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heart Welcome to The Ramblings of a Woman! I'm here to ramble again, eek ! Isn't that shocking?! Hehe, okay so it totally isn't stare , but whatever. Hmmm, what should my topic be today? Hmmmm, how about the old safety net that is religion? Yep, religion-for people who don't know politics and can't think of anything else. OH, I better do it here before I get any further...I'M SORRY, my spell check is broken, please don't kill me.
heart For those that don't know, I am a Neo-Pagan. For those that do not know what a Neo-Pagan is I suggest you ask everyone you meet that says they are Neo-Pagan to explain what that means. Because it is seriously different for everyone. In general, Neo-Paganism is a earth-based religion that encompesses many traditional methods of worship combined with modern thinking. But as I stated before it is better to ask then to assume. After all assuming just makes an a** out of U and ME.(best way to learn how to spell something ever!) Take for example this conversation I had recently with someone who I'd just met.

"Are you Pagan?" (This is being said out of nowhere by some girl who I'd only just met, I didn't even know her name yet, and was completly off topic-she got me totally off guard.)
"Oh-uh what? Oh yeah, I am. Where did that come from? I'm not wearing any of my jewelery or anything," says the totally confused me. I have some jewelery with special symbols on them that are common and identifiable to the Neo-Pagan religion.
"I just had a feeling," goes the girl, who we will now refer to as Miss Random. After giving her an odd look I direct our group back to the topic of disscusion, a project for a class we're doing together. Until she interupts again...
"So do you know where any Gatherings take place or anything?" says Miss Random.
"Uh, no-not really," I stutter out before one of my group mates interrupts the interruption.
"What are you guys talking about?!" says a highly confused group member who has no idea what we are talking about; the other group member is giggling her a** off as she knows what we're talking about and enjoys seeing me so thrown off on a loop.
"Uh-it's my religion. It's like this new wave religion combining old religious traditions with modern thought." I say quickly as I attempt to draw our conversation back to the task at hand.
"No, that's Neo-Paganism. Paganism is the legit old traditions that go back hundreds of years," chimes in Miss Random.
"Oh, uh yeah, well I'm Neo-Pagan. Anyway..." and the conversation goes back to the work at hand because there was no way I was having a religious debate in the middle of working on my giant class project. Anyone who's had a religious debate can attest for their length and energy consumption.

heart Anyway, my point is you should always ask people to clarify when it comes to Neo-Paganism, or perhaps just religion in general. As seen above, if I had just asked her to clarify what she meant we wouldn't have had this misunderstanding(which she continually wished to speak about even though we didn't have time).
heart For those who aren't seeing my point I will state it in a less long winded way. I thought she was talking about Neo-Paganism but was just using the shortened slang version of Paganism. She on the other hand saw them as two seperate religions.
heart And to any who might be wondering I personally do not believe in the exsitence of modern day Paganism as defined by Miss Random. In my train of thought, I believe that because of the gaps of knowledge we have on most ancient religions, it makes it impossible to still consider modern practitioners to be truely continuing those ancient practices. There are some groups who will claim to have passed the information down secret lines for centuries, but I don't personally believe that any of them have sufficiently produced compelling enough evidence of such ancient ties as to be credible. Even if you use the ancient ideas common to that era instead of the more modern ideas that Neo-Paganism typically uses you still have no way of knowing how exact you are as you have nothing reliable to compare it too. You're more like a traditional Neo-Pagan, if that makes any sense at all. rolleyes (And I do hope I'm making some sense. My ramblings aren't suppose to be completly unguided.)
heart So yep, if you wanna know about Neo-Paganism go read a couple of books, not one, a couple. It's a good starting place. Now if you want my personal take on things, continue reading.
heart You know I'm just going to post this in a second entry...It'll take some room to explain my strange mind.