How I Became A Pagan
It's a hell of a long way from Presbyterianism, I'll tell ya...
I was raised a Presbyterian in my home town of Rochester, NY. Of course it was all very interesting when I was kid, but as the years passed on, attending church just became more of a chore that I guessed everyone needed to endure. I guess I'm rather fortunate for the fact that my parents were not terribly devoted church-goers. Truth be told, my mom and my dad came from two different religious backgrounds and mutually agreed that their kids would be raised Presbyterian which was actually not the original faith of either of them. Since we didn't attend every Sunday, and when we did go, every time I discovered it to be more and more boring, it became rather easy to "lose my religion", as it were.
As I grew up and started to come to terms with my sexuality, I stopped putting a lot of stock into Christian rhetoric. It seemed to me that a lot of it was so contradictory. While these people say "Jesus loves me", they appear so burdened with either guilt, low self-esteem, or this constant need to judge others as lower than themselves so that they can feel better about their lives. It never looks as if that person is indeed loved or even knows what love is. Their overworked cliche of "Love the sinner, hate the sin" seemed to be all talk and no action. The examples that I've seen of a true Christian being non-judgemental, accepting and forgiving are so few and far between that I wonder why these other so-called "Christians" even bother to refer to themselves with that moniker. I myself think I've had a closer relationship with Jesus than a lot of these people, and believe me, these deeds done in his name brings him sadness and shame.
As I saw "Christian" behavior becoming more un-Christian, I became more of an agnostic bordering on atheism. My feeling was that if there is a God who allows his followers to treat others this way, then He means nothing to my life. I kept thinking back to the Bible and that other cliche: "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve." I decided that if I ever met one of these guys who spouts that putrid little "non-wisdom" out, I had a comeback: "I hate to be the one to break this to you, BUT ADAM AND EVE WAS A MYTH!!! JUST LIKE ZEUS AND ODIN, THAT CRAP DOES NOT EXIST!!!!" You've read the first couple of pages of Genesis, haven't you? Did that make any sense?! The first man on Earth and the first woman on Earth get cast out from the paradise known as the Garden of Eden, and what do they encounter? OTHER PEOPLE!!!!! WHAT?!?!?!?!?! Any third grader would tell you that there's some faulty logic in that story!
With all of this hatred being aimed at these Bible-thumpers, I had to take a step back and ask myself what I truly believed. Even though I had tried to remain as objective as possible in viewing things that fell outside the realm of natural scientific activity, I found that within me there were a few core beliefs that I could not shake:
1)ALL THINGS ARE ENDOWED WITH ENERGY: The only way I can begin to describe this is with a scene from that classic '70's Disney film "The Cat From Outer Space" (Try to give me a little leeway here. I'm better if I describe things in laymen's terms.). Anyway, the military discovers a crash-landed spaceship, and in it, they find a crystal that mysteriously hovers in midair. Various tests are done to discover how it works. After exhausting every possibility, they bring in one last scientist (played by Dean Jones) who suggests that it might be held in place by telekinetic energy, and goes on to describe how if the human brain were hooked up just right, it would give off enough current to run an electric train set. He is, of course, quickly thrown out of the room, but I always felt that there was something very right in those statements. So, I figured, if every thing comes with an energy, then perhaps its possible for a living creature to endow part of its energy onto, say, an inanimate object in the same way a you can magnetize a needle. Perhaps you've experienced something along those lines: have you noticed how you experience a "rush" when hold in your hands something of personal value (a jewelry box that's been passed down for generations, for example) as opposed to holding something just recently purchased? You could be picking up on that object's energy, which leads me to my next belief:
2)PSYCHIC PHENOMENA: Despite all the critics and cynics (such as The Amazing Randi), there are still some incidents of psychics being right on the money that cannot be easily explained away. I'm constantly amazed how certain psychics can pick up an object and can, with amazing detail, tell details about the object's ownwer from the energy that was imbued upon it by that person. They're very sensitive to it.
3)SYNCHRONICITY: Basically, it's the belief that all actions and deeds are related to one another. If you're familiar with the phrase "chain of events" (Ex.: A man misses a bus making him late for work at the shoe store where a customer, who did not receive the proper help, buys a pair of wing tips which are too tight which makes him snap at his co-workers, one of whom is a despondant woman who just learned that she's pregnant and wonders if she should bring an innocent baby into a nasty world...etc., etc.), then you're familiar with part of the concept. It's almost like the concept of that play/film "Six Degrees of Seperation": You may not personally know the Pope, but you probably know someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows the Pope. So getting back to our "chain" image, imagine, if you will, that every link in that "chain" generates not just one but many other links and that each one of those links generates even more links. Now, there are probably lots of these "chains" going on at the same time, so imagine that all of these "event chains" will weave themselves together into a very tight fabric so that anything happening in the universe can almost directly relate to anything else happening in any other part of the universe, and your choice between wearing a red tie and a yellow tie to work does, in its own way and at that very moment, affects what direction a migrating whale chooses to go north. A heavy responsibility.
4)A HIGHER POWER: This one might be tougher to explain because I'm not talking about a God of any sort but something that goes along the lines of the energy theme that I was talking about earlier: a higher "power". Now I realize how silly that can sound, but keep in mind that at the time I was trying to discover my core belief system, so I tried to remain as objective as possible, and look at this from an entirely scientific viewpoint (not yet realizing that scientific community is just as subjective an organization as any organized religion). Anyway, my basic feeling was that if everything is endowed with some sort of energy, then perhaps there is some excess floating about that no one is using. Maybe that energy is going somewhere. Where was it going? And where did this original energy come from? The Big Bang? Was there a Big Bang? If there was, what was it before it blew up? A collapsed universe? If the universe is really expanding and contracting, continually reinventing itself, then doesn't that mean that everything in the universe is part of a larger organism? A "higher power", as it were? And the BIG question, is this organism or "higher power" self-aware?
So after I took all of these beliefs into consideration, I realized something: I knew of no religion that matched my beliefs. I was S.O.L. on the religion/faith front. "What the hell do I hafta do?," I thought, "I don't have the time to build my own religion! I'm just not the kind of guy who can lead a cult." My self-realization sent me spiralling into a really deep funk, and it couldn't have come at a better time: I was in college in a small town in Kansas, and my grades were sinking; both of my parents retired, bought an RV, and sold the house that was my home for 20 yrs.; I was still struggling with my sexuality, believing myself to be at the time a heavily closetted BISEXUAL!! But, what the hell, the package just ain't complete without an existential crisis! It's no wonder I started sleeping 20 hours a day and feasting on nothing but pizza!
But before I finally flunked out of college, something small - almost insignificant - happened: I found a two copies of Daddy Magazine in a used bookstore. Finally discovering a magazine that had all the types of men that I had secretly been lusting after was a revelation. All of the other gay magazines at the time had nothing but thin, young, hairless, twinkie wimps. Looking at those wonderful photos of those gorgeous older men helped nudge me a little further out of the closet. A necessary step in finally being at peace with myself.
When I was finally ostracized from KU, I had to move back in with my parents. However, I wasn't actually going "home" again (remember my parents had sold the house and became "gypsies"); I was just moving into their cramped little RV which was at the time located in Tucson, AZ!!! I felt like I had hit rock bottom. I had to start all over again in a place that wasn't anything like my hometown. First, I had gotten used to some of the little quirks that Rochester had: little things like SEASONS!!!! (Although looking back, I do remember one joke saying that Rochester had only two seasons: Winter and Construction.) I missed snow so bad that I even missed all the crappy stuff that came with it like the dark grey slush, the salt on the roads and the heart-stopping, property-damaging driving conditions. *Sigh*. You can't get anymore disgustingly homesick than that, folks.
The more I became acclimated to my surroundings (and especially when I finally got a job and an apartment of my own), I got a firmer grip on my sexuality. (HEY! Get that image out of your head, you filthy rutting beast!)...(Alright, you can enjoy it for just a few more seconds, but then we're moving on with the story.) I started to explore the men who most appealed to me: older, stockier, hairier... etc. I started hanging out at the bars, then the adult bookstores and arcades, then the cruisy parks,until I wound up spending almost every day cruising men. Don't get me wrong; I'm not "looking down" on those past times. If anything that was more of a "learning experience". I learned that the more I wanted someone, the more persistent I would become until I'd get him to submit to my will, be he straight or gay. (Is that the most egotistical thing you've ever read in your life that didn't come from a Norman Mailer novel? It's at this point that I should tell you that I was and still am a sex and fantasy addict and that was my attitude. The only difference between now and then is that I'm currently trying to "recover" from my addiction with the help of a 12-step program.)
One day while I was out "trawling", I met a very cute yet very shy "bear" who I found out hours later was named Andrew. I cozied up next to him (in the most obnoxious and obscene manner. Details are currently unimportant.), and a little while later after I had my way with him, I dropped him off somewhere (Details are still kinda sketchy.) and figured I'd never see him again. Well, I was wrong in that assumption because I kept running into him at different places. (It seems the gods wanted to put him directly in my path.) Every time I ran into him, I'd learn some new detail about him. Among other things, I learned that he was a psychic and could read palms. When I found this out, I just had to test him for accuracy. I figured that we may have had sex with each other, but we still didn't truly "know" each other. So there I was at a party where he was giving out quick little readings to everyone and I stuck out my paw and the first thing that he said is still stuck in my brain: "Wow. You've got a lot of thoughts going on inside your head all at once. It's actually kind of hard for you to keep track of them and quite a few of them get lost in the process" *Ding*. (...And the gods said "Gotcha!")
SORRY!! I'm going to have to take a break from writing just so I can figure out what I'm going to say next. In the meantime, enjoy these images of my God, Silenus, Father of the Satyrs (not to be confused with Silenus Honey, the actor). Right now my website boasts the largest collection of Silenus images. I'm going to have to explain where I got each of them later. Also, keep in mind that a lot of these images represent Silenus at a time when he was... well,... more of a "party animal". (C'mon, he was good friends with Bacchus, for God's sake.) Until next time, BLESSINGS, LIGHT AND LOVE!
This statue is called "Silenus and the Infant Bacchus" and is attributed to Praxiteles around 400 B.C.
This is a Roman bust that dates back to the 1st century.
This piece called "The Drunken Silenus" was done around the 16th century by Schletius Adam á Bolswert
This is picture is a detailed piece of Bellini's painting "The Feast of the Gods" circa 1515.
This painting is called (of course) "Drunken Silenus" by Rubens. (Geez, I guess all you have to do is be recognized at a few good parties, and suddenly you're tagged with a "reputation")
And since Silenus is known as the father of all satyrs, I thought I might as well include a photo of one. You can find this handsome brute in Rome.
Links to other sites on the Web
Wicca.com: The best pagan website that I've found so far.
Eye of Sokar pagan page, part of MoonCircle Pagan Network's outreach on the web
Eye Of The Cat: Essential shopping for every good witch
