Some of my fellow jatraqueros were surprised when I explained my religious beliefs as agnostic neopaganism. I'm finding my own path, and have recently found myself part of a practicing group of witches. It's one of the most beautiful things I've ever experienced, and it's not too much like "religion" at all. It's more like playing with the Universe, and dancing with Nature. There are, indeed, some ritualistic and prayer-like aspects, but it's not like any other formal religion I've encountered.
But, being somewhat scientifically minded and skeptical, I also look at the magical aspects through a different lens than someone who just wants to believe.
I think I've got a rather unique perspective on the whole thing, but I could be wrong.
So, if you have any questions, feel free to ask. In no way am I claiming to be an expert on Wicca, or Paganism, or the Occult, but I can tell you about some of the adventures I've had so far.
Posted by Dan_raven (Member # 3383) on :
She is a witch
She turned me into a toad.
I got better.
Posted by Jenny Gardener (Member # 903) on :
See? It worked! Posted by Dan_raven (Member # 3383) on :
I don't mean to disparage Wiccan/Neo-Pagan beliefs. I just couldn't pass up a chance to misquote Monty Python.
Posted by Space Opera (Member # 6504) on :
I really enjoyed learning about your beliefs at KamaCon. I don't know if I have any specific questions, but if you'd like to tell the story of how you were drawn to it, I'd love to listen.
space opera
Posted by dabbler (Member # 6443) on :
Are you in a coven? Do you like the others in the group you practice in? Are you practicing in a group or solo?
So... for your fellow pagans/wiccans/neopagans... are they Good people?
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Well, here's the kicker: do you believe that the "magic" works? Are there multiple gods and/or animist spirits out there, or does it just do you good to reflect upon nature and your place in it?
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
So, do you guys eat babies? What cuts do you prefer? Maybe you could exchange recepies with the Mormons on the board.
Posted by the master (Member # 6788) on :
quote: Some of my fellow jatraqueros were surprised when I explained my religious beliefs as agnostic neopaganism.
not all of us were surprised, dear. Posted by dabbler (Member # 6443) on :
When would you celebrate Beltane? I swear I thought it was May 1st, but then it might be April 30th?
I only keep track of that and Samhain.
Posted by Space Opera (Member # 6504) on :
Hmm. Notice that Jenny seems to no longer be here to answer our questions. I think a house fell on her. Dibs on her shoes!!!
space opera
Posted by J T Stryker (Member # 6300) on :
You can have the shoes, I'll stay in Oz, as long as I get the broom, those golden bricks do hurt my feet.
Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
I never understood the appeal of paganism. I mean, if I were going to believe in the supernatural I believe I would pick something established with a long history and big perks for belonging. Like Christianity.
Most pagans I've met (and I've met a lot of them in the bay area) tend to be an electic mix of stuff they read here and there. (or heard from others who read it here and there.) There's no real consistancy, just each person with their own hand picked beliefs.
Posted by TMedina (Member # 6649) on :
Paganism has tradition, well before the advent of more organized religions.
The actual faiths and practices have been lost, but if you believe in the underlying concept, the semantics of how you worship are pretty much a moot point.
Not unlike the various splinter factions of Christianity - they all agree on the existence of a God; they just differ on the specifics of how to bend knee.
-Trevor
Posted by Frisco (Member # 3765) on :
quote:big perks for belonging.
What, white bread and cheap wine?
Posted by TMedina (Member # 6649) on :
Nah - you get to finally find out what semi-divine flesh tastes like.
Yummy.
Never expected the slightly gummy aftertaste though.
-Trevor
Posted by romanylass (Member # 6306) on :
Bread? All we get are these nasty little wafers. I bet they're low-carb.
Jenny, I would love to hear more about yor journey.
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
Utterly cool! I was interested in paganism back in High school and read a lot about it. Now I'm sort of a semi-pagan heathen.
Posted by Zeugma (Member # 6636) on :
quote:I never understood the appeal of paganism. I mean, if I were going to believe in the supernatural I believe I would pick something established with a long history and big perks for belonging. Like Christianity.
Having finished one Dan Brown book and gotten halfway through another, all I have to say is this:
Posted by J T Stryker (Member # 6300) on :
I bet my grandparents would disown me if I became a pagan (3 Baptist ministers and my stubborn Methodist grandmother)
Posted by Elizabeth (Member # 5218) on :
Last year, while researching stuff about festivals of light, in an attempt to do some sort of nondenominational holiday celebration at school, I came across this site. I thught it was fascinating, and did find other, non-cannabis-related sites which corroborated this info.
[ August 30, 2004, 06:44 PM: Message edited by: Elizabeth ]
Posted by Mabus (Member # 6320) on :
quote: I really enjoyed learning about your beliefs at KamaCon.
Drat...how did I miss this? I always like to talk about religion....
Posted by Taalcon (Member # 839) on :
quote: Having finished one Dan Brown book and gotten halfway through another, all I have to say is this:
Yes, because we all know DaVinci Code is nonfiction.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Paganism certainly draws on traditions that go back at least as far as the Judeo-Christian traditions. See: Inanna, for instance.
Posted by Telperion the Silver (Member # 6074) on :
Jenny, I love you! Posted by michael thompson (Member # 6822) on :
who's jenny?
*apologies for enacting the perpettuo-dumbfoundedness of my sock-pupppetses*
MT
PS (edit): missed a "pet"
[ August 31, 2004, 02:47 AM: Message edited by: michael thompson ]
Posted by Ryuko (Member # 5125) on :
Heh. Awesome. I'd have expected it of you, though, Jenny. Posted by Happy Camper (Member # 5076) on :
Interesting, I also missed this.
One thing, don't tell your students. If reading the bible in the classroom is bad, this would go over like a lead balloon. Still pretty cool, never known a witch before. Posted by Eduardo_Sauron (Member # 5827) on :
You're right, happy camper. Last month, between classes, I was talking to some students, and the subject turned to religion. I made a mistake and talked about mine (I'm Spiritist). Sheesh...I teach adults, mostly, buts let's say that the next few days were...interesting (the "let's save the teacher's soul" campaing was interesting).
Posted by Sara Sasse (Member # 6804) on :
The thing about Jenny is, she glows. Some kind of fey light. And she levitates, so you know she has to be onto something.
I remember you, girl. Posted by Taalcon (Member # 839) on :
At KamaCon, Andrea left a message on my voicemail that can only be described as bubbly joy. I haven't gotten the heart to delete it yet. It makes me smile each time I hear it.
"We just had a lot of fun dancing around in a FOUNTAIN! And there was this one fountain and it was...like...like a...like a FACE! And we all got wet and SPLASHED each other! And it was reallyreallyreallyreally FUN!"
Verbatim, folks.
Posted by the master (Member # 6788) on :
you guys that missed the discussion at kamacon, it was one of those things that happened in the bar. you know, where i lived.
jenny and myself and possibly a few others weren't drinking anything alcoholic at the time, so it wasn't one of those discussions.
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
Except he didn't hear it as "splashed".
Posted by Carrie (Member # 394) on :
Does she float?
Posted by Jenny Gardener (Member # 903) on :
Wow, lots of responses!
I'll address questions in the order asked.
Dabbler asked, "Are you in a coven? Do you like the others in the group you practice in? Are you practicing in a group or solo?
So... for your fellow pagans/wiccans/neopagans... are they Good people? "
I am, I guess, in a coven. There are three of us. One has been Wiccan for a long time. She led the Pagan group at her college and is familiar with classic Wicca, Vodoun (voodoo), and also practices Reiki (a sort of energy healing). The other has learned a bit of Reiki, but doesn't know a whole lot about Wicca. Both of them "good" people. Normal people. Well, okay, weird in the way Hatrackers are weird. Mostly just folks, with their own quirks and foibles. Not off the deep end. We've met a handful of times for the express purpose of practicing magic and being witchy. We call them our "Girly Nights", because it's the time we get together as girlfriends. Our husbands have "Guy Nights", which usually involve alcohol and poker. We are all very good friends.
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
Reiki is pretty interesting, isn't it? It sounds like a big load of hooey, and yet...it seems to work.
Posted by beverly (Member # 6246) on :
My sister-in-law is a massage therapist. I am pretty sure that she Reiki is one of her many "tools" for her trade. Thing is, I can't remember anything about it. I'm pretty sure she has tried it on me though. I don't know, though, if "Reiki Massage" and "Reiki" are the same thing.
Ahhh, now I remember. I had a really bad cold and she was practicing it on me to see if it could help. I don't think it really did help, but then she isn't all that experienced either.
[ August 31, 2004, 01:00 PM: Message edited by: beverly ]
Posted by Jenny Gardener (Member # 903) on :
Oops! I almost forgot SpaceOpera's question in the form of a sentence:
"if you'd like to tell the story of how you were drawn to it, I'd love to listen."
It was more organic than your typical religious conversion. Calling myself a witch is just putting a name on something I've been for a long time.
As a child, I loved Nature. I asked questions. And my most powerful religious moments came when I was alone outside. I sang to insects, talked to trees, and thanked God for the wind. I tried to commune with all kinds of animals. Some of my witchy behaviors have always been with me - lucky number 13, getting what I wish for (but not always in the way I want it; also, I don't use it often), seeking to understand myself before making big decisions, and walking thoroughly in the shoes of others.
I fell away from my ancestral faith (Christianity) gradually. I had trouble with the negativity, the focus on Sin, the denigration of Nature, and the abhorrence of sensuality that I found in the religion. I learned young to love others - but Sunday school kept harping on how I needed to learn this skill. I remember being a martyr of sorts in second or third grade. I also had trouble with much of the genocide in the Old Testament. After all, the people following Asherah had no way of knowing the Israelite god as the True God, yet the Israelites wiped them out before they were even given a chance to convert. But these were little issues.
In college, the most unconditional love I ever received came from an atheist. Blew all kinds of theories out of the water for me.
It's hard to describe the gradual evolution of my thoughts. Suffice to say that I have always sensed something beyond and in and through. What I have learned some cultures call Chi or Energy or LifeForce or mana or... It's hard to describe. But certain places or rocks have always seemed alive to me, while certain people can seem dead.
My first exposure to the occult came from the alarmist books on the tops of my mother's bookshelves. They were all about how Satan was perverting the schools, or culture, or whatnot. They told all the things you should look out for, and how you could keep your children safe from occult influences.
Now, I knew that some of the "bad" things were only bad in the eyes of the beholder. At the same time my mom made us cut the horns off our unicorns, I had just read a book in the library that explained how unicorns were used as an early Christian symbol.
Mom's books were the scariest things I ever read. And so, because this is my reaction to things that scare me, I started doing research.
It wasn't until I was 21 or so that I started visiting pagan websites and asking questions at pagan newsgroups to find out what pagans thought of themselves. Around this time, I also began to find occult/pagan books in the library to read. So I researched and found that these people weren't evil at all, just different. And not, at that point, something I wanted to be part of.
In other, unconnected parts of my life, I got into herbs and herbal medicine as a hobby. Aromatherapy, too. And the remedies worked and were fun.
And my nature-love led me to become active in an environmental group.
And eventually, I met my friend who was openly Pagan with her friends, though not with the community at large. She's a teacher, too, and in UberConservative Midwest, that's not okay. So she doesn't talk about her religion or any religion at all around other people.
And I was comfortable with her, and we became good friends. We could be ourselves around each other. And I had somebody to ask questions of. And trade books with. And supply with herbs.
She called me a Kitchen Witch from the day she met me. And I became comfortable with that idea. The things I do naturally are the things Witches do. So why be afraid of the label?
At any rate, I was kind of ready for a teacher by the time I met her. I had become more interested in Wicca/paganism and wanted to learn how to "do" stuff and see what happened.
So here I am, learning more formal magic and analyzing what happens.
Posted by Jenny Gardener (Member # 903) on :
Tom D asks, "Well, here's the kicker: do you believe that the "magic" works? Are there multiple gods and/or animist spirits out there, or does it just do you good to reflect upon nature and your place in it?"
Whatever magic is, it seems to work. I think that prayer, magic, and "good vibes" are the same thing. "Luck" and "fortune" and coincidence. There are things we don't yet have words for, something about the connection between will and the making real of will. That's what I see as magic. That and gravity and love and all those intangibles that are yet real nouns. Not particularly measurable things. That's magic.
Now, whether you can consciously create magic? I don't know. That's what I'm trying to find out. Sometimes I think I work magic, but is that because I don't know all the factors involved? And if I did know the factors, would it be science then?
Multiple gods and animist spirits are stories we tell ourselves. Just as all religions have their stories, their myths. I'm rather Jungian about stories. They help us understand ourselves more than anything else. Aspects of the Universe can be honored as deities, as gifts from God, or taken absolutly for granted. When I speak to Deity, I am honoring those things. It ennobles me, I feel. So I do and don't believe in these things, which is a skill I seem to have. To fully believe and to be skeptical at the same time. It's just there, whatever it is. Doesn't really matter what name I give it.
Posted by Jenny Gardener (Member # 903) on :
"So, do you guys eat babies? What cuts do you prefer? Maybe you could exchange recepies with the Mormons on the board."
I don't know about anyone else, but I have eaten eggs, veal, and mealworms (beetle larvae) at different times in my life. Those are the only babies I've eaten. I won't ever eat veal again, because my college roommate used to live on a dairy farm and she told me how cruelly a veal calf is raised. It is horrible. So I won't encourage the practice.
Posted by Taalcon (Member # 839) on :
Wait, so you mean...it wasn't Harry Potter's fault?
Does this mean now you'll use D&D as an insidious means to recruit newbies? Like Jack Chick says you do?
Posted by Jenny Gardener (Member # 903) on :
Beltane is May 1. Which is utterly hilarious, since I started having my May Revels before I knew anything about Beltane!
Posted by Jenny Gardener (Member # 903) on :
Traditions of Paganism vary, depending on which mythology you favor. I guess I like it because there are old stories but you can use any of them for your soulwork.
I like making up my own mythos as I go. Paganism is so much more creative than other religions I encounter. It's all about connections and self-analysis and giving back to the world. It's about making your life a sacred dance and participating fully in the world.
Posted by Jenny Gardener (Member # 903) on :
Stryker, my family too. I will never tell them I am pagan. They probably wouldn't be surprised though. I have always been a weird one.
Posted by Jenny Gardener (Member # 903) on :
Paganism in the classroom.
I wouldn't touch this with a 100 foot pole. Not in my community. Anything short of burning at the stake probably could and would happen.
Nope. I'll just uphold common values such as honesty, responsibility, respect, etc.
Posted by Jenny Gardener (Member # 903) on :
Sara, do I really glow? I tend to find joy in the moment when I am really happy. And I love to drag people along with me. After all, this life of ours is so fleeting. Why not Play every time you get the chance?
Really, I think that's what this whole Paganism thing is all about. Playing. My girlfriends and I get together, make and do beautiful things, talk about our problems, support each other without judgment, and then giggle like kids at a slumber party. We run around in the woods at night and dance around campfires. We sing and drink wine and eat honey on bread. We light candles and burn herbs. Simple pleasures.
Posted by Taalcon (Member # 839) on :
So you literally follow the "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorow we die" thing, eh?
MM.. I love honey on bread.
[ August 31, 2004, 01:57 PM: Message edited by: Taalcon ]
Posted by Jenny Gardener (Member # 903) on :
Do I float? Depends on the density of the liquid you throw me into, and the density of myself and anything attached to me.
Harry Potter? Can we say "FANTASY"?
Reiki- It's strange. I like to have it done to me. Not sure it's something I want to work with myself. Just not really drawn to it.
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
That is so cool! You'd probaly love the book Wise Child. I was the same way back during jr high school. My old religion, SDA was falling off me like an old snake skin. I thought there had to be something more... Something... compassionate. The books Wise Child and The Seventh Son had an interesting effect on me that is influencing me even nowadays... Perhaps I am a witch. I got VERY interested in herbs after reading Wise Child too and learned how to recognize thorn apple and nightshade as well as other plants. I ought to study that again because it was completely fascinating... I had learned that herbal women in old Europe knew a lot about medicinal properties of plants, but a lot of them got killed though... And mainstream doctors were using things like gavinism (sp) and leeching...
Posted by TMedina (Member # 6649) on :
I think the Potter reference was more of a joke. Something along the lines of, "You mean Harry Potter really isn't an instrument of the Devil to unleash magic in the world?"
The sane answer is, "Well...duh."
-Trevor
Posted by Sara Sasse (Member # 6804) on :
Yup. Posted by Jenny Gardener (Member # 903) on :
So you literally follow the "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorow we die" thing, eh?
Actually, yes. Why not pack as much joy into existence as possible? Not that I don't have sad times or have to make difficult choices. But when I could choose tasty healthy food over blandness, or barefoot dancing over tv watching, or kissing over arguing, I do so. If I can choose to face my fears and let go of my grudges in order to live more happily, why not? When the choice is between hope and hopelessness, or anger and forgiveness, I don't always take the easiest path. I travel the one that I believe is most beautiful.
Posted by Taalcon (Member # 839) on :
quote: When the choice is between hope and hopelessness, or anger and forgiveness, I don't always take the easiest path. I travel the one that I believe is most beautiful.
And that was so beautifully stated.
Posted by beverly (Member # 6246) on :
I have always been one who did not understand why Paganism and Christianity had to be at odds with one another. Certainly I understand why they *can* be at odds.
One of the things I love about C.S. Lewis is how he blends the joy and celebration found in Paganism with the principles of Christianity. I think the essential difference between the two is recognition of authority. In Christianity, there is a definite authority, one that Christians believe is necessary to our eternal happiness to recognize. In Paganism, there may be forces and deities, but not really an authority. The journey to spirituality is a road you choose yourself, finding your own rules rather than receiving them from a Supreme Authority.
But I don't see why many of the wonderful aspects of Paganism can't be fully enjoyed by Christians--and that many do. Myself included.
[ August 31, 2004, 02:53 PM: Message edited by: beverly ]
Posted by Carrie (Member # 394) on :
Amazing. Thanks for sharing Posted by romanylass (Member # 6306) on :
I incorporate pagan ways into my life too- a lot of my friends call me a "Fish Witch". I will take a Pagan thrown blessingway over a Christian thrown baby shower any day, too! I don't see why it has to be at odds either. Even my hubby gets behind celebrating the Solstice.
Posted by Space Opera (Member # 6504) on :
So Jenny (or romanylass) what pagan web sites would you recommend in order to get more information? I think this is just fascinating and would love to keep learning more.
space opera
Posted by Toretha (Member # 2233) on :
and how did you go about learning herbs? I've been reading books on them, but its hard for me to actually recognize them from pictures in books
Posted by Space Opera (Member # 6504) on :
*waits patiently for discussion to continue*
space opera
Posted by Jenny Gardener (Member # 903) on :
Note to self: Check Hatrack more often.
I'll be back, hopefully this evening.
Posted by Jenny Gardener (Member # 903) on :
Websites - I don't remember. I think I just typed in keywords like Wicca or witchcraft and looked around.
Herbs - I've always been interested in living things. Herbs are SOOOOO easy to grow. They are pretty, practical, and fun. They appeal to all the senses. When my husband introduced me to Serious Gardening, I decided to grow lots of herbs. So I had to learn about them. I went to a lovely local shop, Herbs & Heirlooms, for my herbs. The ladies there let you pick leaves, eat and smell before you buy. They tell you stories and uses. And I read lots of books. And I tried lots of things out.
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I will take a Pagan thrown blessingway over a Christian thrown baby shower any day, too! I don't see why it has to be at odds either. Even my hubby gets behind celebrating the Solstice.