For ten years I was a neopagan. It began as rebellion — against parents I felt had betrayed me, against a culture that seemed to have abandoned me. I was angry, too smart for my own good, and still unable to find a decent job with the English degree I’d been told would be golden. So I turned elsewhere. After all, wasn’t it all the same god anyway?
The first time I stepped into a witchy store, I understood the seduction. A faint cloud of patchouli hung in the air, drifting from the ever-burning incense behind the counter. Smudge sticks lay in little bundles beneath the register. Crystals crowded the shelves in every shape and size, from pocket stones to amethyst geodes big enough to catch the sun and scatter it across the room. Dragons, scarves, and paper kites dangled from the ceiling in a jumble of color. A cluttered bookcase leaned against the wall, half filled with the mysteries of the universe, most of them stamped with the mark of Llewellyn Press. Tarot manuals sprawled above a glass display of decks, each promising to unveil secret wisdom. Herbs and tinctures, tiny vials of oil, cloudy crystal balls. Glass unicorns stood watch beside brass pipes I didn’t yet recognize as bongs. Nothing was neat, nothing was orderly — and that was part of the charm. The whole store buzzed with the promise of hidden power, if only you could learn how to reach out and take it.
I was enchanted, but I didn’t have much money to spend. So I started with Tarot cards. People told me they were complicated, hard to master, not for beginners. But I was smart — I knew I could do it. My grandmother had told me stories about my great-great-grandfather, the old Appalachian faith healer who could stop blood and draw out fire. And hadn’t I seen her speak with the dead myself? I knew I was different. I believed I was set apart — greater, more gifted, more blessed than ordinary people. The cards felt like confirmation, a doorway into power I was sure I had always carried within me.
And you know, I was right. I was very, very good with the cards — uncanny with friends, downright astounding with strangers. I don’t know whether God, in His pity and mercy, granted me flashes of real insight, or whether I simply had a sharper instinct for people than I realized. But the readings landed. More than one person told me I should charge money for it. I never did. Even then, something in me balked. It felt wrong, as if I were trespassing in a place I had no right to go.
Next I turned to spellbooks — but I could never take them seriously. They struck me as silly, almost childish. The business of lighting candles and chanting over them felt absurd. And when I did try, and something actually happened — that was hideous. Once, during a séance, things stirred that I will not describe. Don’t ask. It was enough to show me that there was something beyond me, something greater, something dark. Neopaganism had been teaching me that nothing was greater than me — that the Goddess was in me, that I was the Goddess, strong enough to bend the world to my will. But it was a lie.
That was when I turned back to God. You know — the Christian version. The One who is actually real.
You see, neopaganism promises power. But it’s empty. It offers spirituality without surrender, ritual without repentance, mystery without obedience. It’s all the good chocolates and none of the nougats — but the good chocolates taste sour and wrong once you bite down.
I am immensely grateful that in the end I found my way back to God. With Him, the bad things are bearable. You don’t feel the frantic need to control everything, because you know there is a Plan. And gradually you begin to see: we would not love the light if we did not know the dark. We would not cherish beauty if we had never seen ugliness. We would not treasure our short years on earth if they stretched on forever. It is our impermanence — our imperfection — that gives life its poignancy, its sweetness, its joy.
And yes, it is our lack of control. We cannot command the world; we can only bend ourselves to endure it. We cannot remove the fire, but when it washes over us, it can leave us stronger and purer, if only we will accept it rather than fight.
Neopaganism is just one, very visible symptom of a deeper disease. It pretends to be the old way, the way before Christ, but in reality it’s only a modern attempt at control with a veneer of age and beauty pasted on. It is no different from many of the other ills modern life has given us: failed marriages, children raised without roots or direction, communities hollowed out by transience and loneliness, technology that connects us yet leaves us more isolated than ever. These things are empty, or the results of an empty life. As with spirituality, the older ways usually work better. They are truer.
That is why we are conservatives. We bend to change, but we do not embrace it as inherently better than what came before. We grow in strength because we pass through the fire, not because we try to avoid it. And we hold to what is good and true, even when the world laughs, because deep down everyone longs for the same thing: not control, but a life with meaning, rooted in permanence, not in passing fashions.
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