Pol
July 2nd, 2004, 07:20 PM
Hello, gentlefolk (it sounds better than ladies and gentlemen, eh? ;)).
I'm new here, obviously - why else would I be posting this? :D
My wife is a relatively new poster here (Kimbersly, she be). We're both new to the 'pagan' things. It's been pretty hard letting go of the ..untruths fed to me since I was a child. Though, I'm very excited about this new path and new set of beliefs.
I guess I'll just write up a little 'introduction' of sorts.
A couple of years ago, I went to my ancestoral home of West Yorkshire for about a month. While there, I went up to Scotland for a little while. While there, my cousin (a native to the UK and used to this whole 'walking' thing, unlike myself) and I took a walk up an old celtic hill-fort just across the Scotland/England border (next to a sheep farm/comptuer lab/bed and breakfast called..eh, I don't remember the name). It wasn't a touristy place at all, there were no signs or anything, and it was in some old bloke's pasture.
There was no sort of modern mark on it, except of course the man's fences and the wearing down of time.
In the centre was what looked like a carved stone - by the shape of it, I reckon it to have been a sort of oblisk that had since sunken into the ground, and only about one foot if it was tapering out of the ground.
I had a strange feeling of connection, and sat there for some time soaking up the feeling of the area. I took a couple of pictures of the stone. Months later, when I finally got the film developed, I was shocked to see something that I could not explain. Around the stone - appearing to 'float' - were two or three pale blue forms that were not there when I took the picture, as far as I could see. At first I passed them off as just pieces of wool - it was a sheep farm, and that's not uncommon - but, then I realised that there was none there (I had been picking it up, and would have picked up these pieces as well), and that the base colour was blue, not yellow.
So there I was, in blatant confrontation of something I had long felt but was afraid to admit to: Life is full of spirits, living and interacting with the world - we've just been blinded by science.
I was a hardshell Christian at the time, and figured that if I believed that I was taught, these peaceful spirits that did not make me feel evil at all, but instead very calm and intuned with the world, would be evil satanspawn destroyers of all things Holy.
I started delving into the occult then, little bits at a time. I started studying what the Christian scriptures said about spirits and such, and found surprisingly very little. Definitely nothing saying that everything was evil. I actually found that a lot of my beliefs weren't even in the bible, but were a byproduct of a relatively new religion.
Lately, I've begun to embrace the fact of gods and goddesses, and am delving into a mix of herbology science and magick. I don't know half as much as I should like about either subjects, but I reckon it's instinctual somewhat. I want to do my own thing, but not close out the ideas and traditions of others.
I guess I'm still a bit of a Christian, so I kind of tag on 'Christo-' before 'Pagan,' though I prefer pagan.
I guess that's it.
eheh.
I'm new here, obviously - why else would I be posting this? :D
My wife is a relatively new poster here (Kimbersly, she be). We're both new to the 'pagan' things. It's been pretty hard letting go of the ..untruths fed to me since I was a child. Though, I'm very excited about this new path and new set of beliefs.
I guess I'll just write up a little 'introduction' of sorts.
A couple of years ago, I went to my ancestoral home of West Yorkshire for about a month. While there, I went up to Scotland for a little while. While there, my cousin (a native to the UK and used to this whole 'walking' thing, unlike myself) and I took a walk up an old celtic hill-fort just across the Scotland/England border (next to a sheep farm/comptuer lab/bed and breakfast called..eh, I don't remember the name). It wasn't a touristy place at all, there were no signs or anything, and it was in some old bloke's pasture.
There was no sort of modern mark on it, except of course the man's fences and the wearing down of time.
In the centre was what looked like a carved stone - by the shape of it, I reckon it to have been a sort of oblisk that had since sunken into the ground, and only about one foot if it was tapering out of the ground.
I had a strange feeling of connection, and sat there for some time soaking up the feeling of the area. I took a couple of pictures of the stone. Months later, when I finally got the film developed, I was shocked to see something that I could not explain. Around the stone - appearing to 'float' - were two or three pale blue forms that were not there when I took the picture, as far as I could see. At first I passed them off as just pieces of wool - it was a sheep farm, and that's not uncommon - but, then I realised that there was none there (I had been picking it up, and would have picked up these pieces as well), and that the base colour was blue, not yellow.
So there I was, in blatant confrontation of something I had long felt but was afraid to admit to: Life is full of spirits, living and interacting with the world - we've just been blinded by science.
I was a hardshell Christian at the time, and figured that if I believed that I was taught, these peaceful spirits that did not make me feel evil at all, but instead very calm and intuned with the world, would be evil satanspawn destroyers of all things Holy.
I started delving into the occult then, little bits at a time. I started studying what the Christian scriptures said about spirits and such, and found surprisingly very little. Definitely nothing saying that everything was evil. I actually found that a lot of my beliefs weren't even in the bible, but were a byproduct of a relatively new religion.
Lately, I've begun to embrace the fact of gods and goddesses, and am delving into a mix of herbology science and magick. I don't know half as much as I should like about either subjects, but I reckon it's instinctual somewhat. I want to do my own thing, but not close out the ideas and traditions of others.
I guess I'm still a bit of a Christian, so I kind of tag on 'Christo-' before 'Pagan,' though I prefer pagan.
I guess that's it.
eheh.