Welcome to Gaia! ::

Em Hotep (In peace) soupy ^.^ Glad to have you on board biggrin

I don't remember doing one of these for here, so I guess I should.

My name's Meg. I'm 26 and in school to become a pediatric nurse, and I'm a convert into Vietnamese Zen Buddhism. I was raised in a somewhat lax Catholic home - the most I had to deal with was Church on Sunday and Catholic school. The former, I was allowed to bring books to for most of my tenure, as they kept me quiet. The latter only really had the effect of widening my religious perspective as my high school was a feeder and full of a number of denominations and faiths even though it was Catholic by name.

A number of questions and one pretty severe depression with agoraphobic tendency gave me a lot of time to think. And read. I ended up, after a lot of introspection and study, agreeing that I wasn't really a Catholic at all. After a few more years of study, I've come to rest where I am now - Zen Buddhist, Vietnamese school. smile

Greetings and Bright Blessings, friends. My name is Bunny. I am 21 years old and a community college student redface I am not proud of the fact that I still haven't completed many transferrable units. UCSD's siren call is haunting me.

At any rate. I was born 3rd generation Jehovah's Witness. My childhood was filled with fear mongering from my paternal grandmother (in addition to the Scripture twisting, Bible thumping, and abuse of more than one sort), demonizing of all things that were even remotely unorthodox by my parents (i.e. Sailor Moon, still my favorite anime show/manga/lifestyle of all time), and severe repression. To this day, I still have issues being repressed.

Despite all of these problems and my messed-up, confused, and mildly dangerous family, I have much respect for the faith and may go back to it someday.

At the moment, I am a learning and budding pagan. Athena has been my friend and patron from an early age, which is probably why my baptism in the Jehovah's Witness way felt perverted and hollow. I am also very fond of the animistic practices of the Shinto faith as it is practiced in Japan at this time and in days past. My fiancee is a child of Swt/Set/Seth/Suti and an unintentional jynx to the point of being nearly destructive. He intends to study Kemetic Orthodoxy and possibly behave as an Egyptian revivalist, whereas I am a Helenistic revivalist, thus the account name (which I have foolishly misspelled--adds a strange and somewhat unique charm, does it not?) I live in California and I am a member of a couple pagan guilds.

I am very pleased to have been allowed into this guild. Studying religions in both a cultural and singular context is a passion of mine and I happily and eagerly await the interesting discussions to be had and friendships I will forge here. As you can see from this intro, I am both talkative and intelligent so don't be annoyed if I say a lot in every post. I try not to post when I am tired because I tend to be snappy, rude, and overtly direct.

Merry meet and blessed be. *bows*

Hey there! I'm Sapphire_Magic, and I'm 15 years old. I was raised in an Episcopalian church, and it's hard to believe how boring it was! As a result I was never fond of the Christian religion, and was secretly Atheist until...oh, when was it...6th grade, perhaps?...when I attempted to re-enter the religion for good. I had done so previously, and always failed. But this time I was successful. I still consider myself Christian today. I don't attend church regularly (I often find myself questioning my faith when I do, rather than enforcing it) and I don't agree with much of the Bible, but I believe in God and Jesus Christ, and I pray, and in general try to be a good, unselfish person. I also try to keep an open mind, as well as a learn-before-judging policy. That's why I joined this guild, to gain a deeper understanding of other faiths, and I'm looking forward to doing so!

My name is Andrew. I'm 22 years old and I'm a philosophy major. Religion is one thing that interests me, I guess I'm agnostic for the fact that I don't quite know what religion I am. I tend to take philosophies from many different religions, one thing I keep as a main ideal is the Taoist belief in balance and harmony.

One thing I enjoy doing is debating with Christians about the existance of God. I never start the argument, I usually just wait until someone starts being overzealous. The times I have enjoyed it most were the few times when I got the other person to say something like "I may not be able to prove God exists but I still believe in him." I kind of see it as a test of faith and well I like to see people pass those. People do need something to give them hope.

I am 16. My name is Nicholas, but I go by Leo .I have studied Paganism in broad for about six years, but I have studied Celtic Paganism for about two. I was brought up hard core christian, but I started to question what I was beign taught so I started to look for answers for my own spirital needs. My parents don't know about me being Pagan..My mom thinks I am atheist, all of my friends know I am Pagan..and some know I am a witch ( some think if you are Pagan you are automaticly a Witch, but its not neccissarly true..for me tho i am a Witch..) so I guess I am still in the broom cubard.lol..I am gay, VERY libreal when it comes to peoples' rights, and all that good stuff.I am a HORRIBLE typer and speller , but I will try my best. Thank you for letting me join.
Blessed Be.
Leo

Yo all.

I was born and raised Catholic in the stereotypical Catholic elementary school. Gender roles, uniforms, nuns and all. They didn't hit us, but they wanted to. My mom was a poor, single mom so that made things worse for me. My "dad" (I call him Voldemort) was strict Lutheran and that's one of the reasons why he divorced her when I was 4.

I was never happy with Catholicism. I guess you could have considered me agnostic starting when I was 6 - I figured either God didn't exist or hated me. My school was very efficient in keeping us from knowing that other religions have ever existed. A newbie history teacher in junior high let the secret out, though, and I immediately began exploring different religions. Different Pagan religions fascinated me and I rapidly converted, much to the chagrin of everyone around me. My mom screamed at me, the principal told me that, because I was baptized, I couldn't not be Catholic, and my peers increased their bullying. I stood against it all, though, and later some of my peers' parents realized my strength in standing up for the path I had chosen for myself.

I attended a GREAT Jesuit high school and had many Pagan friends. We were teased by some of the jocks, but they quieted when they realized that we know more about the Bible and Christianity than they!

Now I go to a college that's Catholic by name alone. I have a great variety of friends and almost no problems with peers religiouswise. George Harrison is one of my spiritual influences and I proudly display my Beatles tattoo. They gave me the strength to stand up for myself, they were the first positive message in my life.
I wove through Paganism, fell out of the community and details, and now can be classified as a Liberal Quaker.

I was Christian, born and raised (though I suppose I'm technically still BEING raised...). I just found that it didn't fit with me. So I was always interesting in the elements and the spirital beings. I came across Wicca and it was ment for me.

My name is DepressMemory, and I'm a proud Wiccan.