1 post tagged “tradition”

I started this blog about 7 months ago, and soon thereafter decided to focus it mainly on spirituality (since I have an LJ for silly memes/quizzes, and a regular blog for everything else).  Possibly part of why I went a little crazy here on the Wiccan topics in recent months was a vague uncertainty as to exactly what I believe -- in the sense that I've been practicing Wicca for at least 12 years, and I'm extremely knowledgeable and experienced in most aspects of it, but wanted to define more precisely what it all means to me, to clarify various aspects of it for myself.  In many ways, I feel an abject lack of identification with, or sense of "belonging" to, any particular Wiccan group or tradition.  Over the years, I've occasionally questioned whether I'm actually Wiccan...but have largely chosen to stick with that label as a "default setting" -- because I feel even less identification with any other type of Pagan group that I've heard of, or researched.  Although my personal deities are from the Norse pantheon, I don't feel a connection with Ásatrú or the other Northern European Pagan trads -- and I definitely don't like the idea of using any language that I don't understand in religious rites.  (Sometimes I think I'd be Discordian if I took my faith less seriously than I do!)

Belonging is rather a big deal to me.  For much of my life, I've felt that I didn't belong, in one way or another...so when I do feel a sense of belonging, I tend to be fiercely loyal and protective toward whatever (or whomever) engenders that feeling in me (when it's a person, I tend to be so loyal and devoted that -- as my beloved Geoffrey says -- I'm a "pit bull of love").  The most sense of belonging I've ever had in my religion/faith was within the CUEW, but that's not so much a tradition as a set of guidelines and doctrines; the CUEW doesn't have a litany of rituals or other specific outlines to follow (not that I'd follow them exactly, anyway, but it's nice to have a framework to personalize from).

In any case, I've given a fair amount of thought over the years (since before my Priestess initiation in April 1997, actually) to developing my own specific Pagan tradition -- one that, while adapting many Wiccan themes and some of the mythos, wouldn't/couldn't be defined as a Wiccan tradition because of certain divergent ideas/beliefs.  I actually had a collection of rituals, prayers/meditations, and other writings key to my personal tradition on the harddrive of my very first computer (a Tandy 386), which -- as luck (fate?) would have it -- slagged down and left the data completely inaccessible before I had printed or saved it on disk.  I've never been interested in figuring out if there was some kind of "reason" that happened -- I prefer to be practical and consider it a lesson in backing up data, and nothing more.

(I just lost a couple of really good paragraphs quite stupidly.  Don't trust that "Recover" button, people -- at least, not without copying & pasting what you've got in front of you to Notepad first.  Just don't.  And gee, the "Recover" button put me right back at the spot where I was talking about backing up data?  I really hate it when it seems the gods are laughing at me.)

Anyway, some of the stuff I lost to the "Recover" button had to do with not being interested in teaching or publishing my personal practices.  I learned many years ago that I'm not a good teacher or effective leader...although I do a fair imitation of a decent mentor.  *grin*  And my understanding is that a tradition (in the Wiccan/Pagan sense of the term) isn't actually a tradition until it's been studied and practiced by someone who learned from the originator (and some even add "and passed it on to yet another person").  So I wouldn't be developing a tradition, just a set of personal practices and ideology.  It would simply be something that would have, thoroughly and deeply, a "rightness" and sense of "belonging" for me personally.

There was more, but my brain has reached the point where I'm too tired and run-down to be decently coherent.  Maybe later this weekend...