The Domestic Pagan or the Little City Witch, I'm not sure which, maybe both, is holding or participating in a Pagan Tumblr challenge. My Tumblr blog is about Second Life, but I don't think she/they will hold it against me if I participate over here on Blogger.
I was raised in a loosely Roman-Catholic home. I don't recall ever having gone to church before I was baptized in 1983 when I was about 6 years old, which is late considering it's traditional to take this sacrament as a baby. I don't know why my parents waited so long, but I suspect that (a) they weren't very invested in this ritual or (b) the political situation in Cuba complicated it. In any case, my parents did send me to Sunday school (which was actually on Saturday). I remember the church, the building, the ping-pong table and vending machines, and visiting my aunt who lived nearby, but I don't remember the classes much. I do recall having questions that went unanswered and thinking so much of the doctrine just didn't make any sense at all. I received my First Communion and told my parents I didn't want to go on with the church. That was that.
The rest sounds like most stories you hear about people that come to contemporary Paganism. At some point during my adolescence I became interested in Greek mythology. I found Buckland's Blue Book in a thrift store and convinced my mom to buy it for me. That gave me a vocabulary for what I already knew. In high school, I discovered feminism and female teachers that took me to drum circles on the beach under the full moon and gave me tarot cards. While I was a first-year student at the University of South Florida in Tampa, The Craft was released, and it gave me a visual and a desire for magic and community. I discovered Starhawk and took a class called Paganism and Witchcraft in America. Margot Adler's Drawing Down the Moon was one of the textbooks. Back in Miami, I sought community, made friends, went to open circles, started holding circles with small groups, and eventually met a woman who became the gateway into the coven I have been a member of for about five years. Through my coven, I became a member of COG and earned my ministerial credentials. Eventually, I studied and was initiated into the Georgian Wiccan tradition. Through my connections in COG, online, and broader, I became involved in the Pagan Newswire Collective and Cherry Hill Seminary. That's the abridged version.
So what's your witchy background?
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