From the Deep Earth I Was Born

Written by: louhi

It has always been there inside me. It has always been my nature.

I never knew how to be Christian. When I was very young, I deeply shocked my devout grandmother by saying that I thought God was like my mother, only bigger.

When I was ten I began, little by little, to question what I had been taught about the world, and I grew anxious. Suddenly my Bible seemed full of strange contradictions and things I could not accept. I could not even read it any more, so I stuffed it into the back of my cupboard. I did not want to see my grandparents, nor go to youth evenings at the parish hall. My world had been turned violently upside down.

I made the real leap into the unknown only a few years later, after confirmation classes. At last I accepted that I no longer believed in the Heavenly Father as Christianity describes him, or in the Bible as unquestionable truth. Quietly, in my own time, I began looking for another path.

I travelled through Western philosophy and theology, the great and small religions of the world, and the thinkers and doers of every age. Slowly my views took shape. One of their central ideas was that every human image of God is an attempt to reach the same single divinity. Art, science, philosophy and every school of thought are part of that same striving. Everything seeks the One.

Yet it was not intellectual reflection that guided my life most deeply, but several severe hardships. I vividly remember the night, the star-bright autumn sky and the wind whipping the treetops into a wild dance. There I met Her, whom I had known in childhood but lost along the way. I met the Goddess of Time, the Lady of Nature and mother of all that exists, the unity from which worlds are born and to which they return, again and again. That night, and on many nights that followed, I bound myself anew to the Earth, our home, and understood that I loved Life even when it was very difficult.

I became familiar with neopagan movements and Wicca a couple of years ago. I was overwhelmed to discover that other people felt as I did, saw as I did, understood what I was saying. I was not alone in the world with my beliefs. Wicca in particular gave me much: tools for making sense of my experiences, things to ponder and people to talk with. Yet its most precious gift was one simple word—a word through which I could finally describe my identity in a way that felt right.

I am a mystic of nature. I am a witch.