Why I am Pagan

Why am I a Pagan? Now there is a question to make me think!

Well like many other Pagans I wasn’t brought up in a Pagan household. In fact spirituality wasn’t ever a really big thing in my household. I was christened Church of England as a baby and after that didn’t enter a church for reasons other than weddings and christenings for years. As a young teenager I chose to become involved in the church. I simply couldn’t accept a world without spirituality in it and Christianity seemed the obvious option. It was main stream, it was easily accessible, and what parents in their right mind would object to their teenage daughter taking an interest in the Bible.

But, something didn’t sit right. I felt like I was trying to hard, like it just didn’t sit naturally with me. Around my mid-teens I became interested in witchcraft. I started reading whatever I could on the subject, though ten years ago there was a lot less information readily available than there is now. In my quest for information on witchcraft I inevitably learnt about paganism and all that it encompasses… now this felt right!

As this article is entitled ‘Why I am a Pagan’ and not ‘What is a Pagan?’ I won’t go into to great detail on the many and varied paths within Paganism. Although my personal beliefs fit well towards the centre of the wide road of earth based religions, one of the reasons I love paganism so much is how wide this road is in the first place.

The more time I spend in the Pagan community, whether it is online or in person, the more I feel spirituality is more a journey than a final destination. I once read somewhere “when you stop learning, you are truly old”. With Paganism I’ll never stop learning. Every person is a new set of theories, a new perspective and a new set of practices.

It doesn’t take a lot to work out that any community that embraces such diversity within its own belief system, embraces diversity in all it’s forms. There is very little right and wrong within paganism, just differences. Differences that are celebrated. Differences that become talking points. Differences that then bring us closer. Anyone can find their place in paganism, an encouraging place, where you will be encouraged to celebrate your beliefs rather than someone else’s.