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 Posted: Thu Oct 26, 2006 8:21 pm
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Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2006 10:15 pm
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Hi, since I'm posting to threads here, I figured I'd better introduce myself before I get ahead of myself.
I am MoonJeli, known as Tserisa (Tser) or Andi off Gaia.
I am not here for Fluffy Rehabilitation. I'm more like a teetotaler who won't drink because they're afraid of doing something stupid while drunk than a recovering alcoholic. Heh. So at this time, I don't have a path, but am seeking actively.
My history:
I was born 26 years ago to an agnostic (scientific, doesn't believe god can be proven or disproven) and a pagan (animist/pantheist). My mother followed an instinctual, natural path in which all things have spirit and all things are divine, and I was raised with these beliefs. My mom practiced little ritual or dogma but taught me dreamwork (some shamanism) and to meditate at the age of two or three. I was a rather focused kid and (overly) sensitive. I used to have meditation competitions (my idea of course) with my best friend in kindergarten. I've always been somewhat weird. My dad taught me a reverence for nature and the universe itself, and all it's scientific wonder. I learned more science as a child than most people learn all Kindergarten through 12th grade. We stayed up late for every meteor shower and eclipse, collected rocks and studied roadside geology, and did experiments of decay in pumpkin slices. He'd make a kick-a** scientific pantheist.
I was raised heavily on three things: Acceptance, nature and music. I spent every weekend of my young life (starting before I turned one) in the woods of the Coast Range (a mountain range in the Northwest USA that isn't beach, it's temperate rainforest). I didn't spend a weekend at home until well into middle school, and even then, going camping was extremely frequent. Music was constant. I wasn't put in front of a TV as a child like many kids are/were, I was put in front of a stereo. Folk, rock (including hard stuff), classical, blues, jazz, country -- it was all around me all the time and given a lot of importance. Finally, I was taught to explore everything, question everything, and experience as much as possible, because everything has some value as a lesson.
The books in our house were diverse, and we had many religious and philosophical texts. I was quite young when I first browsed the Tibetan Book of the Dead and read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. My parents owned the I Ching, and every book by Carlos Castenada. Philosophical books, mythology, history, and tons of science books lined our shelves. Hundreds of shelves, literally.
The most significant religious text we did NOT have was actually the Bible. Although it was never stated, it became something naughty to me, and my neighbor (best friend) and I used to sneak the Bible out of her house and read it behind some bushes where we had a hiding place (early grade school). Oh, we were such rebels. I found out in later years that my mom wouldn't have minded that I was doing that, of course, and would've thought it was hilarious I was doing that, but at the time I thought of Christianity as some mysterious weird cult with really cool, strange stories.
As I got older I did go to Sunday school with some friends, but mostly enjoyed it for the tasty breakfasts we got to eat out afterwards.
Throughout grade school and middle school, I pretty much accepted the beliefs I was raised with as fact. Spirits were all around me, all things had a spark and all things connected to and were part of the source.
In late high school, I was extremely extremely depressed, suicidal, and suffering from severe panic disorder and agoraphobia. I was in a pretty desperate place. Suicide and mental illness run on both sides of my family, but my immediate family didn't know much about it, and I was their first brush with it. They didn't know what to do with a self-injuring, utterly terrified teenager whose overly sensitive nature was manifesting as being unable to even go to school.
And then, I found God.
A friend took me to church camp with her, and I was Saved. My poor mother. She told me, recently, that that was the hardest thing I ever did to her. I rebelled and did I rebel hard. Yeah, you mostly hear of Christian-raised kids rebelling by becoming Pagan because their family's religion didn't work out for them, they needed a new sense of idea, they were reaching for something to make life work for them. Nope, not me, I did the opposite. I was desperate, and my family's teachings of the Universe Itself being worthy of awe weren't doing it for me.
They told me Jesus loved me and suffered horribly for me (and if I was the ONLY person he would have suffered just for me) and that I would Be Healed Through God! I was so sick, lonely and frightened at the time. No wonder I was hooked. Oddly enough, a seed was sown in me at that same church camp that eventually led to my realizing how destructive the Christian church was in my life when my fellow churchgoers stoned to death a snake while I stood screaming on the banks of the river, sobbing and begging them to stop, and that it was just a garter snake.
My mom says it was a test for her. She believes everyone must follow their own path but MAN was it hard for her to hold her tongue. She probably wanted to shake me violently.
After that camp, I was On Fire For Jesus! It was the ritual that really appealed to me. I loved singing, praying, falling to my knees and raising my hands. I loved the connection with my fellow Christians, though I got really irritated with the ones that talked through sermons, or sang along because their parents made them be there and not because they FELT anything.
Anyway, I'll spare you the details. My Christian stage must've only lasted a year or maybe, at most, two, because I didn't go to church camp again, and while I was Christian I went to church every week (my mom, bless her, even drove me) and to every retreat and special event I could.
I quickly became disillusioned with Christianity because I couldn't reconcile a loving God with the concept of eternal torture and torment.
I still love Christianity, in particular the Bible, which I think IS full of awesome, weird stories.
I also came out as a lesbian. I did the "gay Christian" thing for maybe three weeks before just giving Christianity up entirely.
I bet my mom threw a party.
After that, I explored my roots a little more. I was especially interested in ecstatic practices and shamanism (and SHUNNED, absolutely REVILED fluffy bunny "shamanism" -- it's one of the things that hissed me off the most). However, at finding so much in the way of fluffy bunny and so little truth, I absolutely refused to have anything to do with people who called themselves shamans.
I read everything I could about paganism (everything my mom and dad taught me was just the way things ARE, and they had never used the word "paganism"). In fact, I read everything I could about every religion I could. I raided my parents' extensive library, the public library, the internet, and bought dozens of books myself. (And refused to buy anything fluffy, including anything published by Llewllyn, though I was gifted with a couple. I still have them because I have a strange connection to books but I can't bring myself to read them.) Much of it resonated, but much of it DIDN'T and I began to become very disillusioned with THAT too. Particularly the randomness of so-called pagan paths, and the cultural and historical lies of others. I saw more and more strange paths pop up, based on various myths and fantasy stories, and just felt bleh about it. My sister experimented with paganism herself for a while (she never rebelled into Christianity like I did) but I am not sure her current status.
For a layperson, I'm fairly educated on the history of most religions, and general beliefs of each.
So what now?
For a long time, I've been content following no path. Lately, though, something's been lacking in my life. I remember ritual, prayer, group worship and the like in church and I miss it. I certainly don't miss Christianity, but I miss the song, hymns, and rites. I miss the communion with spirit and/or community. I miss ecstatic experiences.
The problem is, I don't know where to go. I am a skeptic by nature, thanks to my father, and have a hard time accepting hard dogma without a personal experience to back it up, and question everything. For a while I leaned towards calling myself a Scientific Pantheist or even atheist, but there's SOMETHING and I'm feeling a need to connect to it.
I am entirely against any sort of fluffiness. I don't want some hodgepodge of beliefs, but I don't want to kid myself either. I want something real and experiential that I can do in my life, whether it's solitary or with a group, but I'm wary of groups because I'm not sure how to find one that isn't fluffy. Every one I've found currently strikes me that way, except *perhaps* some Asatru kindred (don't know how to judge their fluffiness) and one "English Traditional Wiccan Outer Court" with year-and-a-day training offered by application only once per year by two Gardnerian High Priests that doesn't have a website (why does that strike me as better?). However, I don't know if either of these paths are right for me.
In terms of my own lineage, I'm Scandinavian on both sides, with one side being traced back to Poland ~1100 AD. The rest is the typical muddy mix that comes when a family immigrates to the US. My family has been in the US a while and I have little connection to my cultural ancestry.
So, that's why I'm here. And of all the pagan Guilds on Gaia -- and, really, most of the pagan forums on the net, this is the finest I've found.
Other:
I'm female, lesbian, polyamorous and live with my two fiance(e)s, one of whom is male, an atheist and a computer software programmer, and one is female, "sort of religious", and a professional artist and animator. I have a bunch of pets and animals are a major part of my life. I teach horseback riding for a living, specifically dressage, and primarily therapeutic riding for the handicapped (physically, emotionally or cognitively). I also enjoy reading, writing, unicorns, learning pretty much anything, art, hiking, camping, internets, Stephen Colbert, ponies, birdwatching, documentaries, drawing, and dragons.
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Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2006 12:43 pm
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Posted: Sun Nov 19, 2006 6:10 pm
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Hello, my name is Amber smile
I'm not really sure where exactly I fit in this whole sceme of things, but I do know that I'm Pagan (it's a start, right?)
I was 13 when I began to come to terms with the fact that I just didn't believe in the actions my church did. I find most of the teachings of Christianity to be beautiful, but not when they are bastardised by over-zealous people. I'm not saying that all Christians are like the ones I was unfortunate enough to been associated with, in fact I know that few are actually so overbearing.
I had a difficult time with the way they taught. It seemed to me to be like brainwashing, forcing children to memorize the bible without conversation or explanation. Threatening with eternal damnation if they didn't. They got rewarded for "converting" other children and bringing them in to memorize the bible passages. I also had a hard time connecting "you are loved" with "you are going to hell if you don't do this, this, and thins."
I remember a confrontation with a youth group leader ending poorly when I foolishly mentioned that I believed in reincarnation. It wasn't horrible, but it was enough to make me realise that I was unwelcome in their world.
I flitted about with an agnostic viewpoint for awhile, then came across some of my mother's works (admittedly, some were Ravenwolf, but that only served as more of a welcoming committe, than a real religious structure) I researched more, and basically formed my own views on well, everything. My research has a lot of holes, admittedly. But, well, that's why I'm here. heart
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Posted: Mon Nov 20, 2006 1:18 pm
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Posted: Mon Nov 20, 2006 1:45 pm
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Posted: Thu Nov 23, 2006 2:44 am
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Posted: Thu Nov 30, 2006 5:19 pm
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Posted: Sat Dec 02, 2006 2:11 pm
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Posted: Sat Dec 02, 2006 10:39 pm
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Posted: Sun Dec 10, 2006 8:55 pm
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Posted: Sun Dec 17, 2006 8:57 pm
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Posted: Mon Dec 18, 2006 12:21 am
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Well, I guess it's my time to introduce myself.
Beyond not knowing what to say really, I've been looking into magick for the past couple years.
First 6 months I was a "witch." I use this term loosely due to fighting with the cotton bed I was mounting for pretty much all of that time, until I happened upon a book on Chaos Magick. From there, I met a group of people that gave me a pretty decent overall understanding on many topics, and i absorbed some of their beliefs. Year beyond that, and I'm here.
Right now, i'm more into the theory of magick systems, and slowly building my own. Although i'm not much of a practicer, I've had moments with interesting results.
That's about it. Oh yeah, Hi razz
Oh, and for what you can call me, Ios, Iosonos, Ion, IonDancer, or NightWolf. (wolfie if you know me, or if I like you, or if you wanna be bitten razz )
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Posted: Mon Dec 18, 2006 9:11 pm
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Reply
