A Pagan Path: First Steps

 Hi, 

Welcome to the Shores of Night, or welcome back if you've trodden the black sands before. Today I want to talk about something quite personal: why I became a Pagan. I know I usually waffle on about a huge number of other subjects, but I wanted to see about putting something a bit more heartfelt out there, partly because it feels like the right time. 

I was raised Christian, my family attended a Church of England broad church and for a long time I think I believed in Jesus. Admittedly, that wasn't a nuanced belief. It was childish and accepting, the sort of faith most of us start out with. Mum and Dad say this is true, society says it's true, so what else do you do? You go along with it, usually without thinking. It was just another part of life, or if I was to be cynical, another part of indoctrination into British society. 

I was also terrified of witches and I still believe I saw a woman fly past my window one night, while on another I thought I heard a voice speak to me through my curtain. My nights were filled with fear. I slept with a nightlight on, and my parents grew tired of me waking them because my imagination, if that's what it was, had convinced me that big bad things were trying to do me harm. 

Looking back, I guess my interest in things pagan, occult, and horror was probably inevitable. For one thing, I hit a point where I was tired of being afraid and decided the best thing to do was learn. That led to me sleeping with the curtains open, and starting to try and find out more about the fears that hounded me. I visited my local library and borrowed Vivian Crowley's book on Wicca and, I think, a few books by Starhawk.  At the same time, my interest in environmentalism was growing. Independently of any faith, I was becoming more concerned about humanity's relationship with the planet and the effect we had up on it. When I learned that the land, the planet itself, was the focus of veneration for many Pagans, it filled me with joy. In a world where the ecosystem was treated as disposable, where progress was felling trees to build a new road just to shave a few minutes off the morning commute, it felt profound to worship the very source of life. 

I was galvanised by the road protests, by the threat of nuclear weapons and even powerstations. I read about the natural world - and remember being fascinated by it even as a young child. Knowing about it made me happy. Even before theology or mythology I cared about animals and birds, forests and mountains. I embraced the idea that they had a place and quietly rejected the idea that humans are somehow more special than foxes, monkeys, cats, and other life forms. I mean, have you seen some of the insects and fish out there - they're marvellous. 

At the same time, this paradigm shift was informed by a rocky relationship with my father. I don't want to go into it in detail, simply because I've never wanted to pen a misery memoir. Let's just say that This Be The Verse by Philip Larkin was on point. For me, that left me in a position where I honestly thought that if the creator was a man, or male, then no matter how powerful they were the world would make far less sense. There'd be far more animals like the duck-billed platypus or naked molerat, because men were stupid, sloppy, and didn't have any empathy. I felt, at that time, that the creator must be a woman and Gaia made more sense. That felt so important to me at the time, because my experience at that point was that men and males were disappointing and women had a stronger grasp on reality. I could believe, at the time, that there had been a matriarchal period of history and that patriarchy had stolen that world away. I... no longer believe that, simply because I don't think the historical evidence backs it up (and because I think agriculture and patriarchy probably informed each other... and of course we have no reliable data from before that). 

At the time, Wicca made sense to me. A Goddess and a God, who was certainly lesser than her but still potent. A faith that tracked the seasons and was connected to the Earth itself. I read, got scolded for wanting a tarot deck (honestly, my very devout Mum acted as if I'd announced I wanted to buy an atom bomb - but we often disagree on points of cosmology), and did my own quiet things. At university I got involved in a Pagan Society, fell in love with a witch, who went on to become my wife. We were together for a long time, but I stalled in my explorations. Always an introvert, always shy around people and fearful of never being liked, I drifted into solitude and probably constructed barriers that stopped me reaching for the thing I wanted. I wanted my partner to be there for me in that capacity, and for whatever reason, she couldn't do that and I wasn't able to step up for myself. 

That situation changed how I saw things. 

I began to wonder if there were any gods or if what we thought were deities and demons were just the impulses of humanity's lower and higher instincts at play in our brains. Over time, I shifted to identifying as a Pagan Agnostic or "Paganish". I was still interested, but I didn't feel I was in the right place to do anything about it or that I had any right to say I was definitely a Pagan. 

It would take some time for me to feel confident enough to use that term for myself again. That's another stretch of beach though, so I hope you'll join me to walk it in the near future.