I'm going to start this blog off with the 44 Days of Witchery. After I'm through with those 44 days I should have a handle on how Blogger works, and we'll see where we go from there!
I honestly don't have much of a witchy background. I'm still kind of new to this. While I've always loved fantasy novels and magical stories and role playing games, I was raised conservative Christian. Dad and older brother had the final say in things, because that's the way things were. Women followed the men.
I was beginning to lose the "good little Christian girl" reputation around...junior year. When I turned 18, a year after graduating high school, my first boyfriend gave me a tarot deck and asked me out. It was Tarot of the Cat People, and to this day, it's the only deck I can just...read. Without referring to any sources. I KNOW that deck. The only downside is...I used it in the live action vampire role playing game I played. As a prop for my fortune-telling vampire. And it was GOOD. Oh, it was good. I had Storytellers pulling me aside asking me who'd let me look at their notes. (If you know Vampire: the Masquerade, at all, well. I told an ST that his character had to come to warn someone, and that he was trying to decide between two ways of doing so; nudging people subtly in the direction he wanted them to go or shouting it from the rooftops. Turns out he was a True Brujah come to warn people about the week of nightmares. I also told a fae that his King was missing. Mind you, I knew nothing about the Fae metaplot at the time...)
But because I used said deck in game so much, it only works in game. Shortly after I met my husband (at the vampire game!) he asked me to do a reading for him...and I did. And his response was "...well that's my CHARACTER perfectly, but what about me?"
So that deck is kind of useless now, as much as I love it.
Anyway. Meeting my husband began to open my eyes to the fact that I didn't HAVE to be Christian. I COULD turn my back on it. I was sheltered enough that refuting Christianity hadn't even occurred to me at the time. He comes from a atheistic/slightly pagan family. The idea that this was something that I had a CHOICE in was new to me. And he was good; he didn't tear into my religion, he simply asked me questions about my view on the world, and let me think about my answers. REALLY think about them.
Somewhere in the last few years I discovered the goddess. The idea that there was a feminine side to divinity, and not just the male, Abrahamic god? This blew my mind. And fascinated me. I have a few pagan friends who have been friends for what feels like forever; shortly after I'd made this discovery I went and visited one of them in Washington. And it totally re-affirmed what I had come to realize. This is for me. The goddess in all her guises - this is what I've been missing. A couple of my other friends were afraid I would lose the male god in my sudden fascination with the goddess, but the way I saw it, I knew the male side to divinity. I'd been trained in it my entire life. I needed to meet the female side. I have now come back from that extreme, as I always knew I would. I still have a bias towards the goddess, but the god is important too. And he's very different in the pagan view of him.
I'm primarily Celtic in my views; Brigid is close to my heart. Cernunnos has a certain allure. Really though, it's the god and goddess in all their forms; I'm just as likely to invoke Kali as I am to invoke the Morrigan. Shiva and Ganesh have a place on my altar; Shiva for my husband and Ganesh for me.
I'm still learning. I've only done one real ritual/spell, and that was a protection ritual for my husband just after he deployed. It's comforting to have someone to pray to.
In some ways it's not that I'm invoking a divinity so much as focusing my will through the lense of the idea of that divinity.
But then again, there are times I've FELT the touch of the gods. I sat at a table with a man channeling Anubis, while another man at the table channeled Horus. I felt the touch of Bast and knew she wanted to join the fun, but she scared me too much. She gave me the feeling that if I let her use me once, she wouldn't give me back. And that I couldn't accept. I wound up shivering at the table with chills. (In a Shari's at 4 in the morning!) We finally packed up and left, and I took a hot shower when I got home but it took me some time to recover from her touch. I still have a connection with Bast, but I haven't explored it because I'm afraid of opening that path.
So I guess that's my witchy background. I have an altar, I occasionally see things that most people can't see, and I pray to the two halves of the divinity. I rarely do spells or rituals, I'm not attached to a circle. I have a few pagan friends who I hold discussions with. And my husband, of course. I'd like to be more involved with the pagan community, and perhaps I will be soon, when we move out of the Bible Belt!
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