Crescent

If you make people think that they are thinking, they will love you; but if you really make them think, they will hate you. ~ Aristotle

I am an Eclectic Polytheist and practicing Witch. My devotional practices are generally adapted from historical sources. I celebrate most of the Wiccanesque holidays because they connect with the seasons in my area. My magical practices are very eclectic, deriving from a variety of traditions. My patrons are Bast and Set, and I also honor Artemis and the Morrigan.

In terms of spirituality, I was basically raised by wolves. My mother doesn't believe in organized religion, so I was raised to believe the Bible was a mythology book like all the others I had. I learned to read well early and became interested in the occult right after I learned how to spell it. I read many of the classic occult texts and histories, as well as the sacred writings of many religions. (I have a mild tendency towards monomania. They used to ban me from the school library if a class was doing a paper on a topic I was interested in.)

Before anyone had a chance to indoctrinate me, I developed my own ideas. I've always had the feeling that there was something larger out there. The various Pagan gods I read about seemed a lot friendlier than the Christian god so I prayed to them instead. ;) They answered. I developed a devotion to Bast and Artemis in particular when I was young, and it simply never occurred to me that they could be seen as parts of a single entity. I tried being a soft polytheist/duotheist for a while when I was a teenager, after discovering more modern Neopagan books, but it never felt right and I got back to my old ways pretty quick. It had a certain amount of intellectual appeal, but it sucked all the real religious experience out if it for me. It was like calling someone on the phone and getting the "this call cannot be completed as dialed" recording.

I basically snuck in right before the pop-Wicca explosion, so I read a lot of the older (pre-Cunningham) Neopagan authors when I became aware of modern Paganism. I tend to be rather old-school in my approach for someone of my age and background. The prudery and anti-intellectualism becoming more prevalent in the Pagan community worries me, along with the preaching that we are "too harmless to persecute." I hope as our community matures that we learn to reconcile our differences without losing the strength of diversity that we possess.