Heather Carter on YouTube put together a series of prompts titled #31DaysofWitchcraft that she’s been working her way through since the beginning of May. I really like this idea, but I can’t handle the responsibility of any more daily posts, so I thought that for the next few weeks, I would do one (or a few at a time) for the end of week “My Pagan Perspective” posts and work through them a bit at a time.
Today’s prompt is #28, and is about how I was raised and the path that it lead me to be on now. This is a topic I’ve probably posted on before and definitely one that I’ve discussed with you… but I didn’t want to leave it out.
28. What belief system, if any, were you raised with? How has that impacted your personal practice?
I was raised in a Wiccan/Buddhist household. My mother is Wiccan and was pretty much almost solely responsible for the spiritual upbringing of my sister and I. We were raised to follow the wheel of the year and worship the god and goddess and their cycles. We were taught spellcraft and ritual from a young age, and I do not have a memory of a time when we were not participants in my mother’s sabbat rituals and often participants in her spellcraft as well.
Much of my mother’s path in Wicca resonated… but much of it also did not. When my sister and I were around nine years old, my mother introduced a pagan parenting mentor to our family unit. This person helped in mentoring our mother on different ways to include us in her practice and guide us in her beliefs, bur in truth Z (that is the mentor) really ended up taking over a huge majority of our spiritual upbringing herself, as well as teaching us about independence, autonomy, and the development of ethics and a moral compass.
When I moved out on my own at 16, I took those beliefs I had been raised with along with me into my independent life, and Z encouraged me to adjust my practices to fit what felt right for me. The first thing I dropped was deity, as the god and goddess part of things never really felt right to me.
From there my personal practice was born. I already had a vast amount of experience and knowledge in spellcraft and rituals, and I took that forward with me into my path and practice, weeding out the things that didn’t work for me, and planting the seeds for those things that did fit.
For this reason, although sixteen years have passed since I’ve been under my parent’s roof, there are still traces of Wicca and Buddhism in my practice. These lingering bits and pieces are those things that still “fit”.
