Category Archives: Paganism

Magic/Magick, Paganism, Personal Development, Podcast, Psychic Stuff, Religion, Spiritual Development, Tarot, Witchcraft

Pagan Podcast: Divination for Self Empowerment

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It’s the end of July and that means it’s time for episode to of my podcast, The Bed and The Blade. In this episode, I talk about divination as a tool for self-empowerment. I include advice on how to start exploring the world of divination and discuss some of the tools available. I tried to find a great balance between information, suggestions, strong opinions, and the acknowledgement that other points of views exist and are legitimate. As always, you can listen here or check it out through any of the distributors listed below. I’ve also included links to the tools I mentioned and other resources you might find useful in this post.

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https://oembed.libsyn.com/embed?item_id=10667189

Tools Mentioned in the Podcast

Note: I have received no compensation for mentioning or linking to any of the above tools. Nor do I receive any sort of compensation if you purchase any of them.

Helpful Resources

Note: I have received no compensation for linking to or promoting any of the above resources. Nor do I receive any sort of compensation if you purchase any of them.

Legal

The music used to introduce and conclude this podcast is from “Outdated Time” by Esther Garcia. It was provided by Jamendo and licensed to me for use with this podcast.

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Paganism, Personal Development, Sexuality

My Journey from Christianity to Witchdom

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While talking with Stephen Bradford Long over at his blog, he expressed an interest in hearing my story about how I left Christianity and came to a Pagan path. I realized that while I’ve occasionally talked about it, I’ve never fully written out the story or tried to capture the various factors that contributed in a single post. I thought it might be good to do exactly that.

As I think is true for so many queer people, my journey out of Christianity started with coming to terms with my sexuality, a topic that I have covered quite extensively elsewhere. While I left my church and Christianity in 1998, the first step in that direction occurred in April 1996, when I decided to quit trying to deny or change the fact that I was attracted to other men — a decision I literally made for the sake of my own survival at the time.

Like so many young evangelical people, at the time I came out, my circle of friends almost exclusively consisted of other Christians, most of whom had the same evangelical leanings that I did. And while a few of my friends were probably sympathetic to LGBT people and possibly even affirming or on their way to being affirming, I felt that I needed to find new friends to support and affirm me as well. So a month before graduation, I started reaching out to another group on my college campus, a volunteer group dedicated to helping students with computer problems. It happened that a lot of people involved with this organization happened to be Pagan, into New Age spirituality, and Pagan-friendly. They were also very welcoming and encouraging of me. Some of them even ran a Telnet-based BBS, which I become involved with (and eventually the main programmer for) when I managed to get Internet access at home.

So I moved back to the rural part of Pennsylvania that my parents lived with (and I lived with them for most of the time until I was 31, moving into my own place for roughly two years starting in 1998). My new friends online and back on the college campus (many of them graduated after me) became my lifeline for the first several years I was stuck in rural conservative-land, having to hide myself. I often made many trips back to school during the next two years.

During this time, I also found myself re-examining my faith. After all, here were these friends who were helping to keep me from feeling completely lost and isolated, and I had been taught to believe that they were going to hell and deserved it. I could not reconcile these two things. Surely my friends deserved better than this. So i started to re-evaluate more in my faith than just what I believed about my own sexuality.

At this time, I was also starting to deal with a lot of emotional turmoil — repressing my sexual feelings as well as going through the cycle of guilt and shame when I gave in and allowed myself to find sexual release by myself messed me up — and lingering doubt and guilt over my sexuality. In 1998, I met someone through a friend and we had a complicated and less than ideal relationship. To be blunt, it wasn’t really a healthy relationship and that was mostly my fault.

The relationship ended abruptly and painfully when i made some hurtful choices, costing me my first relationship and the friendship of the person who introduced us in the first place. It’s perfectly understandable, mind you. I hurt them deeply and it’s one of the few things in my life that I will unequivocally state that I regret.

This caused another huge wave of guilt and shame — a spiral of it no less. Partly because of the hurtful choices I had made and partly because I was still in a purity culture mentality at the time. Sure I had accepted that it was okay to be gay at the time, but I still had this notion that I should save myself for that one person I would spend my life with. Like so many people, I foolishly had believed that my first boyfriend would be the one I would spend my life with and had had sex with him. This meant that I felt like a failure, because now that wasn’t going to happen. I had “given myself away” to the wrong person. And what’s worse, it was all my fault that we weren’t together anymore.

Eventually, I realized I couldn’t go on living with all this guilt and shame and keep spiraling. I realized I was headed to that same dark place I had come out of the closet in order to escape from back in 1996. So it was time for another change.

I don’t rightfully remember if I actually intended to leave Christianity in November of 1998, when I asked one of my online Wiccan friends what book she would recommend I read to learn more about her beliefs. I just knew that I asked her and she recommended that I read Scott Cunningham’s “Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner.” So I bought it and started reading it. Then I devoured it. Figuratively speaking.

The book a balm to my soul. Here was a religion that told me that I was okay. It told me that I could and should improve myself as a person, but it ultimately believed that it was possible for me to improve and become a better person because I had it in me. Compared to a faith that essentially told me that I had to try, but was guaranteed to fail and would have to grovel for mercy, it was a thing of beauty.

And Cunningham’s description of energy and magic spoke to me on a deep, visceral level. I always felt like such things existed, but was not permitted to truly believe in them in a faith that insisted such things were “of the devil.” So after reading the book and thinking about it deeply, I actually prayed a tear-filled goodbye to Jesus, telling him that I loved him, but I needed to find another way, one that lifted me up and allowed me to live a healthy life. And then I reached out to the (nameless and nebulous at the time) God and Goddess and began a new journey.

That journey has also been long, complicated, and filled with many twists and turns. But that will have to wait for another day.

Paganism, Podcast, Religion, Witchcraft

Podcast Episode: Recognizing the Everyday Sacred

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For those of you have been reading my blog for some time, it may interest you to know that I have just started producing a podcast called “The Bed and The Blade.” It’s a podcast that will explore witchcraft, Pagan spirituality, and living life passionately, three things that are incredibly intertwined in my own life. I’m both excited and nervous.

For those of you who may be just now finding me through the podcast, welcome! This post is for the very first episode of the podcast, “Recognizing the Everyday Sacred.”

I think that the understanding that the sacred is something to be discovered in everyday life rather than something that has to be sought out in special places is central and essential to my Craft and pagan practice on a number of levels. Listen in using the embedded player before to find out why.

I would like to take a moment to thank Ana Mardoll for xer help when I reached out to xer with my concerns about erasing or otherwise harming people who live with chronic illness or disability or are trans or nonbinary during my discussion of sacred bodies. I suspect that even with Ana’s words of wisdom, I probably failed in some ways and I take responsibility for that. Thank you Ana (if you read this) for helping me do better and I promise to keep striving toward further improvement in the future.

As a final note, I hope you enjoy the music that introduces the show and closes it out. It’s all from a wonderful track that I found and was able to buy a license to use in the podcast. In accordance with the license agreement, here is the information regarding it:

Esther Garcia — Outdated Time — Provided by Jamendo.

I hope you enjoy the episode. Feel free to share your own thoughts in the comments.

http://bedandblade.libsyn.com/recognizing-the-everyday-sacred

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Paganism, Religion

A few Yule Thoughts

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Happy Yule!1

This post should go live right at sunset here in Rochester, NY. When it does, I should have about an hour and a half left at work before I run home, pick up Hubby, and head to the covenstead to prepare and share some tasty stew and share in one another’s company. What better way could there be to face the longest night of the year than with good food and good company?

Some days, I think many Wiccans and Pagans (or maybe I’m just incorrectly generalizing from my own experiences) forget the importance of community when it comes to the Sabbats, especially this one. Traditionally, this was the time of year when people in Europe were staying inside and out of the cold as much as possible. They relied on the food stores they had managed to gather up over the warmer months and hoped and prayed it all held out until they could start growing food again. And they relied on one another to make it through that process. If your neighbor was running on supplies, you gave them as much as you could simply because you might need your neighbor to help you with as shortage next year.

To the best of my knowledge, no one is my coven is in danger of running out of food this winter. But we do rely on one another in other ways. At least some of us do tend to suffer from seasonal depression at this time of year, and I think having the group to turn to on nights like this is a comfort that helps us to navigate through the emotional lows. It also hopes give us hope that just like this longest night, this will pass, the days will grow longer, and our moods will brighten along with those days.

That is something to celebrate. Or at least something to think about while we eat yummy stew and ride it out together.

1Happy Summer Solstice to any readers from the Southern Hemisphere. Sorry, but as is my tradition, the rest of the post will focus on Yule, as that’s what I’m experiencing right now.

Paganism, Personal Development, Spiritual Development

Musings on Gaining Understanding

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The first step to gaining wisdom is admitting ignorance.

Several years ago, I frequented a number of online message forums that centered around discussing Witchcraft and Paganism.  On one of my favorites, I included the above statement in all of my posts. What most of the other posters did not realize was that I included the line as a reminder and comfort to myself, because it was a reality in my life I was struggling with at the time.

This was back when I was still relatively new to the Pagan paths.  I had a lot to learn (of course I still do and always will, as that’s the nature of any spiritual journey).  In many ways, this was frustrating to me.  Particularly because of my Christian background, which left me brimming with a great deal of knowledge about that religion and culture.  I could tell all of the major Bible stories, quote and explain several different verses in the Bible, and was even knowledgeable enough that I ended up preaching a number of sermons over the years before I eventually left my church and the faith I was raised in.

All of that was behind me.  Being the knowledgeable one was in the past. Instead, here I was having to learn everything about my new spiritual journey from step number one. Frustrating indeed.

I realized if I was going to progress on my journey, I needed to make peace with that reality. I realized that I had to accept that I didn’t know everything — or much of anything, really — so that I could get down to changing that.  So I typed up that sentence and started putting it places where I would see it, remember my goals and what’s needed, and even be comforted by the fact that it’s all part of the journey.

I’ve never forgotten that statement, because I realized there was a greater lesson there. Towards the end of my experience with the Christian faith, I had also grown prideful. I had started to think that I knew it all, which made the realization that my knowledge at the time would no longer serve me.  i was forced to eat a double portion of humble pie.  So I also remind myself of the above statement to avoid that trap of pride again. That sentence reminds me that even though it’s been over a decade since the first time I wrote it down and even though I’ve learned a lot over that time, there is still much I don’t know and understand.  That statement serves as a constant reminder to acknowledge where I’m still ignorant so that I can continue to seek out an even greater understanding, and hopefully do so in humility.

 

Paganism, Spiritual Development, Witchcraft

Samhain Musings

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Dark StaircaseToday is the day that Wiccans and many other Pagans in the Northern Hemisphere observe Samhain.  So happy Samhain!1

Among other things, Samhain represents the mythological and metaphorical descent into the underworld, the realm of Death.  It’s the traditional start of a season where life slows down (or used to, before our technology allowed us to keep a fast-paced frenzy going year-round) and offers much time for introspection and reflection.  It’s also a great time for deconstruction of oneself, one’s ego, and how one looks at the world.  In Gardner’s Myth of the Goddess, this is represented by the guardians to Death’s Domain when they challenge the Goddess and tell her she must remove all her jewelry and even her garments.  She had to bare her true self to descend.

I find it somewhat amusing that the modern adaptation of this holiday — Halloween — involves donning costumes and pretending to be someone or something else, when Samhain traditionally is also about divesting oneself of such pretense and facing the Darkness without one’s armor and accepting that such armor cannot truly protect.

Of course, that’s a frightening realization to embrace.  We tend to like our sense of control, especially over ourselves.  We like to think that we can present to the world who we want to be and have this accepted.  And there is some witchery there.  Letting go of that and becoming bare, vulnerable to any who may see the real us rather than the perfected image we prefer to present is a terrifying process.  It’s terrifying to let ourselves be confronted with the real us, for that matter.

But it’s also necessary.  To know who we truly are — stripped of all the pretense and illusions we create for ourselves and others — also enables us to improve ourselves and even reconstruct us.  Often, we can do that in ways so that we are more substantively like the person we imagine and project ourselves to be.  But making that improvement requires we first take a close look at admit we are not that person yet.

So to all my readers, especially any who follow a path where Samhain has meaning to you, I wish you a blessed Samhain.  May you find the serenity and courage to face the Darkness alone, naked (only figuratively, if you prefer), and vulnerable.  May you find comfort in the journey and hold tight to the hope of seeing the First Light of Yule.

1Happy Beltane to any Wiccans and other Pagans Down Under who are celebrating that instead.

Meditation, Paganism, Witchcraft

It’s almost like I planned it.

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Last night, I led my coven through a guided meditation for our full moon ritual.  After much consideration and considering the astrological configuration (sun in Libra, Moon in Aries) for this full moon, I somehow fell upon the idea of making the focus of the ritual be about the third pillar of the Witches’ Pyramid, “To Dare.”  In the traditions I’ve seen, that pillar is usually associated with the element of water, whereas Libra and Aries are an air sign and fire sign respectively.

My idea for the ritual is to consider how Libra’s energy toward finding harmony and balance can actually become a source of blocking the need o push on and face the unknown and the fears that surround it in an act of daring.  The meditation suggested that Aries’s impulsiveness and impression could provide the necessary contrast and catalyst to push past and delve into the depths of daring.

After we finished the mediation, I realized that I had placed the setting of this meditation in a stone edifice (a high tower with a great room at the top).  The stone provided us with a link to the element of Earth, the missing fourth.  And the element was providing the foundation and stability for the working, as is its nature.

I laughed as I realized that without even planning it, I had created a nicely balance meditation in which all the elements were present and invoked in the work we were doing.  Pretty good, considering I don’t actually work much with the elements in my personal practice.

Paganism, Religion, Witchcraft

Let us bring forth that which has quietly formed in dark places.

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Happy Yule![1]

The winter solstice — that point where the sun’s rays are least direct on the Northern Hemisphere — officially takes place tomorrow morning at 5:30 UTC.  For those of us in the Eastern time zone (UTC -5:00), that translates to tonight/tomorrow morning at 12:30am.

The winter solstice marks the longest night of the year and the triumphant return of the light, longer days, and warmth.  To some Pagans and Wiccans, it represents the rebirth of the sun god.  Yule brings a sense of rejoicing, the darkest time following Samhain has is about to pass and the half-year reign of the underworld will begin to wane and give way to the brightness and warmth that is vital to our survival.

However, I think it’s important to remember as we begin to pass back into more light that we need the time of darkness to survive as well.  After all, the growing season and bountiful harvest rely on the gestational period of the dark winter months, just as our own psyches require downtime and decreased activity.

Yule marks the rebirth of light into a fragile, not entirely ready form, but it’s a birth that takes place thanks to the things that have been rejuvenated and seething in the darkness.  And while that fragile light shall grow stronger and eventually overcome the darkness for its time of reign, it will also be nourished by the waning darkness and the slumber it encourages.

So let the light shine in this quiet time, not as a brilliant force to be reckoned with, but as a comforting glimmer and a promise of what is to come.

Note:
[1]  Or for any readers who are in the Southern Hemisphere, happy Litha/Summer Solstice.  I hope you will indulge me in the rest of this post, however, as I focus on the mysteries I am currently experiencing/working with.

Books, Paganism, Society

A book on Pagan minorities.

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The other day, Steve Hayes brought the book, “Shades of Faith:  Minority Voices in Paganism” to my attention.  As I’ve been highly interested in the intersectionality between various minority groups, discovering a book that discusses minority people within my own religious community came as a terrific boon.

In her introduction, editor Crystal Blanton describes her own experience as a Black[1] Wiccan High Priestess thus:

I am accustomed to being who I am among those who are different.  I am also accustomed to seeing the world a little differently because my experiences in the world are different.  I am used to being the one that people have turned to when they wanted to ask a question about cultures outside of their own.  This has become a part of what I recognize as a gift the Gods have graced me with; and like the pattern of my life, I have found a path to purpose in being the minority within the minority.

Ms. Blanton acknowledges that some minority people within Paganism have felt alienated within the Pagan community, and I hope that some of the essays within this analogy will provide examples of such experiences.  I am hoping that as a Pagan community builder, I can find ways in which to make my own community more inclusive by discovering needs and issues that I may not have considered before.  After all, I agree with Ms. Blanton’s assessment of how a diversity of voices only strengthens us:

The voice of differences add in an element of harmony to the collective voices of any path or movement.  We are in the human and social movement of spiritual understanding; Black, White, Hispanic, Native or other.  Together we harmonize on a frequency that is powerful enough to manifest divinity on earth and bring spiritual rest to so much collective suffering and pain.  I am honored to be the black key on the piano.


Note:
[1]  This is the description that Ms. Blanton chose for herself.  As such, I felt it fitting to use her own terminology.

Paganism, Religion

Pagans, Wiccans, psychics, and jargon

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Pentagram with a circle around it

Image via Wikipedia

Emilyperson left a great comment on Friday’s post:

I’m curious, when you first started hanging around Pagans, was there a lot of jargon that confused your young Christian self? I wouldn’t expect you to have been familiar with things like different deities, symbols, and procedures, but does the slang tend to be as far from mainstream American slang as the fundamentalists’?

To be honest, I can’t say as I recall much about my early exposure to Paganism.  It would be hard for me to evaluate how I handled the introduction to Pagan, Wiccan, and psychic concepts and terminology thirteen years ago.  So rather than trying to remember, I’m going to just take a look at how I perceive such jargon now, how it relates to Wicca, Paganism, and psychic phenomena/practices, and try to guess how an “outsider” or “newbie” might perceive and experience an encounter with such terminology.[1]

I think that Pagan, Wiccan, and psychic jargon can be just as offbeat and unusual as fundamentalist Christian jargon.  And to be frank, there is a lot of it, due to the great diversity of practices and beliefs that falls under those collective umbrellas (each one is pretty broad and contains great diversity in its own right).

However, I also think that the jargon isn’t quite as central to the Pagan/Wiccan/psychic identities.  You can learn a lot about all of those things without coming into contact with terms like “chakras,” “arcana,” “ardanes,” and “visualization.”  You can learn a lot of the basics and get a lot of information before delving into such technical, specialized terms.

Compare this to fundamentalist and even evangelical Christianity, where the first step involves being “born again,” which is a jargon-y term.  In reality, I think fundamentalist jargon and one’s knowledge of it is often used as part of the fundamentalist identity and a way to prove oneself part of the “in crowd.”

This brings me up to my second point, in which I think the religio-magical movements I’m now a part of tend to be far better at presenting our jargon to “outsiders” in an accessible way.  This is done both through personal conversations and the constantly growing introductory literature available.

I think this can at least partly be attributed to the fact that these are relatively new movements and that many of the adherents are still converts rather than people who were raised by Pagan parents[2].  As such, they are religious movements that are more geared towards welcoming new members and making everything understandable and accessible, even to the point of often anticipating what terms may be unfamiliar to the “uninitiated.”

Fundamentalists, on the other hand, tend to be more insular and seem to just expect everyone to automatically know what it means to be “born again,” “sanctified,” or “demonically oppressed.”

Notes:
[1]  It would be awesome if any “newbies” and “outsiders” would pipe up in comments and offer their thoughts.

[2]  This certainly isn’t universal.  I do know a growing number of second-generation Pagans and a few third-generation Pagans.  However, I think we converts outnumber them considerably.