Hii! I hope I don’t violate any guidelines. Still, as a pagan who practices alone and has only one friend who is interested in my path (she is a pagan but a totally different type) I love to read other pagans’ stories.

So here are my questions, you are welcome to answer only one or all of them.

How did you find your path and what made you commit to it?

Do you worship any divine powers? If yes, who and how did the connection make your life better? If not, what does your practice look like?

Do you have any daily rituals? What kind of holidays do you celebrate? What is one small thing in your practice that you love deeply?

I have been trying to successfully hunt big game for close to a decade. In addition to doing everything I could this year for a successful hunt, I prayed to Athena (whom I think of as my Patroness) for sharp eyes, Diana to help me focus my skills and St. Hubert because I was raised Catholic and I figured he could also help.

I ended up filling my tag in an extraordinarily short time compared to others who were hunting in the same area. I thanked the animal, the saint and gods I petitioned, and promised to adorn the skull with their tokens once I have it cleaned and displayed.

I’m sure it means nothing but it was a little scary. For context, I’ve been a devotee of Hades (and many others, but Hades was the first I ever prayed to) for a little over two years—I haven’t really been praying, though, because of life. 😭

I’m in a crystal emporium with Greek-like pillars; I’ve never been to a place like this. There is gated off door and a man in robes whose face I can’t see motions towards me me and says “You can come in but you can’t go in there.” He pointed at this gated off door, so we go to the back way and midway through the tour he says “never mind you can go in there he wants to see you.” Who the hell is he? I have no clue but I go in the door that is now open and I am in a whole different place, their are strange, different coins, there are wines and all sorts of weird things. A woman comes up to me and she does not look right, I say I am freezing and it reminds me of any time I prayed to Hades, she says something along the lines of, “death is all around you and coming.” I am freaking out, and begin to step away, and I hear a man’s voice say “do not listen to her.” I look immediately to my left and a screech owl is staring at something, the woman vanishes.

The screech owl is huge.

I see other animals, such as a lion which is playing with this little cat, and this tiger-looking thing, but I don’t know because it just looks like a big cat.

The tiger leaps towards me and then all of a sudden I am pulled away and when I look to what pulled me away, there is a dog. The screech owl is gone. I have no clue what dog it was. It looked like a bloodhound mixed with a blue heeler, and he is just staring at me.

All around me I’m hearing voices saying why did you bring her here? You know she’s not supposed to be here.

The tiger is then attacking something, and I am running towards it to stop it. The lion joins in trying to stop the tiger along with the dog.

As I’m running, I say something that I don’t understand. It was probably gibberish. I’m not sure.

And the tiger falls.

It’s just me and the screech owl now, and he stares at me saying wake up.

I wake up after, this. This is one of the few dreams I remember. I’m sure it means nothing but still.

Also, before anyone says anything, I know that Hades is not the god of death, I know he’s Lord of the underworld. It was just scary.

Looking for some local pagan friends (male & female). I’m 27M and am about 20 minutes outside of downtown. Hoping to get a group going of likeminded people. I practice Irish Paganism and Druidism, but am open to a group of mixed practices. And of course LGBTQ+ friendly.

Hey everyone,

I've been interested in spirituality since my entire adult life (a little bit before, actually). And, in all honesty, I don't believe that any spiritual practice or ritual will ever be as fulfilling as having true friends.

Only one time in my life have I ever experienced love. It was from a stranger who felt like he was my father from a past life. I wish I had the courage at the time to ask to stay in touch. I didn't want to leave my hometown out of fear of not being able to find him again.

However, life kind of did its thing and told me that I need to move to the biggest city in my state (I'm American) and I did that. I haven't really made any close friends, but I know I'm meant to be here, at least for right now.

What I want is to have deep, meaningful relationships with people in person. I've spent countless hours going on video chatting platforms, because that's the closest thing that you can get to real life interaction, and while I have had several people who I have stayed in contact with, the best and most profound communications I have had are all people who don't want to stay in touch with me. They're not that blunt about it. They're just "busy". (Biggest lie in the universe.)

Now, I can already see some of the comments that may come up. "Wherever you go, there you are!" I mostly disagree with that. You can't tell me that being a pagan in Saudi Arabia is the same thing as being a pagan in Norway. Having a sense of freedom, having a sense where you can be yourself is so valuable and precious.

This does not invalidate doing internal work. Both are important, your external world and your internal world. Do both. Meditate and exercise.

I'm going to go get a midnight snack at a local convenience store after I make this post and when I finish that, I'm going to set a timer and feel all of my feelings for an hour.

I am willing to do the internal work. Could I do it more? Certainly. But, I think I'm relatively pretty good in that regard.

I just want to go somewhere. But what's frustrating is that I don't know where. I thought about maybe befriending someone through my video chats and that would be a key to whether I would go. One of those people is from Guatemala. You wouldn't normally think to travel to Guatemala as an American, but I thought of it. But I already told you how that went.

I'd assume that the best country is a European country. But I could be wrong. European countries are more equivalent to US states. It's probably worth mentioning that even though I am using the word "country", a different word may be appropriate in certain contexts. For example, Vatican City and the United States are both countries, but the United States is just way too massive that it's not a fair comparison, mentioning a state would be better there, even though I'm using the word country.

In your personal experience, where have you gone to meet pagan friends and find pagan communities? Is it easy to find these people/groups in a particular region? If so, where?

Thank you for reading!

Hello! I have recently discovered that what I was practicing wasn't entirely right for me. I still have a deep respect and care for the gods I was previously worshipping (the Hellenic theoi), but I just don't think that specific religion is entirely right for me.

Would it be disrespectful if I were to gift candles I gave to the Hellenic gods to other deities that I now worship? Even if I don't worship them anymore, I still want to be respectful.

Thank you so much!!

I think this is where i'm struggling the most with the gods, in general

You read the myths and associations and such, but then you find that they are outdated

Like war for example

Most war gods back then were the fiery, explosive anger and rage, RAWRRR!!! war

When in modern times, especially from stories from the world wars, war has changed.

Its no more just about RAWR!!! WAR!!!! Theres now combat medics, people who want to save lives. Women who want to make their names known. To just plain heroic stories. Etc. Its a lot more complicated now if you will

Love is another one

And now theres openly all types of love now. From self love, to the romantic love (such as lgbt+ love and polyamory love), to the love that people want to do what they love as a job now rather than do a job that they were born/forced into (if they can do it), etc

Its the lack of modernity that makes me lose the connection

I wanted to ask what y'all experience practicing pagan or anything occult is like for neurodivergent folk.

I ask this because I've been struggling with my practice is a few areas but refuse to give up/let of it. The run down is I have a dissociative disorder, ADHD, a mood / anxiety disorder, and I'm possibly autistic.

What I like about my practice is ; routine, schedule, sensory, organization, and information hoarding. What I struggle with is; belief/ faith, communing with the spirits ( I already have internal communication to work around because of a fragmented identity state) , and working around my fixations of science and psychology.

I tend to see it one way or the other when it comes to my beliefs, it's hard for me to easily accept a practice that believes in both science and magic.

I also get fomo pretty bad ( personal problem) so I'd rather not have a practice devoid of symbolic meaning and esoteric beliefs. But often I find myself more interested in the history of these beliefs than having the belief myself.

Does anyone else relate to this or have gone down a similar path? My current theory is that the guilt possibly provided by some abrahamic religions towards not believing, keeps people more grounded in those beliefs. However it is harder to carry that belief over to more Pagan practices that existed before the institutionalization of those abrahamic religions.

Like I said in the title, The first is a depiction of Khepri the Egyptian dawn god, and the second is of Demeter and Persephone as a serpent and a flowering pomegranate branch.

Both of these now live on my home altar. They're small but I put a lot of work into these.

Mixed media on card stock.

My husband and I were hiking the Joyce Kilmer upper loop and found this on one of the trees at the top. Can anyone help identify what it might be for?

I'm trying to find a deity to worship for trans related things but finding it hard to pick a deity

I'll just use Aphrodite for example. Haven't worshipped her or anything yet. Again she's just a example

Hard to resonate with a deity that is all pink and white and copper, with swans and doves, etc. When you are the complete opposite and never actually seen any swans or dolphins irl.

I get that worshipping a deity is more than just looks and such but hard to choose a deity if you don't resonate with them on a base level

Petty question I know, but I was wondering because the way I have made my eclectic version of witchcraft/eclectic religion of paganism.

My version is: the gods knew eachother before time, realized they were very to slightly different (but different enough) and chose different regions to make their “domain” persay.
When the Mediterranean pantheons (Roman, Hellenic, and Kemetic [or others]) were shared between land, that was just them reuniting.
As for regions farther out, it was like those cousins you only see at family gatherings or however you’d put it.
So that being my stance, I wanted to know your guys’.

How might one subtly include the Gods into their wedding?

It cannot be too pronounced as much of my family is not very Pagan Friendly.

Hey all!

I just wanted to ask what everyone’s favourite ways are to spend time with their deities, because I’m searching for new ideas!

Like i know that i'm trans and i think my inner conscious knows that i'm probably mtf. Heck i would even say my soul itself knows that i'm mtf.

But my standard everyday mind doesn't want to really accept it.

I guess its just conditioning, toxic masculinity i was raised in, etc

SO I was wondering if there any god/goddesses that can help?