Wiccans! Help needed ...

[Jux]

DD is 12, and is Wiccan. She is also quite a disturbed child due to a large number of bereavements we suffered in a short space of time when she was younger (and between December and February we had 4 more).

She is searching desperately for a way through. I know very little about Wicca; I've read a couple of books which dd has passed my way.

We are in the south west. Does anyone know of anyone who could mentor dd? I don't necessarily mean face to face, over the net would be fine. I mean really, just give her a bit of advice when she's having a tough time, point her in the direction of trustworthy sites and so on.

She is vulnerable and impressionable, and I (we) need someone sensible, responsible.

Can anyone help? I would be so grateful. I am really out of my depth.

Oh yes, Christianity quite wisely hung on to many of the feasts and festivals which were already practiced (just altered them a little), which helped its popularity. I suspect if they'd denied people all aspects of their long-held (and probably beloved) beliefs then we'd all still be pagans and Christianity would be a little known religion which tried to unsuccessfully to gain a foothold a long time ago....

Jux, you sound like such a kind mother. You've brought tears to my eyes (I'm pregnant so this is not unusual). Your daughter is one lucky girl. Excuse the random post.

I think cod is referring to "Triumph of the Moon" by Professor Ronald Hutton. It is an excellent read, and has enough sources to keep the keenest researcher happy.

A lot of people are surprised that Wicca is so modern, as Professor Hutton says, it's the only religion that Britain has given to the world and deserves a special place.

Modern paganism should really be called 'neo paganism' as there isn't an ancient unbroken tradition of paganism. Paganism started to become popular in the Victorian era - all those travels to far off lands such as Greece, etc. That combined with the Industrial Revolution led to a harking back to a time when we were in tune with the land and ran around in the nuddy worshipping nature It was from the cauldron of neo-paganism that Wicca came into being.

Professor Hutton has also written another fascinating book called "Stations of the Sun" which is about the ritual year in Britain, and is all about the ancient origins (or not!) of many of our feast days and celebrations.

I suspect both books would be very heavy-going for a 12 year old, but useful to have on the shelves for future reference.

Yes it was indeed Triumph of the Moon - been a long time since I read it but it was brilliant.

Aaargh. My post got munched. I'll try to paraphrase before baby wakes up!

wgc - Gardenerian Wicca is seen as the oldest tradition but from it have sprung many others which do not follow the same rules but still call themselves Wiccan. His practice itself was based on older practices that he moulded into something new. In that sense, it is not set in stone. I appreciate it must be exasperating when someone reads a few books and declares they are Wiccan when it is your sacred religion, but there are others who are just as sincere in their practice as you and if they want to identify themselves as Wiccan then good luck to them. I don't think we'll change each others minds on this so I am happy to let it be if you are.

Codandchops - I think you are absolutely right to point out that at 12 someone may well go through many changes of belief before they find the right path. Trouble is that it is quite hard to see that at the time. You have obviously been on quite a journey from Pagan to Catholic, and i'm still on a journey to i'm not sure what! I wanted to ask Jux why it is that her daughter has so strongly identified herslef with Wicca over the many other pagan traditions? Wanted to say something about the old religions but time up!

I'm not entirely sure why dd chose Wicca over any of the others. She started describing herself as pagan which could have been a simple rejection of Christianity (she sings in our local church choir). Perhaps she felt pushed into making some sort of choice because someone said something, and she'd heard about Wicca, and not of anything else. Now, that can be just as much a choice as a deliberate, well-researched one; sometimes choices are brought to you apparently by a smell in the air, in other words, the Universe. Fate. Destiny. I really don't know. I'll ask her later. It'll have a lot to do with The Goddess, dd's gm's death, my little brother's death and rather too many other deaths.

DD is back from school now, gathering her energies before homework by looking at the Children of Artemis site.

AliceHurled, thank you. good luck with the pregnancy.

I'm obviously not the best person to advocate Wicca as a path as I don't follow it any more, but there is a lot beauty and mystery there, which probably will appeal. It also pops up (or a misleading interpretation of it) in various teen movies, where the emphasis is on magic and personal power rather than honouring the god and godess. I just wondered if this may be part of the reason - if a lot of things have happened that she cannot control or process it is not suprising that she is drawn to a path she feels may empower her in this way.

As she has discovered, initiation at her age is not an option, though if she still felt it was right for her in due course it really is a wonderful path to travel. There have been lots of good suggestions of where she can go for more information, and while she may not think it is what she wants right now, time spent learning about the different traditions and practices, and learning the natural sciences will set her off an an amazing journey.

I know worldgonecrazy and i disagreed about solitary practioners calling themselves Wiccan, but many people, calling themselves all sorts of things, practice on their own without ever going near a coven and that can be quite ritualistic, or others go down a more nature-based informal route. This will help her learn how to mark the sabbats, how to honour the godess and god, and how to grow spiritually. It is a path you have to work at, whichever route she chooses. Hope i'm helping - tell me to go away if i'm waffling on!

No Molly, please don't go.

Everyone on this thread is being really helpful and informative.

I know not everyone will agree, how can you? Even a church like Catholicism doesn't agree and there's one chap in charge with a hotline to God. Even so, there are endless debates, there're schisms, half my family don't agree with each other about everything RC.

I would be sad if a debate on a thread I started hurt one of the participants, though.

As to your question about dd's motivation.

She does feel helpless and that she is - in some things - powerless. She's quite mature for her age, and I think it's unlikely that she's in it for the magic as per those sort of films. Practical Magic is a charming and sweet film, for instance, but dd knows that it's not RL.

She thinks she was a medicine woman in a past life, and is therefore very interested in the properties of plants. She was interested in that long before she even thought about Paganism, let alone Wicca.

I think she's looking for a way to make sense of things. I think there's a degree of rebellion in it too, not least because dh is almost as rabidly atheistic as Dawkins and tends to hammer his points harder than is remotely necessary. (DD also prefers music which dh describes as "diddly shit". Mind you, she still loves music dh likes, and classical which is my love.)

Spiritually, she may well move on to other things, other ways, other paths. At the moment, I rather like this one as it seems very peaceable, gentle and kind, embraces the Universe and nature, and doesn't advocate beating the shit out of other people for not believing, or killing large numbers of animals by stealing their habitats because humans are such superior creatures that they deserve the space more.

That's all good, as far as I'm concerned, and sets her up in a way of thinking and feeling which won't put her into the Boardroom but is more likely to make her happy and satisfied with herself as she is, with what she's got.

Oh, and safety. She doesn't feel safe . The Goddess makes her feel safe.

It's interesting that your family are catholic, and also that codandchops converted from paganism to cathoicism. The catholic in me lapsed a very long time ago, but i wonder if there is something in the structures, the imagery and the mysteries - you can't get much more mysterious than transubstantiation - that appeals across two such different paths. wgc has said a few times that Wicca is like catholicism - i initially thought this was quite an ironic thing to say given the history between witches and the church, but maybe they are more alike than we think. Maybe i shouldn't admit this, but i always used to see Mary as the godess!

Well why not? From what I know of pre-Christian religion, or very early European religions, female and male were both important. The Christians couldn't very well walk in and say " oh give up your much loved female goddesses, we've no room for them" and expect everyone to just say "oh, OK then"!

I like that Mary is venerated in the Catholic church .

Jux, get your DD to look up "tree of life exercise/meditation". It's very relaxing to do and is about grounding yourself.

Standing comfortably, deep relaxing breathing and using imagery to picture roots from the feet penetrating the Earth right down through earth, water, rocks etc. Then lifting arms and picturing them as branches reaching up to the sky. She can do this as long as she feels comfortable (I used to struggle after 10mins) but it was very peaceful.

It can be very relaxing to do

Having had four bereavments in the last year I have also felt loss. As a wiccan, hedgewhitch varity so no coven, I have turned to the goddess for comfort.

My loved ones haven't left me, they still care I just can't see them any more. This is the belief I will pass on to my children. I haven't met many pagans/wiccan/ druids etc that don't hold a belief in the after life and I draw great comfort from it.

If going to places helps her then many good examples have been given. I go to the Hurlers on Bodmin Moor or to the sea. For one of the deaths we planted a tree and seeing it bloom this year helped, maybe you could try something practicle. I grow stuff, flowers, seeds, stones from cherries it helps. Maybe some rose quartz to give her something to handle if she is more about tactile?

Has she undergone some form of grief counselling? It provides some good coping stratagies.

Part of a poem that helped me was this line.
'Do not hurry when you walk with grief, it does not help the journey'

Bright Blessings

Oh, that's a really good meditation codandchops. I think there is a variation as well (requires a real tree!) where you sit at the base and meditate on merging with the tree so that you feel its life force, and again visualise roots in the earth and branches in the sky.

I was a bit nervous about suggesting meditation as it and yoga are my current passions and i didn't want to come across as 'don't try that, try this'!

I think your attitude is amazing by the way Jux. It's obviously been a tough time on you as well as your daughter, and you are still prepared to put so much into helping her in this way. I love what you just said about her future - i remember watching a documentary about Lisa Gerrard, one of my favourite musicians, and her mother said that she wished Lisa had been a bit less brilliant and a bit more happy. I determined to remember that for when i became a mother.

Interesting what your daughter thinks about her past life. This is something that could be nurtured on a prctical level - not sure where you are exactly but most wildlife trusts do days out with botanical experts identifying different plant groups - usually cheap and quite good fun, and obviously identifying things is the first step in knowing how to use them.

Sorry - i missed your post about her not feeling safe. That is completely understandable when you are so young and feel you are losing people left right and centre, but what an awful thing for a mother to hear. Has she read much about karma? Most pagans (i'm going to stop saying wiccan to avoid any confusion) believe in the law of 3, so what you give out comes back to you threefold. Sometimes karma is seen as fatalist. The path i seem to be following at the moment would say it is a case of our previous life determining what we need to learn from this one, and also that we chose where we are born and who to. That can be because someone needs to teach you something or you are here to teach them. Working out what this is is the challenging part. I mention this because it maybe helpful for her to think in terms of events in her life having some deeper meaning, however difficult those events are. It is a hard lesson, as i'm sure we all know too well, that loss is an inevitable part of life. Like fairie said, not gone, just a bit harder to reach for a while.

It's very interesting that in those countries where Mary is venerated most, such as Italy and Spain and parts of France, Wicca has never really taken off, but in other parts of Europe it is more popular. I suspect that the deep-seated need to honour the feminine divine is satisfied by the veneration of Mary, so Wicca has never needed to be an alternative. I have no problem with going into any church and lighting a candle to the feminine divine at the altar of Mary. In Judaism the feminine divine is the Shekinah - when your daughter starts exploring magic more she may become interested in Ceremonial Magick which has a lot of Qaballah within it - The Chicken Qabbalah is a really good and easy starting place for this. Anothe book worth anyone having on their shelves.

which won't put her into the Boardroom I'm not going to out any Wiccans, because that is against our rules, but all I will say is you would be surprised :)

Oh so much help and kindness flowing from you all. I am speechless (not quite! ).

DD meditates regularly.

Codandchops, She says thank you for that meditation, she will use it.

faeriefruitcake, I'm sorry about your bereavements. I absolutely agree that you mustn't rush the grieving; though the worst time for us was over 2 years ago people still think dd should be 'over it' by now. She was coming out of the tunnel when people started dieing again.

This is why she refuses to see any sort of counsellor. When mum died, dd saw a young person's bereavement counsellor through a charity dealing with cancer patients and their families. Dd went for about 3 months, but then said it wasn't helpful any more. Since then, she's been up and down, and sometimes it's been quite severe. Very severe actually.

School counsellors etc keep telling her to move on, she should be getting over it etc. It's not helpful, and no one really seems able to give her tools which she can(or will) use. She draws, writes poetry, pours her feelings out like that. some of it is quite disturbing, but I feel that if she can express her grief and anger and helplessness then it's better than having to repress it. One day......

Molly, thank you.

I am a little ambivalent about her past lives. It's not that I disbelieve in it, but then again I don't actually believe it either. I was trained as a hypnotherapist, and the guy who ran the school did past life regressions. He thought it was nonsense, also the 'inner child' stuff he did. In fact few of the hypnotherapists who worked at the school believed in it, but their patients did. I saw some extraordinary things there. A woman with agoraphobia able to go outside comfortably (middle of London), is particularly memorable. That's why I never practiced once I was qualified. Too much I didn't understand and too much responsibility. When things go wrong they can go badly wrong.

Your words on karma are interesting, things coming back threefold, choosing how and where you learn the lessons you need. I have half a foot in that camp. My science-based mind won't go the whole hog, but it does admit that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in my philosophy, to paraphrase Shakespeare!

I'm guessing her belief in a medicine woman past life is intuitive as I bet you haven't let her have a past life regression! I'm with you on that one Jux. I have tried it and found it quite a profound experience at the time. On later contemplation I felt quite sure that the experience was more akin to a vivid dream. Didn't do me any harm, but I do think there is a lot of scope for self-delusion. I think that self knowledge and meditation are the best way to identify your past mistakes - if you haven't dealt with them then they will still be here in this life, just waiting to be recognised.

Reincarnation can be hard to accept as it is so far removed from western traditions. Most neopagan belief systems draw some elements from eastern traditions, where of course reincarnation is believed by billions. Probably why I have found a natural progression from paganism to vedic traditions - much like has been said about catholicism, there's a suprising amount of common ground.

If she feels particularly drawn to the concept of being a medicine woman (wherever it came from), maybe she should look at the green wichcraft/hedgewitch traditions. They are still goddess-based and celebrate the seasons, but are less focussed on ritual and more bent to, if you like, the kind of magic that would have been practised by the old lady on the edge of the village. Things like natural healing, herblore, divination, spell working - obviously this overlaps with other traditions, it's just a different focus. A couple of good books in this vein:

Hedgewitch (Rae Beth)
Green Witchcraft (Moura) - also Grimoire for the Green Witch
Green Spirituality (Rosa Romani)

I've done past life regression and it was interesting, very fascinating to find out what my brain came up with. I am on the fence as to whether it is genuine or not. What I do suspect very strongly is that it gives a fascinating insight into our unconscious mind and can be very useful for self-knowledge, much like the tarot cards.

Agree with you both about hypnotherapy being very revealing and useful for self-knowledge. It's opening a can of worms though, and that can be quite dangerous unless you know how to deal with it. I only ever do relaxation and ego-strengthening now and those hardly ever. I'd do it for dd, but dh has put her off.

Jux that is so true, I guess I'm looking at it through 40 something eyes, forgetting what an emotional time early teens were.

The Hedgewitch Book is great. I was very shocked when I met Rae Beth though, I was expecting a little old lady but she's the same age as me!

Culpepper's Herbal is also another good book for the bookshelf. (Anyone would think RedMolly and I had shares in Amazon!)

I second Culpeppers Herbal!

Hedgewitch is written as a series of letters to two apprentices, so quite a nice way of learning - each chapter is like getting something through the post, so maybe in a way not unlike the mentoring you were originally after.

To do Amazon another favour :) and on a lighter note, I think she might really enjoy The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley). It's complete hokum but charts the struggle of goddess religion against the rising tide of Christianity in Arthurian Britain. Much of it is set in Glastonbury. There is a slightly dodgy but entertaining US movie of it as well (Angelica Huston as Morgause!??).

I may be naive but am a bit suprised that a hypnotherapist would carry out past life regression when they think it is stuff and nonsense. Did he think that there was still a therapeutic value in it for the patient if they believed it then?

btw - looks like rain for the weekend.