this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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You were raised in it? I'd love to hear about that. I dabbled in Wicca years ago, as I have in most pagan traditions commonly found in the US. I like learning about religion, but I've never met anyone who was raised in it, only converts.
Well, hm, I say "raised" for simplicity. I converted at age 6 or 7 (initiated by me, not converted by another person or family member). Before then, I wasn't raised with any specific beliefs and when I made a friend who was actually raised wiccan from birth I started hanging out with them and just kind of fell into their religion because it made sense to me. Even at that age I was into new-agey stuff on my own. Before converting, when I prayed (because TV told me to every night), I prayed to "all the gods and goddesses" because I (a kindergartner) didnt want anyone to feel left out. So I wasn't very traditional in the first place and can you even say a 7 year old converted? It's more like I discovered the concept of a belief system and Wicca was what I gravitated to, at the time.
Other family members dabbled in the belief but I was the only True Believer until, ironically, my official joining of the religion/coming of age/rite of passage ceremony (think first communion or bar/bat mitzvah but more low key and cheesier because it was made up by a bunch of hippies with no real ties "to the ancients"). I was preparing for the ceremony by doing some ritual self reflecting (meditation stuff) and began to leave my faith.
While I do have some ghosts of pagan beliefs left it's more like superstitions than a religion or belief system.
Like if I'm in trouble, genuinely afraid lost-in-the-woods trouble, I immediately start praying this specific wiccan song. Because my earliest spirituality wasn't crafted by the Abrahamic religions so my go-to operating system is pagan.
I can't think of any real difference between someone who was born in it, converted as a child, or converted later in life except for the fact that I never had Catholic guilt or other Christian or other Abrahamic religious values instilled in me. I was exposed to them a lot because of Western culture (also, Bible camp = free daycare in the summer) but nothing really appealed to me or stuck, especially since I had major issues with the way the Abrahamic religions treated women even as a very young child.