Rosewicket Wicca Coven

I was brought up in a Christian family, my mom was Baptist and my dad a Mormon.

I have looked at some neo-pagan beliefs and that is defiantly one I like, but I like Bitheism (a.k.a. Duotheism) the best. It believes in both the goddess and the god representing both the male and female aspects. here is where I found different types of wicca  http://www.religioustolerance.org/wic_beli.htm  go down about half the way on this page.

i'm wiccan all the way even though i was born lutheran and tried alot of christain churches.

I've never believed that you are only one thing. I mean, everyone has a belief even if they don't call themselves religious. You probably fit into more things than you know, and learning who you are is central to Wicca and many paths.

To be honest, the people I know who have only studied Wicca are rather closed minded. But when you can study and love your path while learning about the faiths of the world, you learn more about Wicca than you would think.

I come from a loosely pagan household (ie, we celebrated the seasons, I was named after a moon goddess, my mom worships any deity she feels like except for the Abrahamic ones).  The rest of my family is 'Christian' in the sense that they don't really do anything for their faith and don't walk their talk...and are complete bigots to anything outside of their realm of narrow experience.

I've looked at Hinduism, Budhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Catholicism, Satanism, Wicca, general goddess worship, Hellenismos (loosely), Kemeticism (again, loosely), and...Taoism...a tiny, tiny bit of Shintoism.  Lots of Mexica and Azteca spirituality...Unitarian Universalist stuff...  I used to want to be a religion major, so that's influenced the studies I do.

Alright, similar to Wicca...you've got your occult groups from the eighteen and nineteen hundreds...you've got the Mystery traditions of ancient cultures and organizations...you've got the perfect love/golden rule-esque guidline of the Rede, similar to most spiritualities (LHPs obviously don't fall in here).  You've got a lot of similarities to Christianity...a 'rebirth' in the form of an initiation, the taking on of new names, the idea that their two gods encompass aspects of all gods...  My mom actually turned away from Wicca because it was 'too Christian' for her and I wondered for years what she meant until I read the older Wiccan material.  Um...UU obviously, with the thought that all gods are aspects of the one god form (or duo god forms).  And similarities to any fertility-based religion.

If I had kept with my Wicca studies I would have probably only studied that...thankfully my mom bought the Bhagavad-Gita and told me to read it, and I started studying others.

I fall into Wiccan-influenced, Feri and Reclaiming leanings, goddess worshipping witch...a Mexica practioner, a bit of shamanistic stuff...UU in the sense that we should all just get along but also not UU because I focus on the differences of religion...part of me wishes I was Jewish (for the ttly wrong reasons that are lame and fanboy-ish)....all around pagan.  I'd say pagan fits me best, because I'm pretty much a mucky, slammed-together, chopped-up-in-a-blender type of person anyway.  Or neo-pagan, if you prefer the term.

It's refreshing to see someone who's taken such an effort to look at so many things. I'm very simillare to you, Meniskos, in that I have studied from many things and blended the right parts of each of them together to something that fits me, regardless of labels, though I know I have much to learn - it coudl take a lifetime just to half understand one path, afterall. You must be so lucky to live in arizona, where you probably have lots of resources on southern/Mexican witchcraft and magic. The culture I resonate with most is rather far away, though there are many cultural families who have immigrated from there.

I do agree with you that wicca is, at it's core, very 'Christian', and it can actually be quite a beautiful thing if it suits you - that's why I'm always so upset by the 13 year olds that come into the craft and talk about how supressive Christianity has been; when in reality, they are uncomfortable with a few people, not the whole belief.

Yeah.  I've had some of my worst experiences from Christians not because of my faith but because of my other identities, and most of the time I would try to laugh it off.  I used to really, passionately despise Christians, but it comes with the territory of dealing with ones that passionately 'hate the sin' while claiming they don't hate exactly who you are.  I'm much more at peace now.  Christianity can be a truly beautiful religion--one of my acquantices converted to Evangelical Christianity and it's made his life so much better, given him confidence and self-love.  I was so happy for him.

There is a lot of Mexica knowledge where I live, but it's rather hidden and held closely by the Chicanas who have it.  They really distrust white people--not without reason, but still--and think that I will never understand their system of thought when I actually grasped it quicker than my Mexican Catholic schoolmates.  On the Mexican Catholic note...those are some of the kindest people I've ever met.  Typical teenagers (as we pretty much all are), but they are also not restricted by what I would consider classical Catholic group-think.  When I came out as completely queer they were all like, 'Awesome!'

I do feel very understudied...I still have yet to read the bible (all versions, though not all translations--I won't touch King James') and Quran, though I want too.  I often feel like I've barely scratched the surface...and at times that makes me infinitely excited and others incredibly frustrated.

I agree - some people don't realize how great certain Christian and Catholic churches are. I think most Pagans go through a phase of disliking the Christian church because we feel it's an enemy, yet it is not. I have seen many Pagans look at me in disgust when I reveal my sexual orientation, yet my very traditional Protestant Christian Grandmother was quite happy and got my aunt on the phone so she could tell me about all the great lesbian restaurants in Seattle.

Total win for you grandma, seriously. 

I personally love the Metropolitan Community Church and what they do to embrace gays.  And how can we forget the wonderful traditions that have come out of the blending of Catholicism and local spiritualities, like Santeria and Voudoun.  The medicine women of Mexico are amazing, and very, very Catholic.

Personally, I had a horrible time with Wicca and my identity.  It was greeted with, 'Well, you have to be a woman because you were born one' and 'Male+Female'.  Too much gender polarity for me...messed with my heavily queer mental processes.

Oh that's horrible.  I've heard of that happening before.  I don't think it's just the pagan community that frowns on differently gendered people though...I think it's the New Age and occult communities in general.  I've read astrology books that simply don't understand what it means to be transsexual.

My boyfriend and I have had a rough time already...I id as a sort of 'both' and 'neither' gender and he's more the sort of 'I love you, no matter how you id/what gender you are' and since we're both really queer we just...don't fit in with most convential thoughts about fertility and love.  Agh, totally off-topic.... >.<

Well, not really. All older religions had to change their ways to incorperate different racial views, then later sex-role views, and some places haven't even sorted those out, and with the Gay Movement being so forward/future based, it's pushing to be recognized spiritually - and if you ask me, many faiths simply aren't ready to understand how flexible beliefs are, or how they relate to us as people, when they should have been ready long ago.