How did you start on your path?

[Artemis84]

I recently found out that a close friend of mine is interested in practicing wicca. I think she was introduced to this idea by the millions of Lewelyn books I have on my shelf. :) It just got me wondering: how did those of you who have been practicing the Craft for a while (about a year) start on your path. Please share your story. Some of them can be very interesting and unique.
Blessed be! :D

[Amethyst Rose]

I wanted to be a witch ever since I was 16, however I didn't think it was possible so it was just a fantasy. However, then I saw the movie "The Craft" and it got me thinking and doing research. And here I am, 5 years later.... :)

[Mairwen]

It's easier for me to give you a link. Sooooooo........

http://xomusic.audio-stream.net/mari/craft.html

Have fun! :D

[Raynewitch]

This is pretty freaky, but here goes:

I have had a recurring dream since I was about maybe 16 or a little older:

I am being dragged through (although Im not the me I am now, Im someone else but its me..get what I mean?? Im confusing I know :)) a crowd of people who are screaming and throwing things at me and yelling Im a witch. I plead with the people not to do burn me and so forth but I am tied to a pire thingy, crying and pleading with the crowd but they light it up. It is so vivid I can actually FEEL the flames on my body and the pain. But as it intensifies I "pass out", at this point I wake up crying and covered in sweat (sounds attractive). Thats the short version anyways.

Anyhoo I decide to find out what I had done that was so awful and started looking at stuff on Wicca etc. I became totally involved in it and the need to know more has just consumed me :D I cant stop reading and learning - its great :sunny:

I havent had that dream for about a year now though (which is a little over the time I actually became a Wiccan, instead of just reading about Wiccans if that makes sense) so I am pretty thankful.

Another weird thing that has happened to me though is when I meditated fo rthe second (successful) time, I had a vision (for want of a better word) of a beautiful woman who called my name and said "I have been waiting for you". It wasnt scary or anything it was like...home if you know what I mean.

So thants enough rambling from me :)

:elf: Rayne :elf:

[Danustouch]

You can read my account in the Poetry and literature forum.

it's labeled..."My Essay on finding wicca".

[Myst]

I was bored. I had been raised as an Atheist with Christian holidays. Then I spent a few years as a Christian by choice. Then I was searching Yahoo! one day and came across the Wicca & Witchcraft section. Read everything I could there and then started breaking into the Llewellyn stuff.

See, Llewellyn isn't all evil.

[slvr_phoenix]

Mine is kind of odd. I grew up in a born-again Christian home. Sometimes we'd go to baptists church, sometimes to an e-free. It depended on where we lived, because we moved a few times. Anywho, so I was striving to know more and more about god.

The funny thing was though, the more I got to know him, the less I actually liked him. I felt he was kind of a hypocritical putz. I must have driven some pastors nuts asking them to help me study different passages in my effort to come to understand and appreciate him as my lord. **L**

Well, when I moved out of home, it didn't take long for me to decide I had to live for myself and no one else. So I became an athiest. That was all well and good for a while, but I felt like something was missing. So I started doing basic research into misc. religions, but got nowhere and felt I was doomed to be an athiest the rest of my life. Heh heh.

Then one night I'm sitting there logged onto AOL and TOTALLY bored. And I just kept typing in stupid words and phrases like "ye-haw", "yahoo", "bippity-boppity-boo", and crap like that to see what stupid things I could find. I started to have a lot of fun with phonetics, making up words that just sounded like fun to say. :) Well, eventually I put in the phrase "wicca wicca wu". You can imagine my surprise at actually finding something on that. **L**

So that was the first step towards finding the path that I've now been on for years, and feel I'll be on the rest of my life. For me it was just all a big fluke of a coincidence. ... Or was it? ;)

[Rævyn Cigány]

Well, to say that I had disagreements with the Catholic church would be a GROSS understatement. I'd spent most of my life looking for something in the faith I was raised in to keep me there, and when I didn't find it (more to the point, when it finally pushed me out...details can be provided later if wished) I decided to look elsewhere...

My husband was Anglican so I started going to church with him every Sunday. Unfortunately there isn't much difference between Catholicism and Anglicanism, so even my husband stopped going altogether, about two and a half years after we were married.

My brother came home from a year away one afternoon and the first thing I noticed (after I practically knocked him over with a hug :D) was the pentacle around his neck, and a serious lack of hair!! Well, needless to say that at first I was very apprehensive and more than a little scared. I was a good Catholic girl, after all (don't you DARE say it!! LOL!!) and all good Catholic girls know that a pentagram is the sign of the Devil!! ( :rolleyes: ) I express my concern for my brother and to my utter amazement, the kid laughed at me! Not a bad laugh, mind you...he sat me down and explained exactly what he was 'into'....I was intrigued and asked for info...and I haven't looked back since...the more I read the more I knew that this was what I believed and what I had believed all along. It took the gentle 'nudging' of my brother to open my eyes to the possibilty of another faith that would fill the gaping hole in my heart. I still hold on to my love of Cathoic hymns, but I also hold on to the fact that we ALL look to the same ONE, no matter what He/She/They are called.

Blessed be, and much love to all

Rae )0(

[Lavender]

It was a slow, slow process. I grew up in a Christian home & went to Sunday school & church every Sunday. I always wanted to be a witch since I read my first witchy book at around the age of 7. I read every fairy tale, witch/magic book I could get me hands on. I always felt sorry for the witches portrayed in the fairy tales...thought they got a bum deal! Anyway, when I was around 16 or 17, my best friend was going out with a guy who's family's Wiccan. His mom lent me Starhawk's Spiral Dance & I loved it! I had also picked up John Lust's The Herb Book & was floored by the wonders of herbs & plants. I wasn't interested in the Wiccan religion but it started me thinking on a lot of things. I never felt comfortable with my family's choice of religion but didn't really have anything better to fill the void with. It wasn't an immediate conversion...it took a lot of years & reading & asking questions & just plain ol' searching & a few set-backs. I don't have a name for the path that I'm on but it doesn't matter to me. I celebrate the Great Mother for the herbs & plants & the wonders of nature around me.

[aquinnah]

I was raised Catholic, but never really felt at home there (or anywhere else, for that matter). I began working as a gardener in college, and had an interest in alternative lifestyles and philosophies (I spent a good deal of my mis-spent youth following the Grateful Dead, and that opened my mind and my eyes). My ex-boyfriend gave me a copy of the Findhorn Garden, a beautiful book about plants and spirituality for lack of a better description. I knew then that what I was feeling around plants was real. I read the Mists of Avalon and I was off and running... but I was slowed down by my burgeoning drug addiction. I was unable to practice my path until I got serious about getting clean, and realized I needed spiritual help to do that. After staying clean for a while, I got involved with the Pagans at my local Unitarian Universalist Church, and here I am... My mother was an alcoholic who died when I was young - but she used to talk to animals and I believed her - everyone else thought she was just crazy. I think she pointed the way for me (and still does, thanks Mom!)

[Earth Walker]

My father taught me quite a lot about Goddess Traditions
as a youngster, and I learned more on my own, and now
I'm here at MW...where I'm frantically trying to keep up with
everything...and it's driving me buggy:eek:


Only my Cat understands me.
************************
There are only two times I feel stress.
Day :D and Night :D

[Dellit Tandannon]

buggy? where?! :p

i studied a lot of different religions for a few years and then found wicca. i am not wiccan, but that's what lead me to researching astral projection, healing, and all around energy. i also had some help from a couple really great girls.

<hugs kaylara and lucidia>

[SpikesPet5150]

My best friend is Wiccan.. and I was Christian (although, I really didn't follow *all* the rules, and I always felt something was missing) and she was living with me at the time.... she would do all of her rituals and spells and stuff in her own room, as to not "bother" me with them. On Yule, we were sitting at Denny's having coffee, as we did pretty much every night, and she was writing down her chants for the night. Out of nowhere, I asked if I could help her out... she smiled at me and said of course I could. From that moment on, I've followed the Wiccan path. It was amazing, that first little touch of magick... when I used to pray, I never felt anything... but in that one ritual, I felt like I was being listened to, and understood. It was like coming home. :)
Earlier today, my friend Jami and I were talking about ghosts and other supernatural things.. and she said she always figured I'd turn out to be into witchcraft, because as far back as elementary school I was really into supernatural and spiritual things. :) I just wish I would have found this path sooner.
~Bree
:elf:

[SageMoon]

It took me a long time to realize where to find the spirituality I was looking for. I was Baptist Methodist at the age of 25 , I know kind of late in life . That is because my parents never really attended church but my father was always a spiritual person reading the bible and all. I joined the church a year before I married . and went on and off over the years. Then I started taking my children to sunday school and the whole nine yards. They said why are we always in here when we can enjoy what was given to us outside , like a walk in the woods or a park on Sunday. Then the Money thing started to get way out of hand as they all do in Organized Religion. To make a long story shorter I never got anything spiritual out of going every Sunday and the more I thought of what my Children said seemed to touch me more spiritually then church on Sunday. So I started to look in to different religions and found that Wicca was what I was looking for all along. So Mote It Be !!!!! ( Still a newbie always reading and learning. It's never ending.......)

Blessed Be,
Sage Moon )o(