How did you learn of Paganism and decide to follow it?

[PoeticVengeance]

Nihilistic Seraph

*coughcoughadvertisingcough*

Cool sig sign.

heh.

Had to replace it with a little guild advertisement though.


If only cutandpastescripts.com would start taking new members again, I'd be able to rotate stuff....  

[Ezinu]

ummm Let me think where to start... Well ever since i can remember i always believed in the supernatural wereworlf vampires fay ghosts you get the point by now. I didnt get seriouse about witchcraft though till i was probably about 13 when i stumbled acrost a webpage with spells and reciepes with soaps shampoos and food after that i was pretty much hooked. I went and read every book my library had on magic but eventualy i got lazy. I stumbled back to christianity for a bit under the pressure of my mother and step father and then i started dating my ex what a nut job that guy was he got me into the occult demons and such but i have to hand it to him if it wasnt for him i probably wouldnt be who i am today or know half as much as i do.  

[Nihilistic Seraph]

Tintreach

DR490N

I'll keep this short and simple.
I was raised through many different sects of christianity...lutheran, baptist, pentecostel, etc....and eventually i 'accepted christ' and flet an abrupt shift in my life. so yeah, that was great for about a month, and then my life went to s**t. i lost my friends, my girlfriend cheated on me, etc....so i took a damn hard look at the bible and christian history, and found that this so called religion of love had been spread only through bloody, brutal conquest, and constantly contradicted itself. So, i turned from christianity and became an aetheist for a while, but that didnt seem right. Then came my vampiric awakening, shortly followed by my dragonkin awakening. so i started looking around, and fount that i began having an enormous interest in paganism and magick. I do use a bit of magick now and again, but at this point in time i have no set religion. I'm still looking for which gods appeal to me, and what i must do to give proper worship to them.

Paganistic religions is not generally about what gods seem right, most early paganistic religions don't have gods but rely oon the elements. Don't waste time trying to fit your ideas around a certain branch, dictate what you believe in, and then the branch will find you! I suggest you read my read!!!!2 thread, it has my humble suggestions of how to seek and find.

Finding the appropriate deities isn't that hard. As long as you can Journey, it's fine. Getting them to listen to you is another matter.  

[Kabuki Doll]

Nihilistic Seraph

Tintreach

DR490N

I'll keep this short and simple.
I was raised through many different sects of christianity...lutheran, baptist, pentecostel, etc....and eventually i 'accepted christ' and flet an abrupt shift in my life. so yeah, that was great for about a month, and then my life went to s**t. i lost my friends, my girlfriend cheated on me, etc....so i took a damn hard look at the bible and christian history, and found that this so called religion of love had been spread only through bloody, brutal conquest, and constantly contradicted itself. So, i turned from christianity and became an aetheist for a while, but that didnt seem right. Then came my vampiric awakening, shortly followed by my dragonkin awakening. so i started looking around, and fount that i began having an enormous interest in paganism and magick. I do use a bit of magick now and again, but at this point in time i have no set religion. I'm still looking for which gods appeal to me, and what i must do to give proper worship to them.

Paganistic religions is not generally about what gods seem right, most early paganistic religions don't have gods but rely oon the elements. Don't waste time trying to fit your ideas around a certain branch, dictate what you believe in, and then the branch will find you! I suggest you read my read!!!!2 thread, it has my humble suggestions of how to seek and find.

Finding the appropriate deities isn't that hard. As long as you can Journey, it's fine. Getting them to listen to you is another matter.
[coughcoughAphroditecoughcough] biggrin  

[Nihilistic Seraph]

Thoth made me go apologize to her. I hate her even more now, but at least she's all smug about being apologized to.

Grrrr....Why does the most prominent love deity have to be the most arrogant and bitchy one out of the lot?  

[MOD66]

Nihilistic Seraph

Thoth made me go apologize to her. I hate her even more now, but at least she's all smug about being apologized to.

Grrrr....Why does the most prominent love deity have to be the most arrogant and bitchy one out of the lot?

well here is a cleshay(sp?) for you "love is like a rose, its sweet butiful but if you hold it to close you will get pricked by a thorn" stressed  

[Feryal Riska]

Hmm. Well, I was raised Asatru, though at around 12 and 13 I did a lot of Wiccan research and called myself one for a while, but I'm mostly just.. there. I have the Asatru background, which spills heavily over into my practices now (which isn't much, but upon being invited into this guild I've started reviving my faith a bit more), but mostly I do.. whatever I please, really. I try not to offend my Gods and Goddesses, and as long as I don't piss them off I'm free to do whatever. Be it cursing, hexing, healing, ect. I never had any of that jaded-christianity stuff, but I did get a lot of s**t from the neighborhood kids for being something other than their religion. I remember once in Alaska, the little group of bullies asked me if I tore up a bible, and I slammed the door in their face. I only had that problem in Alaska. The military isn't very tolerant of other religions, it seems. I know there are a lot of pagans and the like in the military, but I've never really run into them.  

[midara the happy banshee]

Nihilistic Seraph

Thoth made me go apologize to her. I hate her even more now, but at least she's all smug about being apologized to.

Grrrr....Why does the most prominent love deity have to be the most arrogant and bitchy one out of the lot?

Well, if you dislike her so deeply, there are certainly other deities to work with.  

[[GWW Guild Mule]]

My mother was a Dedicate to Wicca since before I was born, I believe. I remember growing up and watching her do her rituals and stuff, and well, I just got intrested in it. ^_^

 

[WickedDecember]

Ever since i was really little the occult has drawn me. When i was 2 i started watching movies like The Lost Boys and then The craft. It wasn't until 5th grade when i read the beginning books of a series called Sweep tat i became more interested. I researched until i met a woman, Magpie. She was old, about 90 but lively. Soon she was teaching me the basics until she died in february of my Freshman year of high school. her death left me heartbroken and confused. I was raised baptist and was taught that witchcraft was satanic. But i knew that my beliefs were not evil and have kept my path though unstaedily but determined.  

[Rioto_Kish]

Twack

Nihilistic Seraph

Thoth made me go apologize to her. I hate her even more now, but at least she's all smug about being apologized to.

Grrrr....Why does the most prominent love deity have to be the most arrogant and bitchy one out of the lot?

well here is a cleshay(sp?) for you "love is like a rose, its sweet butiful but if you hold it to close you will get pricked by a thorn" stressed

*Cliche* (accent thingy above the 'e') Hehe...I suppose when you're a goddess of love and beauty, you can afford to be arrogant. I haven't met a single deity yet...I don't know much yet (my newbishness is very apparent!) but I'm thinking of contacting Wepwawet first, if he decides to listen to me. I read so many threads of people communicating with the gods, and all the while, I keep thinking 'I don't think I am able to do this.' I'm so scared that I'll try and communicate with a deity, and either I won't get a reply, or I'll imagine the whole thing and it'll turn out that I didn't communicate at all. emo

Sorry, that was way of topic: I promise I'll post my whole story of getting into paganism at a later date (I'm about to go into exam blocks at school-argh!)  

[Jezehbelle]

A lot of resurrected threads lately... o_O;

My Grandparents were always a bit more nature based than everyone else's. They taught me how to take care of myself in the woods, what berries were good to eat, which ones were bad, what poison ivy looked like and what to avoid. They taught me how to garden and to be grateful.

They had their own 27 acre plot of land, a farm (no animals, just a really big garden) on top of a mountain in Tennessee.
25 acres of it was wilderness. Streams, hills, ridges, and alive.

And since it was on top of the mountain and I knew the area so well, they let me go hike in the woods by myself. I'd go out and inspect things (I learned that thing about moss facing north on my own), practicing bird calls (they had this vinyl LP of all of these different types of birds in the area, and I would listen to it on rainy days) and pick black berries, while my sisters and brother went swimming or watched TV or played around the house.

My Grandpa had herbal remedies for everything, swimmer's ear is the one I remember the most. I remember watching him mix it up one day while me and my siblings were holding our ears after getting out of the pool.

At home, here in Georgia, my Dad (their son) was always out in the driveway or on the porch at night, watching the sky. When I was 10, I knew almost every major constellation in the sky, what stars in the moon's halo meant and such.
My Dad has also, as long as I can remember, been into herbs, oils and essence.

After my Grandma passed away and we found out that my Grandfather had cancer, my sister moved in with him in a hurry, to take care of him in his last year. At the time she was a Wiccan, and when she lived up in TN, she worked at a Pagan Mall, apparently

The last time I saw him, I wanted to ask and to know how he did everything he did in his life, a book, his story, because I never learned how he made the things he did. Unfortunately, he was on so much medication, I don't think he recognized me, and he could not speak.

After he passed on, I wanted to learn how he made his herbal remedies, and since my sister sold the house 3 years ago, I don't think I'll ever find a book, if he even had one. So I started searching the internet and came across some magic and Wiccan websites. Found the books on Wicca my sister had left behind, and started collecting my own.

I've basically believed and felt the same things now as I did then, and it's because of my Grandparent's house that I do. I had a horrible and cripplingly depressing time in high school where I was converted back to Christianity, but, I got better and went back outside. '

I've been pleasantly pagan since. (:  

[Kakure Basho]

Well, most of the older generations in my family are diehard Christian...(well, one side are Baptist, and the other are Catholics). When I was little, I went along with it because I was told I had to. But when I was nine, our Bible group leader person made us read the bible. It took a while, but when we were done, I had a lot of questions that no one seemed to want to answer. They would tell me "You can't think like that. There is only one true god. Do you really want to go to hell?" Well, that didnt sit right with me, so I didnt go to that church anymore. I tried other churches, but nothing in the realm of Christianity seemed to work for me.

Then I started having really strange dreams. I think by this time I was 10. I'd always had a solid belief in the paranormal, but in my dreams I kept seeing this man, and he would always tell me, "You know what you believe. It shouldnt matter what your family thinks..." I'd ask who he was and he would say "The name is Sam. We'll chat later," laugh and disappear. I thought about it a lot. I did know what I believed, but there wasn't a word for it...that I knew of.

I started having other weird dreams. Including a dream about my cousin. We were sitting in a bedroom, and there were tarot cards, candles, and a little oak box that held things like incense and runes, among other things.

Then my cousin moved in with my grandparents. She didnt go to church with them and I wondered why...and late one night I walked into her room and she was sitting in the middle of a circle of candles in the middle of a ritual. I was intrigued. I didnt say a word, and she didnt seem to mind that I watched.

When she was done, she nodded to me and I came in. I told her all about everything. What I believed, the dreams I'd been having about Sam, what he had said, and the church's response to my 'unchristian-like questions'...

...and she handed me a book about the basic beliefs of Paganism. At first I thought she was nuts, but I read a chapter every night, and I couldnt believe that this book had finally put a name to my beliefs. After that, I was over at my grandparents house all the time, and at night, when they werent watching me like a hawk, I would talk to my cousin. She taught me about Pagan sabbats and all sorts of things, and through time I discovered I had a talent for divination and herbal magick...

In August (of this year), my little brother woke me up to tell me that he had told my mother and my fundie Christian step-grandma that I was Pagan. (Yes...I was in the broom closet for nearly ten years. Sad, ne?) My grandmother told me I was going to hell, woke me up at 6am the next morning and literally dragged me to church, where I was told again that I would go to hell and that the only way to save my soul would be to convert back to Christianity...

...needless to say, grandma didnt take it very well. But my mom did. In fact, she not only supported my choice, but defended me, which was a huge surprise.

And...here I am. ^_^  

[Rioto_Kish]

Jezehbelle

A lot of resurrected threads lately... o_O;

Oh gods, I DID IT AGAIN!!!!! gonk *Bashes head against wall* I keep resurrecting threads, because I'm too much of an idiot to actually read the date of the last posting!! gonk gonk gonk