Safire’s Coming of Witch Story

So, I’m realizing that I have never actually fully put into words how I started down my path with Paganism… And while it’s not exactly a long or honestly interesting story, I think it is still worth telling.  

So, to start at the beginning of the story, I was raised in a small town in North-East Ohio. Which means everyone knows everyone/everything and there is a church on every corner. Which makes believing in something else fairly difficult. That being said, here I am, a slightly functional Pagan. Although, I didn’t start out fully Pagan, through my childhood I was technically Christian. If that’s what you want to call it. My family did follow the Christian belief but only ever went to church on holidays, which is absolutely fine. I don’t believe a building should define someone’s faith. And while I never regularly went to church until I was in high school, that was what the “norm” was, so that was the only thing I knew. Funny enough, when I started to regularly go to church multiple times a week, I had already stopped considering myself Christian.  

The summer before my first year of high school my friend took me to his church’s youth group, and I actually enjoyed the interaction with everyone and decided to keep going. That is actually how I started talking to Terra and my wife, Marissa. Anyways, I was regularly going to church for about a year when Marissa started reading a book series called “House of Night” by PC and Kristen Cast. Between heavily influencing my path to inspiring me to want to write for a living, I can honestly say, 100% this book changed my life. Seriously, if you have never read these books, DO IT NOW! They’re awesome, and they hold true to most modern forms of Witchcraft/Paganism.  

Anyways, I started reading the books, and they changed my life. I was fully enamored in the concept of Witchcraft and Paganism. It wasn’t long before Marissa, myself, and another friend decided to have a ritual at my house. It was just a small full moon ritual, but it fully opened my eyes to the fact that I wasn’t crazy. There was a reason I never felt accepted in Christianity because that wasn’t where I belonged. And even though at the time, I did think I was going crazy because I couldn’t actually feel the energy that we called during the ritual, I dove headfirst into researching Wicca and Witchcraft, I started working with energies and making protection charms, I cleaned the FUCK out of my house, which I found out was desperately needed. I learned about past lives, and started looking into mine, I definitely thought I was crazy then. Lol. I’m sure we will go further into this at some point in the future.  

Now that it has been the better part of a decade, I know that I wasn’t crazy, and I definitely was not the only one to feel that way when learning about everything. Which brings us to today, I am 26, and consider myself a mostly functioning Pagan. There have been times that I have strayed from my path, but I have never thought of that as failing, because it was always still in my head. Life just seemed to find a way to get in the way. And there is nothing wrong with that. The universe isn’t going to condemn you for being too busy and missing a ritual or holiday here or there, and neither should you.  

I would like to say over the past 10 years or so I have learned somethings about life and being Pagan, which is the whole reason that Nyx’s Grove exists, I wanted a place to document my own growth, as well as hopefully help someone else out that may need it. Especially now that we are going to be integrating our children into it. And I am thrilled that Terra agreed to join us on the adventure!