Pagans & Wiccans
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Anonymous
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Are there many in this area? Are you mostly solitary or are there some covens?
Do you prefer solitary or being in a coven? What do you have on your altar? |
Anonymous
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Hi! I'm not pagan or Wiccan, but I LOVE their practices and count many among my friends.
I belong to one of the "mainstream" religions but I've actually always been attracted to the following gods: - Loki - Odin - Hecate - Brigid - The Morrigan - Sekhmet I know a lot of people who are devotees of these gods and I enjoy talking to them about their experiences. I'm also Most of the Wiccan girls I know strongly prefer solitary practice. They say there's way too much coven drama. I've witnessed some of the coven drama and let me tell you, NOT FUN. |
Anonymous
| Whoops, sentence got cut off there. I was going to say: "I'm also friends with "mystic Pagans" who claim to actually directly channel these deities. I am open-minded to the possibility and interested in the phenomenon." |
Gaia
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| I am a solitary witch. I go to a few meet-ups now and then in my area and will sometimes travel up to PA to an earth religion sanctuary that does events. |
Anonymous
| Some UU Congregations have circles and groups. A few have covens. |
Anonymous
| What is a coven? What is a solitary witch? |
Anonymous
Google is your friend. |
Anonymous
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Several UU churches in Northern Virginia have pagan groups. Arlington, Accotink, UUCF. Those three are eclectic. If you are female and feminist, one of them might be perfect for you. If not, you might become solitary. UUCF will celebrate Imbolc this Sunday.
Several UU pagan groups evolved from feminism; it's been my experience that men are sometimes "conditional members." If you can live with that, you've found a spiritual home. On Youtube, check out The Earth, The Air, The Fire, The Water Return. Also RBE2000 Damh the Bard, Winter Solstice It is rare to find spiritually liberty focused and politically liberty focussed in the same person or group. {But hope springs eternal} If your interest tends more toward ancient Celtic several Irish universities (Cork is one, believe) have professors or departments in that area. |
Anonymous
So people believe these entities exist? |
Anonymous
Yes, emphatically so. And why shouldn't they? Hindus believe Shiva and Vishnu exist. Plus, is believing in miraculous Virgin conception somehow less supernatural and strange than believing in Loki, Trickster and Breaker of Worlds? Some pagans try to hand-wave the gods by saying they just think of the gods as "symbols" or "representative of the forces of nature" and while I disagree with them, it's fine for them to take that view. Plenty of mystic pagans have direct, personal relationships with polytheistic pantheons - Egyptian, Celtic, Norse, Sumerian, you name it - based on the assumption that these entities actually exist. |
Anonymous
I don't believe . . . period. A virgin birth, for example - whether it stems from a Christian or pagan belief system - is ridiculous to me. I suppose it's not up to me to judge, but I can't help myself. With all that we know based on scientific research, how can Hecate or Loki be real? and why revere a god like Loki, who was never to be trusted? I don't get it. |
Anonymous
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That's fine, you don't have to believe, it's something that I think pagans would try to insist on because we know it's weird! I'm not going to go into a long explanation of the supernatural and science, because plenty of mystics have probed that contradiction better than I can within the confines of a message board post.
All I will say is that modern mystics are some of the most skeptical people you will ever meet. We are our own biggest critics. We are aware of the difference between delusion and true shamanic experiences, because we test ourselves all the time, and we have confirmations of these deities in our lives that we can't explain away by coincidence or hallucination as hard as we try to. Most of us were educated in the same school systems and colleges that everyone else was, not homeschooled in a Wiccan commune. We enter this path as skeptics. For the record, I personally haven't had direct experience of the gods. I've had other intensely mystical experiences which I won't get into here, but I know people who have gone into trance and received visits from Hecate and Loki and Odin and so on. Loki is...interesting. I'm not a Norse polytheist so anyone who worships in that tradition can chime in here. Loki certainly divides the Norse polytheist community. A large faction hate him and consider him the Norse Satan, and a growing faction (possibly swelled in ranks by the Marvel fandom to be honest) devotedly loves him. He's considered a misunderstood agent of chaos, a trickster deity who does what the world needs but doesn't want, who does what the other gods can't or won't do. In pop culture terms, a dark knight. Like I said, I personally don't worship in the Norse tradition, but this is the impression I get from friends of mine who are Loki devotees. |
Anonymous
I'm a pagan agnostic and view the pantheons as symbols, as I do the Jesus figure, etc. The energies wrapped up in any symbol is real, tho, so if I choose to work with say, Dionysus energy, I should be ready to transform my entire life. That's just my take, and the only belief I have is that we all get to have our own beliefs 
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Anonymous
| Wicca: Pretending to be an ancient religion since 1957. |
Anonymous
| Hmm.. I have friends who are solitary witches I find it interesting. I don't believe in it as a religion per se but more as a form of meditation with respect to spells, curses (by others) and being one with nature. I'm Catholic so that isn't going to change. |