The Path of a Christian Witch Read Online Free PDF Page A

very nice. The new semester for level one was starting the next day. I had to make a choice.
    I took a lump of clay and started to fiddle with it to relieve my anxiety. I tried to make a cup, a gnome, a flower, but nothing worked. The anxiety was flowing all the way down to my fingernails, and the clay refused to cooperate.
    In frustration, I banged the lump of clay on the table and stared at it blindly. As my gaze started to focus, I saw her face. She was veiled, sitting on a mountaintop. Her veil covered her head and went down to drape the mountain itself, so that she seemed to be one with the mountain. I started to clean out the lines of the clay, making each curve smoother, each crevice more defined. Line by line, stroke by stroke, the Goddess entered my world. I took her in my hand, and looking at her I made a decision. I would learn more about her. I joined Crescent Moon.
    [ 1 ]. T. Lobsang Rampa, Les Secrets de l’Aura (Paris: Éditions J’ai Lu, 1971).
    [ 2 ]. Alma Daniel, Timothy Wyllie, and Andrew Ramer, Ask Your Angels (New York: Ballantine, 1992).

The Search: Introduction to a Paradox
    First Steps
    “You must be Adelina.”
    A young woman with long, curly hair smiled at me. She was wearing a T-shirt and faded jeans and sporting a pair of sneakers. No black fingernails, dark makeup, long robes. I looked around the room: there was a young woman with glasses and frizzy hair, another woman my age, a young man who could be Indian, and a huge fellow with long hair.
    No goth queens, no vampires, no hags . . . I was almost disappointed. But at least I could breathe a little better.
    I soon understood why the teacher knew my name. Everyone here knew each other. Unlike me, they were already practicing Pagans; they had read all the classics and were familiar with the Pagan community. They were taking classes to cement what they already knew. I was starting from scratch.
    I sat down, waiting for the class to start. Across the room I heard one of the young women burst out laughing. “Don’t beat yourself up about it,” she told her neighbor. “After all, we’re not Christian.”
    I cowered in my chair. I knew that nothing was meant by the remark, and I did not take it personally. But I had no intention at this point of broadcasting my Christianity.
    I didn’t want to bring up my Christian beliefs for two major reasons. First of all, I knew full well that many of these people had been hurt, as I had been, by one form or another of Christianity. Many had rebelled against a confining, narrow-minded Christian upbringing and had chosen Paganism as a way of fulfilling themselves. For many, Christianity was synonymous with patriarchy, the degradation of women, sexual repression, and the rejection of anything and anyone that does not fit into the established order. I completely understood why someone would want to reject such an institution. I didn’t want to bring all that back into their sacred havens. I had made a clear distinction in my mind between the church as a political institution and the teachings of Christ. Often the two did not match, and I felt no obligation to follow the dictates of a church that did not follow Christ’s teachings of love and humility. But this was not the time and place to get into a philosophical argument on the divide between church and faith.
    The second reason for my remaining “in the Christian closet” was because of the historical treatment of Witches by the church. As I learned more about Paganism, I came to know more about what are called the “burning times.” During the Inquisition, countless men and women were tried, tortured, and brutally murdered on counts of Witchcraft. They were tried by a biased tribunal of priests and bishops who coerced testimonies under torture. Often, hearsay of suspect behavior (like healing someone! . . . ) would be sufficient to arrest women and interrogate them. Under torture, they would confess to devil worship or sorcery and be sentenced to