Worship And The Pagan Gods

I was a faithful Mormon for nearly three decades, and while I definitely busied myself spiritually, and tried to be close to Heavenly Father, I never actually wanted to worship him. Worship in Mormonism is problematic anyway: in my experience Mormonism is much more about trying to experience certain things, trying to feel the Holy [...]

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The Wheel Of The Year

Back in April when I first started to come out as a Pagan, I mentioned that one of my goals was to figure out some good ways to celebrate the Wheel of the Year.  Although my emphasis is typically on the Hellenic gods, and my personal practice draws more from reconstructionism than anywhere else, I [...]

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Once Again, Mormonism And Easter

Once again this year I am baffled by how big of a deal Mormons do not make out of Easter. It’s a total non-holiday, while by contrast in most of the rest of the Christian world it is the high point in the liturgical (or even semi-liturgical or not liturgical at all!) year. [...]

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Polytheistic Possibilities

Or, other ways of explaining the experiences I have had…
So, having personally experienced the presence of two separate divine figures–Dionysus and Aphrodite–I immediately assumed that the next step was Hellenistic Reconstructionist Polytheism.  Simply put, it didn’t work.  I have an intuition about where to go from here, but I am still assuming some kind of [...]

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Development Of Polytheistic Belief: A Brief Personal History

As a little kid in elementary school, I was obsessed with Greek mythology.  In high school I branched out into Celtic and Arthurian lore, and then in college I fell in love with Vikings and Norse mythology, but the pattern is fairly consistent: for most of my life, myth and legend have resonated strongly and [...]

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Apollo and Dionysus

When I think of direction in religion and my ongoing conundrum, some of my difficulties fit the Apollonian/Dionysian dichotomy really well.  Simply put, in terms of Apollonian religious experience, Christianity is the most appealing and compelling to me.  Christianity (and for me I mean mostly Episcopalian/Anglican Protestantism) is beautiful: I love the liturgy, the hymns, [...]

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Concerned About Christmas

I absolutely love Christmas.  I love the music, the decorations, the cookies, the shopping, the presents, the smiles, and the colored lights. The commercialism of Christmas just doesn’t bother me.  It’s fun, and its only once a year (commercialism the rest of the year bothers me).
I can remember each Christmas distinctly going back to when [...]

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What Does It Mean To Believe In Jesus?

One of the biggest obstacles preventing me from simply embracing Christianity is that I am not entirely sure what it means to be a Christian.  Specifically, I can not wrap my head around what it means to actually believe in Jesus, to the extent that belief becomes faith.  By any reading of the New Testament, [...]

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Flirting With Odin In My Mind

I promised myself that I would stop going around and around with religion and getting nowhere with it, but it looks like it was a promise in vain. I went to see Amon Amarth and Ensiferum in concert last week, and it set me thinking about Ásátru again, catching me at a time when [...]

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Christianity And Me: The Saga Continues

I would like Christianity to be true. I’m just not really sure if I believe it. I decided last year, after reading C. S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces, that I believe in God. The exact nature and extent of that belief is properly the subject of another post, but it is sufficient [...]

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