What Does it Mean to be a Priestess of Light and Rainbows?

There are lots of cool pagan blogs out there.  People leading dark and powerful oracular paths,  a follower of the trickster god Loki, a priest of Odin who does ordeal work, rock and roll wicca and people following their spirituality into the deep, powerful, guiding darkness.  It’s cool shit.

Going into the Darkness

I’m not that person. I do have a powerful and deep spirituality.  I study the old lore. I do daily devotionals. I usually end up doing about 3 or 4 full rituals a month. I’ve studied shamanism, energy healing, herbalism, ritual structure, trancework, and lots more.  I’ve had intense and powerful initiatory experiences. I’ve led rituals where the clouds parted right on cue, the winds rose when I called, and the participants felt that transcendent moment when they knew that they had connected with The Powers That Be.

Honestly, I kind of envy the kind of dark spirituality found in the blogs I linked to.  I love reading about the poisoner’s path filled with bones and deadly herbs or the mystic’s solitary existence where the deepest connection they have is with the Gods and Spirits. However, I’ve consistently found that instead of diving into the depths I’ve flown to the heights.  Rainbows and sunshine are my omens.  The Dawn guides me to a path devoted to creativity, beauty, and healing.

Sometimes I feel like a pagan goodie-goodie dork.

That’s not to say that I don’t have some solid weirdo cred, but in the main, my spirituality is a bright and shining thing.  There’s power within that as well, in case you’re wondering.  I’ve shared some amazing experiences.  Sometimes I wonder if the reason that so many pagans are attracted to the darker paths is because those who tend toward sunshiny spirituality stay in Christian faiths.  It’s much easier to fit your spirituality into a Christian matrix when you express your spirituality in symbols of light, love, and healing.  I’m not a Christian though.  I am deeply committed to my Gods and Goddesses, to my Ancestors, to the Spirits of the Land. I expect my religion to not only make my life better, but help me interact with the larger community in a positive way, and I’m not convinced that Christian theology can ever truly provide that.  More than that, my Gods are not their Gods.  I have my own deep and abiding faith, and I’m good with that.

Nor is it that I’m naturally a happy-go-lucky person.  I’ve struggled with depression and anxiety for a long, long time now, and it’s taken me years of work to get to the stable place I am now.  I was attracted to darker paths, but that’s not where I’ve ended up.  I think part of it is my children.  I am dedicated to providing them with an atmosphere of learning and positivity and as a stay at home mom it is never far from my thoughts.

It can be a long climb out of depression.

But this path is the result of more than a need to create a sunshiny space for myself and my kids.  I have come to understand that this is the work that needs doing here in my neck of the woods.  Living in Michigan, things are pretty dark.  We have 4 of the top 10 most violent cities in the US.  Our economy has been tanking for decades right along with the fall of the “Big Three” car companies.  Times are tough, and will continue to be for a while.  With climate change affecting agriculture and the results of peak oil on the horizon I can’t honestly say that I think the future is going to get much brighter.  My life is largely dedicated to learning how to live a sustainable and meaningful existence within the limits of what my culture has chosen to do.

Maybe a world like that needs a little sunshine and rainbows.

In the end, I will continue to seek the answer to these questions, “What is it that has brought me to this path, and how do I live my life in accordance with it?”  I think these are questions that most of us try to answer with varying success in all our lives.