When I was a child, I was raised in an Evangelical household. Up until the age of 14, the Bible was the most important book in my family. My mother didn?t want us expose to anything that went against God?s teaching. I wasn?t allowed to listen to music that had any curse words in it, Pocahontas was banned (Yeah, the Disney film), church was mandatory. That should give you an idea of the home. It relaxed a bit as time went on, but everything changed when I was 14.
A huge family tragedy occurred. My sister passed away. At the time, we were told that if we prayed enough, memorized enough verses and truly believed, she would be cured. Word of Faith, I believe it was called. She had stage four colon cancer that spread. Diagnosed in September, passed away on Christmas Day of the same year. Four months.
Well, this led to a complete upheaval of beliefs in the family. Over the next few years, every family member, apart from my father, ended up going on a different path. One brother became Buddhist, one brother became Catholic, my mother was a Christian looking for a new word for God that didn?t leave a sour taste in her mouth.
I almost immediately abandoned anything in the Judeo-Christian realm. I wandered around through agnosticism, Wicca, witchcraft, pantheism, and I wander around within those. Egyptian pantheons, Celtic pantheons, Greek, Hindu, Roman. I dabbled in all of it and called myself a witch, but never really committed to anything. It was hard, given what happened with Christianity.
At 21, I concluded I was an atheist. I don?t believe there is any sentient higher power directing the flow of life and deciding what?s going to happen.
As I got a little older, I realized I do believe in? something. A divine force of life connecting us all, through the planet and the universe. I would come to find out that this is called ?pantheism.? I still call myself atheist on occasion, because by the traditional concepts of ?gods,? I am still an atheist. No sentient masters, just you, me and the energy of the cosmos.
I fell out of witchcraft and Wicca for the last 5 years or so.
This past year, I?ve felt something missing. My life is good. Married to a wonderful man, great job, started school, good friends, but? there was a hole inside me. A light that got unplugged. A vague sense that something needed to change but me being unsure what that was.
We went to the dog park one day, and there was a woman at a picnic table doing a simple tarot reading for her friend. Sitting nearby with my husband, I couldn?t help but Watch her delicately shuffle the cards. I could faintly hear her explaining each one out loud to her friend, figuring out how the cards related to her situation. Immediately, I knew. That was it. That?s what was missing. Suddenly, I was craving every witchcraft book I had ever touched and desperately wanted to find my old deck of tarot cards.
So in the past month or so, I started picking up more books, candles, I'm setting up my altar, communicating with the universe again and finding my way back to witchcraft and figure out where exactly I need to be.