To be open about your path or not...

Hi all! I ended up taking a little break as the past 2 weeks have been pretty busy. My husband has been in and out of town for work and my parents came to visit. I had a wonderful visit with my parents. However, their visits are always slightly problematic. My parents are conservative Christians. They know I'm no longer Christian, but do not know about my Pagan beliefs or that I use Tarot and such. I'm pretty sure they'd be freaked out if they knew more about my personal path. The initial conversation I had with my mom after she realized I wasn't going to church anymore wasn't very great. She refused to read any of the books I suggested so that she could learn more about my beliefs. We basically agreed to disagree. She believes I'm in a battle for my soul with the Devil. I do not believe this. So we let the subject drop. But, when my parents come to visit, I choose to put away my more obvious Pagan stuff like my books and altar. I leave my crystals out because I have far too many to put them away and I can pass off my interest as an interest in Geology.

There are many people who say we should not hide our beliefs. I agree to a point. For me, letting my parents see my Pagan stuff would be incredibly stressful and would likely cause an argument. I don't want to deal with that and prefer to keep the peace, especially since I only see them a few times a year. For me, the negatives of being completely open and honest with them far outweighs the benefits. I believe everyone needs to decide what is best for them when it comes to sharing their beliefs. I don't see anything wrong with keeping things private, especially if sharing creates family strife or could put your job in jeopardy. I'm very lucky to have a spouse who supports me fully even though my path is not his.

I also got some new stones while I was out with my parents. We went into a shop down in Long Beach, CA. It was a Native American type store. Those types of stores tend to rub me the wrong way, cultural appropriation and all, but I was with my parents. The people working in the shop appeared to possibly be Native American, so who knows... Anyway, I was looking at their worry stones and saw a VERY nice blue stone that I just had to have. I wasn't quite sure what it was at the time. I also found a moss agate and tree agate worry stones as well. They were only $5 each, so I bought them. You don't see those as worry stones very often, so I didn't want to pass them up. After consulting with a friend of mine, we determined the blue stone is an aquamarine. I'm really glad I bought it now because I've never seen an aquamarine worry stone before and it only cost me $5. :-)

Left to right: Moss Agate, Aquamarine, Tree Agate worry stones

Saturday, I brought my Pagan stuff back out and re-set up my altar. I was looking at making some changes anyway, and this was a good time to do that. Lately, I have been feeling called by 3 different pantheons of deities. I have always been drawn to the Greco-Roman mythologies, particulary the Roman side of it. Recently I have also been very drawn to the Gallic-Celtic (ancient Gaul, as opposed to the British Isles Celtic) and Norse/Germanic pantheons as well. I have been seeing "coincidences" and signs that are pointing me towards these three pantheons. I believe this is in part due to my heritage, which is German, French, and Spanish (Spain) on my mother's side. On my father's side I'm a Polish mutt. :-) I'm still relatively new to this whole polytheism thing, so I'm still trying to figure this all out. I'm a book learning type person, so I've been exploring stuff on ancient Rome, the Northern Traditions (Norse/Germanic), and now Ancient Gaul around the time of ancient Rome. I've had some meditations that have lead me to exploring these.

There isn't as much information on ancient Gaul as there is for ancient Rome and the Northern Traditions. A lot of the information on Gaul and the Northern Traditions comes from historical sources of the conquerers (Rome and Christianity), so it is biased. However it gives some interesting information. There is interesting information from Celtic and Northern Tradition reconstruction groups, though I don't think I necessarily want to go that formal in my practice at this point. I also just found a website that might be helpful, http://polytheist.com/. I'm exploring this website and I think it will be quite interesting. I'm still reading and searching so I can try to figure out how I'm supposed to incorporate this all into my path. For now, I'm giving offerings (mixtures of dry teas that smell really nice) to the three pantheons on my altar. It's a start and you gotta start somewhere. I plan on doing some more meditations and journeys to explore this.

Today I'm heading to Sage Goddess for the July Full Moon Ritual. It's going to be a kundalini ritual, which I haven't experienced before. We'll see how it goes.  :-)