Am confused about religion, says I.
Once upon a time, I thought I was wiccan. At the time, the vast majority of my research and experience (albeit book form, since in junior high and high school I didn't have access to any other practitioners or covens... nor anything like the range of online resources one has now) was with traditional British witchcraft. The books I had access to were primarily things by Sybil Leek, Gerald Gardner, and Stewart Farrar (not to mention the rather slanted treatise by Montague Summers which is a decent survey of folk beliefs and superstitions on the subject of witchcraft, magic, and demonology, but is rather sensational and not terribly anthropological). Now, I didn't so much read these cover to cover or memorize them or anything, and none of them had what one might call "how-to" sections like so many books do these days (I totally wouldn't have had the nerve to do much more than I did at the time anyway, even if the material had been available) - I did eventually pick up books by people like Buckland, Ravenwolf, and Cunningham, but only after the others were pretty deeply set in my brain. And the tone and character of the former were very much in line with what I had always had an affinity for even as a small child. The occult, the mysterious, and the slightly dangerous and forbidden appealled to me. It always has.
For awhile, the "lighter, brighter" tone of the later sources grabbed me, perhaps because it seemed so much more accessible and acceptable to me (and frankly, I don't think that I was old enough at the time to really appreciate the deeper, darker (and by that I in no way mean "evil" kind of dark) mysteries and themes that seem prevalent in older texts. I think that both kinds of wicca are valid spiritual paths, but I don't think that either one is for everyone. I also don't think that those deeper, darker mysteries should be synonymous with suffering or pain or depression or tribulation, thanks - but that's a whole other rant entirely.
In any case, I went to college, I met other pagans, and joined a coven. And most of the people that I worked with were on the more eclectic side of things, and focused less (at least in their public group rituals) on the sorts of things you find in those older sources and more on the modern reinventions. I'm not sure I'm explaining this very well, and I'm certainly not doing it an academic sort of justice, but go with me here a ways, and understand that I'm thinking out loud and much of this is emotional tone and impression that I perceive but am not sure how to translate.
I'm certainly not saying that they were doing anything *wrong* - far from it. What I am saying is that the very things that had drawn me to this kind of a path weren't present, and I started seriously questioning whether or not I should be there. And I eventually decided that I wasn't, in fact, wiccan, which i maintained for a long, long time. A couple of my friends wanted to start a non-wiccan circle, and because they knew I was without group and didn't consider myself such or anything like it, asked me to join them, and we've been talking about things. So now, because of all kinds of circumstances, I've been reading Doreen Valiente's "Witchcraft for Tomorrow" in an attempt to figure out what's going on in my head, and I'm realizing that what she is talking about... it *does* appeal to me. There are certainly things I would tweak, change, add and remove (no system is individually perfect), but the essence of things that drew me in the first place is there.
A good comparison might be this: if I had read books on Catholicism as a child initially that had interested me in the subject of Christianity, and then had joined a protestant church... and ultimately decided that I must not be Christian because the protestant method and specifics of belief and emphasis(s?) didn't work for me without realizing that what I really wanted was a traditional latin-mass Catholic church? Only to have this realization along with one that no such church exists around me and I don't do well worshipping alone. Something like that, anyway.
Ultimately, I have the blood and bones of traditional British magic in my veins and psyche, along with all the other things that make me. And currently I have very little outlet for them. I'm not sure what to do with that.
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