I am with you that I didn't need my magic to fill in the blanks of religion. Because for me there were no blanks and there was no guilt. I was satisfied with what I had in my religious life, I only wanted to explore magical life.
That's so refreshing, AlfrunGrima! Not having religious trauma growing up helps me be pretty ecumenical as well. I can respect people in any mythic framework, and I feel we should judge a religion by it's butterflies and not it's caterpillars.
As a mixed ethnic kid of mixed ethnic parents in Texas I was raised to be very ecumenical. At the Unitarian church we took field trips to other churches, temples, and synagogues. All done with no judgement. Unitarianism is very Sufic and sees the light of God as shining through all religions even if they have different words.
I also have Mexican Catholic grandparents on one side, and Jewish grandparents on the other. It would never occur to me to use mythology to pit them against each other. It just seems so stupid and bleak.
I'm currently reading Peter Grey's 'Lucifer: Praxis' which while I think it pretty great I can't escape the feeling it's mostly for people whose ancestors had to suffer through the European hellscape of history, the Dutch, British and Spanish Empires, the Nazis, the resource wars, the use of ritual to cement power (thinking of the British Crown pageantry).
Occultish folks in the States usually have some form Protestant Christo-trauma, usually from some mega-Church nasty fundamentalist sect. Much of their sourpuss qualities comes from The Niagara Bible Conferences from the 1800's , which was American oligarchs trying to make a slave religion for white people, and interjected a whole slew of bad attitudes, among them, anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish, and anti-Black. It was a lot for them to get over, and they as still haunted by it. Vile stuff.
My girlfriend is from Dallas and was raised Southern Baptist. The Christo-trauma is a real thing in her psychology. I am introducing her to the better aspects of Catholic Mysticism. The New Age pagan route is not working so well, so I think maybe more of soft approach to overwrite it with the legit beautiful mystical practices there might help. She was never going to mythologize science and go UFO cult, thank goodness.
As the mixed ethnicity kids of mixed ethnicity parents in Texas and California, I just don't have the same grievances as Grey does against the Catholic Church. Mexican Catholicism is so different from pray-pay-obey Irish Catholicism as to be almost a separate religion. Among the Native American tribes of Mexico it was just accepted you adopted the war god of the people who defeated you. Like, whelp, our war god obviously sucks. Gonna call this other guy. And we changed the Church as much as they changed us. Not sure what to call that.
Maybe just taking the good with the bad, and not trying to fit all of it into one totalizing , low-level, poltical grudge fest mythology? Dare I say it? But in a high-level view that is more actually polytheist.
