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Dechristianizing Yourself: Building Practice as a New Pagan
Categories: ArticlesTags: dechristianizationMoving from a belief-based religion to a practice-based religion can be daunting, especially for those with little experience with personal spiritual practice to begin with. Shifting away from a system where your thoughts and feelings rather than your actions define your spirituality can be very empowering, but some people may worry — as I did…
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Revealing the Mysteries: Open-Sourcing the Craft
Wicca is an experiential religion. For a long time, this meant that people didn’t talk about the mysteries central to its practice. There are a variety of arguments for this. First, some people believe that talking about the Mysteries, or the experiential truths that practitioners become aware of through practice and initiatory rites, cheapens them…
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Dechristianizing Yourself: Addressing Church-Related Trauma
Categories: ArticlesTags: dechristianizationSome people leave the Christian faith because they have been traumatized by the beliefs of the church or by leaders or other trusted people within it. These traumas can affect people for years afterward if left unresolved, even if they seek a new faith path in the Pagan movement. While healing from these traumatic experiences…
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Coffee With the Goddess: A Devotional Practice for Busy Pagans
Categories: ArticlesTags: devotional practiceHaving a devotional practice can be challenging, especially if you’re just starting out on the Pagan path or you’ve got a lot of mundane commitments. If you’re new, there may be so many options of things to do that you don’t know which to incorporate first. And everyone has work or family or community commitments…
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The Wiccan Virtues: Ideals from the Charge of the Goddess
It’s been said that Wicca doesn’t have sacred texts. I disagree. While it’s true that Wicca is an experiential religion, relying on one’s personal experience of Deity to define one’s beliefs, it does have sacred texts: Gardner’s original Book of Shadows, Valiente’s Charge of the Goddess, and the bits of sacred writing of early Gardnerians…