Journey to Wicca...

I had a discussion today with someone regarding transitioning from Christianity to Wicca and how hard that can be.  While many people know instinctively that Christianity isn't a good fit for them, they have many years of background with it and are still immersed in a predominantly Christian environment. There can be a lot of emotional conflict and anxiety during the switch over.  It is a shedding process of the old beliefs that can take a long period of time to leave behind for some while for others it may be as simple as flipping a switch.  For those who suffer anxiety, they may be fearful of hell and damnation, still caught up in the devil and demons, fearing the anti-christ and looking to angels as guardians. So, the transition to Wicca may be a very bumpy one for some. Add to that the pressures of family and friends who are still Christian, still believe you are Christian, and the natural instinct to hide your interests and decisions until you have it all sorted out and feel strong enough to tell others, and you have beginning Wiccans in a literal hot bed of coals.

In my own journey to Wicca, I was raised in a Christian environment. However, I was blessed that my parents didn't have an affinity for *organized religion*.  They were firm believers that church attendance was not a requirement of Christianity and they firmly held that one could pray directly to God without clergy to intervene. Also, my parents believed in personal choice -- they believed that we children had the right to choose for ourselves what we wanted to do.  If we wanted to go to Church, they would see that we got there as long as they were certain we were attending for the *right* reasons. For instance, as young tweens, we attended a week long youth revival at the urging of peers and the *reward* was to go out for ice cream at the end of the week. Our parents let us go all week long but on ice cream reward night, they were there as usual to pick us up and when we explained it was ice cream night, my parents firmly held we could not go because we were not to be bribed into church attendance and being at church should be reward enough. We didn't go any more after that for a very long time.

Oddly enough, at the early age of 6 years old, I announced that I was a Witch after getting a Witch Halloween costume that year. I wanted to wear the dress and hat constantly and had magickal friends with powers. Of course it was deemed a child's fantasy and I was eventually told that it was okay to be a Witch for Halloween but that it was only pretend and that I couldn't be a Witch all the time because God didn't like them. I thought that was strange because my concept of God at that young age was that God loved everyone and every thing so that didn't ring true with me. But to stay out of trouble, I was a Witch every Halloween for the rest of my childhood and openly professed being a Witch during that time since it was acceptable and the rest of the time, I quietly considered myself a Witch year round.

So what did a child Witch think being a Witch was about? For me, I was close to nature, animals and trees. As an only girl I spent a lot of time to myself and so I talked to my *invisible friends* and rocks and trees and animals and fairies and all sorts of *mythical* beings.  Many said I had quite an imagination. I just know they felt very real to me. And I always had a very special medallion to wear around my neck or a special rock or coin to carry in my pocket that was capable of all manner of magickal abilities.  Perhaps it was just the wild imaginings of a child, but the idea that I was a Witch never left me.

By the time I was a teenager, it was the 70s and talk of Witchcraft was becoming more common. There weren't a lot of books but there were some.  And lucky me, my mother would buy all sorts of paranormal books for me at any used book sale she ran across. I had a lot of intriguing books to read as a teenager. But sadly, nothing that really gave me a good sense of direction on being a Witch.  I did manage to find a book of spells in a local variety store. That little red book was quite a mother lode to me and I read it constantly. The sad thing was, the spells contained therein were mostly of a dark nature and some to summon demons or entities. Not really the sort of thing a curious youngster should have had access to. In a fit of anger I did do a knot spell that was supposed to cause a person to become sicker and sicker until eventually they would wither away and could die unless they found the string and untied the knots. I awakened in the middle of the night in a cold sweat guilt ridden for such a hateful deed. I got the string and got the person and tried to get him to untie the knots but I had used sewing thread and the knots were so tiny we couldn't untie them. So in desperation we burned the string. That was my one and only *evil* spell that I worked in all my nearly 55 years. I was somewhere around 13 or 14 at the time.  The other scary thing that I tried was my 3 brothers and I tried doing a ceremony to summon *something*.  My brothers spooked and so we stopped but for a time we did wonder if we had brought something through as we lay awake at night and heard noises all around us.  We lived in the country with squirrels, birds, mice, bats flying around a night light, which our vivid imaginations whirled into lurking beasties in the night.  Needless to say, the book was put aside and the desire to try further experiments died. I felt I needed a *real* Witch to teach me and I had no clue how I would ever find one. Then I heard of Sybil Leek the White Witch so I knew *real* Witches were out there somewhere -- and I was determined that some day, I would find one.

In my twenties I put my Witchiness aside since I married into a family that was very Christian. I satisfied my yearnings with self study of herbalism and alternative medicine and that was the way it went for a great long time. In my 30s I had married for a second time.  Although religious affiliation was not a problem this time, I was a mother for the first time and devoted to my daughter.  I kept my secret of being a Witch from my husband and for the sake of my daughter, I told no one.  I didn't want her to be shunned at school. So all the way through my 30s, the Witch in me was held captive in the Broom Closet.

Not until I divorced for a second time in my 40s was it finally my time to stand firm and be fully and completely who I was.  Unlike in the 70s when books were sparse and poor quality, books in the 1990s were now plentiful and quality. My very first book was an impulse buy which I kept hidden in a dresser drawer, reading it only at night when I was all alone in my room.

Eventually I met my current husband who is very Catholic. As our relationship got deeper I began to panic about being forced to keep the Witch part of myself secret. I decided I couldn't do it and that I was going to have to risk losing him and tell him.  I was so full of jitters and fear when I sat down with him and told him I had something I needed to tell him about me.  Then I got the book from the drawer and put it in his hands and told him, "I am Wiccan, I am a Witch."  He looked at the book for a moment and then looked up at me and said something like, "I knew you were magickal." And he smiled and gave me a big hug and kiss. I was so happy to be accepted for being a Witch. The first time in my whole life to be accepted for who I was in total.

From that moment on I began buying up every book I could get my hands on. Today I own close to 600 books on many aspects of Wicca, energy healing, ritual, spell work, herbalism, and more.

Even then though, armed with all this knowledge, acceptance from my mate, and the freedom to be me in my own home, I still had some anxieties about left over religious beliefs from my childhood that were still clinging to me and reinforced daily by everyone around me that stood strong in the religion I had left. It was generally assumed that everyone was the same religion and certainly it was assumed that NO ONE would ever risk hell and damnation to be a Witch and practice Witchcraft. I clearly had more growing to do to shed the hold these beliefs still had on me even though my life had long outgrown them.

I lived a number of years as a solitary and second guessing myself on all aspects of everything all the time. I read so many things like "only a Witch can make a Witch" and that you couldn't be a Wiccan unless you were part of a British Tradition -- so my new found freedom to study and learn was now working against me -- eroding my confidence in myself as a Witch.  Now, not only did I fear lack of acceptance by those of differing religious paths, I now feared lack of acceptance by what I had hoped would be my peers. I saw terms like *fluffy bunny*, Llewellynites, One Book Wiccans and McWiccans.  I feared being mocked, belittled, or downplayed, or worst of all discredited as a Witch because I didn't meet criteria insisted upon by others.

Then I found two authors that changed everything for me -- Silver RavenWolf and Scott Cunningham. I resonated strongly with Silver's easy to understand style.  It felt like she was talking directly to you in a friend to friend style and not condescending. Scott Cunningham felt the same way and his reassurances that you could be a self initiated Witch was exactly what I needed.  From there numerous other authors enriched my life, Raymond Buckland, Raven Grimassi, Sabin Thea, Ann Moura, Stewart and Janet Farrar, Pino Longchild, D.J. Conway, A.J. Drew, Dorothy Morrison, Christopher Penczak, Timothy Roderick and numerous others.  And so I blossomed as an eclectic Wiccan solitary feeling strong in my path. I was finally a confident Witch living a life I had known I was meant to have since I was 6 years old.

When I moved to New Orleans a several years back, I finally had the opportunity to participate in a Coven. It is undoubtedly one of the best experiences that I have ever had. There were some ups and downs which comes with the territory of working with others but overall, it was a very positive experience and I grew exponentially as a confident Witch.

Finally, I was ready to label myself and be able to say it without guilt or shame, I am a Witch and I am Wiccan -- I am a Wiccan Witch.  Today, I am open about being a Wiccan Witch without being *in-your-face* about it. I simply be the real me without flaunting the Witch or Wicca words and I find that most people are very accepting.  If they ask, I answer truthfully and then the situation goes where it goes.

Now you know how the Wiccan Witch of the Midwest came into existence -- a long slow spiral from birth to today.  And my journey continues...and so will yours.  Enjoy it!

Bright Blessings and Blessed Be,
Rayven Michaels