I'd be curious to talk about this. But I prefer PMs. Where do you prefer to talk?

Hit me up, I am PM-friendly! :D

I explored into various forms of esoteric stuff, occult, paganism, psychedelia etc from about 2012 to 2018 until eventually arriving at Eastern Orthodox Christianity.

Ironically a lot of protestants consider us "basically" pagan because of our focus on mysticism, ritual, and venerating saints.

Oh wow, that is fantastic! I know very little about Eastern Orthodoxy. I do enjoy my mysticism, though.

Did you begin with a Christian background or something else? What did Eastern Orthodoxy have for you that everything else didn't?

I was initially raised Protestant of varying flavors (Episcopal when I was really little, then my dad switched to taking us to more evangelical/pentecostal/non-denominal kind of modern churches). It wasn't all bad experiences, but I felt there was a lack of something vital there. I grew up reading Tolkien and CS Lewis (who were both devout Christians) and kept wondering where the ancient faith of great thinkers like that went, why I was surrounded by what felt like drive-thru spirituality that constantly re-branded itself to try and stay hip. Eventually I hit a major crisis point in my late 20s, and a lot of the Modern Christian platitudes I'd been operating on had no answers or help for me. My family was always supportive, but I was going through a set of problems their spiritual framework had no way to deal with.

So I basically was like "Well God, if you're there, I'll be listening. But until then I'm gonna figure it out on my own." so I never went full on atheist/agnostic but definitely wouldn't have called myself Christian for those years.

It's a really long story how I got into Orthodoxy. A little bit of it comes from my sort of "adoptive aunt & uncle" (close friends of my parents) who I used to live with in the summers as a kid. They're Arab and went to an Antiochian Orthodox Church, and while I didn't understand anything that was going on, I had some hazy childhood memories of the incense and mystery of it all. But I didn't have any experience with it ever since then, until having a series of really strange coincidences that involve encountering a monk on the streets of Cleveland, some psychedelic visions, and hanging with a few heathens in the woods who generally disliked Christianity but had a peculiar respect for the Orthodoxy.

Basically I got to thinking that there was this one aspect of Christianity I hadn't really given a chance yet, so I figured I'd look into it and give it a try, and it stuck.

Slightly related, but this chant always gets me:

https://youtu.be/l26xkVGVklM

Im a not faithful to any beliefs specifically but Im not against the possibility gods exit either. I tend to lean alot more toward beliefs with multiple gods like the Greek gods and Egyptian gods rather than beliefs with one almighty god as it seems not only more plausible but also just more down to earth as the gods "jobs" are divided up and they generally aren't asked the world of them its just stuff like "let me have a good afterlife, bring us a good crop ect." Im also a believer of karma and of course i am very open to the though of any variations of an afterlife weather thats a purgatory a heaven and hell or a rebirth as something new. Im also very interested in paganism and other similar beliefs/rituals

One thing that interests me: often enough, even polytheistic pantheons have a singular point of origin in their stories. Whether that point has anthropomorphic expression within a given culture is variable. Some cultures have a pantheon of figures more easily comprehended and therefore relatable, with a supreme entity that might be acknowledged but not elaborated upon. Even in the Bible, the totality of the Abrahamic God is unknowable, but comprised of a host of Spirits. How the term Spirits here was expressed in its original language, I haven't explored enough. But people can directly experience a Spirit of Joy, a Spirit of Love, a Spirit of Compassion, a Spirit of Wisdom, etc. as being of God, and require no symbol to hang its hat upon, so to speak, to make it relatable. I am unsure if this exists in the same way for other pantheons, but now I am curious.

(I apologize for not having more specific examples. I don't like to make sweeping generalizations without something concrete to point to. Perhaps I can write on the idea more at a later time when I can research it better...}.


I used to have an interest in reincarnation. I do believe we are all comprised of recycled stardust, and if all is energy, then perhaps we carry traces of a billion vibrating stars and everything else that swam in the cosmic soup. But if that's the case, then maybe we're also all the same as everyone else, and the only thing that distinguishes us is our own unique experiences. This life is the only life I will ever be this person in this time in this place. I am not the same as I was ten years ago nor will be ten years from now. And by the time I die and am recycled, I am not sure enough of "me" will remain intact to continue being "me" and, hopefully, my accumulated experiences will take me well beyond to greater things that look nothing at all like me today. Like transitioning colors through a spectrum. If I start as red and gain yellow, I become orange. If circumstances change enough that I loose red and become yellow, gain blue and become green, etc. then what part of being a color is me, aside from the experience of being a color?

It is still fun to imagine, though, who I might have been. Who I'd like to be.

/rant

I only know there must have been a chimera of believes in people's heads when Christianity started spreading in Europe. (And before that the Roman pagans left their marks too. At least in my region.) But we can't know the details of how this looked in people's heads.

There was quite some debate about lots of things in the earliest church. Like... about quite when Jesus became divine - in Acts, reporting the earliest theology, Peter said 'God has made this man both Lord and Christ' implying it may have happened on the cross or at resurrection; at Jesus' baptism, the words of God echo those of three traditional Jewish adoption ceremony when a father would 'adopt' his biological son into the family business; the Virgin birth narratives suggest he was divine from conception, and John put that right back to before the creation.

The Jews have a healthy ongoing debate about lots of things. Christians, sadly, had councils like Nicea, where debate was stamped out.

My original comment was more about the time when pagans in my region of Europe where mixing their customs with Christianity. +-Frankish empire and such. Somewhat 300 - 600? Like building churches on top of established pagan spots. Or praying to God, but celebrating like pagans. Or washing down pagan gods into saints or popular fairy tail characters like Lady Holle. I thought it was an intetesting parallel with the headspace WanderingRae might have.

It's interesting that Jews are more open to debate Christian lore though!

Lady Holle! The name rings a bell. What country are you from, if you don't mind my asking.

The cherry picking is something I found frustrating, and plays a part in how my spirituality has unfolded. A lot of linguistic discrepancy as well. If my choices are between one bucket of cherries or another, I may as well get my own bucket. Who knows? Maybe by the time I'm done going around the tree myself, it will all the cherries will make more sense.

My metaphor got away from me, haha.

Anyways, the Christianization of Europe as you discribe is a point in history that is of interest to me. I have observed a lot of modern pagans decry what was done with the stories of pagan dieties by Christian monks. I know in some cases, they were villified. But not most, I'd estimate, and it makes me wonder if some monks and common folk were not in a similar headspace, as you put it. Maybe some figures were made into fairytales as an attempt to preserve some part of them in the wake of changing thought.

I have also heard some Norse, etc. pagans incorporated Christ into their traditional practice, particularly merchants trading with Christian countries where being a Christian was mandatory for trade. I don't imagine everyone was sincere, but I do still wonder about those chimera, as you call them.

I'm from Germany! I've only "recently" discovered Frau Holle's significance. I always thought she was just a fairy tail character, but her background is assumed to be huge. It's quite fascinating. Funnily her English wiki article is more detailed than the German one:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frau_Holle

This headspace is truly tricky to grasp! It always depends not just on the time but the region too. :s I'm still trying to puzzle myself together an image of the past just for my region and as historical noob its tedious to find, filter, glue together correctly and then memorise the facts and theories. So much will stay theory, I fear. Too little scriptures left by the people. :(

Lol opps. Sorry for writing Jews are more open to debate Christian lore. That's kinda dumb. I mean their lore, I mean the shared lore of this monotheistic belief.

Many Jews are happy to discuss Christian lore too. :)

What's a fulltui?

Ah, sorry, I typoed my intended word!

I meant to say fulltrui. As it has been explained to me, it means, "full trust," as in when someone puts their full trust in a specific diety. Even while believing and even working with other dieties. I am not as familiar with the term "dedicant" or "devotee" in a Heathen context, so I don't know if you'd say they are the same thing. But I understand the word as specifying utter trust in a specific diety, above all others (not necessarily to the exclusion of).

Poking around online may give different definitions, but that is the one I have come to use.

Ok, I get that - like Hindu followers of Vishnu or whoever.

I'm not familiar with polytheism in any real practical sense - I'm a pretty traditional Christian, and would tend to concur with HTLTB below in the exclusivity thing, myself.

Which said, the Jews were warned repeatedly against worshipping other gods, so it's obviously something that happened, and I know there are various theories about the early Genesis accounts deriving from polytheistic beliefs - God having a consort, etc. And it goes without saying that someone claiming to be a Christian Heathen isn't likely to quite orthodox, so to some degree it's a matter of language.

I read a lovely book called 'The Way of Wyrd' by Brian Bates, I think. It's hardly recommended reading for normal Christians, but you may well enjoy it - it's about a Christian monk sent to pre-Christian England, guided by a druid? a mystic, anyway, and encountering the local beliefs in a pretty concrete way - elves and things.

I do see the appeal of something beyond the rather cut-and-dried clinical aspect that modern Christianity sometimes seems to have. Perhaps that's something the Orthodox offers too.

You can't be both a Christian and a pagan at the same time. But you can safely study literature on these topics at the same time. I am writing this as a Christian who, in the first year of his studies at the university, read a lot of literature on the religions of the ancient world.

Faith in Christ does not consist only in reading and memorizing the Bible, it is somewhat about something else.

Thank you for sharing! May I ask what definitions you are using for both Christian and pagan?

Also, I absolutely agree, that faith in Christ is more than memorizing scripture. I was always raised to think of it at a personal relationship. May I ask, as a Christian, have you recieved the Holy Spirit? I was also raised with an emphasis on the spiritual nature of reality. I remember as a child, there was a time when my Grandmother passed over several churches she felt were lacking belief in the Spirit. I was young then, so I didn't know my own senses at the time. I wonder now if there are churches that have and have not, or if it was more a matter of finding a church where the Holy Spirit more readily spoke to her.

There are a number of church denominations that reject the belief in the gifts of the Holy Spirit today, citing the scripture about 'where there are tongues, they will cease', while various others practice them all.

I can't speak for the those who reject - I've received, speaking in tongues and having given a few words of knowledge, so I would have to sit with those who accept the phenomena, but I'm not sure I could point to much evidence of transformation as a result, much to my regret.

I can see pagan beliefs compatible with the idea of one God who deserves the main devotion. But I can't see the Christian God compatible with other gods at all. I guess it is the same with feminist or LGBT Christians though. Taking the ideas and the inspiring stuff and cutting out the rest. It will just clash with a majority of people/Christians as nonsensical or inconsistent. But then again beliefs are a very personal set of cherry picked inspiration all the time anyway. Even with mainstream or hardcore Christians. They do not go by a code 100% themselves.

Haha, I accidentally included my response to your comment here in my response to your other post. Sorry for any confusion!

Excuse any bird walking or rambling lol. I have pregnancy brain really bad right now =3=

You might enjoy Unitarianism. I know lots of folk from the UU that are a bit of a lot of stuff all together doing their thing.

It's mostly that and Quakers in my family. I was raised without the g.o.d. or "plus all" part of any of that stuff but was around a lot of those beliefs. Pretty glad it left my slate open for informed choices. My dad took me to temples, and all sorts of services if I wished, or to gain the experience. I made a lot of youth study class teachers uncomfortable with my questions haha. I liked Zen a lot, but when I was a tot it was not something I really could understand fully. Later in high school and college I stayed at a Zen temple and it was enjoyable. I was student rep for the Bakti Yoga club in college, and I found that to be pretty great too.

I did a lot of Quaker stuff with my dad because that is what he does and mostly that was sitting in silence and felt very seen or individual. I did work/service camps, went to a Quaker high school... that was like a hippie farm though. I was mostly pagan leaning then, but really liked a small bit of the Quaker thoughts (west-coast, not east-coast Quaker, that east-coast is hardcore old-school religious.) I still do service when its needed, and gained a lot of principles from that.

I also still was involved with the UU because of my uncle and grandma. Most of my strong pagan support were Dianic wiccans from the UU going back into 5th grade into HS at my height of pagan leaning. I quite liked a lot of that thought but I am happy the more religious side was removed with that as well. Later on it made me more uncomfortable with its structure depending on where you went. It's not really for me, but it tends to be very pagan filled.

It was important to my dad that I would be able to make an adult formed (individual not indoctrinated) set of beliefs. I think its pretty important too. But I liked that I was not just secluded from all of it. Just the more adult concepts for fully developed folk to be processing and making a choice on.

I landed on holding space for those known and unknown. Inevitably I believe a lot of spirituality and beliefs are just part of human need for community, structure, and explanations (via storytelling/mythology/scriptures/and ritual/habits/rules and all.) A sense of purpose so to speak. I stick with its okay to just exist without a pantheon to name, and that there really isn't a need to separate and contain such things for everyone.

I often come off as not very spiritual, and get much flack for it lol. I am pretty spiritual, I just think its all the same thing in the end, and rather just hold space. Like when I sit in silence or hold the light, its not really for or to one thing or set of things, its just there with all of it.

Oh my, those are topics of interest here too! (I’m way late to comment on this, because I’m a derp who has been having a hard time keeping up with messages ). I have some thoughts, but if you don't mind, I think I might send you a PM!

I'm the same. Super excited to recieve your PM, always great to hear from you. Will respond once I have time to tie-up a few loose ends with obligations. <3