Hello, my name is Featherwolf, I am a single mother of one living under my mother's roof. I am going to take part in providing articles and blogs of stories, life/spiritual experiences, personal thoughts/opinions, and understandings as I continue to define myself, my path, my life, and how the people closest to me take part. I hope that the articles I provide are helpful, the style in which the articles/blogs will be written would be that of a Journal and Informative pieces, sometimes thoughts to me that may have no meaning might not be for me, but someone else to read and understand.
Now where should I begin, well, I guess from the beginning, I was baptized and raised as a Catholic in Richmond, VA, United States, though I have always been around the belief of spiritual beings, energy use, and a more alternative way of thinking as far back as I can remember, along with Catholicism I had also been raised with a lot of Lakota beliefs and practices. Around the age of six I started learning how to feel and use energy (energy being in the most simplistic terms on the equivalent of the force), that was the majority of my knowledge, but I never had any real interest in magic, not till after I hit about the age of thirteen when was the time I started exploring other paths, at this time my parents had divorced and Christianity just wasn't filling the gaps and holes I felt, I knew there was more out there that I wasn't understanding. Also at this time my mother took me and my younger brother to a church gathering where it incorporated Christian and American Indian beliefs together. I got more from this but when my experimenting with Witchcraft became known to my mother, it was passed on the one of the two people who lead the service. As usual I was warned against messing around with such things, and I heeded the warning, which as I look back was a very good thing, I wasn't ready to dive into such a world just yet. We continued with the group but I still felt like something was missing, by the time I reached high school I was in spiritual limbo, I was at a point that I was looking into other religious practices trying to feel them out and find the one that felt right.
It wasn't till my sophomore to senior year that I came to realize that a Pagan path would be the direction I was heading, and that Witchcraft would once again play a part in my life. In my Sophomore year in High School I was still at the time attending Richmond Community High School, it's a small school of at most 200 students all together, or at least it was, not sure how its turned out now. It was in, I believe my Geography class, that I was doodling out a design for a symbol to sit atop a staff, at this time, aside from the Pentacle, Triquetra, and the Triskle, I had not seen or associated any other symbol's with Paganism or practices that fell under the Pagan Umbrella. I had drawn out a moon with two crescents facing away from the center moon, now, many of you know this as the Triple Goddess symbol, but as I have stated, I had never explored Paganism at this time and therefore had never seen the symbol. I had always been someone of the night and was always comforted by the moon, because of that was why I was trying to design a staff topper.
By the time of my Junior year, I had switched schools and started going to Thomas Jefferson High, it was very much like my old middle school, just not as violent so it didn't take much to get used to class movements again. Not too long after starting there I became friends with a very interesting individual, I was still in my goth phase (though I never really left it) and I saw a similarity with him. We became really good friends and not long after we began dating, and not long after I was introduced to his family. They became a second home for me, a place I could go to if my home got a little too stressful, with me being a teenager and someone who was running from my problems, it often did. His sister and I began to bond as she was an artist along with myself, I gave her tips on how to better improve and even showed her a few techniques, we also had a love for books.
One book in particular I had not read before was Marked, the first in The House of Night series, I enjoyed vampires and other fictional books so she let me borrow it and I read it. A little summary of the books, they are a vampire series that is very Pagan in nature, the authors have definitely done research if they don't practice themselves so its not a bunch of mess or fantasized made up practices. The Goddess the Vampires follow is Nyx Goddess of Night. Looking into her story she is a Primordial Greek Goddess, one of the first to be born from Chaos and bring balance to the world. About the point in which Zoey joined the Dark Daughters circle for a ritual and described the pendant that was worn made me freeze. It sounded so familiar and made me look up the symbol, when I saw it I realized it was the exact same symbol that I had drawn the year before. Because of this I took it as a sign and began researching Nyx and even went to a local Metaphysical store to talk to someone about the symbol. I felt because of the connection with the night that I have, and the fact that I had been searching for my path, I had this feeling I was being called out to to look more detailed in the path involving a more Pagan practice.
During my senior year I spent it researching and studying, to understand Paganism and what Witchcraft was all about, I never practiced, never tried a ritual or spell, I just studied so I could get an idea of what I was getting myself into. The more I read the more it felt right for me, and the more I realized that this was what I had been looking for. By the end of my senior year I still continued to study, but I also began practicing, after a while I felt confident that I could start calling myself a Pagan. But I never called myself a witch, I still hadn't fully understood what I felt I would need to understand before I could take on such a title. Events happened that were a cause of my wanting to escape Richmond, my previous boyfriend had passed away and I didn't want to have to deal with the memories, things happened and I was able to move to Indiana. It was a fresh start and a place I could try to better define my path, two of the friends I had made also practiced, and allowed me to better learn what others were about. I had a group I worked with before, I wouldn't necessarily call my old group a coven, but it was similar. I learned a lot more and to also be weary of those who claim great things from themselves, nine time out of ten, they are lying and just want attention.
After a year in Indiana I moved back home with my mom due to more circumstances that caused me to do so. All this time I had begun to lose the connection I had with the universe and the earth, which in a sense left me blind and fumbling around. After I reconnected I began to understand things and see that there were so many lessons I needed to learn from everything I experienced, my gullibility, my ignorance, the past three relationships and staying blind to my partners shortcomings and not talking to them about problems that were going on. Even though all of what happened ended up with me getting kicked out of my apartment in Indiana, dealing with emotional issues and stresses of my past, losing and gaining friends, and ending up as a single mother because of my lover's blindness, taught me quite a bit.
People aren't always as they seem, and sometimes there is much more hidden than they want you to see. It made me realize I didn't know myself as well as I needed, and that I couldn't truly understand my path until I did. We are all the same and yet different, similar causes lead to similar effects, that doesn't ever seem to change, but the difference we all have is our emotions and our thoughts that lead us to the similar effects. Understanding this has given me a better understanding of myself and others, and in my spiritual path, I have always been a counselor to people, and sometimes even mended broken hearts and showed people there are other ways to things, other answers, I have also come to see that even the basic religious meanings aren't too different either. I feel my path my lead down the road of a healer, but what form of healer I am to take, I am not sure yet, I just know no matter how hard I hide or run, I always end up back in a position to help those that are in need. This is what I have come to understand as I have been lead onto my Pagan path, hopefully more things will become clear to me.
I know this first blog got seriously off topic, but I felt it was best to express what I felt was important to express, and to give you an idea of what these blogs will be like, the rest should be better focused on where I start from and hopefully can better express the journey's and realizations I have come to understand, this is my first time as a article writer and a blogger, so please excuse the randomness and floating of my writing. I hope that some good can come from these and might even help express to those that are unknown of the Pagan Community can see we are people too, simple, basic people who have found what we needed in a different form.
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