Witchvox Article

Author: Talma Stormphoenix
Posted: March 15th. 2002
Times Viewed: 3,875

I think my first clue that I was different was my just being a "nature kid". I never, and I mean NEVER, wanted to wear shoes! Every summer until I was twelve or thirteen I was bare-foot! It was nothing to go into the woods and just stay there all day eating berries and watching for animals and just enjoying the sound of the leaves in the breeze and animals running around.

I was taught by my grandfather to respect animals because if you're mean to an animal then you'll be mean to anyone you think can't speak up for themselves and the older I get the more I see how true that is. No one I've ever known that has been cruel to an animal or just looking at them like "it's just a dumb animal". I've found that most people like that don't have much respect for anything. That's not to say you have to be a tree hugger (nothing wrong with that if you are) but just a basic respect for things living is there when people have a basic respect for living things whether they're Pagan or not.

I grew up in the Catholic church and by the time I was 15 I just had a basic dissatisfaction with everything that I saw. Why was the service indoors? Why did they have to have all this standing, sitting and kneeling? If I wanted a workout I'd have joined an aerobics class! Why can't the service be outside sometimes? And why, if all these people are supposed to be trying to be "godly", are they staring at me like they don't want me here?

I realized that most of the church stuff is very superficial but it was the start of my dissatisfaction with the faith I was raised in. Most of it came from within my own family. I couldn't understand how if given a choice you could be punished for doing one thing instead of another. It sounded like a trick question to me and I didn't like how when I asked about something I rarely if ever got a straight answer. Usually I got "What's wrong with you questioning God?". The thing is I didn't think I was questioning God. I could have sworn I was questioning people about God. They didn't see that though and I spent a few years dealing with those "looks" that said "Oh yeah, she's going to hell". Of course that was another question altogether! lol I mean really! Why is there a hell in the first place?

When I was about fifteen years old I quit going to church. My grandmother was seriously upset about it and would ask me "Aren't you afraid of going to hell?". My response? You guessed it "No." I mean the way I figured it we started out in "hell" in order to get to heaven! Well that was my thinking at the time. I've come to the conclusion that yes there's an after life. It's for everybody but the heaven vs. hell thing is what we make of this planet.

At this point I just knew that I wasn't happy being a Christian. I didn't know why but I knew enough to know that I needed to get myself away from the environment. I didn't know what was right but I sure knew what was wrong! It took me a few more years to start finding out what was calling to me. I started out with Tarot cards. I had seen one too many cult films about Ouija boards to get one of those but the cards seemed safe. Just a word, I now do have a "talking" board. :)

In the summer of '95 I started going online. At first it was just seeing what all was out there but then my focus went toward Witchcraft. As afraid of it as I was I still didn't know what it was and I had made up my mind that I wasn't going to be afraid of something I knew nothing about so I started looking. Most of what I found was a little confusing because quite frankly I didn't know anything!

When I went into chat rooms and that made me even more confused! I thought about giving up because there was a few (not most, just a few) people that made it clear when they found out that you were a newbie they made no attempts to hide their I-know-more-than-you-do attitudes. I finally went back into the New Age section of the store and found a book that a friend's brother had let me borrow a few years before. Buckland's Complete Book of Witchcraft, affectionately know as, Big Blue.

That was my start. The reading wasn't what I was looking for but it did give me my start. Since then I've read everything I could get my hands on from Silver RavenWolf to Scott Cunningham to Margo Adler to The Complete Idiot's Guide to Wicca and Witchcraft! My library still isn't complete by a long shot but it is steadily growing. In the past two years I've done the one thing almost every Witch, Wiccan and Pagan has ever said, read, read, read, and I have no plans of stopping.

The best thing that I've found is that I no longer have this the-world-is-falling-down-around-me feelings. I couldn't understand how I could have this almost overpowering feeling that I'm here to do something and be so confused about something that I thought should be so basic! And it was basic. I was just too afraid to look. Now that I have looked I know who I am. I know what has been calling me and I'm glad. It explains a whole lot, most of which I haven't even touched on here but you get the idea.

Recently I, with a few friends, have had to defend our right to be Witches. Those that have claimed the superior right of their faith have not even tried to see things from our view while we all have come from those points of view having been raised in them. I'm actually thankful to have been given this opportunity. I've learned many things that I otherwise would not have know or even suspected. I have again been given the opportunity to see that Wicca/Witchcraft/Paganism is an ongoing, evolving and never ending journey that is filled with new things to learn all the time. We've come to the point that we don't stay there because of those that don't agree with us, that would be like talking to a brick wall and telling it to become water! We are still there because there are those that have no clue what Wiccans/Witches/Pagans are all about and we are doing our best to make sure that the information is there for those who wish to learn. Like Mulder said "The truth is out there"

Talma StormPhoenix

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Talma Stormphoenix

Location: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

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