How I came to Goddess Worship

I came to Paganism during the "Witch Fad" of the nineties.  I like many Neo-pagans was raised in a Christian family.  In my freshmen year of high school a few of my friends came across a few books on Wicca and decided they were witches.  This was how I was introduced to the world of Paganism.  At the time I was very much a Christian and was for the most part satisfied with the religion of my family.  But curiosity got the better of me and I borrowed one of my friend's spell books.  I remember curling up in my bead bag chair flipping through the pages of this cheesy spell book with very basic information on Wicca, when my heart spoke, "this is the religion for me."  I was shocked.  I couldn't be a Wiccan.  What would my family think?  How could I betray the God I worship at the time and follow Wicca instead?

At the time I remained Christian, but the interest in Wicca, Witchcraft and Paganism never left me.  Over the next few years I started feeling more dissatisfied with Christianity. During the times of the most intense spiritual upheaval in my faith,  I gave in to my interest in Wicca and would start researching it again.  Out of pure curiosity, one day I typed the words "Christian Witch" into a search engine to see if any such thing existed, and to my surprised I found many websites and groups dedicated to Christian Wicca and Christo-paganism.  This fascinated me, so I continued my research on the topic in my families computer room, stopping every now and then to look over my shoulder and to delete my browsing history so my family wouldn't figure out what I was up to.

Even then, my guilt would flair up occasionally.  I would then halt my research and I would return to the "straight and narrow road" of South Baptist Christianity.  During my second year of college I moved out of my family home and moved a state away.  At this time I still identified as a Christian.  I started looking for a Church to join but couldn't find one that quite fit.  At the same time, still feeling discontent in Christianity I started reading the New Testament in hopes to build a deeper understanding and relationship with Jesus.  This only brought more doubts and more dissatisfaction.  At this time I decided to stop fighting my interest in Paganism, gave in to it and became a Christo-pagan.

I honor and respect Christo-pagans, and believe they have the right to practice their path as they see fit, but for me Christo-paganism was a transitional phase.  I was only a Christo-pagan for about a year, but during this year I learned a lot about not only Wicca and Witchcraft, but also about earlier Christianity, Gnostism and the heretical idea of Christian Goddesses such as the Mother Mary and Mary Madelene.  During this time I also got over my original hesitations about working with the Feminine Face of the Divine.  After my year in Christo-paganism I came to the realization that Jesus just didn't do it for me.  The idea of Jesus never really related to me well, and that's what caused my dissatisfaction with Christianity.  I gave up Jesus completely and became a generic Eclectic Neo-pagan.

During this next phase of my Neo-paganism I started getting more involved with my local pagan community.  I started researching various Magical and Pagan paths, from generic Wicca 101 stuff, to Voodoo, to Strega, to Celtic Paganism.  At the time I strive to make both the God and the Goddess part of my practice because that's what I was exposed to through the pagan community, and that's what I was told to do by the authors of Pagan books.  It was what good Pagans do.  Everyone knows a good Pagan not only worships the Goddess, but the God as well, equally.  Right?  But it always felt forced.  No matter how I tried it never seemed like the God in any of His forms wanted anything to do with me.  Whenever I evoked the God or prayed to the God, all  I ever got was a big Divine, "BLAH."

I eventually got the opportunity to attend a class at my local university on the Dark Goddess.  Taking this class changed my Paganism and how I viewed the Goddess forever.  I fell in love with the idea of the Dark Goddess. This class gave me the realization that the Goddess was whole and complete unto Herself.  That She was the embodiment of Balance Itself.  She did not need the God to balance Her out.  The class gave me the tools to move away from the God/Goddess binary.  But even after this realization I kept the God in my practice.  Maybe it was out of habit, or out of a sense of obligation.  I don't know.

I don't know how many years I have been a Goddess Worshiper, but I remember the exact moment I became one.  I was sitting in my apartment one day wondering why the God never seem to respond to my worship.  The thought came to me that maybe He's making room for me to get to know the Goddess.  I had spent 19 years of my life worshiping the male face of God. Maybe He was stepping aside so that my relationship with the Feminine Face could develop, and maybe He would come back at some later point in my life.  At that moment I decided to give up the God and to give my worship only to the Goddess.  This happened in my early twenties, I am now one month away from turning 30, and the God hasn't come back yet.  And to be honest I don't miss my relationship with the God.  How could I miss something that I never really had in the first place?

For right now I am a Goddessian.  My path is forever changing and involving.  I accept that I might not always remain a Goddess Worshiper.  But what I do know is that spirituality I felt as though a huge weight was lifted the moment I gave up the God.  I no longer have to force myself into something that just doesn't fit, and it's that a major part of being a Pagan.  Right?  The freedom to develop a path that truly works for us as individuals.