Changing Paths challenge day 31 — where I am now
Nowadays I am fairly and squarely a Pagan and an inclusive polytheist Wiccan, but one who has been enriched by my wobble.
Changing Paths
Reflections
Changing Paths challenge day 30 — reflections.
The most amazing autobiography I have ever read was Memories, Dreams, Reflections by Carl Gustav Jung.
It discusses how he arrived at his psychoanalytical theory — but the bits I found most fascinating were about his childhood and his occult experiences.
Spiritual wobbles
Changing Paths challenge day 26 — wobbling
Spiritual wobbles can happen when your spiritual path becomes out of synch with your religious community. They can be dry spells, when it feels as if the source of your spiritual life has dried up, or the wobble can propel you out of your old path and into a new one. It depends how severe the wobble is.
Wonder
Changing Paths challenge day 24 — wondering.
There’s wondering in the sense of asking questions about the nature of things, and then there’s wonder in the sense of amazement.
Longing
Changing Paths challenge day 23 — longing.
There are various words in other languages that can be approximately translated as longing or yearning. Sehnsucht (German), a longing for a person or a place. Saudade (Portuguese), melancholic longing for a person or a place. Hiraeth (Welsh), a longing for home, possibly unattainable since we cannot revisit the past. Tizita (Amharic-Ethiopian), a longing or yearning, which has given its name to a style of music. Romanian has the word dor, which comes from the Latin word dolus which means “pain” and is related to the Romanian word durere (which means “pain”).
Unexamined baggage
This is an excerpt from my book, Changing Paths:
“Changing your religious or spiritual path can result in unexamined spiritual, emotional, and intellectual baggage from your previous tradition, which can cause all sorts of issues from depression to anger. We all need to unpack and deal with our unexamined baggage. The Tarot card of the fool traditionally depicts a small dog leaping up and biting the Fool’s butt. The dog can be seen as representing material from the unconscious trying to attract the attention of the conscious mind.”
Dreams
Changing Paths challenge day 19 — dreams.
Once I dreamed that I was walking across a rocky sandy landscape (the bedrock was reddish sandstone) and saw an old church. But the surprising thing was what was inside the church…
Library books
If I hadn’t had access to books about mythology and King Arthur and Robin Hood, I might not have become a Pagan, and my life would’ve been very different. The book that I count as the one that made me realize I’m Pagan is Puck of Pook’s Hill by Rudyard Kipling, but I’m sure all the mythology and other stories helped too.
Deep magic
Changing Paths challenge day 17 — deep magic
The deepest magic that I know is love. Not sacrificial love, not romantic love, but the everyday magic of connection, nourishing and soul-satisfying.
Stories
Changing Paths challenge day 16 — stories.
The power of stories to change and challenge a person’s worldview is immense. My worldview was definitely informed by reading A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin, Tolkien’s The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, The Writing on the Hearth by Cynthia Harnett (now sadly forgotten by most people), Mary Stewart’s Arthurian trilogy, and The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupéry. And of course the Narnia series by CS Lewis, and many other books depicting a magical mythopoeic worldview. Ursula Le Guin’s science fiction was and remains extremely important to me.
Read the rest of the post, including photos of my childhood library, at the Changing Paths blog
Dowsing for Divinity 