Beginning My Story: Part I
I think of this blog as a record of my “becoming” because after being an atheist for the past fifteen years, and now being well into my twenties, I am undergoing a weird kind of transformation that I don’t fully understand, but wish to document. I sense (and hope) that I am becoming who I was always meant to be.
It began with a very curious emergence of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, which is also known as the frequency illusion. It is when, after you notice something for the first time, you begin to notice it more often. This leads to the illusion that there is a reoccurring pattern in your life. This year, for me, it was the Adirondacks. Before this year I had never thought or heard of this mountain range, but for some reason ever since January I’ve been seeing it everywhere. I even ordered a book not knowing that the book is set in the Adirondacks. When I flipped through the book for the first time, the first word my eyes settled on was Adirondacks. So yes, just the frequency illusion, but it also showed me how desperate I am for meaning in my life, for self improvement, for control, for ritual, for SOMETHING. I began to feel what I would describe as “witchy,” but being a fairly rational person I wasn’t expecting to find much in my pursuit of spiritual purpose.
I began reading a bunch of books on Wicca, but I just can’t abide the whole polytheism thing. Any theism, really, that purports a divinity that cares about humans, doesn’t sit well with me--it just seems like wishful thinking, ego, self-importance. And, I know from experience that one cannot simply force themselves to believe in something they logically conclude is unlikely to exist.
However, I knew I had to keep exploring Paganism in some capacity--I just “knew”--but a different kind of knowing--because there are many aspects of Wicca that resonate with me, which are the following:
1. The Wiccan Rede: An it harm none, do as ye will.
2. If you put positive energy into the universe, living by your own set of ethics, trying to do good by yourself and others, you’re likely to receive that kind of energy in return. If you put negative energy out, you will get that back too.
3. There is a powerful, celestial force that presides over the earth.
4. This force is too large and abstract for humans to comprehend fully.
5. “God is a thought. God is a name. God is an idea. But its reference is to something that transcends all things. The ultimate mystery of being is beyond all categories of thought.” - Joseph Campbell
6. Humans separate powerful, unexplainable forces into facets, archetypes or metaphors that we can relate to.
7. The celestial force referred to in #3 is immanent, or inherent in all people and things-- Ex: We are all made of stardust.
8. There is a sacred force that infuses everything, and this is deity, or at least part of it. Ex: Gravity, mass, physics, universal laws that bind all things.
9. The earth is a manifestation, indication, or materialization of the celestial force, and by this association can be considered sacred.
10. Because of the nature of the earth as a materialization of an unseen celestial force, it is beneficial to connect with the cycle of the seasons and participate in earth’s cycles through ritual and/or contact with nature. In other words, nature alone inspires awe and reverence merely by existing in the first place.
11. If each human is infused with the same celestial material, along with the earth and all things on it, we ought to be able to tap into this force in some capacity (which is currently not understood, and likely never will be)
12. Many things in nature occur in patterns-the shapes of spiral nautilus shells, the patterns of leaves and branches. There are also less scientifically verifiable patterns in nature--”psychic ability” is simply the sensitivity and awareness of these patterns--sensing things that science cannot explain yet, but not trying to assign meaning to them.
13. Magic can be defined as “the science and art of causing change to occur in conformance with will,” - Aleister Crowley, which by this definition makes magic objectively real.
14. Magic by this definition is a tool for empowerment and personal growth, and each of us must find our own path to enlightenment and a moral compass.
15. I wish to be the arbiter of my own set of ethics, take responsibility for my actions, develop intimate self-knowledge, and direct the course of my own life.
**Note: Most of these are direct quotes from Wicca for Beginners by Thea Sabin, which I thoroughly enjoyed despite the last fifty pages of the book, which go into specific deity worship (Zeus, Morrigan, etc.). I am a non-theist, but I still found a lot of wisdom here.
