The religious and spiritual beliefs of the world are diverse! Not all of us are monotheists and, even within paganism, not all are polytheists.

Who is welcome here?
Those who are curious about or participate in non-traditional spiritualities.
Metaphysicians
Pagans
Polytheists
Monotheists
Voo Doo/Hoo Doo practitioners, root workers
Those who follow the "old ways"
Wiccans
Heathens/Odinists/Asatruar/Anglo-Saxon ~ Theodists
Shamanic practitioners
* More will be added

Follow Menewsha's Rules and TOS. This thread has zero to do with proselytizing or bashing people. If you have issues with a religion/belief system, this is NOT the place to post. Your posts will poof away if you come in here and hassle people, okay? Be cool or go away...

Additionally, I prefer keeping matters related to spell crafting, oracular/fortune telling practices to a minimum and will consider opening another thread if people are interested.


Links to relevant sites: (will be added as needed)

A bit about me:
I lean toward Heathenry but am more of a universalist. Was heavily involved with metaphysics previously. I do not belong to any national organizations or local groups at present. I've had great mentors and friends help me grow spiritually, but most of my path has been experiential.

A local organization I belonged to dissolved this past summer when the leader was too ill to continue. We were in the midst of cataloging a lending library for spiritual studies along with inter-faith outreach in our area.

I have a master's degree in modern US History with a minor in religious (US) history, so I am familiar with some of the religious and spiritual movements in the US. I would like to hear more from others since my knowledge is severely limited to academia and the regions I've lived in throughout my life.

Topics to discuss:
1. Which path are you on now? What has your journey been so far?
2. Do you belong to a group or are you a sole practitioner?
3. How do educate yourself?
4. What are you reading about now?
5. Do you have some book suggestions?
6. What about web sites, blogs, etc.?

Sites I turn to for inspiration: (will add more once I dig them up!)http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/havamal.html

Heathen:
http://www.thortrains.net/blog/ - Sound advice from a gentleman I've known for years.
https://www.abdn.ac.uk/skaldic/db.php Skaldic Poetry database
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/havamal.html Online version of The Havamal/Words of Odin
http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/poe/poe03.htm - Translation of the Poetic Edda and includes Voluspo/Voluspa


Educational material:
http://bassacwords.wordpress.com/ I've known the author of this blog for several years and his perspective on metaphysics/magic includes a high degree of logic and science mixed with his personal experiences. He has a very direct approach and numerous youtube videos to take a look at through his site.

Book suggestions:

The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries by W. Y. Evans-Wentz (recommended by Exaggerated Rebellion)

post #3 - reserved

I believe in fairies, may as well plop down here.

I don't really belong to any specific group; my worship is very eclectic, though I try to research everything I can. I actually do know a ton about Wicca thanks to my Circle magazine subscription.

If want a good history about fairies, I highly suggest The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries by W. Y. Evans-Wentz. It was written roughly a hundred years ago, and has a lot of first hand testimonies recorded in it about various aspects of the faery faith. Some of the theories in the second half are a product of the times, however, and don't really reflect what anthropologists know about the origins of the culture today.

I've met people over the years who follow the Fae/faery path, but don't know much about it! Thank you for sharing this - I'll add it to the second post.

Hey. :3 I'm Alice. I'm a panentheist. I follow, believe in, and worship a deity known as Unelanuhi, the Great Spirit, who encompasses everyone and everything.

Hey!
I am not really any of these beliefs, but I am curious what Heathenry is. If I could just get a summary of that... It'd be great! I never heard of it before, and it's name kind of peaked my interest a little bit.

Apologies for not being more responsive in the thread, but life has been a bit out of control lately. Things have settled down and I hope to be able to spend time so I can respond more thoughtfully.

Uniplex ~ For me, being a Heathen represents what I believe to be the pre-Christian beliefs of my ancestors who were, primarily, Northern European: Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, Norse mostly. I'm personally less involved with the spellcrafting or divination side of things but adhere to a code of ethics. I'll see if I can dig up a document to post later on, so I'm posting this now to remind myself to poke around and find it/them!

I have a few friends who are pantheists, but they don't focus on one deity, more like a nebulous great spirit from what I understand. While I focus more on N. European pantheons, I also listen out for voices elsewhere. I enjoy learning about diverse beliefs.

HeartMoogle ~ Unelanuhi is Cherokee - how did you learn about her?

Oh okay! So it's ancestor based? I am pretty sure I understand this decently lol.

Yes and no. Some organizations, primarily those in the US, are ancestry-based and expect people to be descended solely from Europeans. Others feel that if someone in the pantheon calls to or inspires a person, ancestry is irrelevant. My own family is very diverse, so 100% Northern European is irrelevant to me to be Heathen even though my own blood ancestors are Germanic and primarily UK (Welsh, English, Scottish with a smattering of Irish).

Ah okay. Now I got it. Thanks for being willing to explain this a little to me!

I was a lot more interested in vodoun when I was still living in the city. Of late, because I had just moved out of a metal music phase I had been meeting an awful lot of Ásatrú leaning folk.

I study all sorts of religions, because I think it's all rather complex to be coincidence, and some of the mathematical algorithms that turn up in nature seem to be of some sort of intelligent design. But whose? I like to think that there may be a God or gods to witness our struggles and give our life some kind of meaning, but I also am not entirely sure whatever set life into motion is still around or particularly cares. Again, it would be nice.... but the hope that God/dess/s would like us and in any way influences us is pretty much just that, a hope.

I went through a few different Christian phases, but there's just such a bad taste left by the hate mongering Christian right that I can't really stay with that path in any good conscience. Jesus seems way cool... but if the majority of his followers think they have the right to judge gay people as belonging in Hell, or hassling people at abortion clinics, I can;t be a part of that scene.

I took hand in a Sufi group back in the day, but I think any connexion to Islam I still feel is just a purely punk rock attitude against people who assume all Muslims are terrorists. Like every other religon there are bad zealous people, but I don't dismiss it merely because of them. Mostly I don't fancy myself Muslim anymore because of the upkeep. Man, I'm lucky if I remember to get up in the morning, take my medicines, brush my teeth. Pray 5 times a day??? It's a nice thought, but way too much effort to remember to do.

I had a few Jewish friends when I lived in NY, and I was always supercurious about Judaism, but if you're an obvious goyim you're not going to find many folk who want to enlighten you, I've noticed. I got invited to a few things here and there, but it really seems to be one of those religions you need be born into to understand. That said, my favourite Jewish holiday is Sukkot. The idea of going out in early autumn and building a tent and having a little feast there is really cool to me.

There's a whole bunch of temples all in a row in this one part of Queens, and those were where I learned what I did about Hinduism and Sikhs also. I had also hung with the Hare Krishnas, but I don't quite think of that as 'real' Hinduism, anymore than the 'nam myoho renge kyo' guys are real Buddhists. I got to meet a really cool guru named Karunamayi when i was travelling through Colorado, and she taught me a chant, so I occasionally still use that to meditate with.

What little I know about Buddhism and Shinto I've culled mostly from documentaries, movies and animes. I just don't know enough people born into it to ask questions to. Like everything else it interests me, but I don't really feel I know enough to have an opinion.

My dad was Tsalagi, and I know there are specific paths and ways of worship that are associated with each of the ndn tribes, but my dad was also a douchebag, so I never learned from him. Because there are so many part Cherokee-part something-else's out there, I see a lot of rez born natives close ranks and sneer at all the half breeds, so it doesn't seem likely I could find anyone to teach me anything about those paths. It's a little sad to be mixed blood anything. You're never going to get acceptance from the people of either bloodline, and that's unfair because of course all prejudices are pointless and lame, and it's not like we can choose who we are born as or what skin colour or nationalities we're going to be born as.

I'm sure there's any number of other paths I'm omitting either because I don;'t know enough about them or even know of them at all, but anything I blunder across is going to catch my attention for a bit anyway, even if I eventually decide it isn't my cuppa.

I've named my self as a proud pagan for that long now. It's also a massive umbrella term over here in the U.k. Under it you have Druid's, electric type's, Heathen's so on so forth.

I fall in the Bracket of the Heathen Pagan. I love Norse mythology and have done from a early age soe when trying to decide what path I wanted to walk down when I started learning about it, I looked up two cultures I adored. The old Egyptian belief system with Ra the sun god being well top dog and then The Norse belief system with Odin and fellow company. I tried both for a while and eventually I was being pulled more and more into the Norse side of things and there I have stuck. I get to go to moots every now and then and see other fellow pagan's. And next year I'm off to the Beltaine ritual up at Thornbrough henge to meet with old friends.

Apologies for being conspicuously absent. Kids were home during the summer and I needed some time to settle them into their routines.

The area I live in is very VERY conservative and Christian, so anyone outside of that paradigm has to fend for themselves to find others. Most of the pagan community is rather quiet with a few exceptions. Unfortunately, the groups tend to be too far for my family to travel to investigate them further or very difficult to meet with because pagan groups here are not stable - lots of political in-group arguing. I don't want my kids around that, or myself for that matter.

We're becoming increasingly secular in our home and less pagan. Part of me feels a bit bummed out about this development, but I figure we're in a bit of a waning stage. The leaders of a local Anglo-Saxon Heathen group disbanded. Very cool people, but it seemed like all they were doing was studying Heathenry academically. I prefer to boil down the concepts and live my life following those ethics than wondering about how they brewed mead back in the days of yore or what a boar hunt may have looked like reenacted. Not bashing, but it's ain't my thing ;) After living my life as a Mormon for 25 years (I'm 49), I am pretty turned off by ironclad rules based on sketchy historic references.

How would you find ways to follow or practice your beliefs if you are a pagan or religious/spiritual outsider in your community?