Hi All! This was initially posted in the introduction forum, but it was brought to my attention that this may be a better place for it!


"Hi my name is Rae! I have been a member of the site for nearly a year now and have enjoyed it so much thus far!

I am a senior anthropology student from Michigan who enjoys studying spirituality. As of the last year and a half, my focus has been largely on the witchcraft and pagan communities. So, when I found this site last year, I found it such a valuable resource.

This community has inspired me to shift the focus of my research to understanding the experiences of people who are joining the witchcraft and pagan communities, especially how people find their spiritual path and identity. So now I want to open it all up to you. I would love to speak to anyone who wants to share their experiences, no matter your level of experience or length of membership on this site or as a member of the witchcraft and pagan community. If you want to share a sentence or write a full novel, I'm here to listen. It's your story and you can reveal (or not reveal) whatever you would like!

The purpose of this research is not to make a spectacle of anyone, it is just to foster a greater understanding and to allow anyone who chooses to do so to help in increasing this understanding on your own terms. Any information you choose to share will be kept strictly confidential and your identity will remain anonymous, all I ask is that you are at least 18 years old.

If you are curious at all, have any questions or concerns, want more information, have any amount of interest, or just want to chat: please feel free to comment on this post, private message me, or feel free to email me at: vandesa4@mail.gvsu.edu

Blessed be!" 

Greetings or Merry meet. I adore the pic of the cat. Good taste in avatars. Your email address is inaccessible just so you know. My path is long and winding as most are. So I'll wait for a reply and a question. Blessed be.

If possible, you can contact me at vladgrimshade@gmail.com.

Hi! Not sure why its its inaccessible, I will email you. Also that would be my 20 pound cat and he makes an excellent avatar!

Kensai Journeyman said

If possible, you can contact me at vladgrimshade@gmail.com.

From “Post #13,815”, 24th November 2020, 7:19 PM

In 1988 I was at a midlife cross roads point in life, unemployed at 34 and considering options; witchcraft was the last thing I’d expected.

One day as I was walking my dog along a grassy slope, a very large flock of noisy Canada Geese flew overhead, heading south. I stopped to look up at the geese & I felt a wave motion pass through the ground under my feet. That caused me to look down; the dog was also looking down and then he quickly sat. There was a burst like an electric jolt that passed from my feet & up my body to my head.

I was catapulted out of body, moving straight up & into the midst of the flock of geese now fully over head. I continued rising very fast & I saw the hazy horizon curve of the earth and cried out  “whoa!” & stopped rising. I looked down at the Earth & saw blue lines of light meandering & cris-crossing the ground. Then began a slower descent. The geese had moved a bit further along as I dropped back thru the flock.

As I came nearer I saw my dog, who was now laying down, & in a sudden swoop I re-entered my body; but dang if I wasn’t facing backwards & snapped right ways around 🥴. I glimpsed the last few geese in the V-formation moving away to the south so the whole event hadn’t taken more than a minute but it wasn’t done with me yet.

As I was starting to gather my wits a voice in my head said “You are standing on holy ground.” And then the most wonder-full thing of all happened. I was suddenly conscious of the Earth Herself as a sentient being. And She was aware of me & wondering what I’d make of the experience. It made me cry in awe for starters.  I later figured out that the “holy ground” reference was to the natural spring under the hill.

I was 34 when this altered consciousness event occurred. I’m 68 now. I’ve been involved in parapsychology since my teens so I was familiar with OOBEs during sleep or meditation but had never catapulted out of body between one step and the next. I spent the next 5 years slowly researching to find out what had hit me & my dog. At the time I had known nothing about telluric currents & ley-lines which - in cahoots with the overflying geese - could account for the zap & the blue lines I’d seen from the air.

On March 28, 1993 as I was walking along the street just window shopping, I heard my familiar inner voice say that “There is a way for you over there” & I found my head turning toward a bookstore across the street. I’ve been a medium since I was 17 so when my familiar says go, I look both ways & I go. The book I bought was Scott Cunningham’s “Wicca, Guide for Solitary Practitioners”.  Wicca was a totally new idea for me but I liked the cover design (by Robin Wood,1990's edition). Some weeks later I'd read in the Phenome-News paper that March 28th (the day I'd bought Cunningham's book) was the day he died. I was using the sales receipt as a book mark. The synchronicity was like a green light to me as a medium to go ahead investigating Wicca & see where it led.

I started casting circles in my back yard over the next few months. I tried as many methods as I could think up just to see what the energy would do. For example: I outlined the circle with a garden hose & opened the faucet to create a flowing current because I was aware of water’s favorable effect on psychism, & it watered the garden while I was at it. I felt a difference in pressure against me by pacing either with or moving against the flow, or spiraling inward toward center or outward toward the rim. Funny story - using a deosil, inward-spiraling, unbroken shuffle walk buckled my knees on the 3rd go round. My butt stuck to the ground like being held by static & 😅 I had to rock myself loose.

After a year or so I could see blueish light moving like smoke around my hands and could see this light behave differently when I used my finger to cast with (waffling smoke), used my DIY wand (flat ribbon of blue light) or used a double edged athame (narrow blue beam) to cast with. I came to accept that this witchy magic stuff followed natural laws & was as real as spirit guides, spoon bending and other psychic experiences like an OOBE-fly-by through a flock of geese. My folk-magic style works well enough.

Thanks for reading through this. I hope to read other people's stories.




.

I like your garden hose experiment. It gives me a few ideas.

I've always been open to seeing strange creatures. I dont give them names because they could have certain connotations that would make somebody say they are evil. I have found that the scary looking ones look scary to scare off would-be-attackers.
 I'm probly up to about a dozen physical form ones I've seen which people around me have not seen while looking at them, 2 or 3 that other people have seen with me. There's 5 or 6 dozen I have seen from through the veil. And there are at least that many from dream realms I've seen too.
    Unlike the movie, The 6th Sense, I don't see dead people, just strange creatures
 I have most of my memories from since I was at least 2 years old, maybe a bit younger. Hard to tell since I didn't really have the concept of age back then.
 I've always been able to receive information from the air and have gotten better at it. After internet and I found out about things I wanted to do, I looked back and noticed that I already did most of that stuff, just in a different way. It all boils down to have never closed my 3rd eye like most children do when they are scared of the unseen. I just decided to talk to them instead… that scares away the fear mongers

 

@MK - Yea, I think you got that right about closing the 3rd👁‍🗨 when something scares us & how the bogies use appearance as protective cover. Also I think their appearance can be a result of their function, ie., multi-tendril energy scavengers who are beneficial & clean up, or shape shifters camouflaged to blend in with their habitats. I think they're amazing. 

Internet certainly did open up new ways for myself to learn about things. I remember when I was a wee barn reading about wicca in my native tongue and enthusiastically contacting the site owner to get more information. She gave me none.

As I have aged I believe that back then, that was a sign that wicca was not a path for me. I know about it, but wicca feels to me like cold steel on very cold winter morning. Not so nice. There is practically very little information available on things still on my native tongue, no access to the books either. there is few esoteric shops there and there, but those are never open and they ask ridiculous prices for the books. And what they have available is very small selection, mainly focused towards mindfulness, satanism, achieving nirvana and the Christian stuffs.

Unfortunately also amazon and eBay have ridiculous shipping fees, so buying from there is out of question (we talk about 20 € shipping fee for things costing like 1-3 €)

So Internet is huge source of material for me. I have list of two billion books I want and I have access legally to some, but unfortunately I can't share the books - just tell the names. But that's how it is for me haha. yea rambling comment

Hi RedGreyRaven - Do you have favorite style of practice?

Do you mean Wiccan formal structure feels cold? I feel disconnected from Nature by the "headology" in a ceremonial ritual structure that Wicca originally adapted back in the 1950's. I'm glad there's no rule that we have to copy a specific ritual structure if we are Solitary 🥳 . Obviously a group would have to agree on a procedure or they'd be running into each other, tee hee.

I think the wiccan way is a bit too christian, in the goody 2 shoe sense.

Maybe that's what raven means?maybe not…

I'm nondenominational pagan. And I'm neutral, at least 60%. I might be up to 20% good, 20 bad.
 And half crazy….that's 150% already

Hey MIndKrawler, do you have any favorite forms of practice? I like an informal, folk-magic style myself. I'm definitely an eclectic 🍒cherry picker & bat guano crazy is a given.

I'm inclined to agree, utilize whatever the situation calls for. And happy Thanksgiving everyone. Time to chow.

chaos scares people just like anarchy. they don't realize the order of it and how it can be peaceful.
 under religious and political stats on paperwork i put;
Chaos Magick
Paganarchy
stuff like that

 i definitely use a lot of newtime folk type, all informal, some tech, nature, void, other realms, universal truth, etc… the sky is limitless in chaos

 I see you did not fight the urge to use edit button norwhich lol nor will I
 my 2nd main step in magic is to forget. 1st step is usually similar, decide 3 ways to word what I'm aiming for
3rd step is: it's happening. Not always how I planned. chaos gets to pick some variables. that's why 2nd step is to stop thinking about it and let it occur

Wow a 20 pound cat that must be one loved and spoiled cat.
 For me it's been a long journey with the paranormal and supernatural abilities almost all my life..

  Starting out life as a strong Christian With amazing things happening That were physically impossible.

And then at 40 something changed in my life miraculously I became an observant Jew for years.

 And probably about 4 years ago life changed once again for me with.
 A powerful force Showing me a different way and ultimately here.
 With so many things happening over the years and psychic abilities and being able to move and change physical objects I knew there had to be more than standardised religion and the force showed me
 Much more that we are all connected and It's all because of love.

Hey resuecrof, The title of the book  Growing Up Psychic by Chip Coffee makes me think of you. 

Norwich said

Hey resuecrof, The title of the book  Growing Up Psychic by Chip Coffee makes me think of you. 

From “Post #14,208”, 30th November 2020, 5:16 PM

That is soooo nice of you!

But most people would disagree with you… they would say I never grew up.   Lol

It takes a tough guy to admit it 🤭 … 😁

Hey Raev… is this helpful, like should we focus on those psychic experiences that contributed to our being open to witchcraft and/or Wicca, & stay on the positive side?

It's not all fun and games and some psi experiences may not be suitable for young readers. It's easy to write about the stuff that's interesting and turns out well, but the clairvoyant-chillers don't come easy or the larger PKs or the random PK either -  Just so you're aware.

Norwich said

It takes a tough guy to admit it 🤭 … 😁

Hey Raev… is this helpful, like should we focus on those psychic experiences that contributed to our being open to witchcraft and/or Wicca, & stay on the positive side?

It's not all fun and games and some psi experiences may not be suitable for young readers. It's easy to write about the stuff that's interesting and turns out well, but the clairvoyant-chillers don't come easy or the larger PKs or the random PK either -  Just so you're aware.

From “Post #14,269”, 1st December 2020, 5:36 PM

Hi Norwich, this really is helpful! I'm interested in how people develop in their spirituality and what brought them into the community, which of course is not always fun and games so I'm really enjoying all the conversation

Norwich said

Hi RedGreyRaven - Do you have favorite style of practice?

Do you mean Wiccan formal structure feels cold? I feel disconnected from Nature by the "headology" in a ceremonial ritual structure that Wicca originally adapted back in the 1950's. I'm glad there's no rule that we have to copy a specific ritual structure if we are Solitary 🥳 . Obviously a group would have to agree on a procedure or they'd be running into each other, tee hee.

From “Post #13,885”, 25th November 2020, 8:31 PM

I mix and match to bring up my own flavour, but I work a lot with herbs and have been lately doing bit of counselling to help with the matters of the heart.

It's all the rules and structures Wicca has. There is good stuff, but you could say that I am quite independent and headstrong, which would cause issues on the longer run. While I might follow some structures in wicca, I also walk strongly on my own and enjoy discovering things on my own and then share.

RedGreyRaven said

Norwich said

Hi RedGreyRaven - Do you have favorite style of practice?

Do you mean Wiccan formal structure feels cold? I feel disconnected from Nature by the "headology" in a ceremonial ritual structure that Wicca originally adapted back in the 1950's. I'm glad there's no rule that we have to copy a specific ritual structure if we are Solitary 🥳 . Obviously a group would have to agree on a procedure or they'd be running into each other, tee hee.

From “Post #13,885”, 25th November 2020, 8:31 PM

I mix and match to bring up my own flavour, but I work a lot with herbs and have been lately doing bit of counselling to help with the matters of the heart.

It's all the rules and structures Wicca has. There is good stuff, but you could say that I am quite independent and headstrong, which would cause issues on the longer run. While I might follow some structures in wicca, I also walk strongly on my own and enjoy discovering things on my own and then share.

From “Post #14,322”, 3rd December 2020, 6:12 AM

I can understand and relate to that. Much like yourself, I found there wasn't much reference to any spiritual paths back in the late 70s or early 80s. Honestly, I enjoy the independence and can work with any system, format, or style. I also have to say, the things we see and experience as solitary eclectics are far more enriching than what we would as opposed to being in a structured if not almost rigid system of practice. So with that said, I applaud and appreciate all who blaze and tread their own path. Blessed be.