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Author Topic: Searching.  (Read 1851 times)

EllieDriver

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Searching.
« on: December 01, 2016, 09:40:51 am »
I have been searching for a pagan religion that truly calls to me.  Something I feel in my heart.  I'm looking for an ancestral religion as I'm of Irish and west African ancestry and feel very connected to both.  

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HedgeAndCave

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Re: Searching.
« Reply #1 on: December 02, 2016, 05:07:04 pm »
Quote from: EllieDriver;199600
I have been searching for a pagan religion that truly calls to me.  Something I feel in my heart.  I'm looking for an ancestral religion as I'm of Irish and west African ancestry and feel very connected to both.  

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You could always just make your own sytem, venerate your ancestors, pick and choose Gods if you wish them from Irish and West African Pantheons...  make a gentle/tentative starting point and proceed from there, it will no doubt grow organically with your own practice and research.  
Do you know where in West Africa parts your family come from?  There are some fascinating beliefs etc from there, I studied a bit about West African fetishism and iron working beliefs at university *cough* years ago.

Jenett

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Re: Searching.
« Reply #2 on: December 02, 2016, 05:42:02 pm »
Quote from: EllieDriver;199600
I have been searching for a pagan religion that truly calls to me.  Something I feel in my heart.  I'm looking for an ancestral religion as I'm of Irish and west African ancestry and feel very connected to both.

 
I think there's three different ways you could go with this - because there probably isn't a specific religion or path out there that combines things in exactly that combination (though you might be able to find specific people who share both heritages...)

In one option you could pick one side of your family or the other for the structure and practices of the religion. In both cases, it would probably be possible to incorporate honouring ancestors from the other side, but you'd pick one or the other for a starting point of how to do that.

(If you're not sure where to start with that, I'd probably suggest seeing if there are groups of either that you like the sound of, especially if they're geographically close enough you could talk to people in person occasionally, and start your investigating there.)

There may be practices in those various paths that would make honouring both sets of heritage equally complicated, but usually that's as a result of specific ritual commitments that aren't required to be part of the community in general (like making a more exclusive commitment to a particular deity or being at a more clergy or priesthood type level.)

Another option would be to look into a path like ADF (Ár nDraíocht Féin: A Druid Fellowship), which is a druidic organization that both has an ancestral component, and has fairly open guidelines about what deities, ancestors, and other beings are invited to ritual. (Other druid orgs may also be of possible interest).

And finally, as HedgeAndCave suggests, there's an option to design your own - look at existing cultural paths, see if there are shared practices between the two cultures, look at other general approaches, and build from there. This can be time and energy consuming to sort out (and some people find it very frustrating not to have people who can help them with the specifics), but a lot of Pagans build their own paths.
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