The Cauldron: A Pagan Forum

Since Demophon reactivated this thread, and the subject is of permanent interest, for comparative purposes, I decide to answer as well.

How were you raised? Did it have any impact on your decision?

I was raised as most Swedes. My parents simultaneously identify as Agnostics and Lutherans (the number of Lutherans has sunk to about 65% now, from about 95% in the 1960's). It is a very common combination here, and it didn't impact my decision at all.

I think that many Agnostics remain Lutherans, since they find civil marriage rites and civil funeral rites boring and lacking in solemnity (i.e. more boring than the Lutheran counterparts), and since they perceive Protestant Non-conformist denominations as threatening and fanatic. Some artists, poets and intellectuals convert to the Roman Catholic Church, since that church is perceived as more cultivated, intellectually refined and highbrow, than the boorish and mainline Church of Sweden. Swedish Humanist Association (which is Atheist) was founden in 1979, is swiftly growing and visible in media, but still of relatively small significance.

Paganism is not even on the map for most.

What initially brought you to Paganism? What was your first experience like, and how much searching did you have to do to find it?

Please remember: I am a solitary. I have no experience of officially Pagan group ritual.

A few weeks ago I read a blog post written by Jason Mankey about how some non-Pagan popular customs could be perceived as having a Pagan mood or atmosphere. If I remember correctly, he used the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance or morris dancing as an example. The same apply on some folk customs over here: May Eve bonfires does probably not have Pagan roots, but are folk customs performed by self-identified Christians or Agnostics. The mood or atmosphere I experienced by May Eve bonfires as an Agnostic or a Lutheran in the 1970's onwards (and still experience annually, now when my religious adherence is fluid) is the same (or similar) 'Pagan' mood I now experience when performing solitary Druid rituals. I can't, therefore, say that there was any clear break at any particular time.

As a teenager, I became interested in René Guenon and Aldous Huxley, and their idea of a perennial philosophy underlying all religions. For practical reasons, I begun practicing the perennial philosophy within a Lutheran framework.

The Lutherans are good in some regards. They collect financial means to international aid (literacy classes, well-boring, irrigation), assist refugees, arrange food banks for the homeless, and arrange entertainment for lonely elderly people – almost always with the ubiquitous coffee. In other regards, the Lutheran milieu is problematic: Although meditation groups, liturgically rich eucharists and pilgrimages exist at some places (few and far between), they are treated stepmotherly with suspicion by Left wing Lutherans, and are accused of not being socially and environmentally aware enough, and lacking in Feminist cred. At the same time, they are treated badly by Right wing Lutherans, for being 'New Age', 'Catholic' or 'Pagan'. Two things made me leave Lutheranism: Personal doubts over the resurrection of Christ, and the continuous calling in question (on two fronts) of the very things I found valuable among the Lutherans.

Since a long time back, I am a member of a handful of esoteric orders, about which there is no need to dwell.

For Guenon, it is only possible to practice the perennial philosophy in a religion with continuous historical existence, since the spiritual experience needed to guide adherents must be accumulated and handed over through time. Religions reactivated after a long time of dormancy didn't qualify as vehicles of the Tradition. I now began to question Guenon in this regard. Although it is a disadvantage of Paganism to not have a lineage of continuously accumulated wisdom, the study of ancient Pagan literature and the living Nature will probably cause a new lineage within Paganism within a few generations, and of the present Pagan movements, Meso-Druidry is the oldest one, with roots in the 18th century.

Although Matthew Fox began as a Roman Catholic, and is now an Episcopalian, he had readers within Lutheranism as well. Already in my Lutheran days, I was attracted to a spirituality connected to our natural environment. I practiced 'Christian Druidry' long before I began to practice 'Non-defined Druidry'. When John Michael Greer published The Druidry Handbook in 2006, I had already celebrated the eight festivals since the 1990's. I later widened my studies to Emma Restall-Orr and Ross Nichols.

For philosophy, I had to look to the Graeco-Roman world. The step from being a Christian Platonist to being a Pagan Platonist wasn't very far. At least not for me.

How did you choose or how did you discover your current practice within Paganism (wicca, druid, eclectic, etc)?

Both Greek myths and Norse myths are part of the late primary school curriculum here. Everyone, regardless of religious adherence, are aware of their existence, although no one is expected to revive old religions. It is a part of cultural literacy. Greek philosophy (and mediaeval, enlightenment and modern philosophy, of course) is part of the school curriculum at the ages of 16-19.

I know that I stumbled on a concise overview of minority religions (including Druidry and Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn) back in the mid-1980's, and British Revival Druids are often depicted (at Stonehenge) in the newspapers at Summer Solstice. I have to admit, that Druidry became more available when Greer and Restall-Orr began to write about it.

How were you raised? Did it have any impact on your decision?

What initially brought you to Paganism? What was your first experience like, and how much searching did you have to do to find it?

How did you choose or how did you discover your current practice within Paganism (wicca, druid, eclectic, etc)?

My apologies if this question has been asked before, but I'd love to know all of the different spiritual paths you all took to bring you here.

 
I was raised Roman Catholic, but started "asking too many questions" around age 10, and while my parish priest was a very forthright and honest man, and he did his best to answer me, he explained about dogma and how things were arranged to incorporate the "heathens" into the religion, and how they selected what would work best for the bible - I found it all bullsh*t and I turned my back on man-made/organised religion around age 13... I was also a very "weird" and solitary child (despite having an older sibling - but he is very much like me, so we were very independent of each other, but we are also very close in our own way - he has my back, and vice versa, no matter what) and I found it hard to get along in "normal" society, because I liked to spend most of my time outdoors, with animals, surrounded by nature. But I was not aware of my path at that time. I became an anti-theist. I despised organised religion and wanted nothing to do with it. It made me angry. But I kept this all to myself, until about 6 or 7 years ago when I met my husband - he was raised Episcopalian, but after meeting me and my (I have to admit, very intelligent) group of friends, he has since become an atheist, as he also had too many questions when he was young, and nobody would answer them until he met me! - and we could finally talk freely and openly about what we felt/thought/understood. While I was no atheist (I still believed in some sort of power/energy/force in the universe, and in nature especially) my husband has never judged me for not agreeing with his (new) viewpoints and we still have long discussions about these philosophical ideas.
And then about 2 weeks ago, maybe a little longer, I had a strange and very vivid dream. I woke around 0200, and felt a tremendous rush of adrenaline, and an absolute DESPERATE need to find out everything I could about the Goddess... the Morrigan, specifically. (If you want to know about the dream, I'm happy to elaborate - I do like to have other opinions on what it might have meant) and I spent hours and hours on the internet, reading about everything I could find on Paganism, Wicca, mythology and all that. I bought a whole load of books about everything from Ogham to Deer-Trods to Witchcraft and Celtic Myths and Norse Runes. I'm still reading.
I joined this forum. I'm still learning.
I haven't quite found my Path yet, but I'm getting there.