Why I Am (Still) a Born Again Witch

My honeymoon in the Pagan community is slowly but surely coming to an end. I am now in my fourth year of identifying as a Witch and gone are the days when I thought the Pagan community was flawless and Witchcraft an endless ride of power and bliss.

And yet I am still a Witch and believe I always will be. For one, I have nowhere else to go. I lost my evangelical Christian faith and can never go back. Although I tried to make it work, progressive Christianity failed to become a spiritual home for me. My attempt at having no religion ended when I felt empty and stuck. So I turned to the religion that I attracted me the most, Witchcraft, and here I am.

Despite the flame wars, drama, predators, and dysfunction (yes, some of it is very ugly and no, I will not link to any of it), I love the Pagan community. To me it’s nothing new. I’ve seen and lived through enough infighting during my Christian years to last me a lifetime. It is easy to be tempted into losing all faith in humanity. I have never, however, seen the counterbalance of wisdom, kindness, grace, and respect with which many Pagan leaders respond. Never. And that, to me, is invaluable – a pearl of great price, to borrow an image from the bible.

And I am still in love. Four years in, honeymoon ending, I am still deeply in love.

I love the Pagan community

Yes, I am listing community first. I suck very badly at being a solitary practitioner. I need my religion to be communal and I won’t settle for a community that is toxic. The bad stuff I expect; it’s a sad part of human nature, aggravated by a toxic and oppressive society. But the fact that so many good people work hard to overcome the challenges,  stand up for the marginalized, and create safe spaces, continues to amaze me. This community is where I feel at home.

I love my mentors and teachers

When Jesus lost some of his followers, he asked those sticking around if they were going to leave also. One of them responded by saying “to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” I’ve thought of this story from the bible often, because I feel this way about my mentors and teachers of Witchcraft. Where else would I go? I’ve been in many communities all over the country, but the healthiest, most empowered people I have found are those who are now in my life. When I look around and ask myself who I look up to and would want to emulate, everyone on my list identifies as a Witch.

I am not saying that Witches are superior or somehow better humans than people of other religions or other Pagan paths. It’s just my experience, the first individuals I met whose lives inspired me were Witches. Through them I met many other Witches, including additional mentors and teachers. Their support and wisdom alone would be enough for me to stick around.

I love ritual

All the bells and smells and robes and flowers and skulls and candles and the eerie music and drumming and chanting and dancing and moving of energy  – all of it. I love a good ritual. I love the big celebratory rituals, dancing the spiral with over a thousand people each year, the cones of power, the trance journeys. I love how colorful and creative our rituals are, and how often they are deeply transformative rites of passage. To me rituals make reality seem brighter, like there are suddenly more colors than I used to see.

I love magic

It works. Every time a piece of magic works, I am blown away. You’d think I’d be used to it by now, but I am still blown away by every spell that comes back fulfilled. I’m not sure I’ll ever lose the sense of awe and wonder. In fact, I hope I won’t. I will leave at this and with an effort refrain from telling one story after another about my experiences with magic.

I love Pagan culture

We’re such a weird bunch that for once in my life I don’t feel like I’m the freak. In Pagan culture, I’m practically normal, and that’s to say something. I enjoy the freedom of expression and diversity within Witchcraft. I enjoy our sex positivity and how our religion is embodied. I love the emphasis on experience and ecstatic experiences.

What about the gods?

This is a random list of the first few things that came to my sleep deprived mind. What is absent is any mention of gods. My relationship with deity is so complicated, that I have been hesitant to write about it. It also changes often. Some days I think of myself as polytheistic, some days I’m sure I am a monist, and some days I wonder if any of it matters. My practice is currently not deity focused, but centered around community. That may very well change, as I have recently had hints in that direction, but for now I am content with a relationship to the gods that defies my theological categories.

Born Again Witch

As for the Born Again part of Born Again Witch – it is a nod to my religion of origin. I do have a non-exclusive relationship with Jesus, but it is not the Jesus of American Christianity. I no longer identify as a Christian, nor do I consider myself a Christopagan. The born-again experience, however, is something with which I identify, albeit in a non-Christian context. When I became a Witch, I felt like I was Born Again. I had come home, I had embraced my true self, I had embarked on a journey of healing, I had found my people. All of that sounded so much like the born-again experience I missed out on as someone raised in born-again Christianity. I never got to have a dramatic conversion and life change until I found Witchcraft, so I chose to reclaim the term by calling myself a Born Again Witch.