Well, at least that is what some folks would say. I don’t think I’m going to Hell, but then again I don’t have all the answers either. The reasons I chose my spiritual path (wicca) are many but for the purpose of this post I am focusing on just a few aspects of how my choice came about. I chose to be a wiccan\pagan because it was the path that resonated with my soul from a very young age (I read my first book by Gardner, Witchcraft Today at age 13).
My father was Seventh Day Adventist (a bit of a zealot to say the least) and my mom a protestant (but rarely went to church). My father would tell me often that I was going to hell for wearing makeup, smoking, and various other minor teenage acts of rebellion. At about age 12, I began searching for a spiritual path that made sense to me because the Christian paths I had seen so far were too cruel and peculiar for me. For one thing, if my father was going to heaven, I definitely did NOT want to be there. He was a child molester. In my young brain it made no sense to me that a man who would sexual assault young girls (from the age of 2 through about 8 or so) could make it into any kind of heaven (just because he went to church and donated all his money) – and if so, then heaven was definitely not a place I was going to try to get into.
I attended a state run Catholic boarding school from 8th grade through 12th, so I had first hand (often seen with my own eyes) exposure to how many nuns one priest can keep happy – in the woods, in their rooms, and well you get the picture. So if the priests and nuns were going to heaven, (not that sex is a bad thing) – it just didn’t make sense to me that if the Church could lie to the world about sex being evil, do it in secret, and still get into heaven – then why would I be going to hell just because I chose a different path? The fact that the church did not allow women to have any positions of authority also played a role in my scratching off any Christian religion as a possible choice.
As I explored various religious paths, wicca was the one I found to be the most soothing to my soul. The individual was responsible for their own actions and would reap the karma from those actions. Women were priestesses and leaders within the Circles, representing the Goddess (an entity of compassion, forgiveness, love, sensuality, death, rebirth – and NOT some male authority who punished on a whim). Wicca respected the laws of nature and honored all living things, believed in being a part of the web of life. These were all concepts I felt to the core of my being and felt were true, and didn’t need a religion to teach them to me, but just felt “right,” so following a path that also honored those ideas was very appealing to me. The wiccan\pagan path is also one that is open to many ideas and encourages the individual to find their connection directly to the Universe\Goddess\God (or what ever name you chose) so there was no one human person trying to cram down any one’s throat their interpretation of the written words that were also written by humans (thousands of years ago in another language that could be interpreted in many ways).
As I grew older and wiser and more exposed to a variety of things in life, I also felt that the teachings of the Native American and Buddhists were wonderful and I could have been very happy following similar paths.
Perhaps it was past life experience on a wiccan\pagan path that also contributed to my choice, or some other reasons, who knows. Now at age 51, I follow a very eclectic spiritual path, which is still mostly wiccan\pagan in nature, and I am very comfortable with who I am, how I live my life, and very certain down to the essence of my soul that I will NOT be going to Hell (but should I be wrong, if I do, as I used to tell my father, “It’s ok cause all my friends will be there too!).
Bright blessings, Lady Rose
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