Religion

There was a lot to spirituality in my childhood. A lot of my family around me believed in Christianity; a few were pagan. My mom, though, was fully pagan from the time I can remember onward, practicing different forms of witchcraft in my livingroom on the weekends. Most kids woke up on Saturday morning to go watch cartoons while their mom cleaned around them or maybe went out to play; my mom would be burning tobbacco and cedar leaves in the living room, soothing the angry spirits and sending the negative and truly bad ones away. I was shown how to pray to the Earth a long time before I was shown how to pray to any invisible deity in the sky. But that doesn't mean I didn't wonder.

The few times I can remember going to church with my grandparents were always significantly more uncomfortable and worse than the times I ever went with my friends. The church services my grandparents took me too always ended up kicking me out of the nursery room to go back and sit with them... apparently they didn't take kindly to a small child interrupting nursery service to ask questions or to point out how something didn't make sense. I've always spent my time questioning things, I've found it incredibly hard to take things at face value, even as a child. (Another thing we can absolutely thank my mom for teaching me) When they told me that the expectation was that someone who died would "come back" was an impossible thing, I as a child had already dealt with death and knew the outcome of it. There was no return; just like my other grandma this Jesus guy was never going to be able to come back from wherever he was, not if he truly died. Other things that didn't make sense were the rituals they performed, my first time watching communion left me with more questions then I'd ever get answers, even still to this day.

Early on with friends though, I learned that I could ask questions, but as I got older I realized it's only because they genuinely believed they were doing me a favor. Pulling me from the hedonistic clutches of my incredibly not Christian mother, and teach me the good morals and good moral standings of all the GOOD Christian people I could surround myself with. There was a point where one friends mom made sure she knew even if it ended up out of her way, she would ensure that I had a ride to their church any Wednesday or Sunday that I wanted to attend. (Side note- I didn't. I didn't really want to go to church. I did, however, want to spend as much time out of the house and away from my abusive father as I could; so church seemed like an alright bet). I did know I couldn't trust them to actually keep me safe, though.

They weren't trustworthy. When they said "Come to us with any problems you're experiencing" and I did, I found very quickly how uncomfortably deep the claws of my dad's side of the family dug into the entire towns ecosystem at the time. Anything I even remotely mentioned that could be viewed in a negative light was promptly delivered to my grandparents, who would then relay it directly to my father for him to handle.

"Your daughter said this at youth group tonight, I just thought you should know." Is quite literally all it would take to invoke something that to this day feels evil.

It didn't take long for me to learn why my mom found comfort in the woods, in magic. It was somewhere dad didn't want to go, he was too busy doing other things on his computer to be bothered to go out for the walks she and I did. I learned as an adult that while it's not something she and I did together very often, it was something we both did often, and deeply enjoyed back then. (Still too, but there was a point to it, then) In the woods you could ask the trees to listen, and listen they would. And sometimes, if you were lucky, they'd respond. It always felt like the entire woods would come alive, breathing with you, its chest heaving as yours did while you cried. During any pivotal point in my life I can think of, I can also think of the associated "woods time" I would take to go along with it. To this day still, when I'm dealing with incredibly heavy things, I go to the woods and breathe with the trees.. except now I bring along my own kiddos too; so they don't have to learn about the shared love when they're older.

You could see magic in the home, whenever my dad was gone. The house always felt static, and any friend who was troubled or going through something hard would come over, and inevitably they'd fall asleep and take a nap. None ever knew why, beyond mom and I. The magic in the house spun so heavily that it would wind around those who needed it most, wrap them up in warmth, and let them feel peace for a while. The most refreshing naps, every time. It did get to a point though when I was a teenager where I had to ask the house to stop with me, at least for a while. I spent an entire summer sleeping, doing nothing but waking up to go to the bathroom and occasionally eat something during dinner. While it concerned my mom and my dad didn't care, there wasn't much they could've done both working full time jobs at the time. (and yes, I do know the correlation to depression and sleeping but the amount of sleep I was doing was nearing coma level, and yet, I was not in a coma.

When I was a teenager I found out about Satanism (oh don't we all!)

And while I did and do agree with a lot of the doctrines of Satanism, I am not one. I genuinely don't think Satan/God combo is real in the same sense that that would require. I do think that all deities exist in some manner or another, but that they are all "right". That no matter your religion whichever you believe is what'll happen to you. I don't think whatever deitie(s) are out there would let so many of the creatures they made suffer post death (that's not the ideology of all religions, I know) no matter what they believed in. There's too much love in how humanity was created, in how we work and work together now. Even through all this divide it is proven historically that humanity comes together, and that we perservere. That can only truly be done when there's an equilibrium reached. And we've witnessed it within this lifetime, even small acts and small feats. The instinct to cooperate and protect and help is inherent in most all of us, and with my beliefs, that's because our deities don't want us to suffer. They want us to survive and thrive and win. They'd want to see us happy at the end. I found Buddhism as a teenager too, and I couldn't view myself as being that sacrificial at the time, although my viewpoints have changed some.

Albeit, I'd NEVER hold myself or call myself a Buddhist, any and every modern day person I've met calls themselves one as a pass on being one of the absolute WORST characters I've met in my life; and they all tend to have the same air of arrogance around them that is nearly palpable.

Wicca was something I dabbled in incredibly heavily in high school. I went so far as learning to write in Theban, something that I've actually found handy and a fun trick to whip out as an adult. As I grew and started to research more religion, I didn't really like how Wicca looked. And it's true and easily identifiable now especially, how it's the Pagan's take on Christianity. Just a bunch of different religions in a trench coat, with aboslutely none of the tradition or reasoning behind the rituals and practices to actually make sense in context. The rules bend over backward to not fight against one another, and especially then, the literature available were all written by some twenty year old "High Priestess" on the internet and then publicized through a self publishing company. I shit you not though, every single one of them apparently ran some high level Coven full of "thousands of members" that they inevitably were the High Priestess of, one of the "most powerful witches".......

And the descriptions all read the same. ALL of them. Even then it was enough to raise alarm bells, and it led me to fall away from it as time went on. But I didn't stop practicing. Small spellwork here and there, during a period nearly always burning incense trying to keep my space cleansed spiritually after things got really dark with my dad. But I also found out about what I've been referring to now for years as just simply Witchcraft. There were many branches, sure, and there were a million different ways to practice; Hell, there weren't even any set deities, you just figured out what mythos spoke to you the most and you went with it. I loved it. It felt like home, especially as someone who loved a lot of mythos, and loved the idea of polytheistic life in modern day. Even still I adhere incredibly heavily to a polytheistic lifestyle, and not all of the deities I pray to come from the same stories, from the same legends. But I've also learned that it's entirely okay, and that how I practice my craft wont ever look quite like how others work theirs, and that's part of what makes Witchcraft so beautiful.

So while this section may change, for now I think this is a decent place to end it, at least until I compile more information about what religion has looked like to my family through time. As a quick overview, I've dabbled in a lot of branches of religion, all of them different in significant ways, until I landed on Witchcraft. I am a polytheistic witch, who's been functionally practicing witchcraft since I was in middle school. If you've got any questions or need research help, don't hesitate to reach out!

COMING SOON