Question number 2 from Write Your Witchcraft:

How do I see the divine?

I grew up in a fairly neutral household with a Christian mother and an Agnostic/Atheist father and brother (I’m actually not sure what my dad and brother believe now, but I know they’re not spiritual or religious). While my mother wanted my brother and I to attend church, read the Bible, and so on, my dad disallowed her from influencing us, which I appreciated deeply when I came of age. He gave us the space we needed to form our own opinions about the nature of the universe.

The thing is, I tried to see what my mom saw in Christianity. The first time I actively tried, I was a pre-teen in fourth grade. That didn’t count for much, since I was only just beginning to form my adult identity through teenage experiences. But even as I grew older, I tried to connect — tried to find the spark that my mom so desperately wanted her little family to feel. My mom was born into Christianity and her faith never wavered. I often wonder what she would believe if she hadn’t been raised into it.

That’s beside the point, though. I tried to connect with Christianity and failed. The spark was never there. I felt nothing when I considered God — or, at least, the Christian interpretation of God. I found Christian art and architecture compelling (I still do), and some of the mythology is interesting, but God never resonated with me. It didn’t feel right.

Growing up with a Christian mother was equal parts fascinating, frustrating, and anxiety-inducing. She commented occasionally on how she wanted to prepare us for the end of all things, how she herself felt prepared, how she interpreted God through various life events (she told me that she felt a bike accident I had when I was a kid was God’s way of getting her attention), and so on. I even remember her complaining one day that nobody in our immediate family understood her because she was the only Christian. It didn’t matter that all her other relatives — her parents and siblings and aunts and uncles — shared her faith and worshiped together. She wanted at least one of us to believe, too.

I suppose I understand her pain, in retrospect, but I realize now that her pain came from a place of fear, and that realization served as part of my spiritual foundation. It did not resonate with me to include fear on my path: fear of the divine, fear of the afterlife, fear for the fate of my family’s souls. It did not resonate that the divine would punish its own creations for believing a certain way, or loving a certain way, or partaking in harmless activities.

My early understanding of the divine was that it was universal. I considered the divine to be an all-encompassing energy, present in all things. When I was a teenager, I didn’t quite believe in the existence of deities — or, at least, I never focused on them. I wanted to explore something outside of religion, outside of named pantheons and rules and restrictions and expectations. None of that felt right to me.

My understanding hasn’t changed much over the years, but I’ve had time to reflect on experiences I’ve had and research I’ve done. I still feel as though the divine is an all-encompassing energy, perhaps even “the universe experiencing itself,” but I also feel that entities and energies such as deities exist on some level, personifying or embodying certain aspects or elements or forces.

The funny thing is, despite coming to this conclusion, I never expected to gravitate to any deity in particular. I admired the concept of them, the sheer power they represented, but I assumed deity work or worship wasn’t my thing. And I was okay with that. I was prepared to forge ahead alone, working only with a close spirit or two, until I achieved my dreams, my goals, my ideal life.

That changed when Shiva popped into my life, and let me tell you: I was not expecting that. At all. I had a few interesting experiences with Shiva, but I wouldn’t call my work with him “worship”. I think he may have popped up because it was a time in my life that desperately needed change, and, well, he is known as the Destroyer. I came to appreciate change a lot more since then, but today, I don’t feel called to work with him. I respect him, still, but I think his lesson was temporary. I never spoke much about him because I was worried what people might say; he wasn’t part of my culture, after all, and it’s not often you hear of a Mediterranean mutt working with a Hindu deity.

All was quiet for a few years, and then came May of this year, when out of the blue, I had the urge to begin work with Morpheus. I’d always been fascinated by Greek mythology and its deities/figures, and the ancient culture more closely matches my blood (despite no one in my family even realizing they’re of Mediterranean blood until a few short years ago). This, I realized, would work. Out of all the other deities in known existence, I’ve always resonated with the Theoi the most. Morpheus, in particular, made complete sense for me as an artist, writer, and perpetual dreamer/daydreamer. He may not be one of the top dogs, but he exists, even if only as an embodiment of dreams and of the dreamscape.

The divine, I feel, is not “above” or “below” us — not in the sense we, as mortals, tend to believe. It is all around us, within us, all-encompassing, and serves us so that we may better reach our power. That is a suitable foundation for me.