My Disorganized Religion

The joy of this blog thing is the way that, in the process of trying to come up with things to entertain my readers, I am inspired and required to organize my thoughts.
They need organizing.
Between dating a deeply pious and well educated Christian, reading multiple philosophers at once, and engaging in excitable midnight conversations about quantum mechanics, my brain feels like it is filling up and popping out my ears these days. Kant and Wilber and quantum theory are sort of tangling up in my head in pleasing ways and forming all sorts of interesting pictures of the nature of reality, and I am feeling pretty pleased with myself for having intuited much of it beforehand, under the guise of the hocus pocus I have been studying determinedly for more than half my life. The framework of belief stands against all philosophical assaults so far, we are now furnishing the interior with details.
But what does the framework actually consist of? I recently requested a post on spirituality of a fellow blogger, and it got me to thinking that it was about time I conducted a review of my own beliefs. Not only for the benefit of those who are curious about me, but for my own as well. My personal belief system has been pieced together slowly over my lifetime. Now is as good a time as any to organize those pieces.
I am a witch, or at least that’s what I tell people. The actual truth is a lot more complicated than that. I have incorporated all compatible aspects of the different religious and philosophical thought systems I was exposed to into my own traditions, while discarding that which did not work or make sense. Not in an offhand way, mind you. I have since childhood had some quite deep instinctive beliefs, which I was unable to cast aside in order to believe what I was taught.
Hence I am not a Christian though I had the best Biblical education available to children short of actual bible school. I was very involved in the church throughout childhood.
Besides weekly services and Sunday school, we observed lent, went to church nearly every day of holy week, stations of the cross, midnight mass, xmas morning service, etc. I was a server for 3 years, (those kids in the white robes carrying candles and helping the priests and stuff in High Anglican and Catholic services) which is possibly where I got my love of high ceremonial drama, though I rarely do that sort of thing now. I received a grown up bible (with a cover handmade by my mom in plastic canvas!) as my 10th bday present. I read quite a lot of it, though I already knew all the stories from my children’s bible.
Also they sent me to "daily vacation bible school" every summer. This was held at a Baptist church, though we were Anglican. Oh and a youth group I belonged to at the same Baptist church met 2 nights a week as well. Not to mention conferences and seminars on bible topics and Christian living. These things have continued to influence me even during the times when I have been really angry with Christianity.
Even at a young age I had an abiding interest in spiritual and religious matters. I hassled my family, priests and Sunday school teachers endlessly with questions and argued relentlessly when things did not make sense.
There were a great many things that did not make sense to me.
I was also always interested in the occult, though the subjects of tarot, psychism, meditation, etc. were verboten in my house.
I discovered Wicca when I was 12 and was initiated at 14. Over the next two years I learned the basic principles of magick. I was able to pass on this budding knowledge, and the love of it, to another in exchange for an introduction to the tarot.
At 16 I was part of a magical circle composed of an eclectic mix of ceremonial magicians, shamans, and one flaky lightworker (heehee Bran), ranging in age between 16 and 36. It never should have worked but it did, for quite awhile.
At 17 I began studying shamanism and local native traditions while volunteering at the native friendship center.
When I was 19 I worked at a new age bookstore and learned a lot more about Buddhist and Taoist teachings.
At 20 I took my first job as a professional tarot/psychic reader, on a 900 line. It was here that I rediscovered the original basis for all my interest in spirituality, namely human psychology. I began reading a lot more myth at this time. I was also, for the first time since the circle I once belonged to, surrounded by people of like mind, and exposed to a great diversity of views even within a fairly specific range of belief.
Each book I read, each method or idea I was exposed to, taught me something, even if it was only that there are a lot of flaky people out there writing books. I have mentioned in an earlier post about learning critical discernment. It is essential when studying something as subjective and personal and yet universal and scientific as magick.
"Scientific?" I hear some of you scoffing. "Coincidental success exaggerated by overactive imaginations scientific?! Peasants running around in the woods without any clothes on scientific???!!! Overblown superstitious folk customs and childish wishful thinking SCIENTIFIC!!!!!?????"
Yep, scientific I say.
There is a way it works and a way it doesn’t. But it does work, and just like physics or biology, one does not need to fully understand the principles at work to perform a successful experiment. Understanding the principles comes with time and careful analysis of results. Not that my methods have been particularly methodical, I’m not really like that, but I have been doing this stuff long enough to have developed a very comprehensive practical understanding of how it works.
That’s why I’m always lecturing you guys.
Magick is the art of causing change in accordance with the Will. Brushing your teeth or chopping carrots could be considered magick acts, and for practical purposes I do not differentiate between natural "physical" magick, and the more intangible energies that can be raised to work ones will. This is why we call it metaphysics. All physical laws have spiritual counterparts. As above, so below.
The transformative power of thought is well known to most. The best magick transforms thought and perception before going out into the physical world. Certain aspects of quantum physics make a great argument for many of the "superstitious folk beliefs" held long before they could be proven through scientific observation. My quest has been to find the pure truth behind the subjective experience.
This is the basis of my interest in mythic archetypes also. There is a common thread in all mythological systems, including the Christian system, (sorry guys its true) which suggests it is all from one source.
Well of course it is.
I recognize the underlying patterns that are common to all culture specific modes of thought. I find it very interesting that Christians on the whole have dismissed the validity of archetypal concepts when their holy book contains just as much as anyone’s. In honor of this I have begun compiling ideas for a biblical tarot. I cannot take full credit for that idea, alas. It was suggested to me by a certain seminary candidate who will remain nameless.
Myths tell of the doings of god and heroes, but in actuality they are allegorical expressions of sometimes tangible but frequently intangible human experiences. They point to that which we aspire toward and that which we shrink from. When you remove the specific masks from the characters in these stories, you begin to see the core essences they represent. When you cease to seek for a literal interpretation, you begin to see the underlying pattern. Thus myths, while being for all intents and purposes fictitious, can give us an accurate idea of the core truths that resonate with the psyche. Archetypes don’t just represent the immortal in humanity; they ARE the immortal aspects of humanity on inner levels.
This is why the tarot is an effective tool for exploring the less communicable aspects of the psyche, especially the deeper subconscious. If you try to interpret a tarot spread literally you will find yourself talking a lot of irrelevant nonsense. If you look beyond the specifics to the ideas represented by and encompassed within the images, and allow the mind to intuitively free associate those with the subject of the reading, there is a lot of useful insight to be gained. The same can be said of any archetypal expression of a universal truth. That’s all I see when I look at any religious system anymore; a series of metaphors that reinforce the preferred status quo of a particular culture.
Old ideas don’t die, they just take new forms. Old secrets survive in new languages. When I first began my own spiritual search, I was seeking an alternative to the mindsets and role limitations of the culture I was raised in, in the hopes of getting far enough away that I need never return. I was hoping to prove Christianity "wrong" and wash my hands of it. I now recognize that it has its own validity as a system of thought, as a stage of human spiritual evolution, regardless of how it is misinterpreted and misused by certain of its followers. I have often wished that such a detailed support and teaching system existed for those of us of the magick persuasion, though we are supposed to be alternative to organised religion.
The real question has become, for me, not who is right but what is right. This must be answered on an individual basis.
I believe in a god beyond myself, who incorporates me, who I am a manifestation of. I believe that I have a direct connection to this divine entity, which I can separate my consciousness from, but not my essence. As I grow in awareness of this intrinsic relationship, it becomes less necessary to try and visualize it in a personified form. I begin to see it in all form and in all formlessness. I relax and allow communion with this formless One to guide me, and as I follow the guidance I am drawn closer still and more is offered. Or rather, I become more capable of recognizing what is offered. I am blessed with gifts of uncanny timing and direction. I am shown signs written in the sky. I am granted true visions. I am directed to random people bearing gifts and messages. I believe that what I refer to as magick is a way of growing closer to the inner reality of the divine, and of manifesting the guidance I receive.
At those times when I have begun to lose awareness of this, my sense of alienation has been increased by my crying out in a state of unbalanced impatience and missing the answer in the echoes of that cry.
I believe in searching all sources for new ways of understanding, in stretching ourselves to encompass more of the reality we encounter instead of choosing to believe only that which reinforces preexisting ideologies. I also believe in filtering the nonsense out, when it proves to be such. I believe in a sane and compassionate embracing of all worldviews, with an objective eye ever open to the possibility that certain aspects of them were created from fear and not from love, or from expediency instead of responsible moral philosophy.
I believe that we all, gods and humans and everything, are experiencing continual learning and development and that this often necessitates some very unpleasant individual experiences. I tell that to people who ask why God allows disasters and wars and stuff. Nature requires destruction in order to create. It smashes itself and rebuilds from the particles.
The only thing that does not change is the infinitesimal speck at the center of it all that I mention in my Soapbox post, which I call God, capital ‘G’. All reality is emanations of that center, distance or extension is necessary for the speck to perceive It’s own being.
Everything else is just details, as far as I am concerned, which is why I can accept anything, though I may not condone it, because I do see all things as a part of that whole, which is self contained and already complete in its own development, saving only self recognition and understanding of its own nature, which is only possible when the limitations of time and space allow an extension of perception and consciousness where before there was pure Beingness. We are all God’s thoughts, feelings and sensations. We are God's mirror. We can see it in each other if we take the time to look, and that is, as a priestess, what I do. I try to dwell in constant awareness of this and promote and ecourage it everywhere i go. To acknowledge the divine within humanity but also to continue rising beyond human limits. As people lose their fear of their own power and beauty, humanity evolves spiritually.
Theres more, but lets stop there for now. Any thoughts?