Hello dearest sister and brother of mine!  I am so sorry to have to inform you that today's story is going to be the start of some extremely disturbing and controversial topics I must write about.  If you ever want to understand the true battles we face in our life, I feel the need to share my upcoming stories with you and hope that you can contain any anger I might generate from this and future topics.  

     Throughout my entire life I felt I was a Christian, loved God, and tried my best to do the right things in the world while I am here, but I never really addressed the 'Witchcraft" part of my life, that is until the spring of 2006!  I never thought the Supernatrual things I engaged in with my sister were evil and still don't think it is to this date, but I understand people's concern with the occult world and why most people should avoid it.  Before I continue on I want to warn you that although I consider myself a full Christian person, I am going to be as neutral as possible as while I address the Christian and Pagan community that might stumble upon my readings.  In the end I hope you can give God a chance but that is not going to affect my friendship, my love, and my faith in you regardless of what choice you make!  I believe all people regardless of the religious spectrum they choose to follow or refrain from including Atheist have a right to their beliefs.  I have so much faith in my God that if I am so blessed to have you in my life we can be family regardless of your beliefs, because as long as we have contact with one another I can show you the love that my God has for me and for you as well.  Actually in Christian terms I am the worst Christian you will ever meet because I am not going to pressure you to come to God or try to scare you to give your life to Jesus.  That is something that has to come from your own heart and desire to have a relationship with Him!  I would love for you to have Jesus in your life but I understand if you can't, just know that I love you unconditionally and have faith in you to make the right decisions in your life, I will stand by your side!

     Anyway my apologies lol, getting back to my story in the spring of 2006, the internet was really starting to take off and I began a spiritual journey as part of my New Year's resolution to try and understand why there are so many different religions in the world and more importantly why most religious people try to demonize people that are outside of their faith?  What I found out in my studies is that if you break off all contact with people of other faiths the only information you have to rely on is your assumptions of what people of other faiths are engaging in.  From a Christian perspective you only have 2 choices:  You are either for God or the Devil, there is no middle ground to choose from, but from a Pagan perspectrive God and the Devil are not even part of the equation when it comes to worship and from a Wiccan perspective, life is centered around Earth and Nature not God and the devil.  you can't have a valid discussion with either group until you recoginze the fundamental differences of what the 2 groups believe in.  Well in the Spring months of 2006 I began chatting on the Yahoo chatroom sites and hung out in the Christian and Pagan rooms they had available and it was a very eye opening and comforting experience for me to take part in.  On one particular night I was in one of the Christian themed chatrooms of Yahoo I befriended a kind lady who went by the pen name of "Mrs. Fuggles".  She told me that she just finished writing a book about a Priest that discovered 3 young female witches were attending his weekly church services and would I be interested in reading her work?  Wow, I was honored that she chose me to read her book and couldn't wait to read how the young witches were going to show the preacher how they were wise beyond their years and how they used their powers to heal and help the ones around them, well as I read her book I got a rude awakening! ;)

     When the preacher confornted the witches in his church after everyone left for the day, these young witches were evil people that wanted to steal baby souls for Satan!  Oh what was I thinking?  How Niave could I be?  Did I really think a Christian was going to have a positive story about a witch in a Christian themed book?  Apparently so haha,  but on that faithful day I snapped!  I decided right then and there that I was going to do as much research on Wicca as I could to find out if witches really were satanic evil people or were something entirely different!  I started my research the next morning and found so many amazing things the following months!

     One thing I realized in my research is that Wicca and Paganism in general is as fragmented and split up as Christianity is.  In Christianity there seems to be two main groups from Catholism to Prostestants that has so many sub groups within it's system.  You have Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox churches, Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist, Non Demontial churches, Mormons, Calvanist, Pentecostal churches to name a few. You also have Islam, Muslims and Judaism that has ties with Christianity .  It's actually very overwhelming to see how diverse and split the Christian religion really is but so is Paganism.  You have everything including Wicca, Dianic, Druids, Shamism, Celtic Polytheism, Taoism, Shintoism, Buddhism, Hinduism and the never ending list goes on from all the views of what people believe the Divine Creator is! Some people are Monothestic believing in a single God or Goddess, others are Polythestic believing in a Goddess and God or several Gods and Goddesses!  There are also some that do not believe in a God at all but more of a source of perfection we don't understand yet?

     That is what my research led me to and I was lucky enough to meet some of the people from the religions I mentioned above, but  Wicca was the religion that I was most drawn to and the more I read about it's beliefs the more shocked I was to see how all the things I was doing over the years fell in line with most Wicca practices.  It was the most eye opening experience I had and I felt so blessed to see God from a different perspective.  It was strange because even though Wicca Was a completely different religion from Christianity, it didn't weaken my faith in God, it strengthen it and that is how I found out how important religious diversity is in order to spiritually grow and mature in the individual faith you follow.

     I had several months to prepare but as I was reading about Wicca and Paganism in general I was looking for ways to actually meet with people of these faiths to see what they were like, well I found out from a New Age book store that San Antonio was going to have a Pagan Pride day in September and that I should check it out.  September was a month away and when that faithful day came in 2006 I was nervous.  I still held on to that crazy belief that these people were somehow Satanic and possibly held rituals that were bizzare and when I arrived at the staging area I noticed that there were police in the area haha!  This was not very reassuring, but I went to the grounds anyway and I what I experienced that day was life changing!

     The people there were very friendly, they had all kinds of workshops set up from pet adoptions, to signing up to clean our rivers and parks to a very family friendly atmosphere and I was amazed to see how much the pagan parents loved their children it was amazing.  One of the rituals they had during the day was to ask everyone's help to move a large yarn ball all over the room to symbolically show the connection we have with one another through the string we held as we strung it all around us in the room we were in.  It was such a nice day and I felt so embarrassed of how I let my fear fill in the blanks of what I thought these people were until I actually went to their event and found out that they were no different than what I was.  Just normal people who loved their family, tried to do the right things in life and celebrate their religious gathering and festivities in peace.  

     Well from 2006 to 2016 I embraced Witchcraft and incorporated as much of it as I could into my Christian life with no regrets.  It was a strange time, but everything seemed to work out well.  During those 10 years I tried my best to encourage people of other faiths to have dialogue with one another so they can see the human behind the monster they created in their minds from fear of not knowing them.  One thing I found out is that if you lose contact with people of other faiths your religion becomes a cult when your group shuts itself off from the rest of the world.  Don't let the paranoia, the fear of perscution or the demonization of someone outside your faith grow or your religion will eventually self destruct!

     Those 10 years of religious exploration was some of my most happiest times on this Earth, I feel so blessed and lucky to have met so many diverse people living their lives peacefully as they were trying to understand the fundamental things of life I was trying to find out for myself as well.  Those fundamental questions of where did we come from?  Why are we here?  What is our purpose in life and what happens to us once we die?  Are the most important philosophical questions we need to ask as we search for the answers to the meaning of life!  Some choose Science, others choose Religion but as long as we are searching for those answers I will still have hope for humanity.

     So Mrs. Fuggles I am sorry that you couldn't see the human behind the witch in your story, but I hope you can see that there are people from all kinds of faiths that are trying to understand what this life is all about!  As for me, I can't prove my death experiences were real or the God I believe in exists, I can only witness the experiences I believed I had in my life and the faith I have in the Divine that is looking over us with love!  I intuitively feel that perpetual love, that missing piece of life that is out there for us to reunite with!  I believe I found that missing piece of my life with Jesus Christ and hope other people can find Him as well but if not it is ok!  I have faith in the people that are in my life and as long as they keep searching I won't give up on them because they are my family and I love them dearly!  I love you too Mr.s Fuggles and hope one day you can see what I have seen in my life!