great conversation with over coffee and even join with to work towards political causes we shared in common. But the services at those churches did not speak to my soul. So in both cases, I quite going after a couple of Sundays.1

These memories and other like it came to mind as I was reading chapter nine of Changing Paths by Yvonne Aburrow, which is titled “Arriving in a group.” In this chapter, Yvonne talks a lot about the importance of finding a group that shares your values. And I absolutely agree that shared values is absolutely important. I don’t think that I could stay in a group where I had an awesome spiritual experience, but found their values morally concerning. So checking out the values of a group first makes absolute sense.2

And if I’m looking for a group that’s mostly inclined toward social, educational, or advocacy purposes, shared values might remain the only thing I care about. But if I’m looking for something more spiritually fulfilling, I feel there are more things I need to have. For example, I need ritual that’s steeped in the mythology and cosmology that speaks to my soul. Similarly, I need a group that explores the mysteries and the aspects of the numinous that I feel called to explore.3 I may love the people in both of those UU churches and share their values, but we clearly speak different spiritual languages, making communal worship with them less than ideal for me. And that’s okay.

And this is where I note that it’s important to consider that we’re allowed to have more than one group membership, just like it’s possible to follow multiple religious traditions in some cases. Even if I were to limit myself to just Pagan groups, I think this is pretty normal, reasonable, and even arguably expected. For example, I can attend both my local witch’s meetup and have coven with whose members I’m more closely knit. And obviously, my level of commitment to each of those groups would differ based on the reasons I’m a part of them and the level of commitment required to be a contributing member of them.4

Footnotes

  1. Okay, full disclosure time: When I went to the church in Rochester, I was motivated by more than just wanting to find a new spiritually minded group. There was a guy involved. And how things turned out with that guy probably also played a part in why I quit going. Though I’d like to think that if I had found the services spiritually fulfilling, I would have kept going regardless. ↩︎
  2. And lest this post come across as being too critical of this chapter of Yvonne, I will note that the title is “Arriving in a group.” Yvonne dedicates chapter 13 to beloved community and finding that. So one could reasonably argue that I’m jumping the gun here and should save these thoughts for that chapter. To which I say, “Maybe, but that’s not what I decided to do.” So nyah! (I never said I was mature.) ↩︎
  3. Also, a service that is centered around sitting and listening to a sermon or lecture just doesn’t really work for me. Even when I might agree with the sermon. ↩︎
  4. The idea that different groups require different levels of commitment is something Yvonne covers in this chapter as well. In fact, they encourage people to consider the commitment level required by any group they are considering joining and whether they are able and willing to meet it. ↩︎
Paganism, Religion

#changingpathschallenge2024: Nature

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Image: A picture of the Genesee River from the Gorge Trail in Letchworth State Park. Taken during my birthday hike in 2015.

I’ve hiked off and on for much of my life. It’s an activity that I’ve gotten fairly serious about at some points while walking away from it at other points. The last time I got into hiking was from 2013 until about 2015. In fact, the above picture is probably from one of the last hikes I took.

I enjoy the sense of seclusion and isolation from the bustle of civilization that I experience with hiking. While on a good trail, it’s just me, whatever companions I’ve chosen to invite along, and the beautiful views. I’d often hike alone, with my own thoughts my only companions. Such an environment is practically a breeding ground for new perspectives on old ideas and new solutions for old problems.

And yet, while out in nature and being isolated from most of human civilization, I don’t feel quite alone. I’m surrounded by the sounds of wildlife and am often blessed with glimpses of the occasional animal. An encounter with a bird or a deer can remind me that I am not alone in the world and humans are not alone in this world either. It can also remind me that all life on the planet is connected.

These days, health issues and higher priority activities keeps me closer to home. To be honest, I don’t think I could hike the gorge trail pictured above any more.1 But I still try to keep the lessons I’ve learned from hiking in mind years later. And I try to remember that even in my suburban home, I am still a part of the greater community of the world. The community that is made up of more than just humans.

(This post is part of the #changingpathschallenge2024. See Yvonne Aburrow’s post for more details about the challenge.)

Footnotes

  1. Given that I usually had to take a day or two of serious rest after hiking that trail when I was at my peak physical health in 2015, I’d say I could barely hike it back then. ↩︎
Emotions, Love, Paganism, Personal Development, Religion

#changingpathschallenge2024: Love

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Jesus Loved Me. Freyja Taught Me to Love Myself.

That was my joking answer back in 2022 when Meghan Crozier1 asked her followers what they would title their own deconstruction memoirs. The statement has stuck with me ever since. It’s funny how sometimes what we say when joking turns out to be profound truths, even if only personally true or profound.

My understanding of love was somewhat limited when I was an evangelical Christian. This was due to the fact that in that religion, I was taught that love — or at least pure love — was something that was only given out by the perfect god of the religion, who poured his love out on the undeserving — that is, everyone else. Realizing that I was only receiving love because the Almighty was giving it to me despite myself ruined my sense of self-worth, something I’ve talked about multiple times.

So when I came to Paganism, I was confronted with a new in which I could see myself as inherently worthy of love. That changed so much about the way I saw both myself and love. In time, I’ve come to realize that love — whether for myself or others — is a natural reaction to recognizing the sacred nature — which I define as the inherent value — of the beloved. If I and other are sacred/inherently valuable, how can I do anything other than love them? This allowed me to pour out love2 — both for myself and for others — more freely.

(This post is part of the #changingpathschallenge2024. See Yvonne Aburrow’s post for more details on the challenge.)

Footnotes

  1. As an aside, Meghan co-hosts a wonderful deconstruction-themed podcast with Cortland Coffey called Thereafter. I highly recommend it. I’m their number one fan. (Pay no attention to the sledgehammer behind my back.) It also occurs to me that I should see if I can help get Yvonne Aburrow on their podcast. I think many people in their audience would appreciate Yvonne’s book(s). ↩︎
  2. I will note that as an evangelical Christian, I always found it other to be loving toward others than toward myself. Much of (white) evangelical Christianity is designed this way. After all, we are commanded to love others, but deny ourselves and do things like “put our sinful nature” — which is often conflated with “the flesh” — to death. Plus, I grew up learning that “Jesus, Others, then You” spelled J-O-Y, and that was the order you were supposed to prioritize people in. The reality was, I rarely got around to the Y part, so I had more JO than JOY. ↩︎
Paganism, Religion

#changingpathschallenge2024: My values

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Today’s blogging challenge prompt is “my values.” As I considered what to say about my values, I decided to look up a definition. The University Texas of Austin’s website Ethics Unwrapped defines values as “beliefs that motivate people to act one way or another.” This made me immediately think of a Threads post from the start of May in which I offered my top three beliefs:

  • Everything and everyone is sacred.
  • We are in dialogue with the Divine.
  • Creation is an ongoing process and we are participants in it.

I’d say that these three beliefs form the foundation of my morals and every decision I make. It is that dialogue and my role as a co-creator that urges to realize that the choices I make have consequences, while my belief that everything is sacred and my desire to treat all everyone and everything with the dignity that such a sacred nature requires informs my choices.

Of course, this trio of beliefs alone are not sufficient for making day-to-day choices. For that, I rely on virtues, those qualities that I have come to deem worthy of pursuing and upholding. I can’t say as I have a definitive or formal list of all the virtues I embrace and seek to uphold, but I’ve been heavily influenced by the Wiccan virtues, the Nine Noble Virtues from Asatru, and Ar nDraiocht Fein’s own list of virtues from their dedicant program.

The thing about a virtue-based morality is that it’s not black and white, nor are there any easy answers in such a system. For each situation, I have to consider the virtues I hold dear and determine which ones have something to say about that particular situation. I then must consider whether any of those virtues come into conflict in the context of that particular situation. If so, I have to decide how to best resolve that conflict. This is why i appreciate being in dialogue with my deities. Their wisdom in navigating such a complicated world is greatly appreciated. But in the end, it is up to me to decide what to do. After all, I am the one who has to take responsibility for my choice and the consequences that result from it.

(This post is part of #changingpathschallenge2024. For more information on the challenge, check out Yvonne Aburrow’s post to learn more about the challenge.)

Books, Introspection, Paganism, Religion, Witchcraft

Why I like being a Pagan: Exploring a journal prompt from Chapter 8 of “Changing Paths”

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Happy Friday readers! In this blog post, I continue working my way through Changing Paths by Yvonne Aburrow. Today’s prompt is from chapter eight, which is titled “Joining a Pagan Tradition.”1 I’ve chosen the following prompt as a guide and inspiration for this post:

What aspect of Paganism are you drawn to? Is it magic and witchcraft? Nature, the Earth, or the land? Ancestors? Trees, stars, and stones? A specific pantheon of deities or a specific ancient culture?

This feels like another one of those prompts where I’ve spent this entire blog exploring the underlying question, so it’ll be somewhat challenge to distill several years of thoughts into a single cohesive post.2

I think the first thing that comes to mind is the memory of how the idea magic drew me to witchcraft (and Paganism in general) almost immediately back in 1998. It wasn’t necessarily even the thought of self-empowerment that comes with the ability to work magic, though that definitely was a factor. There was some part of me that almost craved a sense of wonder and magic — something existing just beyond the humdrum of everyday life — all my life. I remember being a kid and imagining that I could feel the flow of magical energy all around me. So imagine my delight when I read Cunningham’s book3 and realized that some people thought that was actually real. To make a pun of it, I was enchanted.

Of course, as I matured as a witch, I also began to appreciate what I might call the magical of the mundane. I came to appreciate that the separation between a magical life and a mundane one was actually illusory, which is an idea that appealed to me ever since.

I gravitated toward the Norse deities and Freyja over a period of a few years after exploring a few options. For example, i spent about a year studying Irish mythology and trying to connect with the Tuatha De Danann. This was mainly because I found a young gentleman at my local witch shop who was also studying and was a member of Ar nDriacht Fein, a Druid group4 founded by Isaac Bonewitts.

However, my friend and I discussed some of our other interests, and for me, that included the runes, which I had begun studying (at the suggestion of my first boyfriend, no less) even before I decided to leave Christianity.5 My friend noted that I practically lit up when I started talking about the runes and the lore that was often woven into interpreting and understanding them. He commented that while I clearly enjoyed learning about Irish mythology, I did not have that same passion for it. So he strongly encouraged me to seek to build a relationship with the Aesir and Vanir instead. And that’s how I eventually became a Freyjasman.6

As time went by, the ancestors became increasingly important to me. This was especially true as I learned more about seidr and other shamanistic7 aspects of Norse magic. Of course, my first introduction to the idea of honoring the ancestors likely came from my time with ADF, which includes calling and honoring the ancestors in their ritual structure. But it became more important as I began a more practical and intimate practice of working with the ancestors on a more one-on-one level.

As for honoring nature, I have very mixed feelings about the relationship between Paganism and nature, at least how it often seems to be viewed in the greater Pagan community. As someone who grew up in rural Pennsylvania, went hunting a couple times (I quickly realized I had neither the patience nor the overall temperament for it), and grew up camping, I had a great deal of appreciation for nature. I still think much of nature and spending time in nature is wondrous and important. I also think that preserving nature is crucial.

And yet, as an old rural boy, I sometimes feel that many Pagans romanticize and even idolize “nature” in a way that doesn’t resonate with my experiences with nature. I often find myself wondering if any of them have actually taken a hike in the woods or spent much time in the parts of nature not meticulously maintained by people.

Also, I feel like some of my Pagans tend to forget that humans are a part of nature, and that includes our tendency to build structures, societies, and the amenities of civilization. The “nature vs. human civilization” divide sometimes seems overblown to me at times.8

I think for me, this is a topic where my perception of Midgard vs. Utgard is instructive for me.9 On one level, I tend to view them as symbolic of the (relatively) secure places established by human civilization and the untamed places in the world that exist beyond those boundaries. I also think that we as humans need both of these places and that human survival requires us to cross into those untamed places at times. I also think that once you start thinking about these ideas, the boundary between Midgard and Utgard tend to get much fuzzier than we first thought.

That was probably quite the tangent though. At any rate, I hope you’ve enjoyed this latest insight into the things that have drawn me most and meant he most to me in Paganism as I practice it. I’d love to hear your own thoughts in the comments!

Footnotes

  1. I will note that this is the first chapter in part two of the book, where Aburrow shifts focus to exploring and following Pagan spiritualities. For those who are not interested in becoming a Pagan, I acknowledge that the rest of the posts in this series and (and the rest of Aburrow’s book) may not be as directly applicable or even interesting as part one. As such, I understand if you choose to skip the rest of this series, though I hope you’ll at least consider sticking around. After all, you may find ways to apply my own thoughts and Aburrow’s book to your own spiritual path (or lack thereof). Either way, I wish you well. ↩︎
  2. Me being me, I may abandon all pretense of cohesion fairly quickly. ↩︎
  3. Many of you undoubtedly know exactly which one I’m talking about. ↩︎
  4. I’ll note that ADF (whose new website I just noticed) is a bit different than some Druid organizations in that it does not limit itself, its members, or its groves to Celtic reconstructionism. It welcomes and encourages the exploration of any and all Indo-European cultures, their myths, and their religious traditions. However, my friend and the proto-grove he hoped to established were focused on Irish myths and culture. ↩︎
  5. This is where I make most of the Heathens reading this post groan (or worse) by confessing that my foray into the runes started with getting a copy of Ralph Blum’s “Book of Runes.” Don’t worry, though. My studies quickly expanded to sources more rooted in Norse cosmology, mythology, and lore. ↩︎
  6. Okay, Odin occasionally shows up with some lesson he wants me to learn or a change he wants me to make. But my practice and devotion is definitely focused on Freyja. ↩︎
  7. I forget where I picked it up from, but I’ve adopted the practice of describing practices that bear similarities to various shamanic practices as “shamanistic” while reserving the term “shamanic” to refer to practices that are part of a vocation in certain cultures. ↩︎
  8. In the past, I’ve asserted that the sexual (and other) energy often found at a rave in the city is as much a manifestation of nature as an idyllic site in the forest and I’m inclined to stand by that claim. ↩︎
  9. My brain is also slow-baking a retelling of the myth of Thor’s encounter with Utgard-Loki where Utgard-Loki is the protagonist, protecting the untamed places from Thor and his compatriots, whom he saw as invaders. I think this retelling would underscore the dangers of destroying the untamed places by imposing too much order on them. But I’m just a witch who thinks a certain level of chaos is needed for life to thrive in the end. ↩︎