Beginings

[lorifiya]

Okay we have mentioned coming out but we havn't spoken about how we began.

What was it that got you started or interested in paganism?

I had a slight intrest in elementry school, I was always interested in magic and fantasy but had no idea it was a religion. Then in seventh grade when I learned about wicca is when I decided for certain that it was the lifstyle and religion that called to me. As I have gotten older I have read more books and even learned a bit about other religions and know that I have made the right choice for myself.

[firemoonw]

sound interesteing. (( )):**

[darlingstrawberry]

Like lorifiya, I was always interested in magic and all that as a kid. When I was in maybe... the 7th grade I peeled off with my own beliefs, not really knowing that anyone else shared them.
One day while my best friend and I were driving in the car with her mom, we were talking about religion, and I was talking about my beliefs, and her mom says, "That sounds a lot like Wicca. You should check that out."
(My friend's parents are really awesome.)
And so from there, I just sort of started reading, and I've grown from there.

[firemoonw]

:-p

[Lady Motevia]

My story is a lot like you ladies'. When I was 14, I was an assistant to a super religious guy. He used to work for NASA and he spent his life creating all sorts of weird and cool things. He used heat sensoring technology to develop his own lie detector and he designed his own line of cars and I was in charge of editing his documents. He combined his business with trying to spread the word of God to all of his clients. He was a real loon. He preached to me and his clients about Jesus being our Bridegroom (it was always capitalized) and blah blah blah. I only worked for him on the weekends. After I stopped working for him, I was really turned off by Christianity. I was introduced to Wicca in high school from a friend of mine (see the post about fluffy bunnies). It wasn't until college when I got away from my parents that I was able to really look into paganism. I joined a small group at school and learned a little about the past of Wicca and the beliefs. Since then, I haven't looked back.

Btw- the stuff that my former employer was working on never went anywhere. He passed away about 5 years ago or so at the age of 70.

[firemoonw]

|-{

[Pandora]

I think I was twelve years old when I first took an interest to Wicca, but I have no idea what lead me to it...I know I first learned of its existence on the Internet, though

[habibidancer]

when I was about 6, my mom took me to a used book sale (I think it was the Bettendorf library's book sale... this was almost 40 yrs ago!) and she gave me a quarter to go find a book to buy. She assumed I would find something in the kids stuff... no I found this large tome that turned out to be "The Wonders of the Ancient World". The book itself seemed kind of ancient. Anyway, there was a mark on the front cover of the book that I "remembered" somehow. So I insisted to mom that the book was mine. She thought I was saying I wanted to buy it (which I did) but I was really trying to tell her that it had been mine before and I wanted it back. But I didn't really understand what I felt or was trying to say. Anyway, I got the book.

Turned out there was lots of images of ancient things, ancient greece, egypt, troy, petra... all that stuff in that book. I LOVED it. I studied that book for hours all my childhood, till I was able to start getting more books. But from that one book I developed my love of Ancient Egypt.

I was always that one geeky girl in gradeschool and junior high that, when assigned to do a report on whatever I wanted, I always choose witches or witchcraft, the salem trials, the witch burnings in europe... you see the pattern? Or Ancient Egypt. One of my first reports was in first or second grade when I made a book on cats and spent most of it talking about and illustrating the Goddess Bast.

Skip along... I flirted with christianity as a teen (more because I wanted to be in choir than be religious) including a short stint in pentacostal christianity, which I think inspired my interest in spirituality rather than religion... cuz them spirit-filled christians got it going on during service. I never cared at all for the "witnessing" or trying to convert people. I wanted to be filled with the holy spirit and work miracles. Well, that didn't happen that way probably because I was too scared to let go.

Then I read the Bible. Every word. Studied it. And then I stopped attending the christian churches and decided it was not for me.

As a young adult, I stopped practicing anything. I thought about being atheist for a bit, but that didn't gel with me as I still felt I had personal experience with the Divine (I HAD felt that "holy spirit" thing and had felt as if I'd communicated with the Divine, I just couldn't accept the Bible as infallible, inspired word of god). So, I didn't do anything spiritually for a few years.

Then I read "Cat Magic" by Whitley Strieber. It's a fiction novel. But it introduced a concept I had never heard of. Witches and witchcraft as a RELIGION. And not as a historical one, but as a modern one. Now, I'm a big sci-fi and fantasy fiction geek from the old days and because I KNEW a lot about sci-fi authors and met some by then, I knew that they do research before they write. Mind you, this is in 1988! You youngsters have it easy, there are hundreds of books and they are everywhere. I didn't have internet. I only had the public library and my meager pennies to go looking for books. But I went to the library and I looked up Strieber and found an interview where he SAID he found real witches to interview! Now, mind you I'm terrified to ask a librarian for help but by gosh I figure out where the witchy pagan books are supposed to be in the dewey decimal system, and lo! there's one book. Diary of a Witch by Sybil Leek. Then I find Earth Power by Scott Cunningham. These are at the public library! Then suddenly, one by one, more books (NEW books) start appearing on that library shelf, and then I get the courage (and a few bucks) and go looking at the book store.

Within 6 months I knew for a fact that I was a witch. That I'd finally come home. Also, a few years later I was working at that public library. I discovered then that the librarian who ordered books for the "occult" section was a pagan herself! which is why more books were showing up there. She doesn't work there any more by the way. I spent most of my spending money on books, as working at the library got me an awesome staff discount ordering books from the distributors.

In 1991, I took a Wicca 101 class from a local coven, and joined that coven in 1994. Never once have I doubted my path as a witch!

[Lady Motevia]

Wow, Habibidancer! I really enjoy your story. Isn't it amazing how things just seem to fall into place for us to find our path to Paganism? It's not accident or coincidence that we find things at a certain period of our lives that leads us to our Path.

[lorifiya]

I agree with Lady Motevia, it is amazing how one finds the path they are ment to be on.