The Genderqueer Gods (or those which generate a spiritual safe space for me) & combating gender norms in religious structures

*all spiritual experiences contained below should be forewarned as being of my own UPG and are not intended to override or speak with authority on anyone's traditions other than my own personal path*

This was an post of sorts that I thought would only be one little essay, but since, after a lengthy introduction and a discussion of how social constructs put blinders on us when we approach the gods, I realize that now it will probably be a series of sorts on the subject.

The gods you can expect to hear about in the future are:

• Hera
• Innana & Ereshkigal
• Loki
• Thor - which was a surprise to me, as the Snorri myths are pretty rife with inflated, overblown masculinity, but I will explain in due time. 
• Artemis
• Freya
• Dionysus
• and last but certainly not least, dearest, darling Baphomet - a deity who is the most responsible for helping me reclaim my omnigender/genderqueer identity.

As a devotional polytheist and witch who honors the both the greek and the norse gods, it can be challenge to let the gods speak through myth while also striving to remember that they are cloaked in human trappings in these tales. I think that is why it is of vital importance that I give them opportunities in ritual and journey work to speak on themselves in a way that is independent of the icons they were cornered into in the past.

As a witch more specifically, I think that if I am going to ask for aid from deities and spirits alike, I better damn well know who they are and have a relationship based on respect, not just an approach that is a "one-stop-capitalistic-god shop" that only invokes them in magic circles when it suits me, and ignoring them the rest of the time. Witchcraft is spiritual empowerment for me, but I will not misuse the names of the gods and the spirits by not taking the time to get to know them, both through research and UPG.

As a queer bodied person coming more firmly into their own body, I must make time to ask the gods who I have worked with previously how they transcend the cis/het and misogynistic narratives they were packaged into in the past and how they challenge these structures in their divine works.

I will never be the polytheist who thinks the gods only want blind obedience. I think understanding is the key for a strong reciprocal relationship, and so this post sets a foundation of trans and genderqueer positivity & safe sacred spaces that I need to help dispel dysphoria and fear in my spiritual life.

The gods are not defined by human notions and stories alone - what these reflect more than anything, is our limited understanding of them and our own societal values. I think often times the gods come to us within certain constructs and under certain themes since that is how they will communicate more effectively within our own culture. But if we do not recognize and challenge how constructs such as gender and institutions of sexism shape how we work with those values, we have cut ourselves off from the fullness in experiencing deity, and often times,  given power to systems of oppression (against others and ourselves).

I want to give my gods the space to voice acceptance for the queer body. Trans/queer/intersex people deserve to know that they are loved by the deities they love and honor. And so this post is a chance to explore through writing the ways that love has been made apparent to me.

Gods and People are plurality. 

Ge is many faced, held by the sun, holding the moon, in the science of perfect love. And we, the non binary, are coming out of their sacred caverns, blooming like manifold petals from the quantum lotus. And I will learn from the theologies, both old and new, and from many schools of magical thought,  and  where this cave spills out upon, as daimons in body and heart,  we will spill out across Ge's 21st century. 

We are kicking down the temples to build up new ones -

doric pedestals in which the transgressive body takes a stand to say

We are sacred, too. Our bodies are hallowed by the dawn, too

Innana's children, Ereskigal's spooks, we come in many forms. 

And we are not letting the old paradigms swallow us whole EVER again. 

Up next in the series: more on social constructs, and an introduction to Hera's non-binary safe space. :)
Thank you for reading,
Ecco

Devotions and Affirmations: Restructuring the Spiritual Landscape while coming out as gender-queer

**everything in this post is from my own UPG (unverified personal gnosis) and is not intended to be a statement on any religious path other than my own. **

If you've perused my blog at all for older posts, or happen to have met me and discussed my practices in person, you will probably see that during my kindergarten years with paganism I have jumped from witch (starting out with Wiccan, goddess movement oriented viewpoints) to polytheistic worship with slight recon bents, mixed with a general pantheistic leaning that I now realize was more animistic than anything really.  In short my theology is a hot mess.

In my practice, I have cast circles, called the quarters, worked with the Fae and the Vaettir (land spirits), strove to pour libations in keeping with the Hellenismos tradition of honoring the Theoi, and journeyed into the Otherworld to figure out where the Vaettir of my homeland are leading me.

I have followed Odin to the well of Mimir to see if what I have forgotten that would fill my soul with the abundance of remembering who I am. The Raven flies and caws above, and so I wandered with the All Father as his one eye scanned the void's leylines my mortal eyes could not see.

On simmering summer nights with their bloated moons, I invoked Hecate and heard her dogs hallow the night, announcing her path on the roads between worlds as she moved through the dark.

Perhaps brashly, but without regret, I devoted myself to Artemis after a year of studying paganism and witchcraft, and without hesitation, She who is Queen of the Wild, in her voice which is like an avalanche and the breaking of a twig on the forest floor all at once, said, "Bow."

The Fae have driven me mad for the span of a few days when I made the romantic's mistake of wanting to live in their realm for but a moment. Dark Rabbit (a house spirit) was waiting for me when I came back to my body days later, holding it out like a coat for me to slip back into. You may have seen me at work during this time, walking down the street, but inside, I was shrouded in a fog of Fae hex. When I wore my own skin again, I realized how everyone else dressed it, painted it, and denoted it with lace. I realized, after wandering in Faerie and meeting my child self I lost years ago, that my own body was my home no more.

I, the most sexually lack luster person you have ever met, encountered Inanna, the goddess of sex and Queen of Heaven, in a dream, and after she returned me to my second born body once I completed the arc of her descent, I have been her servant ever since.

Freyja blessed a little dagger pendant for me, one that I need because now, for the first time, after fully inhabiting my queer body instead of suppressing it's wants (to be the flat chested, skirt twirling, two different earring toting devil child), I feel like I'm behind enemy lines when I walk out my own front door, and I will probably have to ask for her shapeshifting cloak to flee more than once.
As she cries riding in searching for her love, I cry searching for myself.

While at a writer's conference, Apollo came to me in the night, pouring his holy light into my head, refueling the Blarney' Stone kiss as he played the blues long into the night, with the neon green veined marble floor beneath him flickering as the ink flowed from my pen sweeter than wine.

One of Odin's sacrifices turned shield maiden led me to a nest where she bid me to roost on a spotted egg, which she later broke over my head. I am still reeling in the after birth.

Sorry if I drip yolk on you, my friend.

Innana let me sit beneath the Huppulu tree to write verse in her honor. Anzu molted on me, and I'm still not sure if his ruffled feathers smudged the ink to the point that the words came out right. (you can read that collection of devotional poetry here)

Artemis pulled me through Selene, the Fae Mirror Goddess through which their world manifests in ours (my UPG, not intended to overwrite any one else's beliefs). I still feel like I have a foot in both worlds, and her bow is taught, ready to strike me down should the fever of any one world burn my brain out.

Dionysus led me straight to the Maenad circle where they rebuild him out of his old parts each year. He said they can rebuild me too.

In short, this is a devotional post in honor of all the ways the gods, the vaettir, and the good neighbors have influenced my life in the time since I formally began my path a few years ago. If you had asked me ten years ago where I pictured myself now, I never would have imagined that I would be a journey work oriented, ecstatic witch, whose rituals and magic leads them into the Realms of Spirit & Faerie, and  onto the Page as poet and story weaver.

But up until now, much of my time has been spent experimenting, researching, and investigating the traditions of the past and present to better understand the way before me. I felt a yearning, a spiritual bleeding of sorts when I left my craft for more devotional work (although I believe very strongly now that was a necessary part of my growth) and a similar loss when I realized I needed to focus more on witchcraft to help shape my own mind-body poetics and metaphysical landscapes in a way that resonated with me more truly than the traditions I tried to mimic verbatim.

Now, I realize I am more secure in my foundational understanding of where I stand in relation to the gods, the vaettir, the fair folk, and myself as a a witch. I think this has been shaped largely in part by my conscious recognition that I fall under the umbrella of gender queer. The body is the seat of  power and for years, when I pushed down the need to analyze and reconfigure it's meaning in relation to the world, I was squelching the reclaiming of my own identity, which is the will's power.

From Aleister Crowley to the mainstream neo-pagan Wiccan teachings of today, the will has been acknowledged as the seat of the witch's power. And I refused  for years to look at myself in Mimir's reflective pool, and so my will was denied a house in which it could do it's own work.

It's in this head space that I realize it was unnecessary to abandon my more devotional practices, those rooted in recon teachings of honoring the gods in the manner their own cultures recognized as the best way to worship them.  In fact, now more than ever, it is vital to my spiritual work. I must be in harmony with myself at all levels as I transition into Ecco - in sync with the gods, the spirits, and the craft - if I am to walk in truth.

And so I have re-lit the altars of the Theoi, the Aesir, and Vanir, spruced up my craft altar with it's shelf for Inanna, and reconfigured my devotional layout to the first god-love of my soul, Artemis. I am keeping the cycle of reciprocity on going between the Good Neighbors and this house.

I have looked to the recon calendars of Hellenismos and the Asatru traditions to honor the gods , and promise to keep their hearth fires burning through out the year. A new liturgical calendar now rests on my wall so that I might always take note of their holy days, and continue to set new days aside throughout the year to recognize their work in this world.

Writing this blog post reaffirms to me the love, wisdom, and change they have brought to me, and so, it is with great pride and affection, that I now strive to give back proactively to them.

This post is my commitment to keep the fires burning in these sacred spaces so that the gods might inhabit and be recognized in my household.

Hail the Theoi. 

Hail the Aesir.

Hail the Vanir. 

Hail Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Hell.

Hail Artemis, Queen of the Wilderness.

Blessings to the Vaettir and Fair Folk. 

Thank you for reading,
Ecco

Signal Boost for "Arcane Perfection" and statement of position on trans-issues in the community

I know my readership is probably so small, it's null, but I still want to make this post on the chance that those who read this might discover a project that is very near and dear to my heart.  Arcane Perfection is an anthology with a submission deadline of August 1st that is open to queer, trans, and intersex witches. From what I understand, this is a response in part to the pile of transphobic hate speech that is coming out of those members of the goddess movement who are working on "Female Erasure" - a very transphobic collection of essays that is sadly only a few thousand away from reaching it's indie gogo goals and will soon be published. It is also an opportunity for trans voices in the witch and pagan community to be heard, to let the wider pagan world know that they are here and are not going anywhere just because society at large chooses to ignore them or  worse actively work to their erasure. If you are queer/trans/intersex and you are a witch, I think this project would be of great interest and I encourage you to submit.

As a word witch, an arcana witch, and a pagan, I cannot simply stand by while the movement to destroy the queer presence in our community gains traction and support. I am pansexual and I have recently come to terms with the reality that I am omnigender (or pangender), and the emotional and spiritual space I once felt at home with as a community is drastically shifting to a site of danger for those I love. I am choosing to abstain from submitting to Arcane Perfection because I have lived most my life to the world at large as cis-gender woman and I want to give priority to those voices who certain members of the pagan community are right now striving to erase from our circles.

So here I take my stand. I am an omnigender witch who believes trans lives matter, and I will do my part when hate speech arises to denounce it, argumentatively combat it, and will always welcome queer/trans/intersex people into my spiritual circles.

To all of my trans/queer/intersex siblings in the pagan community, I love you, and I want you around.

May this post stand against the bigotry and hate that wills to destroy you. We will not bend, we will not break, and we will be here when the waves rush over and the rain howls.

Arcane Perfection

(first cross post with my poetry blog, House of Glass Cards)

Update: Editor encouraged me to submit, so I am! And you should too!

Full Moon Trance - June 2016

Hello my friends.

I know it has been a while. Let me preface this by saying that everything listed here is my own Unverified Personal Gnosis (UPG) and is not intended to be a lesson to override anyone’s belief system or personal experiences with divinity. Artemis in Hellenismos has a very specific tradition and mythological setting that is linked to her. In Wicca she is often thrown in under the Mother Goddess umbrella. My experiences with her are as a wild huntress who leads us further away from the trappings that keep us from our true selves( and even that is a reductive sentence on her power and sway) . Please, read her mythologies as handed down from ancient Greece, and I encourage you to keep the fires going of your own belief system involving her.

The following is from ecstatic trance work I underwent last night in June’s beautiful full moon.


I reached up as Artemis from the cosmic tree reached down through the heavens to pull me up. The tree hung upside down from where it was rooted in her world. And I was astonished to see not just one tree, but a whole forest worth, glowing and pulsating with their fruits of many colored light.
After she pulled me up to her, I walked on ether, an invisible floor that let me gaze down through the sky to our world. The woods which Artemis lays her head to sleep, dream, eat, and play mirrors our own, with a thousand at times subtle, at times starkly loud differences. I used to roll my eyes for the first year and a half of my path at the platitude “as above, so below.” Oh, I’m such a young one. I now know I was ignoring the wisdom given to us from those who have walked the path before we even thought of setting foot on it.

As I stared up at her woods, I saw movement. A thousand rabbits darted across her forest floor as she continued to keep her hand on mine, pulling my arm above my head to keep me rooted in her reality. She was a silhouette of the night, with her furs and skins gently spinning around her as an accent to the totality of the void she had brought in her own skin to craft life out of the dark. Her eyes had the silver light of the moon spilling out of them, making them completely opaque. When she opened her mouth, her teeth were sharp, like a bear’s. And when she laughed, for the pure joy of it, more light poured out in great waves, keeping me in a flood of her power.

Beneath us, steady as she has been since she was ripped from us in an interplanetary collision, the moon was flattened into a lens, a transparent mirror, and as Artemis spoke and sang and gazed down at me, the light danced down my body, through this moon mirror, a gate if you will, and came out the other side to kiss our sacred earth.  It has beneath some time that the moon made it known to me that she/they is/are a conduit through which the power of spirit enters our realm from those which embrace us in the cosmos and also where the spirits of our own world may slip into others, but this is the first time I have had such a blatant communication through vision confirming this UPG to myself.

It was a startling moment, even while I was drunk on moonlight and the presence of my wild goddess, I couldn’t help but want to look around, to flip myself onto the solid ground of that cosmic forest and run with the rabbits. But I was not here to dally. Her giggles and babbling which I could not understand clearly had a purpose.

Finally, in words I could make out, she asked that I reach out for the glow worm kissed leaves and fruit. She asked that I pick which fruits I wanted to send down - to eat and to use to plant more trees in my own world.

I had to whisper like a mantra those things that I wish to see in myself, in my own reality.

Strength. Restraint. Truth. Liberation.

These I plucked as she held me in my place form where she hung on a branch in her own woods and once plucked, the fruits trickled slowly in through the mirror of the moon. Iridescent in color, pulsing neon green, red, and violet, they cut through the ether and began the fall to solid ground.

I know the influences are obvious - this trance is undoubtedly all of my experiences to date culminating in this sort of vortex of messages and metaphors. But this one moved me in a way that I feel will shape the twist and turns of my spiritual path in a manner I have not seen before. Recently, I have made a commitment to try and document all of my spiritual realizations, all those places my questions and experiments lead me to. And some of those I will share here if the gods and spirits tell me it’s the sort of thing that isn’t restricted to just being relevant only to me, i.e. if it’s something that might be of use to others, or that it’s something I need to get out of the broom closet and into the wide world.

When I went to Caldera Fest a couple of weeks ago, something in me quickened. Energy pummeled through me from all corners. The musicians stirred the pot of this cauldron. The land and its hidden people brought me into the circle of their sacred fire during that weekend and I’ve been brewing up a storm of life and ecstatic journeying ever since.  I started this path three years ago studying as a witch and then backed away for devotional work. But now the circle is arcing back in on itself. I know now that witchcraft for me is a spiritual toolbox to work with the gods and spirits and knit their truths (conflicting and plural as they are) into my life.

There was a period a year and a half ago I had to back off because I was practicing the motions of ritual without really understanding the tools I was employing. A lot of chaotic energy poured in from that time when I was really not grounded enough as a person to work with those spirits in a meaningful way. Don’t open the door if you’re not going to be a gracious host I suppose was the message from that time.

But now, the fire is lit. My friends in nature are never far away (I realize now I was the one that walked away) and the gods are dancing. And I’m not afraid to step onto that dance floor which sometimes serves as a threshing ground. The old platitude that change is the only constant is one I intellectually accepted but never swallowed as truth. If you want to be transformed, to walk with through the fire and kiss the heavens, and sink into the earth, you have to be ready to be whipped by the storm.

It is all one. I know I cannot have one without the other.

I guess the only way to do this is to dive in.

Ghost Girl in Autumn

I recently started honoring and working with the Norse Pantheon, and the Aesir and Vanir have completely stripped away any notions I had of them. Once I saw only a warrior's aesthetic in their lore, but now I find how beautifully their tales are steeped in the knowledge that all are subject to Wyrd - a complicated mixture of fate brewed by the fires of social circumstance, ancestral contributions to the now, and personal action. Frigg, Sif, and Freya have been tremendously comforting to me during this stressful month during our move out our old home.

Odin has been helping my fires of creativity return, and Thor is teaching me how to better protect myself from those "giants" of the psyche that keep trying to knock down my own personal fortress.  I have not abandoned the gods who have brought me this far, but I have been craving new sources for spiritual growth. I do not want to be the sort of pagan who jumps from pantheon to pantheon and tries on new gods as though they were nothing more than clothes to be traded out from season to season,
but I feel it would be foolish to ignore the call of other deities, while remaining just as firm in my relationship with Artemis and Apollo as before.

During my path as a pagan it has always been a personal sign of strong communication between myself and deity when poetry seems to run like an unbroken thread - the words pour out, an act of devotion ensues, and something I hope I can call art results.

I asked Freyr what was the meaning of ghost girls

shrouding us beneath their skirts

The only response I received

was a heart wrapped in vintage ivy

and a thyrsus swollen in the autumn air

Pine cones opened, exultant

harvest has come,

but can the solace of night keep pace?

or are we tossing the leavings out

for ghost girl,

inviting her to smother us

with the humidity of moss?

Make your offerings, the norse god said,

for ghost girl keeps the howling winds at bay,

all in exchange for your witness

to her dance

watch her colors change

watch her roots spin, reach out

and find new ground in the incipient

you, an abbreviation of spring

finding new ground spiritually in uninviting waters along life's beach

I'm not going to lie. As of late, the deities and spirits have seemed distant. I can't hear them the way they seemed to be jumping out at me during the first year and half of my path. Work piled up, strapping me between a prison of concrete and glass doors to where even the sky through our windows appears less of the domain of air, and more of a tainted distortion as the sun's light passes through the corporate junction between consumerism and materialism. My house has become a cave which I run into just to escape from the thought of work, and thus, I hide in it like a bear hibernating.

When my thoughts have turned to spiritual matters - usually ending in reflections on how dried up my spiritual connections seem to be now - despair usually ensues. And as an adult, I have, however mature it may be, learned to hide my emotions in pointless busy tasks even while at home - reading for hours on end, gaming splurges that sometimes last for days (this is not to say that enjoying either of those things is inherently bad, just I indulge in them oftentimes as opportunities to hide from what is really the matter).

So as the months have passed, and each full moon passes by unremarked because I have lacked the time or energy to ritually honor Luna's dance, I found myself wondering if all of my research and spiritual investment in paganism has actually brought any real change in my life. Have I become a more aware, wonder struck child of the moon and sun just to find myself trapped and numbed by the modern world so many of us are forced to live in out of necessity?

And then I remember to walk outside, and stop thinking and fretting for just a minute, and actually listen.  I am fortunate enough to live currently in a place that, though in the middle of a small city, is surrounded by nature.  The cicadas are brewing their primal song, the cricket's call out to one another in a frenzied symphony of life, and the wind whispers the tree's chorus. It all seems to say,
We are here, We have always been here, It is you who have left us

And I realized that all my concern about ritual and rising to celebrate the "right" holidays has been grossly misguided. Instead of worrying about when I can commune with spirits and celebrate the old ones of wild, I just need to step outside and let them do the talking. That is not to say that the pagan holidays should go by unremarked, as they are wonderful points of the year that we as a community can connect and unite in honor of key segments of the seasons, of the spirit's track along the alternations of the earth. But I spent too much time on when, on the spectacle of how it "should be done" rather than just letting the natural lines of communication open up.

Friends of ours graciously took us on a trip with them yesterday, and we went hiking to see a sixty foot waterfall. The moment we began climbing up a back road of the mountains, the visions of the spirits started to hit me again. I saw a laughing, vivacious woman whose laughter caused the hills, rocks, and peaks to jut out, making the ridges around us. The sun was a flower held by the child we call The Real, rays petals reaching down to earth. And the waterfall herself was singing, her water splashing over me, drawing me into her and her fall, her surrender to the earth. Everything spun, everything was held in balance. Sky romances earth, and the Earth's children are weathered away to visages of segmented rock which cradle us, and tell the story of how the gods are just the planet, just the world, and it's forces twirling in the love light of Stars.

We try to serrate the spiritual as though it's knife can only catch in moments like this one, but I had been so emotionally drained from the pattern of life and work that the spirit's knife failed to catch when trying to open up the parts of me that need to hear the cicada song, the bird trills, the wind's dirge of summer into fall.  I'm now finding Artemis roaming in fields of human life I never would have believed she could inhabit before. And Apollo is no longer the distant pre-christ archetype he was for me before, a deity I payed homage to because he held sway in my home realm, that of Story. Now I see him as a man by the fire telling me to Speak, to tell him a Story, with my life and the words it has given me.

Beliefs

I have recently been asked by an old high school comrade of mine if I would like to attend an interfaith meeting at a local pride group. He said the group is interested in trying to make any services they have inclusive of everyone, and would like to hear from people of paths outside of the Christian faith. I feel really excited to have this opportunity to contribute to the community. I identify as queer and pagan, and this is honestly the first time ever I had a chance participate in both communities in any capacity beyond a social call.

But I do want it to be understood that I in no way feel as though I can act as a spokesperson for pagans in general, especially since the term pagan as an umbrella term encompasses such a wide variety of theologies that even a single group could have members ranging from hard polytheists - who believe the gods are distinct and very separate deities-  to monists who believe the divine is one entity that simply utilizes different names and faces to achieve what ever metaphysical goals it has in mind.

For instance, I have even come across on the internet people who identify as Wiccan and believe in the traditional dual divinity of the God and the Goddess, and others who identify as the same and believe  in the same duality but ascribe names to them of other gods who fulfill similar spiritual functions from other religions (i.e. referring to the Goddess as Isis, or the God as Pan, etc).

There is even a wide divide concerning where the gods originate or are "headquartered" in. Many believe the gods are part of the natural world, that they reside in it and are actually identities of ecological, tectonic, or even meteorological forces.  Yet many others also believe that the gods reside on other planes or, similar to many views that Christians have of their God, that they are outside of the world altogether.

So what I say past this particular paragraph should be taken no further than as the spiritual perspective of a solitary practicing pagan whose personal experiences are, to use a term widely used in the pagan community to discuss religious experiences without toting them around as universal fact, unverified personal gnosis, or UPG for short. I have only met a couple of pagans in real life and most of my knowledge about the community at large is from what I read in forums or in the blogosphere.

First and foremost, I have always strongly felt that for me, intuition and the personal journey is the crux on which my whole spirituality stands. My reading list that I have gone through on the subject  has been quite long, but I feel first and foremost that if something a certain religious expert says doesn't rest well, or make sense in your own spiritual world view, then it's probably going to be harmful to your spiritual development. There is a huge field of pagan authors out there who all have their own take on the divine and how it should be approached. I'm not trying to say to keep a closed mind and not listen to wisdom, but if your experience of a particular god has been completely encouraging and positive, and someone comes along and blares at you that what you've seen is not in keeping with their experiences or the mythology, etc, then you are just going to have to let that go while also understanding that your interactions with the gods can be completely different to what others experience.  And that is okay.

Secondly, I would like to say that I personally identify as a pantheistic polytheist. Pantheism is the belief that the divine is in every little thing, or more specifically, that the spirits are everywhere around us.  The qualifier of polytheist means that I believe the gods are distinct and separate deities, i.e. I do not think one can swap Isis and Gaia and claim it is okay because they are both the same Mother Goddess.  I'm not saying that it is not okay to see it that way if that is your UPG. Just for me personally, this what I have come to understand of the divine workings of the gods.

Basically as a pantheist, I recognize that is possible to encounter the spirits and/or gods anywhere. They are in the trees and stones and rivers. They are the mountain, sky, and rain. They are in everything.

As a polytheist, I believe there are probably more deities than there are people living on this planet, and that they are distinct (but I'm not beyond the possibility of accepting that many of them could share spiritual bodies).

Prayer for me does not necessarily need to involve words. For strength I look to the stones and ground and seek to find support from them.  When I need emotional healing I look to water and draw serenityfrom the waves. Often, when I praise the gods, I do so verbally, not just in my head, because I believe that to expend the energy of giving honor is an important part of devotional work. I offer offerings of bread, grapes, incense, and wine when I want to welcome and honor the role that divinity has played in the universe.

Now I understand that magic is frequently tied to paganism due to the popularity of Wicca. For me witchcraft is a practice, a trade, like metal work or car repair, Although it is tied to my spiritual world view as I believe that that spirits are everywhere and they can frequently be worked with while using magic, I do not consider it a significant or necessary part of my spiritual practice. I am primarily interested in, as far as religion is concerned, with communicating the spirits and the gods, and communing with the divine in the natural world. Witchcraft is more than often used as a guide post for me to communicate with them - i.e., by setting up a circle, raising the power, and entering a trance, but it is not the axis around which my religious experience revolves.

I am also willing to admit that I am completely in err about the whole thing and the gods I think I know could be other gods in disguise. I wouldn't be surprised that the deity I worship as Artemis is actually just a local forest god. But in the end, I don't think that sort of knowledge would render my spiritual encounters invalid. Just now they would be viewed with a different lens.

And I think I have worn my keys in quite a lot by this point, but I just wanted to spend some time reflecting on what my personal beliefs are before perhaps being questioned about them in a public setting next month.