Issue No.

2 March 2012

Our ancestors of the olde world might not recognize their pagan religion today for what it was when they were walking the earth. Our ancestorial witches may wonder what has become of their ancient knowledge. They would find the planet and its inhabitants much changed. There are many today following pagan and the like, traditions though that are striving hard to keep it alive and intact. This article is an honest interview with a friend and sister of the craft that I met through a wonderful online group called Pagan Pixels. This is my online interview with Jay-Jay. This will appear in several issues as

it is an in-depth interview and cannot all be put into one issue. I started off my e-mail interview with JayJay by asking her if she defines her spiritual practices and or belief system by conventional words -such as Wicca, solitary practicitioner of witchcraft, eclectic, pagan, green witchcraft, shamanism, etc There are so many areas of religion and spiritualism. I read books that mention the mundane world and the magickal world. But to me personally it is all one. Jay-Jay also stated: Its all in one area its not separate. Everything combined makes up who and what I am. It is however not a practice but a lifestyle. I don't have a set path Im an eclectic pagan I tend to take strands of believes from a lot of paths, most notably Buddhism spirituality, green witchcraft.

Jay-Jay has been practicing paganism on & off for 20 years. She goes on to tell us about how she came into the craft. When I was 2 my parents split up and I lived with my mother and my step father and they were and still are to this day devout christians. I was brought up to only believe in the way of the church. Over the years I did not know my father or my fathers family. However all that changed when I was 13 and my paternal grandfather died. My mother took myself and my sister and two brothers to the funeral and afterwards I stayed with a uncle and aunt who I had not previously known. That evening my uncle stayed up through the night with me talking about my life and I confided in him the abuses I had suffered growing up.

About 3am that morning he went and got a book from his bookshelf about yoga and meditation and told me he would lend it to me because he felt it would be something I could do to try and help with the daily stress's in my life. I took the book home and read it cover to cover and then started it again. A few days later my mother caught me reading the book and burned it. However the knowledge I had gleaned from the book had sunk in. I began to feel that there was more to spirituality than what I had been raised to believe and started to read anything and everything I could lay my hands on about alternate religions. When I was 17 I left home and went up north to train in evangelism and street preaching. My family couldnt have been prouder and upon completion of my training I got an internship with the evangelical group who had trained me. Over the coming months I became very disillusioned with christianity. When I was out on the streets I would see the homeless, the drug addicted, the messed up and this group of evangelicals were telling them about god but werent offering to help them find a way out of their situations. I didnt like this and started volunteering at a shelter that provided meals for the homeless and poor. I got a great deal of encouragement from seeing their faces when they had a stomach full of soup, bread and other goodies we had prepared for them. Once they had eaten I would often sit down with them and talk about their lives and it broke my heart. I knew then that if I was to help them it was not going to be through the church. However the evangelicals saw my disillusionment with them and called my parents to pick me up and take me home. I dont think it was because I was confused about my beliefs I think I may have been a threat to them that they had to get me out of the way. My Parents came and picked me up and took me home the one place I had been running from after suffering physical, emotional and sexual abuse. I lasted all of 3 days at home before I ran off without telling them where I had gone. The next few months I moved around a lot but began to accumulate a lot of pagan lit and spend a lot of time doing my tarot cards to try and understand the future. This was met with some very scathing comments from my flat

mates and so I started to read in my room privately. By the time I was 19 I was pregnant with my first child and I knew I didnt want to bring her into the world I had grown up with and wanted her to stand for something important and swore to myself that I would bring her up under the guidance of the goddess.

For the first 8 or 9 years of her life I took my wiccan lifestyle pretty seriously but something felt like it was missing and I sold all my books, cards, and alter items and said to myself its only a teenage rebellion what your doing and its time to grow up and because my husband had never liked it he actively encouraged me in giving it up. However you can remove the pagan elements from ones life in a physical sense but down deep they never really go away. It wasnt long before I realized Id made a mistake and set about rectifying it. I knew this time though that wicca was not the lifestyle for me.

I studied druidry and shamanism for awhile but again it didnt feel right for me. As time progressed my passions were found to lay in helping others, caring for the enviroment, animal rights etc I realized then that I did not need to follow one strand but I could mix them up to get the end result i so craved. I then watched a documentary about the tibetan buddhists and something resonated in me so deeply I had to explore this further and for the first time I knew I had found my grounding. I set about learning everything I could about the faith. I still knew something was amiss though and as I pottered in my garden one day i 6

began to realize how much fun I was having being all green thumbed. I realized I could mix up the buddahism and green witchcraft to become an eclectic pagan.

A few years done the line I began to hear things being told to me like little whisperings in my mind and I said to myself dont be so silly you just have an over imaginative imagination. However the whisperings in my mind were telling me things I couldnt possibly know and they were coming true soon after I was told them. I tried to suppress this side of me for a long time but eventually the whispers got louder and louder and they would not be denied. I spoke to someone about this and they told me I had a gift. And I should mention this gift was not appreciated or wanted but it wasnt prepared to let me off that lightly. After a time I started to think back over my childhood and I began to recollect many a time I instinctively knew things before they happened but had never made the connection till that moment. Then late last year I lost my cousin in a tragic accident and you could have blown me down with a feather because he rocked up to his own funeral. I had never seen anyone in spirit before that moment but he was there and if I hadnt known better I would have thought he was a real solid person. Since then my abilities have continued to grow and I have continued to embrace them sometimes not as willingly as they would like. But this has what has led me to the path i am now on. Jay-Jay is also a wonderful pixel artist! Please stop by to visit her online today Angel Valley & Prim Pixels Suggested Sites by Jay-Jay Recycle Bin Graphics Lejardin Despoc More of my interview with Jay-Jay will continue next month. 7

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OSTARA | SPRING EQUINOX (northern hemisphere) Rebirth Rejuvenation Clearing out New Beginnings Colors: Green, Yellow, Pink & Silver Herbs: Tansy, Lavender, Jonquil, Daffodil, Iris, Peony to name a few spring florals. Incense: Jasmine, Rose, Strawberry (floral scents) Gemstones: Jasper Deities to Honor: Persephone, Isis & Osiris, Cernunnos, Eastre, Freyja. Deities of love, spring and rebirth. In the Southern Hemisphere - MABON | AUTUMNAL EQUINOX

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