Mabon 1999 Newsletter Interview With a Pagan

PA:What name can we call you during this interview?
A:DawnHawk. I chose this name after watching hawks riding the dawn thermals over the headlands near my home. The image of the bird moving in harmony with a natural force is particularly relevant to my path.

PA:What tradition/path do you follow?
A:I’d term myself a modernist eclectic Witch, but with a strong Taoist influence.

PA:Tell us a little about this tradition?
A:The usual cyclical nature of life stuff, along with the need to recognise our existence as part of the unity of all nature. I’m much less interested in trying to link with antiquity than is common with some Witches I know. If there is some ancient knowledge I can make use of, fine. But I’d just as readily use something that was discovered yesterday. My personal belief is that, as all humans filter and adapt information, no path is fundamentally older than the person travelling it. Having said that, if someone feels they have made contact with some ancient power, and if it works for them, fine.

PA:How long have you been travelling on this path?
A:That’s a difficult question to answer. My present path is the result of an evolutionary process, and of course that process is bound to continue. During the last two years though I have re-focused on pagan fundamentals, mostly as a result of working with my teenage children as they start to explore their own spiritual paths.

PA:Tell us a little about your path?
A:The Taoist influence has left me with a bit of a different slant than the mainstream (if such a thing exists). My view of the Goddess and God is much less as Deities than is the case in, say, the Wiccan tradition. I view them more as fundamental forces that I choose to personify for visualisation purposes. My ritual is less based on prayer than on seeking to attune my life to the direction of these forces. Sort of like a sailing ship choosing to run with the prevailing wind rather than tack against it. After all the way of the Goddess is the direction we are designed to take and where we achieve maximum satisfaction and success. We may struggle in an alternate direction and even obtain an ego goal, but what value is there in that?

PA:How did you discover paganism?
A:I think really it discovered me. As a child I could never really contact with the predominant Christian beliefs of my family. I was a member of a Gardnerian coven in the mid ‘70s and studied Taoist philosophy for a number of years. It really started to click for me after I studied biology, organic chemistry and physics as part of a university course. I could see them how pagan practice was the only "religious" belief that was confirmed by rather than being challenged by scientific discovery.

PA:What is your first or most vivid memory of being involved in paganism?
A:As a small child I had a number of identical altered state experiences. They are among my few recollections from this time. Many years later while studying Tao, I learned to recapture this exact state during meditation. I continue to use this technique during ritual.

PA:What particular holidays/festivals do you observe?
A:The eight sabbats. Except I celebrate the beginning of the year at Imbolc. Also, although I love the full moon, it is the new moon that I usually use for ritual purposes.

PA:How do you observe these?
A:I carry out ritual strictly as a solitaire, however I frequently build a social occasion around a sabbat.

PA:What advice would you give to a newcomer travelling on a similar path?
A:That your path is already wired into your brain for you. It is a gift from the Goddess. Sure you may have lost touch with it as you were raised and "educated", but it’s still there. As such, once you’re on the groove it should flow naturally out of you. It’s a bit like getting physically fit. It may be a struggle to start with, but once you’re over the first hurdle you naturally want more. But there’s not many one legged tap dancers out there, so don’t try to turn yourself into something you were never meant to be.