I am going out on a limb here, and share something with you that I'm fairly sure I haven't discussed in the five years that I've been blogging. Nothing earth shattering, of course. Some of you might have already figured it out. I know that I won't be judged too harshly by most of you. I hope. I almost deleted this entry three times. I don't know why. Maybe I don't like hinting at any vulnerability that I might possess. It's just not my scene man...

I've always said that I was an agnostic who was a little bit of a pagan. And really, this has been more or less true. What does it mean to be "a little bit of a pagan"? I don't even know exactly what I meant by that. You're either pagan or you're not. I've spent a lot of years, more than I care to count, trying to come to terms with where I fit into that world. It's not always a simple path. I've always felt at odds with it, because I knew what I didn't want. When you can't get past what you don't want, that is all you're going to see. How can you know what you do want, when you're so blinded by your own judgments of things?

I don't believe in God, gods, goddesses, as deities or entities. These things are created by humans. Some of us have a need for a spiritual outlet, and these entities and the philosophies that we base on them enrich our lives and give us meaning. If we need them to. There are plenty of people in the world who do not. I've always been one of them. I just don't buy into the concept in the manner that theists and polytheists do. Good on them, isn't good for me. How can I be a pagan when I wholeheartedly connect with so many parts, but not that part? I always thought that the polytheist part was the important part. Or so I thought.

What most people know about paganism has a lot to do with Wicca. I'm not Wiccan, and I cannot say at this point that it would really be something that I could embrace. It's not me, although I do respect those who practice it. We have some similar views. I'm just not interested in it. It doesn't talk to me. I've also met far too many professed Wiccans who knew less about the history of their religion than I did. Yeah, you don't know that Margaret Murray was full of crap? You don't know who Gerald Gardner is? What? Once I knew that Christianity wasn't for me, I read as much as I could on many different spiritual philosophies. Wicca was just one of many. If it talked to me, I'd read a little bit more. Back in the days when the internets were young, there was a little bit of information. Not much, but a little bit. I couldn't afford to buy books, so I looked where I could. The pagan paths resonated with me in ways that others didn't. I did my best to figure it out for me on my own. With no one to talk about it with, I was pretty much on my own. I only knew Wiccans, and as I said, I just wasn't interested in it.

It left me in an odd position. I always felt like a fraud or a phony. A traitor in the midst of other pagans. I've always felt like an outsider looking in. I could never really be a part of any of it, no matter how much I wanted to, because I just couldn't make the connection. The vital something was missing. It was easier just to be an agnostic, with a love of all things pagan, than to be a pagan. I do some pagan things, and there are some pagan things that I don't do. I've accepted for a long time that while I don't know everything, that what is intuitive seems to be fine for me.

It's hard to be in a weird place where you can't really be anything. I'd essentially given up trying to understand. I hadn't done any pagan type stuff for quite a few years. My heart just wasn't in it anymore.

I've recently figured it out. Intuition gave me a rather large thump on the head. Intuition said... "You're probably a pantheist, stupid!".

I've come to believe over the last few years that there is something to all of this. It may not be true, but part of me likes the idea. I want to believe, but it's always been hard for me. There is such great beauty and such ugliness in Nature and in people. We take concepts such as duality from what we observe in the world around us. We are reflections of that. It's a kind of divinity that we don't always acknowledge. I don't believe in "God" or gods. I do believe in energy. Energy is everything, and is in everything. You can call it God, you can call it a life force, you can call it Nature. Pantheists believe in the concept of "god" as an abstract  force equivalent to Nature. In everything and part of everything. I get this. It works well for me. In a world of energy that we see and feel, wouldn't it make sense to personify it in some way? Making it accessible to us? Making it more real and tangible? Giving us a way in which to focus on it? You could do this with a number of things, this is how I see god(s). We do these things to make our connection to these energies real and meaningful for us. At least I think so. The agnostic in me says the verdict is still out, but the pagan in me says... EUREKA!

The pagan in me also says that even though this is right for my spiritual needs, it's not right for everyone. Do what you've got to do. Wiccans say "Do What Thou Wilt, an it harm none". I say "Do what you've got to do, and try not to be an asshole about it." After my little thwack on the head... I started to see the patterns and the connections spiral out in front of me. Weird things began to happen. I realized that I'd known what was true for me all along, I was just too busy buying shoes to listen. Let's just say I've definitely made up for the great gaping whole in my spiritual life through shopping. A little balance is in order. Scary, huh?

I'm a Pagan who is a little bit of an agnostic.

It's taken 12 years. That's certainly long enough. I'm not really interested in joining a circle or hoping on the Asatru, Druid, or Feri bandwagons. Still, I'm trying to figure stuff out. I'm just trying to reach out more. I'm trying to be open minded. I'm trying to actually see how this all works for me, but with a sincerity and confidence that I couldn't have mustered before. I've been so firmly rooted in an outsider looking in, or more of a field researcher kind of a role. Now is the time for a more active role. I keep getting weird little coincidences and occurrences. It must be right.

Okay. I've just got to get over feeling weird about talking about it. There's no need to. I am still fabulous, and I still abhor all things hippie.

I'm not going to bore you with a lot of details, and I hope that you won't think less of me. This is my biggest fear. People have such a negative connotation about it, and I've had too many hurtful things said to me in the past. I needed to be able to talk about it. Thanks for putting up with me.