lighting candles
When I was young I yearned to be Catholic or Jewish. Raised Episcopalian, I found nothing in my family's spiritual practices which seized my imagination. I longed for candle lighting, holy cards, eating proscribed foods, mezuzahs, hairs of saints, bitter herbs, and statues of Mary or Jesus around the house. What I wanted was more stuff. Stuff that symbolized something else, that was ascribed power and meaning. No wonder I eventually chose to become a witch! A Pagan Sojourn turned me on to a great series of articles by Jeff Lilly at DruidJournal on choosing a religion. He makes the excellent point that this is the first time in history that so many of us have choice in regards to religion. In the past, if you were raised in the Catholic, Jewish, or Episcopalian faith, that is what you were. Not now. The majority of us witches come from other faiths, and our children by far know they have choice around whether or not to claim themselves pagan. Even within the Craft, we have a...