Everything Under the Moon

Hello,

So I’m new to this path but I have been drawn towards Paganism most of my life. I am an empath to the point of being able to know what my husband is thinking about. I am drawn towards Wicca, but there is so much mixed information out there that I am having trouble finding my direct path. I have always considered myself Pagan, but I never took the step to commit myself. I have always felt the pull inside of me, the connection to the universe, the fascination with the moon that I could never explain, the desire to live amongst the wilderness. I am here because I don’t know where to start. I am bursting at the seams with all of the energy and possibilities inside of my being, and I’m lost at where to go from here now that I have accepted my path.

Hi & welcome. Please do look around the site and we invite questions. How you practice depends on what your focus is, what draws you the most. What do you want from a spiritual practice? How do you define witchcraft? What do you want from your witchcraft practice? Do you want to engage in a form of worship? Then look into ritual methods and god-forms. Or are you seeking an understanding of your place in the Universe? Then look into the spiritual exercises & meditation practices. Do you want to learn just the craft-side of witchcraft? Then look into spell crafting. Do you seek an Earth-centered spiritual experience? Then look into shamanic witchcraft. If you know what you are seeking then you can better direct your interests and time.

Hail and welcome. You are so fortunate to have been drawn to this magickal way of life. I am a Witch elder retired with little to keep me occupied. Should you wish to chat, ask questions or are seeking a mentor feel free to message me. There are many here with various practices all happy to help.

Goddess Blessings
Shekinah

Welcome in Oblivionbeauty.

So many newbies(I'm one myself, less than a year being actively into witchcraft.) coming in lately. I hope you guys will become active members here, its so nice to see discussion being alive.

If you want my advice, I say follow your heart and do what is right. Don't take things on face value, let your own experience verify them for you. Asking yourself what is that you feel drawn to and what you want to achieve, where do you want your path to take you. My way has always been about going in head first, doing mistakes along the way, some times its a rocky road, but rewarding in the end. I'm repeating what others already said.

This is a good place to ask others for guidance and advice, there's very helpful people here who know this witchy stuff inside and out. The nicest forum on this I've found so far. I wish you will enjoy your time here.

May your path be blessed.

Hello and welcome.

It's good to look at the creators of Wicca, and be careful of the misinformation. It is very popular in paganism.

Thank you everyone for your welcoming posts! I’ve been attempting to do research and learn as much as possible about Wicca, but there is SO MUCH information!! I’m still trying to figure it all out. All I know for sure is that this has been calling to me for the last 20 years (at least). Glad to see movement in this forum because the other ones are dead.

By the way, I think you should take your time and consider if you want to get into Wicca as it is, I mean looking for a coven and so on. At one time I was really into it, but after a while I found out that some things about it feel close to my heart while other things do not. That plus the witches around here being few and far between made me choose to stay solitary eclectic. (Usually rule sets and group work doesn't suit me much.) Not to say there's anything wrong with Wicca.

I mean don't rush it. Read, talk and try things out yourself. Take your time.

And ditto about this forum, although the pace is rather slow, its nice that people actually take part here. Too many forums are dead these days. Gods damn the trend of "social" media on the expense of good old forums. I like the slow pace of a forum and here it wont take much effort to stay up to date as there aren't gazillion people posting dozens of posts each day. Oh I could praise this piece of cyberspace heaven for ages.

@LJHex so here is a question for you. I am definitely a solitary practitioner, but I was under the assumption that one can be a solitary Wiccan. Is that wrong?

Oh no, not at all. It seems there's quite a lot of solitaries around.

EDIT:
There's way more knowledgeable people on Wicca here than me by the way. My experience on it is quite limited. One friend back in the day and everything I've read online and that's pretty much it. I would like to learn more about it too. Some of the things about Wicca are very close to heart for me, but I'm yet to get convinced about taking it as it is, so I mix and match, find my own way.

This seems to be something that some people don't like much, cherry picking... Here I haven't encountered any problem about it, people on this forum seem to be very tolerant and nice as we're such a varied bunch, which I think is the right way to deal with it.

My 50-cent back story:

Traditionally British witchcraft Gardnerian-Style Wica (one "C") blended traditions that were dying out & framed it in a Western Occult format. In the late 1940''s Wica was begun as an initiatory, lineage-by-founder, coven based religion, & many seek to keep it that way for reasons of the structure & training. And by the 1980s Scott Cunningham recognized there were a lot more seekers in the US than covens could accommodate & his book Wicca for the Solitary Practitioner opened the door. He kept the structure based in Western Occultism. By the '90's eclecticism added shamanistic practices & folk magic of many cultures.

Recall that In the '50's there were no organized books in public domain that taught "witchcraft" & the '60's-70's brought a hodgepodge of related anthropology studies. Paul Huson published his Mastering Witchcraft book (1970) which is ceremonial Craft based. Coven trained meant oath bound. In the US, August 13, 1971, Lady Sheba, claiming Lineage as an Alexandrian priestess, broke tradition & established Wicca as a legally recognized religion & "shockingly" printed her Grimoire. Gardnerian trained Raymond Buckland established Wiccan covens in the US & printed his "Big Blue" training book (2001). So-o, once the cat was out of the bag it will never return.

To engage in a religion requires a community. To live a spiritual practice denotes solitaire. Just IMO it's up to the individual as a solitary Witch-Crafter to seek within their means the most suitable info & practices & to train themselves at their own pace & to responsibly intuit out the core of their own path, then claim what label they will.

Edit: now in the 21st C, the term "Wicca" has morphed into a broadly inclusive set of shifting eclectic practices as a path, so much so that the term "traditional" needs to be added on to
indicate the coven-style training & ritual practice as being structured differently from the popular, solitaire eclectic Wiccan practice. Solitaire Wiccan has become accepted as a qualifier.

Edit: I've gone back checked & corrected reference to publication dates. Memory compression had occurred

SpiritTalker just put to words a lot of what I was thinking and from way more knowledgeable point of view.

Now I guess I'm drifting off topic, but I wouldn't claim to be a Wicca or anything else very lightly as was (is?) the trend at one point for many young people. Even though I follow quite a lot of the framework of what is perceived being Wicca, I do not call myself that as I'm not "all in" in it, just out of respect for those who have devoted their lives and time on it.

Ok, /offtopic over and out. Quite a thread for an introduction...

You folks are quite knowledgeable regarding this! As of now, I refer to myself as a Pagan (because it is an umbrella term for all of it) since I haven’t been able to pin down one specific “path”. I know I am solitary, I am spiritual in the sense that I connect deeply to nature, the universe, the moon and stars, animals, etc. I think my biggest difficulty would be pinpointing “who” or “what” I worship. I am a firm believer in my abilities to sense other’s feelings, and read people’s energies. I think that if I were to ground myself, focus deeply, meditate, and center myself that I could use my abilities for many things. Just not sure what that would be called!!! Lol either way, I’m happy to be here sharing my thoughts with all of you!!

Yeh, discovering what we worship gets down to the brass. Labels are convenient placeholders to mark where we are at the moment while we figure things out. And then they change ... again.

Welcome. I used to scare my ex because I knew what he was thinking, and would act on it before he could request anything. I'm a solitary with a wandering path. It's been working for 40+ years, so I'm not inclined to change it. My deities have changed over time, depending in what our mutual needs are. Just relax and go with the flow.