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Post Featured Image: European spindletree in one of our local city parks. Pretty hot pink berry pods with orange berries. Caution, do not eat, poisonous. – photograph by Karine

I grew up in a typical Roman Catholic, French Canadian family, with lots of aunts and uncles, since my mother had 6 siblings, she was 2nd oldest of 7, and there are 13 cousins in my generation, including myself. I was Christened at a month old, went through Communion at 7 years old and Confirmation at 11 years old as expected of someone of my generation. But I never really believed in Catholicism, Christianity, and, particularly, of the virgin birth and resurrection.

What may have been somewhat atypical, and I am not even sure of the prevalence of those practices, I was brought up with French Canadian Folk Catholicism beliefs and practices. My father is a traditional bloodstopper, and I grew up around and with various superstitions and practices that are often at odds with mainstream Roman Catholicism.

I mean, who would hang their rosary outside to ensure fair weather for a wedding or other important event?

I’ve also pretty much always believed in reincarnation, even before learning the word for it or having even heard about the concept. This freaked out my deeply religious babysitter, when I was about 5 years old.

Fast forward to grade 11, when I took a comparative religions class in High School. We studied the basics of the main five religions of the world, talked briefly about smaller religious movements, non-religious spirituality, atheism, agnosticism and cults. This course made me realize that I did believe in a higher power, but that the beliefs and practices I grew up with really did not fulfill my spiritual needs, and I started looking for my spiritual home.

I discovered that Paganism, Polytheism and witchcraft were options at age 20, and have never looked back, since.

I started off studying on my own, which I did for 9 years, before finding a tradition I was interested in learning with and potentially getting initiated into. I was with them for 5 years, until I left and my partner left with me. But that is a story for another time that includes spiritual abuse, toxic people, and definitely some religious trauma, on my end.

After three years of sitting on our hands, my then fiancée and I decided to join a Norse ADF Grove. This went fantastic, aside from the fact that none of the three members we still have at this time were less than crazy about the idea of proselytizing and compulsory public rituals, until the story broke that there were allegations of sexual abuse of minors from the founder of the organization. We raised a whole stink about that, were verbally attacked for standing our ground, despite our grove having a Norse focus and having signed Declaration 127, and calling out evil as we saw it, in the shape of the Mother Grove attempting to sweep the whole thing under the rug. Which was not the first time, for similar situations involving Senior Druids and other leaders.

And so we re-incorporated as a purely Norse Kindred, which we have been ever since. Our level of activity has dwindled considerably since 2020 due to Covid and not being able to assemble, plus, our Head Gythia and myself are currently undergoing career changes, and other factors are also making it harder to meet.

Due to the challenges we are currently having as a group, I started branching out. Reading books on Traditional Witchcraft and solid 101 texts so that I can re-build a solo practice from the ground up. During that time, my wife came out as a trans woman (and no, I will not use masculine pronouns or her deadname, even for her dead self), and this eventually led her to Luciferianism, partly due to radicalizing thanks to counter-protests she has attended. She is still on the fence about completely leaving Heathenry behind, since one does not prevent the other. Same with me and my saturnine plants and Hekatean interests. A lot of polytheists end up with patrons from different ancient cultures, and that can definitely be done properly.