Growing up Pagan amoungst non-pagans (written for The Ostarian Moonthly and The Comsmic Cauldron)

My mother is a Jehovah’s Witness, my father is an atheist, the rest of my family is Jewish and I am Pagan. You can only imagine the dinner conversation/arguments my family use to have. I am one of the many pagans out there who grew up in a non-pagan household - in fact, over the younger years, I lost many pentacles, book of shadows, and other pagan objects to my mother ‘saving my soul’. Somewhere, out there, buried in a tip, is enough ritual material to start a small pagan community. Yet all of her reactions to my decided path resulted in me studying harder so I had an equal dispute to all of her Christian reasons. But soon the ‘Wicca 101’ books ran out of the information I needed to continue these debates and to deepen my practices, and I began my quest to find a pagan teacher.

I went to many different schools, in different countries and cities- all of them Anglican or Catholic. I spent many defiant years debating the Religious Education teachers, questioning the priests, or being sent to the principle’s office for the above reasons. Christianity confused me. I just couldn’t get my head around some of their practices and beliefs, and the more confused I got the more desperate and upset I got. Which religion was lying? If I follow this religion will I end up in hell? What if I die and find out I got it all wrong? I firmly believed that if I researched and debated every religion I fell across I would eventually find the true path, and I desperately hoped it would be the Pagan path.

One day, after a long debate with the Religious Education teacher that went something like…
Me: “I don’t understand the trinity. Why would Jesus pray to himself on the cross?”
Teacher: “Because a part of God had been given to him but he was still a separate entity, but the same.”
Me: “So Jesus called God inside him at different moments, and when he was praying, God was not inside him?”
Teacher: “No, he was always inside Jesus.”
Me: “Ok, so your saying that we are all connected through a web of relationships with everything else in the universe including, of course, God himself?”
Teacher: “No. Just Jesus had God inside him. We are not God.”
Me: “So Jesus was schizophrenic?”
… I ended up waiting outside the Principal’s office again in a state of confusion, looked over at another poor kid waiting opposite me and noticed they were wearing a pentacle. I was stunned. I had almost come to the conclusion that I was the only Pagan in the southern hemisphere – according to all the pagan authors at that time, they all seemed to be partying on down in the Europe or America.

The girl became a good friend of mine and I soon learned that she had been brought up in a Pagan family. I spent many long hours talking to her grandmother about Pagan traditions, rituals, gypsies, the deities and the craft. I caught a glimpse at what it could have been like growing up in a Pagan household. First off was the insane amount of animals this family owned – three cats, four dogs, a goat, chickens, rabbits… the list goes on. It was also my first glimpse at a temple room which the family all practiced in. I had never considered having a separate room dedicated to my practices. They still had their arguments, and tears, just like any other family, but there was something knowledgeable and all-knowing about them.

The debates between my mother and I became intense, especially because during my search for the right religious path, I had studied Jehovah’s Witness with her for a bit and gotten her hopes up. Some pagans choose to hide their path from their non-pagan families, after the many years of arguments with my family about it, I’m not surprised! But after many years, and upon moving out of home, my mother finally wanted to know exactly what I practiced, why I practiced it, the dangers of the practice, the good things on the path, everything. The debates to a turn and we began swapping information about our religions, and became increasingly surprised at how similar many of the beliefs were. Believe it or not, I even cast a circle round my mother and she could feel it. She began standing up for my beliefs to her Jehovah’s Witness friends – “It doesn’t matter what she believes, she’s my daughter and I love her, and she is doing no harm.” She will never be in a ritual, but she has agreed to watch my handfasting. She will never try any methods that I suggest, but she has an inkling why they would work.

I soon found more pagans and finally could be proudly pagan with the right support. I live in my own pagan house, with my pagan partner, and I can finally eat my dinner without having to explain why my soul isn’t doomed. As for pagan children? My mother has plans on how to explain religion to her grandchildren. I hope she’s disappointed J.

Growing up pagan in a non-pagan environment can be very traumatic. People are telling you you’re doomed or that it’s just a fad, but you have a strange feeling that you know you are on the right track. The extra stress of ‘if you’re wrong about this you’re going to burn in hell with a hot poker in your rear’ can be very disturbing. One can feel like a high-stake gambler. It can be hard to be supportive of a religion you don’t agree with and I had to learn to be supportive of my mother’s choices as well. But the one thing I have learnt from my experiences is that I will try to be supportive of my child if they want to go to bible camp.