John Halstead is a former Mormon, now eclectic Neopagan with an interest in ritual as an art form, theopoetics, eco-psychology, the Jungian heilsweg (“sacred way”), and the idea of death as an act of creation.
The Allergic Pagan
My seasonal allergies mean that at those times of the year I most want to worship surrounded by nature, it is difficult, and sometimes impossible, to do so. This irony is a metaphor for an essential conflict at the core of my psyche, between the desire for communion with nature on the one hand and the desire to transcend nature on the other. It also reveals one of the many practical difficulties of practicing Paganism when I get out of my armchair. This blog is where I expose the “warts and all” of my private Pagan practice: my successes, my failures, and all the rest (most of it really) which falls somewhere in between.
Hello!
I discovered your blog a few weeks ago, and I’ve really enjoyed reading about your experiences. As someone who is new to paganism (in practice anyway) I would really like to hear more about the two years you spent trying to figure out what spiritual path to take. Anyway, thank you for providing such interesting and enjoyable reading!
Sarah, I’ve been struggling to put this into a blog post, so I’ll just try to give you an abbreviated version. There were about three years between the time I formally withdrew from the Mormon Church, at the age of 25, and when I started self-identifying as Neopagan. It was another seven years until I sought out other Pagans in the flesh. The three years after leaving Mormonism and before I discovered Neopaganism were some of the most difficult years of my life. I felt adrift and was desperately searching for … something.
When I first left the LDS Church I still considered myself Christian — which I blogged about recently — and studied liberal and neo-orthodox Christian theology. After being “saved”, though, ironically I was done with Christianity. After that I began studying a little bit of a lot of different things: mysticism, Vedanta, Tai Chi, kundalini yoga, tarot, and liberal Quakerism. This was all book study, though. I intentionally avoided any religious community. I was done with that too. I also never succeeded in developing any sustained spiritual practice either though. During this time, I also discovered transcendentalism, humanism, and feminism, which had been tragically absent from my undergraduate education at BYU. (I had never heard the word “patriarchy” used in a negative context before.)
I’d like to say that my all of my religious studies led me to Neopaganism. But I actually happened across it quite accidentally. After I graduated from law school and passed the bar and we relocated so I could begin a judicial clerkship. It was then I discovered Neopaganism. I had been a fan of Anne Rice’s vampire novels for years and ended up picking up The Witching Hour. This led me to look into witchcraft at the public library, which led me quickly to Neopagan witchcraft. I had no contact with any Neopagan community. Instead, my understanding of Neopaganism was formed by books. The first books I read were Ronald Hutton’s The Triumph of the Moon and Vivianne Crowley’s Wicca: The Old Religion in the New Age.
Because of Hutton, I formed an image of Neopaganism as a religious community that had abandoned claims to historical authenticity. This was important to me because I had left Mormonism largely because I came to doubt the truth of its historical claim. Actually, Neopaganism, as I later learned, turned out to be not quite as postmodern as I had thought. People still argue about the Gerald Gardner’s claims. And then there is reconstructionism, which has always looked to me as retrogressive.
And because of Vivianne Crowley, I formed a distinctly Jungian understanding of Neopaganism. Crowley is a Jungian therapist, and Wouter Hanegraaf has written that reading Crowley, one might be forgiven for thinking that Neopaganism is just Jungian psychology in religious form. I quite disappointed to learn, years later, than Jungianism had become passe for most Neopagans.
Hi Sarah! Thanks for the positive feedback. I started to write a response to your question, but it was too long for a comment box. So I think I’ll make it the subject of my next post. I’d love to hear about how you came to paganism.
John just stumbled onto your blog and like what I’ve read so far. I too am former Mormon with many similarities in experience. Thank you for publishing your insightfull thoughts.
Jongiorgi Enos: Glad to meet you! Is the surname Enos a coincidence?