What was your experience that brought you to Paganism/Witchcraft?

[icymist]

For me, I was just a kid, 19 years old. This person I knew came up to me asked me if I was special in this way. Myself, I asked this person to prove themselves in numerous ways The ways presented to me showed nothing more than tricks through voicery and by talking a lot. This expericense rose through me for this is what I had thought to be Witchcraft and Paganism. Since then, I have found Paganism and witchcraft full of blessings. Never, in any other religion would I be able to afford the space to investigate myself. Nor would any known religion, other than Pagan, understand and recognize my want to do so.

[intheflow]

1. For me, it was going to Methodist seminary.

Really! I was never a Christian, I'm a UU, but I entered seminary defining my beliefs as "deist/taoist." I am probably most inspired by Taoism, but I was raised (unchurched) by a Presbyterian and a Catholic, and I was always really curious about Christianity since most of my friends went to some church or another. By the time I was a teen I rejected all Christians as hypocrites (not true, but somewhat true in my family), but by the time I hit seminary in my late 30's I had to admit Jesus' teachings had positively influenced me. (Note I say "Jesus' teachings" and not "Christianity"--there's a big difference imo. If I had to define my western deist beliefs these days, I might say I'm a gnostic mystic.)

But I digress. By the time I graduated, I started identifying my personal path as deist/taoist/pagan. Because I learned in seminary that while I really wasn't Christian at all, I still want to honor the positive, rich influence the Tanak and the Bible in my life; God as loving Father is appealing to me on some level. (Paging Dr. Freud: never mind cracks about my father issues. :P ) I am also heavily influenced by Christian social gospel. However, Taoism--and also feminism, and environmentalism--really kicked in and I knew I also needed a God who was a creative, nurturing Mother to balance the paternalism in western religion. And while there are a few images of Mother-God in Judaism and Christianity, they just didn't feed me like Mother Earth. Now there's a matriarch who can hold her own against God-the-Father! Of course they are just two sides of the same coin, trans-gendered and life-and-death-giving, Source Of All. I still prefer the word God over Goddess because "God" as a word can be gender-neutral, akin to "Tao", whereas "Goddess" always gives gender something without gender.

Then, too, all of my transcendent moments, when I've actually felt the presence I'll call God/dess here, have been in nature. My life work these days is in responding to a natural disaster. I have come to realize that the natural world has always been my refuge and inspiration, even here in Katrina's disaster zone. I think this blue and green planet's oceans and sky and mountains are the closest humans can ever come to understanding permanence--the permanence that must be God/dess, the Mystery, the Unknowable, The Ultimate Energy that existed before this planet and will exist when all around us ceases. How can I deny earth-based traditions that honor the Earth that created us, feeds us and sustains us? I can't.

So that's how I came to define my beliefs as pagan--at least in part. Never as a seminarian how their beliefs developed. :hi:

[Jackpine Radical]

2. It's always been the nature thing.

I was raised in the woods of northern Wisconsin, on the bank of the Namekagon River. When the topic of religion and church came up, I remember my father saying he just went out into the woods to find God. I never heard him express any particular religious doctrine--he simply experienced a connection with divinity rather than theorizing about it all. I have a vivid recollection of early transcendent experiences, certainly by the age of 5 (I think before that, actually), and have had them at various times throughout my entire life, always in close connection with nature. I can't live in cities; I start going crazy and getting depressed when I'm away from trees and birds and soil.

[intheflow]

3. That sounds like an idyllic childhood.

We lived in the suburbs, but on the rural outskirts. I was always up in trees or hiking around the woods. My mother, who was raised on a farm, never went into the woods. She would have lived in the heart of NYC if she had her choice. But I also bug out when I'm in cities too long.

[Chovexani]

4. It was a report for school for me

I had a Mythology class in my sophomore year of high school, and around Halloween we had to do an oral report on any kind of mythology-related topic of our choosing. I was sitting in class and I swear out of nowhere, I knew I had to do my report on witches. It's really weird because at the time I was a disenchanted born again Christian but I still heavily felt the whole taboo on occultism. Now I know it was definitely the Goddess speaking to me but I didn't realize it at the time. The first book I ever read on it was Sybil Leek's The Complete Art of Witchcraft, which I took out from the library. I still had that silly born again baggage poking me as I read it, but it was like I had an epiphany. Everything in that book made complete and utter sense to me; it was like a light turned on in my head. I knew without a doubt that it was for me. That was ten years ago. I remember finding the address of a local occult shop in the back of Wicca for the Solitary Practicioner shortly thereafter and walking back and forth outside it a zillion times (of course I was scared I'd get eaten or sent to hell or something if I walked inside!). I finally got the gumption to go in, and met my "dad", the most wonderful teacher in the Craft anyone could ask for. Oddly enough I ended up working at the shop about three years later. The Universe has a funny sense of humor, I think.

I no longer identify as Wiccan, now I'm an Eclectic Witch with Hellenistic leanings, and martial arts are very much a part of my practice. Maybe one day I'll even be good at it. :silly:

[MountainLaurel]

5. A book led me

As a child, I attended a fundamentalist Baptist church, though my parents were never churchgoers. But, me being an anxiety-prone kid, I was horribly afraid of going to hell, so I continued in a church that taught things I knew were wrong (that mental illness didn't exist, that interracial marriage was a sin). In college, a couple incidents made me not so afraid to break away: my best friend from high school got pregnant, teaching me that abortion was not a black-and-white issue, and my best friend in college told me she was bisexual. I could not understand how anyone could think that my friend, who took care of me when I was sick, loaned me her car when mine had died again, drew me out of my shell, was this paragon of ultimate evil.

So, fast forward a few years and I was out of college and living in Washington, D.C. At some point, I came across a book entitled "A God Who Looks Like Me," about the negative effects of patriarchal religions on women's psyches and spirituality. I learned things in that book that I'd never known: about the religions existing in the Middle East prior to the rise of Judaism, that many parts of the Bible had been written centuries after Christ's death. that many gospels hadn't made it into the Bible for political reasons. At that point, I had to wonder what else I did not know. From these, I hit the bibliography in the book and learned even more.

During this time, I happened to go to a book signing by Starhawk at a local bookstore. (She was there for protests at the IMF and World Bank.) We did some chanting and drumming during the presentation, and I could feel the energy rise in the room. It frightened and exhilarated me at the same time. I couldn't turn back at that point.

[Why Syzygy]

6. The experience at the bookstore

sounds wonderful!