Meet Me, Ganshmi

Greetings My Loves!

My name is Ganshmi and I will be writing a blog post on anything that comes to mind. Here you will find current events, holiday topics, struggles with being in the broom closet, health and diet, and much more. This will be more of an actual blog but will be mostly related to pagan like ideas. 

Now for a little about me. I am female that is 24 years young living in New Jersey and am living in an 'in the closet' type situation for the time being. I am mainly out of the closet except to family members of mine and my boyfriend's. We live with his mother at the time being but plan on looking for houses beginning in 2016 (super excited about that by the way) in our area. I have been a practicing pagan for a year now (yes, baby pagan) but according to my past lives, this is not something new to my soul, just new to me until I begin remembering again. I do not have free reign to practice apart from candle magick and meditation, which for now is fine. I however am part of a coven that lets me celebrate the holidays and has become a family to me in such a short time frame.

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 I did not discover paganism by any sort of flashing light or some great beautiful goddess smacking me on the head. One day my boyfriend and I were walking around Princeton (by the college part of the town) because we had never done something like that before even though we live pretty close to the town. We did a little window shopping and when I spotted a book store, I wanted to check it out. I just obtained a new job and had a lot of free time to read books. Upon browsing, I came upon Babayaga by Toby Barlow and instantly knew I had to have the book. After purchasing it, it took me about a week with the free time I had to finish it. It peeked my interest with finding the witch who was not so good while there was another that was. There's also a love story and the detective becomes a flea! Oh it was so good haha. But then I had a thought, and this thought changed my entire world. Do witches exist today?

That question led me to do a simple Google search asking the same question. I found the words 'wicca' and 'paganism' amongst the top searches and began doing my research. I briefly heard of the word 'pagan' before but had no idea what they actually meant. Upon reading definitions of what they were, I began doing more research: what do they believe? how do they worship? what is magick and why does it have a 'k' at the end of it? etc. and found upon reading, I felt I agreed more with the idea of paganism and wicca then I ever had with christianity. Now I am not saying christianity is wrong, but it never settled well with me. A god that loves everyone regardless of their sins yet cannot accept gay marriage though we are created in his own vision? That thought was the strongest against my beliefs, being a form of pansexual (not exactly sure what to call my sexuality at this time) and if I ever fell in love with anyone other then a male, I could not get married to them. That and the church I did not agree with because I felt them to be greedy. You were judged for throwing in little money, or no money at all, even if it was a choice between food for your family and the salary of the priest.  I felt you could worship the lord anywhere, it did not have to be inside the church on a Sunday morning.

Then I began researching groups in my area and went to find online discussion groups such as WiccanTogether and PaganSpace, which I still am active on, and WitchVox where I found a few covens in the area who do public classes. Thus my research began to take off and I was in the mindset of transforming my spirituality. My family is super religious so I chose not to tell them for the sake of having a relationship with them, although my mother might come around. I do not know if I will ever tell them at this point, but I was sure I was not going to tell anyone and yet I have told my closest friends about my new founded religion. They have been surprisingly supportive and it does help that most of my friends now are pagan.

But this post is already long enough and I shall describe exactly what I do and what I practice at a later date. Thanks for reading!
Love & Light, Ganshmi