Spirited Enterprise

 While going through the forums I have seen some posts on various topics where something comes up and people down their nose at various religions and make it sound like you can only be Wiccian and use entities and spell casting and such. So I thought I would start a thread on religion and we could openly discuss them and get some of these silly myths out of people's heads and realize that some of the old time thinking is just not right.

 Also, I thought I would share some religious history of myself and my studies and hopefully make others see you do not have to be Wiccian or a pagan in order to be mystical.

 So with that said, enter me and my religious history and who I am today. I was raised in a pretty interesting family. My Mother's Father was a Spiritualist minister and her Mother was a spell caster who was a Native American Medicine woman. Her family was a combo of Native American, Romanian Gypsies, A bit of Irish travellers( like gypsy's) and possibly some french, which we are looking into. My Fathers Family is almost pure Scottish, with a small bit of Irish. My Dad's granfather was born in Scotland and while he was Christian, you don't grow up in the UK and not believe in fairies, pixies and such. Until my great grandfather died, he always had a pot of Scottish heather and lavender growing, because it made the pixies happy.

  My parents were for the most part Christian. My Mom did bindings by word, which sucks as a kid cause until I learned how to undo them, we did what she wanted no questions asked! My Father read tarot cards and studied the esoteric and was well versed in demonology, paganism, witchcraft and the Kabbalah. He also read and spoke Latin as well as he did english. He has fancinated with religion and passed it to me, as well as a love of ancient history. I spent most of my life studying religion and was very proud to go on and get my doctorate in theology. I also did my ministry work in a metaphysical church to get a more well rounded look. To this day I consider myself mostly christian as it feels the most right to me. So now how does a person christian do spell crafting you ask? Well have you ever heard of a catholic's lighting a white candle and making a pray to Mary? Hello?? Sounds like spell crafting to me! All religion is full of mystisim and such, by nature. 

  Anyway, I thought I would lend not only my magical life work to the forums, but my religious and historical knowledge too. So please ask away and maybe some of the other members of the forum will jump in with their knowledge too and we can look at religion in a much more positive way instead of the negative way most metaphysical people view other religions then paganism or wicca.

 Well I tried to edit this post, but no luck! So I will add that another thing that irks me is the people who say you can be only a certain religion and do spell work...hogwash! Spell crafting is a tool, nothing more and nothing less. Just like one uses a hammer to build a house, one can use a spell to build ones desires. Faith has nothing to do with spellwork. Any faith can preform it too. While there are some spells that require the asking of a certain God or Goddess, most do not require any religion at all just the faith in yourself to take the energy around you and within you to make what you want manifest into what you are asking. Most sucessful spells require you to believe in it and use your energy to make it happen then a specific religion or God/Goddess belief.

I have no religion. I do not neccisarily beleive in a deity that controls everything either. I beleive there is a power, but I dont think it is a being. I think the entities we call "Immortals" or "Gods" just have more of this power than the rest of us.

Most perfectly said Lady Isolde, I couldn’t agree more on this and I don’t think it could be any better, thank you for this post.

I consider myself a confused Christian, with chaos leanings (I tend to do what "feels" right and makes sense to me, personally) and I also have such great, great, incredible respect/interest in Islam.

But you know what? Most importantly,  I really, really, TRULY love people.  I am monotheistic and refer to them as "God's people" and really can see the beauty of each individual.  My father is an atheist, my mother hard-core Holy-Rolling Christian (a term used in love and fun, not intended to offend or hurt anyone, I love her dearly) and I am of the mindset that perhaps there is more out there than we know... I'm sketchy on the details, willing to look, willing to see with an open mind, and very interested in the beliefs of others.

Maybe all beliefs/faiths have something to teach us; something we can take with us and grow as people   Sadly, I think too many out there have a "I am right and you are 100% WRONG" mentality and they miss out on the really great lessons, and really great people that there are to know.

That's my 2 cents....

I apologize for saying "really" about 50 million times in the above post.  3 hours sleep leads to a very poor vocabulary

I am roman catholic or at least I was.I don't practise any religon but I have great respect for all relegions, because I feel they all try to guide peole to better themselves and give us hope that something exists after this life.

I find other religons interesting .all religons to me seem good.

                                     Paul.

P.S. Nice shoes SWAN! I like the new pic.

lady isolde thanks for starting this thread, religious knowledge is very important for spiritual growth.

swan, i m really happy to know that u have great interest in islam.

i m too open minded person, what i believe is that there is one GOD, simply because if u see anywhere in universe everything is in harmony and integrated so efficiently and working together so well that there is no chance of error, and that one GOD is the supreme power. islam word means submitting ur will to GOD almighty, of course who has made u and all knows better than u and others how u should live. GOD has sent his messengers with guidlines from time to time for specific group of people and thats why basic message is same in almost all scriptures of all religions, (hinduism,christianity,islam,judaism).

islam prohibits use of black magick, magick for causing evil, i believe that magick for defence and healing is completely allowed but we cant use spells or inscriptions in which things r written which contradicts with basic islamic beliefs, the most important thing that we muslim believe is that happens what, what GOD wants. if i give some task to my entities i believe that only GOD will make them successful if he wills, otherwise there is also a chance that they may fail, and if they r successful then i first thanks GOD and then entities.

No worries Swan (when I have less then 5 hours sleep, I have trouble seeing my family LOL)

I am Muslim but I wouldn’t say I do what a good Muslim should do. My Sister-in-low is Christian and we (my whole family) are completely having no doubts or anything in relation with her religions, in fact we get to learn new thing about other religions. At the end of days, we all are human, religious or non-religious, straight, or non-straight we all are HUMAN - ok we have difference in certain areas but we are human at the end of days and should try to learn new things from other religion, have open mind that each and every religion is true as it as daylight (hope that makes sense LOL)

Paul - Good to know that you have open mind (after life “thing” really scares me)

Zeeshan -well said

What a great topic!

I was raised in a very strict Pagan household.

We always considered ourselves to be traditional pagans, however, after reading a bunch of new age books, I discovered, that by todays standards, we are eclectic pagans.

Eclectic pagans or Eclectic practitioners use many traditions of magick and beliefs. Throughout many generations of marriage, this is what our belief system has become.

Even though we were all raised as Pagans, believing in many Gods & Goddesses, we were also taught to respect all religions. We were baptised in both the pagan and christian traditions. We went to Sunday school, confirmation, etc.

Every summer, we traveled in order to visit churches of different faiths.

My mother always said that there was no better way to respect a religion than to learn all you could about it

We have Christian witches in our family as well. My grandmother is a devote christian and all of her magickal workings are centered around God, Jesus, the apostles, etc, depending on the spellwork.

Also on my mothers side, we have Norse practitioners, British Traditional practitioners, and old school folk magick practitioners.

My fathers side is mostly Celtic. However, my fathers grandmother brought to the mix, Egyptian traditions.

Although it sounds complicated to other people, to us, its all we've ever known lol.

That sounds absolutely beautiful.  I hope to raise my child(ren) that way.

Mmh... this is a very interesting topic

I try my best to work on my view of religion. I had religion (Christianity) sorta forced on me since I was a kid. So I rebelled and went to Paganism.

I find myself being sceptical towards religious people (not religion itself), because some harm others in the name of their religion and believe they’re doing the right thing.

Therefore when I do a spell or other magic work I speak with the Goddess and think of her as Mother Earth. I don’t have other gods than that.
I study Norn mythology though, just because I find it interesting and it’s from where I live.

I’m not sure if it’s just me, but the rest of the best know religions feel a bit distant to me, since non of them had their start around here. But that might be just because they aren’t right for me

ya moonwolf, there r many people who try to fight on the basis of religon, though i havent seen any religion which encourage any human to fight on the basis of religion. there r many muslims who say they r muslim but they try to earn through prohibited ways like stealing,murders,robbery etc. they r shame actually these people think that they r labeled as muslims, but actually heart of a person tells what he\she is. this is true for most, i just gave example.

the important is that talking on the basis of knowledge and logic and facts is the best way, if anyone want to talk about religion, but many try to impose thier opinions rather than giving logic. they dont follow good and expect others to follow, they just say and dont do themselves what they say.

i just hate that type of people. they just dont understand the essence of religion, that is, well being and development of humans in best way.

there r many who judge religion by its followers rather than actually studying what is in that religion actually.

i think open mindedness is a very important thing.

I am coming from a very religious family,my dad is very strict if it coming to religion topic

But i grow up and learn, i don't believe into any religion, i only believe there is greater power that controlling everything in the universe and we name it god,some call allah and etc

and we respect and worship him/her in so many ways so we called religion,some are casual with praying/chanting where there are extreme also with sacrificing, either way we are human being who create this ritual/religion

If in any way my dad found out that i am giving up to have a religion he would be so mad and disappoint with me, but i think on different way, i felt a freedom where i not tied in rules as long i am being a good person,who doing a good deed i don't find any wrong with what i do

Hope i don't offended you guys in any way

My mom's an ordained minister so I was raised Christian. I still identify as only Christian. When I was in high school at the age of 13, I met a friend, a wiccan. I was so naive, I had no idea what a wiccan was or what it meant. So she taught me some of what she knew and sucked me into a world I'd long been denying. It was exhilarating! I went through the traditional coming of age ceremonies of an Oglala. I became an initaited Sioux winyan with Peji Tho Wi in Colorado. I've even had the honor of befriending the grand daughter of a well known holy man and dancing as head girl. I learned even more about spirituality from the wise women and adopted aunts and uncles of my tribe. It took a while to figure exactly what I believed. After years and years of studying I have a solid belief that we're not so different in the end. Live and let live. ^-^