A Wiccan deconversion, but still Discordian at heart.

[Anymouse]

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When I was a younger, more naive person I consumed an astonishing amount of information about wicca. It was extremely interesting to me (and it totally got me laid, so, plus 5 billion on that count). Went from that to the Golden Dawn and The OTO. Pagan reconstructionism. There really is a lot to like about wicca (all of the above really) but in the end I learned too much about the origins of wicca, and the differences between paganism and wicca (from which many wiccans feel that they draw spiritual authority). Not to mention meeting a ton of verifiable nutjobs and cat ladies. I still have my witchvox account, I still have tons of books. I'll never let them go because I like the artwork. I like tarot decks as well, picked up an awesome deck in germany that I gave to my mother as a gift. I can set up the traditional cross reading, some novel ones, I can work out a natal horoscope, I was really into all of this stuff despite taking it with an immense grain of salt. I used to opine on how wonderful a resurgent paganism would be divorced from the supernatural. It seems like a shoe in for a relevant religion for our times. The focus on nature and balance and so forth. These are of course our own modern interpretations of what paganism was and it was disappointing to me to learn so much about it that I became disillusioned with it. You've abandoned the faith, but the principles are worth holding onto yes? The rede works even if the lord and lady are make-believe, in my opinion at least.
(I really do wish that I could recapture that initial sense of wonder and provisional acceptance)

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Roger wilco on the cat ladies. As for the sense of wonder, all one really has to do is look up at night (if you live outside a city) at the Universe . . .

And to my Sweetie above, agnosticism is indeed a position on a deity, that one doesn't or can't know if one exists. Theism does not ask you to know, it asks you to believe. You can believe regardless of knowledge. But if you know, it is not much in the way of faith is it?

An atheist by definition only believes in things that can be known, and suspends belief in those that aren't until reasonable proof is put forth. In my mind an agnostic is an atheist who doesn't like the latter term.