Rev Janet Callahan

Priestess and Author

PBP – Beginnings

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In the Beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth.

–Genesis 1:1

When I was in middle school, I attended confirmation classes (not entirely willingly; I think in the grand scheme of things, it was the beginning of the end for me as a Christian).  Apparently in the “good old days” the class stood up at the front of the church and people asked them questions of doctrine; by the time I got there, someone realized that putting a bunch of 7th and 8th graders on the spot was maybe not a good idea, so we were to write essays about our favorite Bible verse and what it said about our faith.

Most of my friends and classmates picked things from the New Testament about love and redemption…I picked Genesis 1:1.  (Yes, I was a strange child, even then). But the thing is, where we came from is often germane to how we got to where we are, and that seemed to me to be an important step.

But where we came from – where we begin – is not an easy thing to understand. It comes down to what we see as True (as opposed to what is true – factual) – that Truth that lies at the heart of how the universe works.

What is Truth, and what is God?

We Pagan folk believe in a lot of different creation stories. All of them are True, even when they contradict themselves and each other, and even when none of them are true.

There’s the Descent of the Goddess, as told in the Vangelo Delle Streghe. The Norse have a myth of ice that becomes a cow, who then frees a man from an ice block, who becomes the father of Odin; Odin and his brothers kill a giant and make the world from him. The Egyptians have Nu, the chaos of churning water, and when it recedes, the land appears…and then many different stories about how the earth and all its creatures come from that. Floods and formless voids abound, but the details differ from culture to culture, each telling the people where they came from.

Truth then, is our beginning, and it tells us where we have come from, and who we are. It doesn’t necessarily tell us where we’re going, but it gives us a firm foundation for making that journey.

 

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Pagan Blog Project: Ordinary

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If all you knew of Pagans was photos from festivals and TV shows, you’d think you could pick us all out on the street by our long flowing robes, gothy hair, and dinner plate sized pentacles.

Oh, and there’d be tie-dye everywhere.

But the thing is, most of us are just regular people. We have jobs. We have families. We live in houses & apartments – rural and suburbs and big cities too.

We eat, we sleep, we poop – like the kids’ book says, Everyone Poops

We’re just ordinary people, like everyone else. We just happen to belong to a faith that isn’t one of the big-name ones.

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Pagan Blog Project: Kali

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Kali, who I commonly refer to with the epithet “Big, Dark, and Scary,” has been one of my patrons since I started working towards my mother priestess initiation 6 years ago.

Her statement to me then – that she would help me with anything if I asked wisely – is as true today as it was then. I’m cautious about the things I ask for her help with, because frankly, she IS scary at times, and if you don’t occasionally get a little creeped out when you realize that Gods and Goddesses are a lot like us, but with more power, you probably should contemplate it for a while.

She is not as one-dimensional as she’s often portrayed, but then that’s true of many of the old Gods. She is kind and loving, and she’s a drill sergeant, and she’s occasionally destruction incarnate…but sometimes that’s what we need.

Finally, a couple bits of UPG (unverified personal gnosis) – she is sarcastic, and she likes dark liquor, particularly bourbun.

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Pagan Blog Project: Individual Immanence

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икона за подаръкA short post this week for PBP.

You are Goddess. You are beautiful.

So were the words of the Dianic circle I trained under. Wiccans and many other Pagan faiths believe that the divine is immanent – present in everything we see.

By definition, then, the divine essence is within us, and by extension, we are divine. We do not need a priest, priestess, or minister to intercede with God on our behalf – we can do that on our own.

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Pagan Blog Project: Habits

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Old habits die hard.

Just about a year ago, I sat in a hospital bed, watching in horror as reports started coming in on the tornado that took out much of Joplin, Missouri.

In 1996, I lived in Joplin.

Happily, I can report that the lovely (and then brand-new) apartment building I lived in at the time still stands at the end of a little cul-de-sac off Connecticut Ave, right next to the railroad tracks.

In 1996, while living in Joplin, I started learning about Pagan religions –  I had a friend who offered to teach me shamanism as they practiced it, I bought a copy of Cunningham’s Guide for the Solitary Practitioner, and I gathered a small collection of books on ceremonial magick.

Living in Joplin, by myself, through a summer of stormy weather, I was first introduced to the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, commonly known as the LBRP.

It’s kind of funny – even though it’s been nearly 16 years, and even though I went through a 6 month period of part of my training doing the LBRP daily, I still cannot remember the words, though I can conjure the images in my mind quite easily. Rote memorization has never been my strong suit.

But even with that daily practice, the habit of daily practice still eludes me.

The church of my childhood didn’t push for daily practice either, but at least there I had the various orders of service memorized by the time I was 5 – weekly attendance made that easy.

And I think that’s true of a lot of us Pagans. Sure, some of us have covens or groves or other groups that gather for Sabbats or full moons (or maybe even both). But it’s hard to extend that into a daily habit.

I know Pagans who meditate daily. For a while we lit a candle and incense daily (and then we had a child on oxygen, and then a second child on oxygen, which cut our use of candles dramatically). Some folks do a daily devotion, or daily offerings….and the best I can manage is a quick daily prayer.

I’m still searching for the religious habit that becomes a habit. But until then I’ll keep plugging away at celebrating full moons and Sabbats.

Check out my new energy work page, http://www.facebook.com/GoodVibrationsEnergyStudio