How did you come to be on the path you are on? Did it just happen or did you choose a path?

I was a spiritulist who reserched wicca n fell into heathenry

Christianty felt wrong (and i had too many questions for the vicar)
i started to reserch wicca .i then found my way onto UKP . UKP lead me to my first Moot
.as i started to learn more and more about paganry i realised I was polythesitic then Woden happened to me and I have been Heathen since

does that help ya Woozle

Hail

Mojie

I was pretty much born on it. (the path that is )

I just had to accept that and get on with it!

Then again many they would say being a Witch isnt a path and I cant disagree with that really, its more like being born with red hair... nothing I can do about it I just have to live with it!

I dont have a path. I'm just who I've always been only these days I'm not looking for anything more in the way of an epiphany or the whole religious experience.

I spent a lot of energy wasting my time looking for something more than I already had instead of realising that for me I had the answers all along.

I think it comes with being comfy in your own skin and actually quite liking it. Its been a long time coming though, I can tell you

I agree with Comfrey!
What I label myself to help others define me and stick me in a box, is far less important than being myself and comfortable with that!
As a path, I was born into Spirtualist family, always had a fasination with Native American Culture, but then I suppose many 5 year old boys did! a disatisfaction with Chrisitan beliefs led me to look into other Religions, I learnt to Meditate at 10, I had a strong drawing towards Norse at 11, thanks to the Runes, at 17 I discovered I was a Healer, I also studied Buddhism and Taoism for a bit, along with kung Fu and Shiatsu, Native American and Nordic stuff returned at 22 ish, this led into Druidry and from there to Paganism in general, looked into Wicca, that wasnt for me and sort of returned to Native American by Eclectic Shamanism / Animism, but focused on Britain (mainly Celtic / Norse),which is where I have stayed.
But basically despite all that, I was just me looking for me and figuring out how I fitted into things.

I came to the Druid path after years of being a lapsed Catholic, not happy with the teachings I was brought up with and not at all sure that any religion could answer the questions I had. I read about paganism and felt that that was where I was heading, then I then came across an Ogham greeting card at the Swanage Folk Festival and the interest grew from there. I read up on Druidry and other pagan paths and eventually after a year of following The Wheel of the Year and celebrating the festivals I decided on the path of Druidry. I wish I had come to it earlier, but maybe I was not ready then and it has taken a good few years for me to come to paganism. I feel that I have come home and most of the questions that I felt alienated me from the more conventional religions or spirituality were answered. That is not to say that I don't have doubts, I think most of us do at some time or other, but mostly they are resolved one way or the other.

More than anything I think it is freedom that I feel now and the ability to enjoy the festivals without the feeling of guilt that Christian festivals seem to impart (ie..be happy the Christ child is born, but in a few months he is going to die horribly and its your fault!!!) What a legacy of guilt and depression that such a teaching leaves on impressionable minds! It has taken near on 60 years to be free of it!

So there you are, a potted history of how I wandered onto the path of Paganism and how I am really very happy to be on it!

Bright Blessings to all!

Grew up in the backwoods of Canada , never Christened, baptized or whatever. Always trusted in my instincts and natural cunning. What more can I say.

I really wasn't into the whole christianity thing and spent years not doing anything but felt there was something missing. I discovered Wicca a few years ago but only became active recently but have felt rather inspired since then really.

BB
AR x

Care to share?

I was brought up Catholic, not really practicing. I had a pen friend who happened to be Pagan and I started to ask questions and get interested. It seemed to feel right to me and a lot of things 'clicked'.

It just happened and I chose to discover it.

When i was little i always thought there was a god-like being of some kind and i tried out christianity(i was only young so i thought religion was something you just kinda decided to do one day). I didnt like it, it just felt all wrong. Then my mum started talking to me about paganism and druidry and i researched it and read up on it and it just felt right and comfortable.

As a lil 'un I was just an 'odd' child.

In my teens, dabbled with Christianity, was 'saved' by Billy Graham, started an Alpha course and walked out when they said you couldn't respect other people's faiths.

In my later teens, had a lot of problems with 'dead peoples' and went to a local spiritualist church for some help. They were lovely and I think if that hadn't helped me get a modicum of control I’d have gone barking mad(er?)

At 18 I was pregnant, and all my 'oddness' lay dormant. I think pregnancy and motherhood focused all my energies elsewhere, and frankly I was relieved.

Then for years and years and years I didn't really look to my spirituality. The occasional 'odd' thing would happen but I tried my best to ignore it.

Then in my late twenties I had a couple of traumatic experiences. My lil tower got quite heavily lightning blasted and I had to re-evaluate everything I thought I was. Everything in my life was just so much smoking rubble and I had to rebuild from scratch.

I met a wiccan woman on a post traumatic stress board who talked about her beliefs and what she said about walking between worlds, seeing hard choices but making them anyway, about seeing and experiencing the world and learning from each experience, seeing the opportunities for growth, turning negatives into positives. Well it really resonated with me.

Started off on wicca 101 books, couldn't agree with everything they said, but it was a starting place. I took down some of my barriers, that I'd erected to keep out the 'odd' and began to embrace it. That's when I started getting up close and personal with diety...alas they wanted me as a damp goddess botherer.

My first patron told me exactly what she wanted from me and that she expected me to reconstruct a lil ancient Greek religion in my tiny corner of the garden of England. So my research went that way.

After a few years solitary, I met a fabulous woman who ran a learning circle and I've been involved ever since.

My path, when I try to explain it, is a lil hybrid. I practise hedge witchcraft, but my faith is Hellenic, but those two aspects of my life are so intertwined it's impossible to know where one ends and the other begins.

Q

Yeah c'mon woozle - spil.....

Me - nominal xian via raghing fundie evangelical born again (bore again!) xian, faith crisis due to death of child...... pagan and then found druidry as being where I feel at home. But I do magic also and feel I am probably a druid witchy type?!?

Mine all began when I read "The Lord of the Rings" at the age of 9. I became obsessed with the figure of Gandalf in the books and I think that was the first stirrings of numinosity or spirituality I ever felt. I was delighted to read as an adult that he was based on Odin I was also deeply drawn to "Noggin the Nog" ! A short time after that I read "Myths of the Norsemen" by Roger Lancelyn Green and had a kind of epiphany. I stitched a little pouch and put a badly done drawing of Odin inside, with another paper with the Tolkien runes on it and wore it round my neck until I was about 13, despite its increasing grubbiness and the constant mockery of my family. I wish that someone had taken me aside and told me that this was a valid spiritual experience and helped me find my way back then, but of course no one did.

In my teens I really wanted to fit in and attended the village church youth club. I even got confirmed, but a summer visit to an evangelical youth camp put an end to all that as it scared the living shit out of me . I had another brief flirtation with paganism/Wicca when I was around 18 but was put off by a bunch of militant feminists who insisted in the triple goddess thing and told me that the Norse faith was an evil invented by men to suppress matriarchy So I decided religion wasn't for me.

There followed a kind of spiritual desert during which I continued to read about mythology and archaeology in an academic way, but denied any spiritual feelings I had. I drank quite a lot and had disastrous relationships including a failed marriage. It wasn't a total car wreck of a life, but I wasn't happy either. About 6 years ago I began to read the Sagas again and it just rekindled all that childhood feeling. I was totally skint at the time and one day found the most beautiful Thorshammer at half price in a posh jewellers (Curiouser & Curiouser in Brighton if anyone knows it ) I took this as a sign and went in a bought it even though it meant living on fags and coffee for a week

Since then I've really changed my life, and I get the feeling that although I have my ups and downs and often question what I'm doing, I'm generally on the right track. Sometimes I wonder why this path and not another, but I've felt such an affinity with the Norse Gods for most of my life that it seems daft to just try another for the sake of it. It seems too wishy-washy to say "It's how I feel inside" but that is the heart of it. I'd love to do a genetic DNA test and find out if it's ancestral.

I can't claim any direct messages from the Gods, only that I feel like I'm being led somewhere, and that the salient points on my path are gradually being revealed. This has last happened recently in discovering this forum and meeting all the Heathens here; just when you think you know what you're doing you get shown a different side and everything is up in the air again. I love it !

I met my Eclectic Occultist husband 5 years ago and we have set up our home together as a Pagan family. About 3 years ago I began to tell people I was a Pagan and to write it on official documents that ask "religion ?" I still consider myself a real newbie with everything to learn but there's no way I'd go back to my pre-Pagan life.

Gods I've written War & Peace ! I'll shut up now

well snippety i made it through war and peace
i was read the noggin the nog books by my dad, he actually changed the words and read it as noggin the arse biter, and i wonder why im so weird.
my path was a gradual learning curve, i was raised a christian by my mother was baptised and confirmed. hated the confirmation, i just knew it was not for me.
spent my teenage years wasted on cheap wine and fags, even dabbled with being a goth. all that make up and hairspray played havoc with my skin.
i kinda wandered around in the wilderness for a bit then at 23 i had my eldest son. it was just him and me. it was a midwife who actully talked about the way i was bringing alex up was very 'natural' this made me think hard.
but with being a single working mum i kinda put my life on hold.
then after my split from my husband the calling wrench in my stomach came again this time i did look round and dig deeper, along the way i realised id stumbled off and on my path for years without even realising it. noe i accept it its a way of life and a little light that glows inside me. oh my god that sounds so twee. believe it or not im really not a fluffy

Maybe I'll do that for T !!

Do you all wonder a lot though. Sometimes when life is tough I wonder if I'm kidding myself - like is it all something I've just made up in my head and I'm crazy ? Does everyone have times like that ?

it was a slow process, bound up by a lot of odd experiences which no other faith could really answer, it was through these experiences (which I've touched on a few times on various other threads) and exploration that I discovered my 'path' was pagan oriented.

fizz

Been Pagan all my life - knew it was Pagan but didn't really know any more than that. Started studying it properly about 10 years ago when a certain Goddess thwacked me over the head. Flirted with Wicca but Herself wasn't really happy with that, and now am on my sorta-Religio-Romana path

can't speak for anyone but myself snippety, yes i do feel like that. sometimes its fleeting sometimes it sticks around for a while

Never was particularly religious (apart from dabbling with the Tarot and wondering about occultism in my teens) and spent a lot of time back then being fairly militantly atheist.

But coming back to Wales after college set me on a path of discovery in a number of areas. I started looking for my roots and reading a lot of Welsh history and Celtic studies, started learning Welsh and getting stuck into the culture, and basically slid/got pulled on to the Celtic path through my own studies and the messages I was getting from the landscape and in dreams.

Pretty good time of my life, really.

gwyn eich byd

Ffred

You first!

Yes. But I don't see this as a negative thing. Sometimes it's good to be forced to confront your beliefs, to analyse them, and so on. I think it's a quite healthy mind-set to think "you know, this could all be utter rubbish" - I certainly do. And of course it may well be - we really just don't know because subjective evidence even if it fits in with with our own particular world-view is not the same as objective evidence (and there are arguments that there can be no such thing as objective evidence).

I had a similar experience but in reverse, my family hark from North Wales, of our batch of the family I was born in Wales along with one other brother. I don't consider my self to be what people term as 'Celtic' mainly because I've read and studied too much history and know there is not and never was one 'Celtic' belief, so now I am me, myself and I as far.

And before you ask, I have not spoken Welsh in years, since I was around 6 although apparently I do drop into Welsh when pissed or angry or during sex

I find it hard to think of being on A path, I still see so many ways I could go and most of them don't have names I could pin on them. I think its more important to enjoy the journey than to keep wondering what station you passed.

I'm still waiting to see how Woozle got on his path...come on, share and share alike!

i was brought up as a chritian, my family are scotish desent and presbatarian. my mother began an interest in seventhday adventisim. then my dad died in 1992 and we left SDA. my mum then remarried and we moved to england from zimbabwe, my mum found her xtian faith again and became intrested in jehovah's whitneses as did i. i took it further at 13-14 after being confermed into the church of england and got baptized as a JW. at that age i was also fighting some very strong hormones and acepted my nature and came out to my mum that i am gay. i left JW because of this and started looking into tresa mooreys writings on witchcraft and beginers paganism, much to the fear and dissapointment of my mum i didnt take it further and got involved in an evangelical group that a few friends were part of at school. this didnt work well and there were many arguments about the teachings of the bible and homosexuality and about all things xtian and church like.

i left after many fights and bible bashing and i gave up on xtianity and found paganism again. i strted on wicca and general pagan ideas worshiping isis and acepting her and osiris as my main deity, i began doubting the teachings of wicca and started looking to justify my ideas i then began taking a polytheistic view of my path an di was addiment that wichcraft was not a religion, i could feel it in my gut that wicca my use forms of witchcraft in its practices but it was a religeion. i felt so drawn to witchcraft that i wanted to find out if my ideas and practices were correct so i searched the internet and found some good sites that helped. i then found ukp and all my doubts and confusion were cleared to some extent. my path became more and more eclectic as i found myself drawn to other teachings from spiritual practices like budhisim hinduism and jainisim, also some shamanic practices and ideas. i met a santira voodoo preast oddly enough on a gay forum but didnt want to persue any thing sexual as i didnt find him attractive but found his practis interesting and took great liberty in asking many questions on his path his ideas on witchcraft, i sat in on some of his small rituals and felt some strong energies. but i dissagred with is very strict and dogmatic views of witchcraft being a religion and one where christian mythology and apocrifal jewish mythology was being used to prove some blood line that i belive dose not exist.

i dissagreed with his strong fenatecisem and how he took great delight in telling me that all my ideas and opinions are wrong and not in acordance with his "dogma" as he called it. he found it insulting to have a centce of humor about the gods and thought me wrong to be plytheiest and my opinion of seeing the gods as ansestral energy and archetyple forces was aparently wrong. so i began to lose my 'faith'.

we parted ways and i began to continue on my path. i now practice natural magic and eclectic paganism with leanings to hinduism and many other panthions. i dont have a real lable for my path i am just pagan.

i still doubt my ideas at times and my ideas are always changing and i have also started looking at catholic iconagraphy with pagan eyes and seeing roman influance it is my opinion that the image of the vergin is the goddess isis and possably many other roman goddesses in this image. i have also started to see many links with other faiths to paganism even if that faith denys it.

i gues my path is very pic and chose but it works for me. i guess i see my self as a warlok and a pagan.

wow never seen my path in that many words good gods!!!! sorry about the spelling btw i type fast and dont think about it.

I stumbled up on it, and have been stumbling along ever since.

My mum is a witch, and a pagan, so I grew up with it. But then so did my 3 siblings and I am the only one who describes myself as pagan, but I think rather than it being me who made a choice to continue with what I grew up with, I think it was more a case of the others who decided not to, if you see what I mean.

My 'path' - well, I do consider I have a path, because its a journey, but it doesnt belong to any 'tradition', and its much more of a journey through life than just a journey through spirituality, because even tho I railed against my beliefs at one time - just for a little while - I could no sooner not be what I am than I could stop breathing. As Xalle said, its like having red hair - nowt you can do about it. My 'beliefs' colour every aspect of my life and I wouldnt have it any other way

I was raised as nominal CofE, went to Sunday school, etc. Spent most of my life drifting along thinking that there could be 'something' but not really caring what it was. I was a sceptic especially about things like fortune telling, ghosts, etc.

A few years ago I met somebody who followed an American Indian path and who pointed out certain things to me, animal messengers, etc that made me start looking at things in a different light. The final push was seeing my eldest daughter channel somebody who she couldn't have known.

That was about 5 years ago. Since then I've been happily wandering along, tripping over things, going down dead ends, and generally getting nowhere fast; but what the hell - I'm enjoying the journey.

I think its interesting that we've all pretty much come from the same pov. Many of us have known since we were small that there was something different but we've all had to find our own ways to where we are now.

Heh... I guess we've found one thing all pagans have in common.

Sssshhhhhhhh!!! We must keep up the illusion!!!

I discovered paganism through my father who's always been interested in Celtic culture and history. We used to call him druid, something he'd never admit. I followed my father's path for a couple of years before I finally found out that the Norse path is my path.

My twinsister is a pagan as well, we do work together and can talk about all related matters.

Hmmm, where to begin! My family were mainly non-conformist protestant, and I got dragged/sent to sunday school and all that stuff. The biggest influence of me spiritually when I was small though was my mother's mother, who was a natural medium. She refused to have anything to do with the spiritualist church though, in fact got quite cross if anyone outside the family mentioned it, but due to my mother's ill health when I was growing up, I spent a lot of time with her. It came as a shock when I realised that having conversations with various dead relatives as she did was not the norm. She also taught me quite a bit about herbs and plants, and had a sort of presence about her; very down to earth, yet at the same time seeing beyond the mundane in so many ways.

I was in many ways a solitary child. My mum, bless her, was fully occupied with my brother (who has haemophilia) and my youngest sister (who has Down's syndrome), I clashed repeatedly with my Fire and Brimstone father, now a lay preacher and church elder... and he's mellowed compared to how he was! When I was about 7, my parents bought a holiday cottage in the foothills of the Presceli mountains, and we were allowed to run wild there. That was where I first became aware of the gods and spirits of the land,and was welcomed by them. I was quite used to talking to spirits, my relationship with the land wights, if that was what the were, followed on from that.

By the time I reached my teens, I had realised that whatever I was, it was not christian. I was by now able to draw out books from the adult section of the library, and went through books on Buddhism, Hinduism, and just about every other -ism I could find. Then one day, a breakthrough. In a second hand bookshop, I found a book about witchcraft, and realised that 1) this was what I'd been doing for years anyway, and 2) they'd got it all wrong! (It was one of those Man, Myth and Magic type books that simultaneously sensationalise and trivialise witchcraft... worse than fluff, you know the kind of thing).

Fast forward a couple of years, I was now 20 and had just split from my first husband. I met an old friend from school one day, my ex couldn't stand her so we'd lost touch during my marriage. It turned out she was training in Alexandrian Wicca under another former schoolmate, who I'll call P. After some time, he agreed to train me as well. She dropped out; I became his first HPs. But for reasons best left in the past, we had a falling out which culminated in my throwing all my magickal tools into a local lake... actually a flooded quarry... and vowing to leave the craft and indeed the country, which I did. I turned my back on Them, but They still kept watch over me. And despite all appearances to the contrary, I was still a pagan at heart.

Fast forward again, back in Britain after a nightmare marriage. Bumbled about for a bit as a solitary and eclectic, before bumping into P again at a moot. And also, thankfully, into someone who was not only far more ethical but greatly more knowledgeable also. This person became a friend, and has been guiding me along the path of Welsh Trad Craft I now follow for the last couple of years. It often seems like everything that went before, however random and haphazard it seemed at the time, was leading up to this point. As a very wise person once said, 'Life can only be understood backwards, but it has to be lived forwards.'

Apologies for the length of this post, but I have lived a lot in my time!

In a nutshell...
The only religion where I grew up was Christianity and right from the start I never could figure out what jesus had to do with me. I lived in a county which was cold at xmas and nobody I knew wore the silly clothes or rode camels and it just seemed too theatrical to be credible. So I was left with no options really. I have always, that I remember, believed that everything was natural and that if there was a god then he or she must be natural too. I became quite early on passionately and outspokenly hostile to any book based belief system which as an adolescent didn’t leave me with much to believe in. The only thing I knew though that nature was what it was all about and that man mattered not a jot. I criticized and questioned everything (as I continue to do) until I suppose the gods got bored with the constant torrent of anti-deity stuff and arranged a few ‘mystical’ experiences for me in quite a short space of time when I was about twenty which confirmed my idea about everything being just a part of nature, and vividly showed me my place in everything. That took care of the belief part. The directional part was shown to me when I met a ‘practitioner’ who got me to open my horizons enough to start to accept things like dowsing, ley lines, the spirit world, the wee folk etc. and to understand why I had been given the experiences I had. She ‘opened’ or charged standing stones in her spare time and the thing that actually got me onto my 'path' (i use this term very loosely) came after she finally got me to touch a standing stone in the right way and from which I was physically repelled. She stood over me, as I lay on the ground, shouting “left or right? left or right?” (meaning clockwise or anticlockwise) and as I hollered out “Left! Left!” she smiled and I instantly became a believer in earth energy and instantly (and reading back, very presumptuously) became linked with everything all at once. All very dramatic.
She always said ‘fuck book knowledge, if you can’t feel it it is not real’, words i have always treasured. Thus I became a feely so I have never struggled along my path or even read much about paths and slowly I came to the awareness that there was somebody there guiding me very noticably in a certain direction and when I started to recognize and accept Her then everything else just fell into place and I have never looked back.

She wasn't called Sandra was she LOL

Those words were spoken to me constantly by one of my (for the want of a better word) mentors.

In fact she almost forbade me to read anything for a year.

If I tell "younguns" that these days they look at me as if I'm some sort of loon. Because we all know everything can be found in a book dont we

..and all books are always true and accruate too.
No she wasn't called called Sandra. Maybe her sister though

Dammit, I was hoping I could share my trauma with someone

Well, me, I've spent most of my life trying to find a path and beating myself up for apparently not having got any further along it. My outlook has been broadened and my attitude chilled by a. UKP and b. menopause, which shifted my perspective on everything: I'm moving towards death and I want to do as much as I can before I arrive. So sod the path. It's the experience that matters. Restez zen, as they say at France Telecom. (don't ask)

Well it's my first proper post on here so this is as good a place as any.

I was born on this pathway one Pearent Native American the other of old Siberian tribal decent. Don't ask how they came to meet it's a very long story which I may go into at a later date. Let's just say that my pearent's time together was a short one and I was the result of that brief union, this happened in Australia on top of a well known ancient land mark. By chance I was born in the UK in East Anglia.

My grandpearemt's raised me and my Grandfather made sure as it was pretty odviouse that I had strong ties back to my heritage that I learn't all he could teach me about my Siberian heritage. This both helped and hindered me as my Mother had then become christian and sent me to a Church of England school. Needless to say I didn't fit in, what was in my blood and genetics was and is just to strong. So through out my schooling I stuck to my own belifes and despite alot of problems because of it kept them.

Shear chance or some higher intervention meant that after school I ended up for several years in Siberia liveing not only with my Siberian family and tribe, but with a Native American partner / husband.He was involved in the work that I was doing out there and some very strange circumstnces threw us togther. It was a great learning curve to say the least. From the outset my Uncle who was an Elder set about getting me a proper traditional back ground and teaching regarding my belifes for want of a better word.

In a very short time it became very odviouse in which direction my path way led and I was lucky enough to be taught properly once I had proven that I was responsible and able enough to keep this role in life and to teach others when needed. But the teaching I had from those elders , healers and Whindgana's was very intense and short, due to circumstances beyond there or my controle, they are no longer alive to teach me anything further in this relam, but before I left there I earn't the right to be recognised and called a Whindgana.

The UK was a reality shock that I didn't know how to handle when I returned, I kinda split from my partner but we remained more than just good friends for many years until his death about 18 months ago. He's still about mind to remind me to keep learning. Two strong medicine carriers do not an easy union make, though it's was damned good on a good day. Just no body wanted to be any where near us on a bad one.

Due to him I found out about my Canadian NA blood and heritage, I didn't know about it for sure until that point in time, as this had been kept from me for variouse reasons and the fact that I had to much to learn with my siberian heritage. I also met my Father and we are now very good friends.

Thankfully my partner (we had been a kind of were still married in a traditional sense) managed to teach me alot of what I know and get me to the right people to find out about my heritage and belifes on this side of my family. He was of the same NA tribe and a Medicine Carrier as he prefered to be called.

Both my Siberian teachings and NA are pretty much interlinked, as my partner was there when I was taught out in Siberia so was able to make sure that all of what I was taught worked together and was relavent for everyday use, so I ended up a Medicine Carrier, a bundle holder and the gardian of a very significant religiouse object. This I have been trained to care for properly and to work with, it is in my care until the point that it needs to be passed on to the right person.

I work with both sides of my heritage as I am trained to work both ways, a Whindgana is basically a type of Medicine Carrier, just with a few more very specific roles. I had to go through varies changes in my lifetime and rites of passage to earn this rite/ title, none of which were easy espcially for someone who grew up outside of the culture. Despite all this teaching I am still learning and will continue to do so. For those who look for the word Whindgana, I doubt you will find very much about it, simply because it is from a very old dialect and of a tribe that now virtually no longer exists. But it roughly translates into one of the forms of words that equals shaman, but not quiet.

Anyway that's now just about blown my cover wide open, but it explains best as breifly as possible who and what I am, as well as what I do and how . I fit in to no box's and am very honoured and proud about my mixed heritage. The majority of my work though is with animals at the moment more specifically horses. And I have relevent recognised qualifications in these perticular feilds along with a few others also, just to keep everyone happy.

Hope it's not to long a read and please excuse the typo's as no doubt there are plenty.

Siksika

What an absolutely fascinating and heart warming story you have there Siksika. Thank you for taking time to share it with us - and it adds to my own personal belief that, regardless of upbringing, "the blood will out"!

Thanks for your reply Tas Mania, Yes I do agree your blood will out what ever way and where ever you are bought up, but I also feel that you must be prepared and strong enough to listen to it.

Sure as a teenager I tried very hard to hide it , but it really didn't work. Then I tried to ignore it, and it kept kicking me back until I paid it some attention. Then it took over and got me into and out of all kinds of scrapes.

It wasn't until I got a major reality and culture shock in Siberia that I really began to listen to it and by then It was nearly to late for me. It took several very strong willed but fare people who genuinly cared for me to pull me back around and set me on the right path way with the correct guidence, and teaching. It wasn't easy by any means either to them or me but I'm here today a much stronger and yet humbler person with a lot of respect for all they did for me.

I will say that through all the tough times and there really were some of those there were also a lot of good ones, and I sure got chance's to do things that most people never get the oportunity to do, so that I don't regret. But along side this alot of people who trusted in my blood ties and spirit worked very hard to get me to where I am today, I owe them an awful lot and thank them very much for what they did to help me.

Siksika

Siksika your post is one of the best i have ever read on this subject
yes blood will out
dads family were anglo saxon and we know there is viking blood in my mums ansestry lo and behold i turn heathen
i went trough a lot of twists and turns to get there
wassail

Mojie

Regarding the "blood will out", I don't think I've posted this before, but if I have, then forgive me - it was ages ago.

I had a maternal great aunt who lived on a croft on Mull and who I stayed with every summer. The family (there) were ostensibly Christian, though isolation and family duties meant churchgoing was out.

In the evenings she would take me on walks in the dusk. We'd watch the sun disappearing low over the sea and she would watch for the deer. Often they would be seen on the horizon, outlined against first he setting sun, and then the moonlight as night took over.

She especially was in awe of the great stag, calling him "The great King", and this wonder transmitted to me. She also called him the "Lord" and said he was the Lord of all the beasts. I would now call her involvement with the deer almost worshipful...

She also took me and my late mother for a very long walk in the hills above the croft. We took food and a flask as it was a good many miles, and we were travelling to visit the Witch's grave. Needless to say, my mother pooh-poohed the whole concept throughout the walk, but despite this my aunt and I enjoyed the sunshine and I was intrigued and eager to get to this special place.

We eventually arrived - all that was to be seen to indicate a grave was a small mound. A stunted hawthorn grew nearby. We set out the food and ate and relaxed, but I can't recall what was spoken about.

Then my mother got up and said she thought the whole idea of a Witch's grave was rubbish, laughed at the mound, and then gave it a hefty kick. She was extremely derisory and my aunt was shocked. She told her no good would come of her actions and she would be cursed. Nothing daunted my mother aimed another kick, laughed at my aint's superstitious nonsense, and went to the tree, where she reached up and grabbed a branch and began to swing on it.

There was an almighty crack and the branch snapped. My mother landed on her back, where a stone (hidden in the turf) sverely hurt her back. My aunt had to carry her back down as she couldn't walk. I recall my aunt telling her it served her right and that naybe she should listen in future, and show more respect!

Now, the odd thing is, that branch was NOT dead. It was a very thick and living piece of green wood, and as such it should have supported the weight of a much heavier person - I have NO doubt (nor did my aunt) that my mother simply got what she deserved!

This aunt's mother (my great Granny) was the local midwife and layer out of corpses; the one who knew remedies for various ailments. I often wonder if that part of my family was far more knowledgable than was let on (given it was a devoutly Christian region and time).

All I do know is that I have a very strong link with Mull, as with all the Western Isles.

Thanks Mojie, I'm glad it was of interest and prehaps use to some one. It's those very twists and turns that teach us our greatest lessons in life as well as the struggles and good points that intermix with them. Enjoy them , for with each one there is a peice of knowledge attched that we need to learn to further ourselves. And what is heathen except someone's attempt to put a lable on you and box you up with others. Yopu are what you are meant to be, so enjoy it and good luck on your path way.

As for you Taz Mania, well I suggest you may need a trip back to Mull, I suspect it will help you greatly, if not I think it will prove very interesting to you. Some times its those conections that we need in life. As for me well I can't go back to Siberia, and it'll be a while before I head back to Canada, but I have things from here that I only need to touch to give me any help that I need. Oh one of the great joy's of my own personal medicine bundle is the conections and memories it containes.

As for the Stag, yes I can well understand your link here, haveing lived with them both in captivity and the wild. It get's a bit of diconcerting when we go for a walk with friends in a new place and I get a wild deer come up to me. It also happens with wild boar of which we have alot around here and other animals that are wild including horses. But then again is it really a surprise I work with and for them both physically and spiritually on a regular basis.

I do suspect that your Mother got the lesson about respect that she needed at that grave. We had a simler one here with a friend husband who kept being very disrespectful about her belifes in stones and crystals. We knwo them pretty well and one day in the broad day light before he steppe outside the front door, I just said to him that very soon a Crystal would make him eat his word's gain ghis reapect and change his mind for him. He just laughed. But I told him when he did find this stone he was to pick it up and keep it with him. This guy is a biker and a big person, so no weird stuff fo him.

Now for years we have had a hugh peice of white quartz the front of our house, well several actually. he know's about them haveing sat on them many a time. That day he walked straight out the front door and into it, cutting his knee and scrapeing his shin as it tore his bikeing leathers. After a few choice words from him and a look of utter disbelife , he turned and asked me absolutly sensibly how the hell he was ever going to fit that stone in his pocket? Its about 2ft by 1ft and 1.5ft high.

His wife couldn't stop laughing and he couldn't belive he'd just done that it's in the same place it always has been and no where near the gate way. He broke a bit off of it when he walked into it, and still carries it with him to this day. He's never been rude about his wifes belifes in stones since. So a lesson well learn't for us all.

The knowledge from your ancestors is not lost to you for ever, but to find it you must conect with the land and yourself. The right things will come along to help you rediscover it if you want and need to.

Hope that's of use.
Siksika

Dear Folks,

Like a lot of other Pagan folk, I never so much 'became' a Pagan as eventually realised I'd always been one. And finding a specific path was perhaps less important to me than that first realisation.

I was fortunate to be raised in a small rural village in the days when people didn't worry too much about children roving about all over the countryside. Although my parents are devoutly CoS, they're also open-minded, well-educated folk who encouraged reading and thinking for yourself . Learning about the old myths, Celtic, Graeco-Roman and Norse especially, came at a very early age and even though, looking back, they were heavily bowlderised versions, they struck a very deep chord. The way some mythology seemed to be about 'now' as much as about 'then' fascinated me. Things like Deirdre & Naoise finding refuge along the shores of Loch Etive in the myths, and playing as a child along the shores of that same Loch Etive, wondering who or what you might see out of the corner of your eye. Myths aren't just about people and their deities & ancestors. They're about landscape, about home and place at a very deep level.

I spent quite a lot of time on my own as a child, nosing about in woods, fields and along the shore, with that sense of looking for something, expecting something, without having much idea of what it might be. Going to church was a normal part of childhood but it didn't really connect with me, being outside under the sky always felt more 'holy' somehow. I don't think I reacted against Christianity - there were and are a lot of good people involved in it. I just knew at some instinctive level it wasn't for me. Looking back, I suppose I always felt that Nature was sacred, holy, filled with an 'aliveness' that no human creation could match but it took a long time - until my early twenties before I really understood that the feelings I had about nature and about mythology were the same feelings. Religious feelings. I'd looked at other religions in my teens - especially Buddhism - but soon knew they weren't for me. That doesn’t mean I saw no wisdom in them, just that in the end they weren’t about living in the world as I was feeling my way to understanding it.

I'd come across some bits and pieces on modern Paganism but they were such obvious tripe - Hans Holzer anyone? - that they didn't really register. Graves "The White Goddess" did make a deep impression though. However dubious the scholarship, the links between female divinity, mythology and inspiration sank in. It was also increasingly obvious that polytheism made much more sense in terms of my own experience of the sacred than monotheism could.

Then, at the beginning of the 80's, a friend recommended reading Margot Adler's 'Drawing Down the Moon'. That was when my partner & I really understood we were Pagan and that many other people felt the same way. It was a joy to find something that described and analysed a coherent spiritual path that did not entail throwing your brain out the window.

That led to looking for and finding like-minded people. And a very strong sense of 'coming home' that has never faltered since. Wicca was the specific path I came to through which to honour the old Gods and Goddesses, and I hold to it, but I wasn’t consciously looking for Wicca when I started getting involved in Paganism. I simply knew, in body, mind and spirit, that it was the right path for me when I came to it. I’ve found pretty much all Pagan paths to be closely related in their diversity when it comes down to it. !n the end it's Nature and the Pagan deities that matter for me, more than any particular style of worship.

Perhaps finding a Pagan path is a bit like a dog settling into an old wicker basket. No matter how many blankets have been put in there, it doesn’t really suit the dog until it’s turned around a few times, stretched it here and there, gnawed on some of the interesting bits and shed all over it.

BB,

John Macintyre

Everything I am comes from the Earth. Everything will returnn to Earth. Mother Earth and that's enough for me and it should be enough for all.

As in my introduction to the forums, a while back I came to my path through scientific study of the Sumerians.

gilgamesh

As it happens, I have beenback on manydifferent occasions, and always the pull is as strong. I have also had an interesting "happening" (or three) too!

I believe it is an intrinsic part of me, and that no matter where I am, the West and the Highlands will always be in me. I can think myself back, and do so in times of need, as well as for simple reconnection.

I laughed at whatyou said re the stag - I get that too. The most incredible time was on Loch Lomond shores. I was there with a friend who works planting trees there. She had told me of a white stag, and next thing I knew - there he was - right in front of me, and totally unafraid. She glanced at me, saw Iwas making frantic but subtle signals and slowly moved a bit closer. Together we watched him, and it was an awesome experience. He walked towards me, seemong to be unafraid and also curious, as I spoke to him. A loud noise from the road behind made him move away. Sadly some scum hunted him. I hope they rot in whatever particular hell they believe in.

Unfortunately my mother never learnt. She went to her grave as bitter and twisted as she had lived her life. Which is a pity, but that's how some things go.

I have had other deer experiences, and many things happening as a child but these were literally knocked out of me, and I quickly learned to keep quiet. For a while I even blocked out this part of myself, but no more!

Snap. My father's side are Anglian (from Suffolk) and my mother's side is a mixture of Anglian (also Suffolk) and Norwegian.

Hi again Tas Mania,

Glad you've been back there it'll help keep you strong when you need it. There were a whole herd of white deer where I worked in East anglia, i never forgot one American guy who was shooting there nearly got lynched because he deared shoot a white stag. None of the Game keepers or hunt staff of local shooters wouldn't shoot at this herd they were classed as near as damned it as Sacred. They were a great joy to watch.

I have lived with and amongst deer and hunted them, my Siberian family kept large herd of Caribou or rain deer, the feed and clothed us, but we also hunted wild deer when we were away from the village. Wild boar are also a sacred animal to us and held in high regard like the deer and wolves as well as horses.

I got to spend alot of time with Wolves there as well, infact my NA family name means Wolf. Whilst in Siberia I had a half Wolf hunting Dog , he was a brillient and extremly loyal friend until some Russian shot him. But that's anather long story.

I to tried to black alot of what I was feeling out, when I left my Grandpearents care and went back to my mother, ( no choice of mine or my Grandpearents) I had a very rough time, at the age of 11 years I'd pretty much moved out onto the farm next door and lived with the horses, it was the safest place for me. No mother n stepfather to hassle me. They finanlly stopped when I was old enough and un afraid enough to stand up for myself.

My mother sounds like yours and is very bitter and twisted, the only problem on my part was getting people to belive me as these were two highly respectable members of the community. Needless to say when circumstances got me the chnce to go abroad I went all to willingly. She has never learn't and never will, I just bid my time until I can sever that tie totally, only a short time to wait until that point.

Just to let you know I saw a stag on our land tonight when I went out to cheak on the horses, also the Buzzards and a couple of wild boar. They are very good at reminding me where I am and need to be.

Siksika