The Pagan's Journey

 A Pagan’s Journey

By Scott Campbell

In the yellow envelope of a 70’s summer day, I awoke. It wasn’t one of those “ I suddenly knew the truth” moments . It was just an awareness that everything I had learned from others up to that point was somehow wrong or they were leaving out a bigger part of the story. My cousin told me Santa Claus wasn’t real. Reality began to unravel as my young mind tried to wrap itself around this horrible revelation that my vile cousin had given me. I cried. That was the beginning of my Pagan Journey . I began to question everything after that and haven’t stopped.

I wasn’t raised in a religious household. When I use the world religious I am referring to the mainstream religions of today. Christianity, Islam and Judaism. I am thankful for that. I was living outside of the brainwashing that was going on inside those buildings in my town. I was able to be outside in the woods, the fields, lakes and rivers where I grew up and I did. I spent all of my free time with Nature. I got to know her very well and she was very very real. I could see and feel her. I could taste her in the fruits and vegetables she produced. I could smell her in the lilacs and other flowers that bloomed there. It was amazing and I loved Nature. When my friends went into religious studies in the afternoon after school. I was left outside, alone and I went to the woods. They were learning from a book and worshiping an invisible sky god. I was living in the god itself being taught directly by the god that is Nature. I didn’t know it at the time but I was being indoctrinated into Paganism but there was no human involvement in that indoctrination. I didn’t even label it a religion. It was just reality.

 

Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul (Lewiston, Maine)

Maine Woods