Recently, a friend of mine emailed to let me know her sister-in-law was curious about Wicca and Paganism. She asked if she could send her my email so that she could ask me some questions. Since I think my response to her sister-in-law really exemplifies my honest feelings about religion, I’ve decided to make it into a blog post ~

Hi Stacey,

Good to hear from you, Huyen let me know you were having some thoughts about Wicca/Paganism and I’m glad to be able to share my own experiences with you. I read your email as well as your blog post and I feel as though we have a lot in common as far as religion goes!

I was raised in a very strict christian group, called The Way Ministry. It has since been termed a cult, and I believe it probably was although I tend to see all organized religions as large cults at this point. Like you, I never really fully accepted what I was taught, but I went through the motions and didn’t know any better. I never outwardly questioned the beliefs because they used enough fear tactics to keep us from using our own brains.

When I graduated high school and went off to college my spiritual life was thrown into flux. I was in the honors program at USM and we covered a lot of religious history, philosophy, etc. I spent a lot of time in philosophical discussions with other students that would go late into the night, sometimes into the mornings. I consider that time in my life to be the “awakening.” I was finally thinking, I was finally looking at the world, at history, at my own life in a very objective way.

I remember subscribing to agnostic ideals early on in my freshman year. And even 10 years later, after years of being a pagan I still consider my core beliefs to be agnostic. I truly believe that not I, nor anyone else can ever know the answers about heaven, hell, god, gods, goddesses, life after death, reincarnation, etc. All I can do is try and strip away all the dogma that’s been forced upon me and try and live my life in a sacred, meaningful and spiritual way. The best way for me to do that is through paganism. It just fits my personality.

I did dabble in Wicca for a couple of years, and in fact that was where I started down the pagan path. I found some local groups that held open circles and practiced with them casually; I read a lot of books, I met a lot of pagan folk. I enjoyed the energy of working with others but mostly I cherished working alone. When doing rituals or celebrating the festivals I would love to be at home, baking, preparing, cleaning my tools, burning incense, listening to pagan music. I loved casting circles in my home, doing cleansing rituals, meditations, etc. It was an incredibly magical experience. I didn’t feel anything as spiritual and powerful when working within a group. I still went to group rituals on occasion for the social aspect though and it kept me tied to the community.

The best pagan experience I ever had was a class I took in the Reclaiming tradition. Some pagan folk hosted it at their home in the Maine woods; it was a weekend class. It was two days of intensive meditation & visualization work, singing, drumming, ritual, sharing meals, etc. One morning I was awoken by the sound of a guy playing a harp and signing a beautiful welsh song. It was everything I had imagined that being a pagan would be. 

I’ve always felt that religion is just a means for control/manipulation. Wicca, of course doesn’t have the usual power scheme of most organized religions, so I think it’s a much safer sort of religion. With that being said, there are a lot people in covens that tend to be just as dogmatic and power hungry as the leaders in christian religions. 

I think that Wicca and paganism tend to draw an odd crowd. There are a lot of rebellious teens, adults with “problems” (like addictions, mental disorders, etc) and even predators. Because of the way Wicca is portrayed by the media and by people in general, a lot of weird people end up being attracted to it. Now, with that said, there are of course lots of wonderful people that are Wiccan and pagan! But you have to keep an eye out for the odd ones. Don’t be dismayed by the people that seem to be in it for all the wrong reasons. I try to remind myself that we are all on a very personal quest and I think that even the wack-jobs will find what they are looking for someday.

After practicing Wicca for a couple of years, I realized it didn’t feel right to me. I really do hate dogma. I don’t want to be told what to believe, what to call gods and goddesses, or even told that I have to believe in a god and a goddess. While I do think that there is certainly a strong force in the universe, I like to think of it is as an energy source that animates all things. I don’t think of it as masculine or feminine, but rather, genderless. Sometimes it’s nice to call it a god or a goddess just to make it easier to understand, but for the most part I never felt comfortable just replacing the christian God with a Wiccan God/Goddess.

My questioning of religion in general went far beyond christianity and right into the very core of what makes humans desire to name a god/goddess and create them in our own image. The intricate similarities between all the religions of the world make me think that each culture creates its own ideas and stories about that which they cannot explain, like death, life after death, how did we get here, why are we here, etc. And then some power hungry jerk comes along and decides to capitalize upon a peoples weakness by using their guiding set of morals and stories as a means of control.

So when all the dogma is stripped away, I am pagan. I simply celebrate the earth festivals for their significance (eostara and beltane which celebrate new life upon the fertile earth, samhain to celebrate everything the earth has given us through its harvest to sustain us, etc). I leave the gods and goddesses out of it.

Am I still spiritual? Very much so. Since I believe in energy (in the theoretical physics way), I believe that anything I put out into the universe will find its way back to me one way or another. So, I treat the earth with great respect, I try to be kind to others, I try to buy local produce to support sustainable agriculture, I teach my children about the sacredness of all life. When I walk outside at night I look up at the moon and feel comforted. I know the moon’s energy plays a vital role upon our planet, and especially upon me as a woman. I look at the sun in the morning and think of how it’s warmth creates new life on our planet and gives us energy.

And the most spiritual part of it is the underlying awareness that I know nothing. For so many years there was a religion I subscribed to that made me feel as though the most important thing was to be right, to have an answer. To be able to feel entirely comfortable with the reality that I know nothing is incredibly satisfying and fulfilling on a deep, spiritual level. It allows me to stop trying to make sense of things and connect dots. Instead, I can just live, cherish my life, and love my family without second-guessing my beliefs or chosen path.

I decided long ago that I don’t need an organized religion to give me a set of morals to live by. I believe that through the love and care of our parents when we are children and by others around us we learn to live honestly and to love truthfully. It doesn’t matter that a bible instructs someone to act in a certain way. What matters is that we are shown how to act by those that love us. And that is how I parent my two little ones. I focus my attention on love, attention, and nurturing guidance rather than fear and harsh discipline.

In summary, I think you have been brave to step out of the mold you were raised in and allow yourself to start asking the questions that you’ve probably wanted to ask for years. Wicca and paganism are incredibly self-empowering paths. There is no middle man between you and your idea of god. There is only you, your own beliefs, and a very old tradition of general ritual practices, like circle casting, calling of the four elements, etc. Both Wicca and paganism celebrate the feminine aspect of life, which is, of course, a gaping void in most organized religions.

I also want to point out that it’s easy to get caught up in buying all sorts of ritual items. It has happened to me! Remember that the purpose of the tools are to help you create a mental shift. The tools themselves don’t have any power. But us humans tend to need symbols of energy and we easily identify with the ritual tools like the athame, the wand, the chalice, etc. In the end, the tools I loved the most were the ones I made myself or found in a special way. The wand I still use is a branch that came off a willow tree in my yard. I took some time to carve it and although it doesn’t look like a fancy $100 wand, I’ve never felt as comfortable with any other wand in my hand.

Here are some resources that might be helpful to you along the way!

For the kids, Starhawk has written a children’s book “Circle Round”, songs, and is an amazing female pagan activist. She has also written a lot of great books, The Spiral Dance being my personal favorite.

Lorelei Greenwood sings beautiful pagan songs and chants.

http://www.geocities.com/firebornspirit/chants.html

(Her chants are powerful, and fun to sing in the car! We all Come from the Goddess is a good classic, as well as We Are a Circle, and Kindle a Fire)

Laura Powers also sings beautiful pagan songs!

http://www.laurapowers.com/

Scott Cunningham’s book, “Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner” is probably the best, easy to follow book for learning the basics of circle casting, your rituals tools, etc.

Witchvox.com is a great website. It is chock full of articles and there are links to your local section so you can see what sort of groups are in your area. They usually advertise their open circles on witchvox.

The Pagan Pride festivals will start happening mid-summer, so if you have some time, venture out to one near you. You’ll be able to meet lots of pagans/wiccans and there are open rituals, dancing, drumming, the works. It’s great fun!

So here’s the deal. My most fervent desire for my children and their future is that they are able to retain a healthy curiosity, a penchant for questioning authority, and the natural ability to be remarkable. I want them to be innovators, to be great thinkers. Therefore, I refuse to put them on the assembly line, which is the government-run education system in America.

Our education system is socialized daycare. My husband and I made incredible changes in our professional and financial lives before our daughter was born so that I was able to stay home and raise her myself rather than send her off to daycare. At a time when it was not popular for families to survive on single incomes we made it happen because we decided early on where our values were. So, we live with one car, we don’t have credit cards, we trimmed off the frivolous and $$ niceties so that we could bring into existence the life we dreamed of for our family. We did not want this precious new life to find itself surrounded by strange caregivers, limited emotional experiences, and stagnant environments. We didn’t want her earliest memories to be of Miss Debbie at Debbie Doo’s Daycare. Based on those principles that were the catalyst for so many changes in our lives, why then would we send her off to daycare under an educational pretext when she turns 5 years old?

As John Gatto points out in his book, “Dumbing Us Down,” our school system is good at one thing: it schools our children. It teaches them to follow orders. It teaches them to be timely. It does not, however, educate them. Enclosing children within a solid structure for 12 years of their lives, limiting their interactions to children of the exact same age, and impressing upon them that the only way they can “learn” anything is by listening to a teacher is absolutely absurd and intellectually heretical. Socrates would be pissed.

Is school really an assembly line? Well lets zoom in:

Young Gwen is sitting her math class working through a problem that she has been struggling with. She has been persisting though, and she feels as though she is making progress. Just as she starts to feel confident in her ability to solve this problem the school bell rings. Does Gwen remain in her seat to finish the problem? Of course not. Gwen has to shuffle out of the room, proceed down the hall and assimilate herself into the next classroom to memorize more useless facts that she’ll forget in less than 10 years. What is Gwen learning? That it never mattered to anyone else if she solved that math problem. Sure, it mattered to her. But what matters to her is not important. What is important is following that assembly line. Move on through. Don’t ask questions. Never seek. Just move on through.

When Gwen is 18 years old she might go to college. I hope she does. She might find herself in some interesting classes where her professors will encourage her to think for herself and solve problems in creative ways. Hopefully it will undo some of the damage that public school inflicted on her well-being for 12 very influential years of her life.

Realistically, Gwen probably won’t go to college. The burning desire to achieve, to create, and to think will have been replaced with pure apathy. She’ll assimilate into the 9-5 workforce that keeps this great consumerist economy rollin’. And our government will love her for it. They’ll show their love by requiring her to fill out W4 forms annually and using her taxes to grant large tax breaks to CEO’s of oil companies. The Federal Reserve will love her because she’ll live a long, unfulfilling life on credit. She’ll live outside her means because that’s what we are all encouraged to do, and she’ll always be in debt to a system that is designed to keep her that way.

For all of these reasons, and so many  more, I choose homeschooling for my children. I value their right to a meaningful, thoughtful existence. I understand the value in being on the fringe. On the educational fringe I can offer unique opportunities for learning for my kids. I can help them learn that the best teacher they will ever find is in fact, themselves. The ability to go out and teach yourself something on your own accord, is in my opinion the most beneficial thing a person could ever learn. In kindergarten my child would be asked to build a bridge with their blocks.  At home I can supply the blocks and then step back; the beauty comes in observing what their own curiosities will direct them build with the blocks. As an unschooling parent I will provide a landscape of potentials and be a nurturing guide.

If you want to know why mainstream is not where you want to be, I’ll tell you why: It’s not progressive, and it’s mediocre. It runs in shallow cycles, regurgitating meaningless and often harmful trends throughout hundreds and thousands of years. If you want an example, check out the girls wearing leg warmers over their jeans as they walk down your street tomorrow morning. It’s the 80’s in 2008. A more harmful trend? Check out this video and then watch and wait for Sarah Palin’s church to repopularize the witch hunts again. Sarah Palin needs protection from witches

Is it kooky to homeschool? According to most people on the assembly line it is. But, you can feel bad for them later. It’s ok to be on the fringe. Once you get used to it you’ll feel quite “normal” there. Living on the fringe requires using concerned analysis in your decision making process for anything that matters from education, spirituality, envinronmental concerns, your profession, your hobbies. It’s about abandoning the main road and creating a new path to the things that matter most to you. Allow yourself to think. It can be frightening, but I think you’ll agree that is the most exhiliarating and freeing experience you can create for yourself.