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Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2010 3:56 pm
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Parts of this might seem a little irrelevant, but if you bear with me I will get to a point. I live in the Bible Belt. In a small town called Union City, in North West Tennessee. There a good 40 or more Christian and Catholic churches in the town (I just Googled it, I quit at 40). So naturally I grew up believing such was the only truth. In the last 2 year, I have become increasingly interested in and practicing forms of withcraft, though I still believed in the "Christian God". I feel like I am meant for witchcraft, but I have been slowly (yet intentionally) placing myself farther from the Christian ways and their deity. In the last couple of weeks, even more so in the last few days, I have been feeling like there is another deity, or deities (feeling more like 2, but I'm not sure) out there calling for me, the ones I am meant to follow. Now, believing the same stuff for the better part of 20 years, I am at a loss as to what I should do or where I should look. And to top it all off, being the nostalgic person that I am, there is a little part of me creating self-doubt, it's the same part of me that tells me not to give something I don't want away just because I might find a use for it one day (that part typically causes more problems then solutions).
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Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2010 4:23 pm
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Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2010 4:26 pm
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Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2010 4:35 pm
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Sanguina Cruenta Vice Captain
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Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2010 4:35 pm
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Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2010 4:39 pm
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Sanguina Cruenta Vice Captain
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Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2010 5:20 pm
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Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2010 5:58 pm
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Sanguina Cruenta Vice Captain
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Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2010 6:19 pm
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Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2010 6:40 pm
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Sanguina Cruenta Vice Captain
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Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2010 6:52 pm
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I can't give any sources really until I know the direction you want to head in. All you have right now is "not Christianity", and that's far too wide for us to give you any direction. We don't even know that Neo-Paganism is the way you want to go.
I didn't mean to stop helping others, I meant stop thinking of that as your main focus. Your main focus at this point should be on working out where you are and where you want to go, and then you can shift your focus again when you know better what that entails. Because if you have the focus you have right now, it might blank you out to something that might be important or very useful, just because you have it sitting there as your overarching and eventual aim. There are many ways to help people. You don't want to end up not seeing the wood for the trees.
Start pulling out some basics. As a person looking for a path, what is important? Will you honour nature? - if so, will you honour it as a whole or will you honour, for example, land-spirits? - will honouring nature be something you do actively or something more passively important? Will you worship deities? - How many deities are there? - Will you worship within one pantheon, or many? - Are you a polytheist, pantheist, henotheist, monist, panentheist, ditheist, deist? Other? What of the afterlife? Do you believe in reincarnation? - If so, what is the purpose of reincarnation, the eventual aim of many lives? What sort of magic do you prefer to practice? Are you bigger on ceremonial styles, or folk magic? Are you keen to practice within a cultural tradition, or work in a more eclectic way? What parts of the world are spiritually appealing? Do you feel most comfortable at particular times of day, or during a particular reason? What means "magic" to you? How important is magic within the religion you are looking for? Will you practice it as an element of the religion, or are you happy enough to practice it as an addition or on the side?
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Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2010 7:07 pm
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Sanguina Cruenta Vice Captain
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Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2010 7:18 pm
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Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2010 7:28 pm
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Sanguina Cruenta Vice Captain
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Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2010 7:40 pm
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My comments on those I've read:
DemonCount When it comes to books, I have a small collection on the subject, I like to read about this. The Wicca Handbook by Eileen Holland Flicked through it. Not that gret aktully. But there's worse out there.Wicca for the Wise Witch by Lady Starfire ( Don't remember her real name, she owns the closest store to my house over 60 miles away) Wicca For Life By Raymond Buckland Solitary Witch by Silver Ravenwolf No. Discard at once.The Magic Candle by Charmaine Dey Buckland's Complete Book of Witchcraft Available for free online iirc.... it made me angry and Buckland's a douchebag... just reject the poor history and the annoying soft polytheism.Cunningham's Book of Shadows by Scott Cunningham Interesting from a "aww, weren't he adorable?" perspective, but not as a sourcebook; it's literally his BoS, and there's not a lot of info in it, just rituals, spells and poetry.Celtic Magic by D.J. Conway For the love of god throw it away. IT BURNS. IT ******** BUUUUUURNS.
Cunningham's "Wicca for the solitary" and "Living Wicca" are better resources than his BoS.
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