In the last two columns we discussed various ways in which Pagans can connect with the divine. We can use prayer, meditation, shamanistic journeys, ritual, magic, or other means to connect with the Gods and Goddesses. But what happens once we do connect? What evidence do we have for a connection in ourselves, and in others?
This is a complex and important question that leads across psychology, philosophy, and theology. Because its so big, and I can do it so little justice even in the column space and time that I do have, we’ll break this topic up into three installments, starting this month with a general discussion of the topic, and beginning a detailed discussion with the problem of desire. In the next few columns we will discuss how it changes how you deal with people, and how you deal with the world.
This is an important question for a couple of reasons. First, if we understand what to expect once “contact is made,” we can establish internal criteria for our growth along the Pagan path. We can also recognize, as too often happens, when we are stagnant, or, heavens forbid, way far behind where we think we are! When we meet people who profess some experience along the path, and who wish to present themselves as learned, or as teachers, we can have some criteria to assess whether they are what they say they are.
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This article is dedicated to Father Jordan Stratford+ of the Apostolic Johannite Church and fellow witch, who helped me to find Holy Sophia.
My long, agonizing journey towards becoming a Christian Witch began on the day that I left the Christian Church forever, which was thirteen years ago. After having been an Ultra- Traditional Catholic followed by my conversion to the Russian Orthodox Church, one day, I simply walked out of the 2,000 year old, heavy oaken Christian door and never looked back. Or, so I thought at the time. Leaving Christianity had nothing to do with Jesus Christ or his Mother Mary, the latter, to whom I had been deeply devoted all my life. I finally had enough of the rules and regulations regarding every aspect of my mind, body and soul. I was done with the politics and the scandals which touched me, personally. I was finished with the hypocrisy of a priesthood that didn’t always follow it’s own rules, alongside a male hierarchy which felt it had a God-ordained right to instruct me as how to conduct the most private parts of my life under pain of ever-lasting fire, anguish and desolation. I was angry, very, very angry. The first thing I was determined to do upon my new-found freedom, was to read every book that had been banned to me as both a Catholic and as an Orthodox Christian. Anything that had been deemed heretical, I read, most voraciously.
