Best Experiences as a Pagan/Witch

[Melissa]

I am wondering what is the best experiences you have had since you started your pagan/witchcraft journey and how this has enriched your life.

[Altair]

I am wondering what is the best experiences you have had since you started your pagan/witchcraft journey and how this has enriched your life.

This is hard to answer, because my paganism is "low key"--woven into everyday life. There was a moment when I was birding during the spring songbird migration in Central Park, which was an amazing moment just for a birder--hell, for a non-birder!--and since birding is a primary lens for my bonding with nature, as a nature-based pagan I keep coming back to that as a profoundly pagan moment for me...

A male blackburnian warbler--it's nicknamed the "firethroat" for its incandescent orange face and throat--was perched at eye level, which in and of itself is something, because normally these tiny birds are at the tops of trees. But here's this little fireball, an arm's length away, throwing back his head and belting out his incredibly high-pitched, urgent song, over and over as if I'm not even there, not moving an inch. And neither could I; I was riveted, my mouth hanging open, watching what seemed like all the joy in the world pouring through that tiny body and exploding from that fiery throat in pure exuberance, a foot or two from my face.

The description above is hopelessly inadequate to the experience. The only way I could begin to express what that was like is in myth: Imagine the sun spent the day crossing the Earth, looking down on all its life, and was so amazed that by the time it was setting in the west it began to cry tears of joy. Those flaming tears briefly formed a pool of liquid fire upon the earth, but only one tiny bird was brave enough to drink from the pool before it evaporated forever. From that day forward the liquid fire has been lodged in its throat, and when it sings, as the fire tries to rise up and return to the heavens it came from, the joy of the sun at a world full of life is once more known to all who look and listen.

Short answer: Myth has enriched my life, giving me ways to think about my beloved world I could not otherwise have imagined.

[Cinder]

I am wondering what is the best experiences you have had since you started your pagan/witchcraft journey and how this has enriched your life.

I am much more social than I used to be. I talk to pagan friends and acquaintances on Tumblr and Discord and other places, and that's been really great for me.

I've also found myths to be a great tool for not only learning about the gods, but as another lens to look at my life through. I look at a lot of things at least slightly differently now.

I also find that my connections and associations with my gods have really enriched the way I look at the natural world. Hawks always warm my heart when I see them flying, not just because they're beautiful, but because they remind me of Heru-wer. Rivers remind me of Osiris. And so on and so forth.

But I think the moments I treasure most are the quiet moments I share with my gods, and the general feeling I've come to embrace from them- which, if I had to describe it in a sentence or less, would be "Welcome home"

[Hippie-Witch]

I am wondering what is the best experiences you have had since you started your pagan/witchcraft journey and how this has enriched your life.

My husband and I were low on cash so I did a money spell. 3 days later someone lights a piece of carpet on fire and puts it on our truck. Minor damage done to the vehicle, but we got $3500 from our insurance.

We fixed the truck for about $300 and got to keep the rest.

When I told him about the spell he laughed and said it was like that monkeys paw story

[Dynes Hysbys]

I am wondering what is the best experiences you have had since you started your pagan/witchcraft journey and how this has enriched your life.

Far too many to choose a favourite but in general it's when I get external unequivocal validation for something that would otherwise be UPG. It's happened several times now 

[MeadowRae]

I am wondering what is the best experiences you have had since you started your pagan/witchcraft journey and how this has enriched your life.

Confidence, strength, understanding, intuition, wisdom, the ability to see the right way for me and follow it unapologetically.

Specifically my practice and my patron deity gave me the strength and knowledge to leave an abusive ex and protect my child. I also credit my path with helping me find a home, a better job, a car, my partner, and my girlfriend. She always watched over my child and myself through the worst of times, and she gives me the inner strength to be my truest self in the best of time. I sometimes fall away from this path, but I hope that I always come back. I can barely recognize the person I was before this journey.

[PerditaPickle]

I am wondering what is the best experiences you have had since you started your pagan/witchcraft journey and how this has enriched your life.

I'm not sure if the OP's actually around any longer, but I kept seeing this thread & thinking I'd nothing to say in it and I've now realised I'm overlooking something really obvious (that's not to say that my experiences since starting my Pagan journey have been particularly bad, but they've just been nothing very remarkable so far).

The really obvious thing I'm overlooking is that I've made a really close friend - someone who previously merely travelled in some of the same social circles has now become one of my closest friends since we've started pursuing our Pagan paths alongside one another.  We're on different paths, but we really get one another, and we're really alike (except, she makes me look almost punctual and organised!  Bless her!)