Hi! I am so excited to have found a community that appears to be honestly focused on supporting, learning, and exploring! I've been looking for a long time for such a community, and honestly, just reading through the introduction threads, I feel like I've come home.
I'm not sure whether it's better to share too little or a little too much, but here goes...
I'm Lyssia, and I'm a witch... which is to say, that's the term I use simply because it's about as vague as I am about what I do/am, (though I also really like the reasons Aiden Wachter gives for "sorcerer", and occasionally use sorceress in that context as well). I'm not young; I grew up having fairly frequent encounters/experiences with spirits/gods, in an atheist family who eventually wandered into a kind of intellectual and social Christianity, and sent me to a Catholic school. At the time, Wicca was an in-thing, so I moved towards Christianity to try to explain what I was experiencing; I ended up marrying a born-again Christian who would have been much happier and lived a whole lot longer if he'd followed his obvious calling to study druidism and shamanism. Not being quite as traditionally Christian as my husband and in-laws, I dabbled in various kinds of practical magic, mostly Wiccan-based (though I didn't know that at the time), and studying everything about magic(k - if you prefer that spelling; I don't have preference either way, and will use whatever is preferred here), occultism, mythology, religion... anything I could get my hands on, while trying very hard and very futilely to reconcile Christianity with my growing relationship with the Horned Lord, and the spirits we found in most every place we lived. When my husband died, very young, about five years ago, I realized Christianity (especially the kind of Christianity practiced by the people around me at the time) and I had... irreconcilable differences, and I abandoned the Abrahamic religions completely (my husband had Jewish roots), and have been trying every path I can find or read about since, looking for the words for what I've been doing, and experimenting, to find out what I'm actually good at and and enjoy. When Covid started, it apparently gave the Horned Lord, who revealed himself as Lucifer, an opportunity for a series of initiatory experiences; in the wake of that, it became clear that it was time to widen out from private study and practice to learn from a community as well. I actually found this forum totally by "accident", researching Santa Muerte.
As far as interests go... I'm interested in everything! I love tarot, and have been studying and reading tarot since I was a teenager; I've recently branched out into runes and ogham. I have two elementary school children who "talk to fairies" (as they call it) so a lot of my practice is focused on folk magic and learning how to help them grow as witchlings, while still navigating the world safely... and, frankly, while still being "in the closet" to our extended family. Much of my personal interest and practice right now is exploring how to blend the modern with the traditional, particularly in working with spirits and demons. "Organized" doesn't really work for me; my relationship with Lucifer centers my work (and I am so very glad to see so many others here who also have a connection to him!), closely followed by Persephone, who has been an incredible part of my life since childhood.
Anyway, if anyone is still reading at the end of all of this... Thank you! I am so excited to have found you!
I'm not sure whether it's better to share too little or a little too much, but here goes...
I'm Lyssia, and I'm a witch... which is to say, that's the term I use simply because it's about as vague as I am about what I do/am, (though I also really like the reasons Aiden Wachter gives for "sorcerer", and occasionally use sorceress in that context as well). I'm not young; I grew up having fairly frequent encounters/experiences with spirits/gods, in an atheist family who eventually wandered into a kind of intellectual and social Christianity, and sent me to a Catholic school. At the time, Wicca was an in-thing, so I moved towards Christianity to try to explain what I was experiencing; I ended up marrying a born-again Christian who would have been much happier and lived a whole lot longer if he'd followed his obvious calling to study druidism and shamanism. Not being quite as traditionally Christian as my husband and in-laws, I dabbled in various kinds of practical magic, mostly Wiccan-based (though I didn't know that at the time), and studying everything about magic(k - if you prefer that spelling; I don't have preference either way, and will use whatever is preferred here), occultism, mythology, religion... anything I could get my hands on, while trying very hard and very futilely to reconcile Christianity with my growing relationship with the Horned Lord, and the spirits we found in most every place we lived. When my husband died, very young, about five years ago, I realized Christianity (especially the kind of Christianity practiced by the people around me at the time) and I had... irreconcilable differences, and I abandoned the Abrahamic religions completely (my husband had Jewish roots), and have been trying every path I can find or read about since, looking for the words for what I've been doing, and experimenting, to find out what I'm actually good at and and enjoy. When Covid started, it apparently gave the Horned Lord, who revealed himself as Lucifer, an opportunity for a series of initiatory experiences; in the wake of that, it became clear that it was time to widen out from private study and practice to learn from a community as well. I actually found this forum totally by "accident", researching Santa Muerte.
As far as interests go... I'm interested in everything! I love tarot, and have been studying and reading tarot since I was a teenager; I've recently branched out into runes and ogham. I have two elementary school children who "talk to fairies" (as they call it) so a lot of my practice is focused on folk magic and learning how to help them grow as witchlings, while still navigating the world safely... and, frankly, while still being "in the closet" to our extended family. Much of my personal interest and practice right now is exploring how to blend the modern with the traditional, particularly in working with spirits and demons. "Organized" doesn't really work for me; my relationship with Lucifer centers my work (and I am so very glad to see so many others here who also have a connection to him!), closely followed by Persephone, who has been an incredible part of my life since childhood.
Anyway, if anyone is still reading at the end of all of this... Thank you! I am so excited to have found you!