Defining My Own Practices and Spirituality - Part 1

In my last blog post I mentioned a challenge on Tumblr for creating a Grimoire. The current prompts are all about preparation, and within that, defining what your own practices are, what you believe, what you work with and things like that. I have made many attempts to put together where all my interests started and I've finally put together a piece that gets out what I have to say. A piece I can work off of and add on too. While I never expect people to believe or truly understand me, I will leave it here with the hopes of continuing it further. It is a huge part of me I never get to share, and this is the first time I don't feel silly about it at all.

• What do I believe in and things of that nature?

   If everything and nothing was a proper answer to give, that would be mine. I was raised southern baptist, I spent many nights reading the Bible with my grandfather (on my mother's side) and loving God every bit as hard as he did. I am not the first, and won't be the last to have had such a spiritual person in my life and have lost them as well. He passed away when I was going on thirteen. My Uncle Jim, who was very much like my grandfather, Eugene, passed away on my 18th birthday, and my Grandmother (on my father's side), Marilyn, passed away December 7th, 2014. You always hear how God pulls his children to Heaven... the hard part is when the people he/she/it seems to pull away the people that truly matter, the people who would give up everything in God's name because they love so hard and so much and want everyone to do the same. These people in my life loved, and they never forced a word down anyone's throat as you often see today. They were kind and amazing and it breaks my heart to know they are gone, but at the same time, I know they are at peace, they are with their maker and where they want to be. 

     I say all this because my grandfather dying was a huge, huge blow to my existence, and of course I blamed God. When my uncle died, that was the last straw, but there were so many other things before that, that I knew wholeheartedly that God was a being... a being amongst many more. My dad will say that he has many names, and many forms. I however believe that God, and other supreme beings, myth and legend all have roots somewhere, that enough stories, enough encounters, enough faith means that there is always going to be more than one version; That while the Greeks had Hades, and the Romans had Pluto, they had their own Gods, and the two of them could very well have been separate entities that partied in their underworld lairs. I'm not about to deny the existence of God because that would be foolish, but I sure as hell am not going to credit God as the one and only being out there, especially not when I've spent most of my life dedicated to Egyptian Gods and the sacred rituals of their dead and the passing into the afterlife. 

    Even before my Grandfather died I knew that I was obsessed with Ancient Egypt. I wanted to be an archaeologist before anything... I wanted to travel and to explore and all sorts of other things children often want to do. It all started when my brother obtained a guitar pick charm with an ankh engraved onto it, on a string necklace out of the quarter machines you often find in discount stores. He didn't care for it, but it was his and I couldn't have it right off when I knew I wanted it more than anything. We would often clean and I remember singling in out so it wouldn't be lost, and eventually, it became mine. I'm now twenty fine and I still have it. The Ankh, the key to eternal life, it was and is still very much my everything. It was my first tattoo when I turned sixteen and I have a key collection that's been growing quite nicely recently, and it's not just skeleton keys, but any key in general. There's just something about them I'll never be able to truly define.

    Ancient Egypt started my love for the afterlife, from there it became the paranormal, and then the undead and death in general. My parents are always baffled as to my collection of skulls, and the need for the dark and morbid. I just think I'm better off in the shadows. 

    As far as my witchcraft practice goes, the last thing it is set in stone because it has become about tarot and crystals now, trying to divine with crystal skulls and scrying, on top of the fact I once considered myself an empath. I obsess over the Constantine comics and a lot of other things that involve darker magicks and creatures from the beyond. I mention Constantine because the man, the comics, the movie and later the show, they've all been a great impact and recently I made the joke that if you could be reincarnated as a character, I was him in a past life. While that may not be possible, I do believe I was an Egyptian Priest/ess in a past life, and had a few dreams growing up, one where I woke up speaking another language and my step-sister at the time had heard me. Not that I can prove any of this now, and I suppose this is where faith, of any sort, comes in.

    One day, I hope to list all of my little experiences from out-of-body ones to general paranormal one's, but it is one of those things that make me feel silly writing or typing up, and maybe that is a way of saying I should keep them to myself. At this point in my life, I really don't care who believes me or not, what I do care about is the fact that they just need to accept it. They are more then happy to think I'm crazy or any variation of the word, but the last thing they need to bother with is trying to argue me out of my point or my belief, because I have a few of my own arguments and very few people like when you throw their religion back at them. 

    There's probably quite a bit more to this, however, this is my spiritual basis, a rocky foundation that has now seen so much growth in the past year, and I'm proud of what I've discovered recently and where I am. I look forward to wherever this journey might now lead me.