Branches
I realize that this is all terribly self-centered, but it is a journal. I think it is important to lay out some details of self if anything that I am to share in this space is to be of any use to anyone reading it. Which is, the whole point of doing this. But I admit to some level of discomfort blathering on about myself. I have been on a few forum boards lately and it seems that one needs to do a lot of blathering about oneself to iterate view points and personal experience. As a result, I find myself a bit too conscious of myself. Introspection is important, I just do not like feeling I am being selfish. Hmph. Anyway, onto the task at hand!
I went on about my "practical" upbringing, if you like. I guess I should address my pagan path, eh? Very well! Here it is:
As I have said, Christianity has never ever sat well with me. I have never really identified with being Christian and I disliked most of the Christians I grew up knowing - judgemental, bigoted, narrow, woman-hating, fundy fanatics who could not think themselves out of a paper bag was how I saw it. I grew up going to Christian schools and I always felt like a phony. I remember most of the whole Sunday school-church-Christian school period of time as a time which I spent lying about my piety. How many people did you witness to? Are you spreading the good word? Blah, blah blah. It actually became fun to invent stories about doing those things, in which I came off as a big Christian hero. Mind you, I never so much as disclosed my churchgoing to anyone who didn't know. Being a Christian was hokey, corny and embarrassing to me. At age...12 I think it was, I got a job as the church nursery keeper - yea! Now I no longer had to go to church! I just had to babysit the wee ones in the nursery. Two years later, I quit altogether - I just hated the whole thing so very much. I stopped going to church, much to my mother's chagrin. I think for me, the final straw, was being dragged to church one Sunday night (we went to Church Sunday morning and night and Wednesday night for Bible study) to see a film about the evils of rock music and how it was all Satanic and evil. That was when I lost it. My future vocation at the time was as a rock guitarist! And I knew damn well I wasn't evil or Satanic. So, with the burden of Christianity off my shoulders, I was now free to explore. Whenever anyone asked my religion, I now responded with the most exotic thing I could think of - Buddhist! Egyptian! etc...Somewhere around age 16, I found a book in the secondhand store that I liked to get funky clothes at. The Witches' Workbook, by Ann Grammary. Many of the things that I learned in that book resonated deeply with me. I now knew that there was another way of doing things, another faith, another way to have spirituality without the things that so disgusted me. I could be myself and be spiritual. So I began researching, in earnest, witchcraft, wicca, etc. I learned withccraft was not a dark evil thing, as I had been taught. It was beautiful and advocated something I had always had - a deep love of nature and a belief in magick. It was an intense year of study, nearly obsessive study, as I tried to learn everything I can, find the truth of it, the path that I was to take, etc. It was in my 17th year (always around my birthday too- strange that) that I discovered that there were druids and that they held their rites at Stonehenge, something that blew my mind. So, I made it my goal to become a druid. In my eighteenth year, I bought a book called Celtic Magic by DJ Conway. I know, I know - I do not want to hear it - it is not a book I recommend for many reasons, HOWEVER, AT THE TIME, it was what I was interested in, there was very little accessible to a highschool girl with a limited income and it was $5.00. So. I bought it. And devoured it. For years and years I had been having dreams and I had been drawing pictures and thinking of a man. He was a man I had never seen before in my life. Very tall, long coppery-gold hair and eyes the exact color of emeralds. Powerfully built and with the loveliest face you can ever imagine. He always had something to show me, something to tell me, whenever I was doing something magickal, I was thinking of him. I had no clue who this person was, but I wanted him to be proud of me. I assumed he was just a fantasy and that I was either crazy or just overly imaginative. But he seemed to be giving me very useful advice. Not listening to it seemed to be result in foolishness. And most of his advice was spiritual or related to my personal conduct, honor and artistry. I frequently saw him when I meditated or pathworked. I kept him to myself. So, on reading this book, Celtic Magic, I found a list of gods and goddesses. And I found the description that it never occurred to me that I would find. Tall, beautiful young man with emerald green eyes and coppery hair. Aengus mac Og. I always thought that my deities would be goddesses. From somewhere else - like greece or Egypt or the Britist Isles (I do not include Ireland as British). I always thought I would choose or that being pagan meant praying to the Goddess and the God, which was not something that particularly resonated with me. Anyway, on discovering this, I spent time researching him and finding very little. But enjoying his company nonetheless, when I finally came around to the idea of being worthy enough for a god to call. And I did understand, even then, that I was being called to spiritual service, as a druid, a priestess. I dedicated myself to discovering what I could about him and to doing things to please him. I tried to be a goddess worshipper - so many pagans seemed to go out of their way to stress that that was how one became pagan - or so I picked up from their writings. I kind of kept him to myself, but he was always there regardless. When I finally came out and said, listen, I follow a god, some pagan folks that I knew said "Oh that's wonderful" and promptly began to drift away from me. I found that that hurt, but it never made me question my decision and I never regretted that this incredibly god called to me. I never have regretted following him. This is the way I have grown as a pagan. I tried to reconcile being a druid with being wiccan. Most of the pagans I knew were wiccan. It did not work. And I am glad - the druid's path is very different, yes, but we are all pagans and our paths are vital to earth centered spirituality.
I have since, reformed many of my negative opinions of Christianity. I have some. But I no longer associate true Christianity with the kind that I grew up with. My mother is a beautiful Christian who could easily have been a minister. I base my view of Christianity on her and some of the other beloved Christian family friends I know. I do know some Christian clergy people and some active Christians as well. Obviously, I still have some issues with Christianity. There are some things about the Christian attitude and religious teachings that annoy the shit out of me. That's one of the reasons I am not Christian.There are times when Christians aggravate me to no end. But so do some pagans :) There are just some people who are aggravating. I find an irritating tendency in the pagan community to either bash Christianity or to be too tolerant of Christianity to the point of railing against a fellow pagan who is having an issue at the ime with Christianity. People need to be able to express their irritation with another. Sometimes that means ranting and venting and blowing off steam. Learn the difference.
Love, Honor and Respect
Niamh sionnachdubh
I went on about my "practical" upbringing, if you like. I guess I should address my pagan path, eh? Very well! Here it is:
As I have said, Christianity has never ever sat well with me. I have never really identified with being Christian and I disliked most of the Christians I grew up knowing - judgemental, bigoted, narrow, woman-hating, fundy fanatics who could not think themselves out of a paper bag was how I saw it. I grew up going to Christian schools and I always felt like a phony. I remember most of the whole Sunday school-church-Christian school period of time as a time which I spent lying about my piety. How many people did you witness to? Are you spreading the good word? Blah, blah blah. It actually became fun to invent stories about doing those things, in which I came off as a big Christian hero. Mind you, I never so much as disclosed my churchgoing to anyone who didn't know. Being a Christian was hokey, corny and embarrassing to me. At age...12 I think it was, I got a job as the church nursery keeper - yea! Now I no longer had to go to church! I just had to babysit the wee ones in the nursery. Two years later, I quit altogether - I just hated the whole thing so very much. I stopped going to church, much to my mother's chagrin. I think for me, the final straw, was being dragged to church one Sunday night (we went to Church Sunday morning and night and Wednesday night for Bible study) to see a film about the evils of rock music and how it was all Satanic and evil. That was when I lost it. My future vocation at the time was as a rock guitarist! And I knew damn well I wasn't evil or Satanic. So, with the burden of Christianity off my shoulders, I was now free to explore. Whenever anyone asked my religion, I now responded with the most exotic thing I could think of - Buddhist! Egyptian! etc...Somewhere around age 16, I found a book in the secondhand store that I liked to get funky clothes at. The Witches' Workbook, by Ann Grammary. Many of the things that I learned in that book resonated deeply with me. I now knew that there was another way of doing things, another faith, another way to have spirituality without the things that so disgusted me. I could be myself and be spiritual. So I began researching, in earnest, witchcraft, wicca, etc. I learned withccraft was not a dark evil thing, as I had been taught. It was beautiful and advocated something I had always had - a deep love of nature and a belief in magick. It was an intense year of study, nearly obsessive study, as I tried to learn everything I can, find the truth of it, the path that I was to take, etc. It was in my 17th year (always around my birthday too- strange that) that I discovered that there were druids and that they held their rites at Stonehenge, something that blew my mind. So, I made it my goal to become a druid. In my eighteenth year, I bought a book called Celtic Magic by DJ Conway. I know, I know - I do not want to hear it - it is not a book I recommend for many reasons, HOWEVER, AT THE TIME, it was what I was interested in, there was very little accessible to a highschool girl with a limited income and it was $5.00. So. I bought it. And devoured it. For years and years I had been having dreams and I had been drawing pictures and thinking of a man. He was a man I had never seen before in my life. Very tall, long coppery-gold hair and eyes the exact color of emeralds. Powerfully built and with the loveliest face you can ever imagine. He always had something to show me, something to tell me, whenever I was doing something magickal, I was thinking of him. I had no clue who this person was, but I wanted him to be proud of me. I assumed he was just a fantasy and that I was either crazy or just overly imaginative. But he seemed to be giving me very useful advice. Not listening to it seemed to be result in foolishness. And most of his advice was spiritual or related to my personal conduct, honor and artistry. I frequently saw him when I meditated or pathworked. I kept him to myself. So, on reading this book, Celtic Magic, I found a list of gods and goddesses. And I found the description that it never occurred to me that I would find. Tall, beautiful young man with emerald green eyes and coppery hair. Aengus mac Og. I always thought that my deities would be goddesses. From somewhere else - like greece or Egypt or the Britist Isles (I do not include Ireland as British). I always thought I would choose or that being pagan meant praying to the Goddess and the God, which was not something that particularly resonated with me. Anyway, on discovering this, I spent time researching him and finding very little. But enjoying his company nonetheless, when I finally came around to the idea of being worthy enough for a god to call. And I did understand, even then, that I was being called to spiritual service, as a druid, a priestess. I dedicated myself to discovering what I could about him and to doing things to please him. I tried to be a goddess worshipper - so many pagans seemed to go out of their way to stress that that was how one became pagan - or so I picked up from their writings. I kind of kept him to myself, but he was always there regardless. When I finally came out and said, listen, I follow a god, some pagan folks that I knew said "Oh that's wonderful" and promptly began to drift away from me. I found that that hurt, but it never made me question my decision and I never regretted that this incredibly god called to me. I never have regretted following him. This is the way I have grown as a pagan. I tried to reconcile being a druid with being wiccan. Most of the pagans I knew were wiccan. It did not work. And I am glad - the druid's path is very different, yes, but we are all pagans and our paths are vital to earth centered spirituality.
I have since, reformed many of my negative opinions of Christianity. I have some. But I no longer associate true Christianity with the kind that I grew up with. My mother is a beautiful Christian who could easily have been a minister. I base my view of Christianity on her and some of the other beloved Christian family friends I know. I do know some Christian clergy people and some active Christians as well. Obviously, I still have some issues with Christianity. There are some things about the Christian attitude and religious teachings that annoy the shit out of me. That's one of the reasons I am not Christian.There are times when Christians aggravate me to no end. But so do some pagans :) There are just some people who are aggravating. I find an irritating tendency in the pagan community to either bash Christianity or to be too tolerant of Christianity to the point of railing against a fellow pagan who is having an issue at the ime with Christianity. People need to be able to express their irritation with another. Sometimes that means ranting and venting and blowing off steam. Learn the difference.
Love, Honor and Respect
Niamh sionnachdubh
posted by Niamh sionnachdubh at 11:25 AM
1 Comments:
I too follow Aengus mac Og, and I have seen him in my dreams all my life without knowing who he was. Now that I do know him, my life has become more peaceful, less chaotic.
He is my lord and I speak with his voice.
bedb
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