[Miss Cassandra]

Originally Posted by Amara "Bambi" Madden

Hello. My name is Amara, but most of the people who know me call me Bambi.

Hello there, Sister. Great to see another wiccan visiting this forum! Is it OK if I call you Bambi as well? If you like, you might call me Moonbeam, that's how some of the girls at my coven like to call me.

From what I’ve read in some post and in some peoples profiles, church members here might call me ‘slut’, ‘whore’, ‘witch’, ‘heathen’, etc….

Yes, that's what they do. I've grown up in Freehold, among most of the people you see posting here, so I've grown used to being called names like that.

If I even say a word that sounds like ‘wiccan’ or ‘witch’ in context with something completely different, conservative Christians go crazy like I’m going to put some sort of “curse” on them. So, before I go on, I would just like to say that, no, I will not place any type of “curse” or evil “spell” on anyone.

I don't think they will listen to you. Many people in town seriously believe that I'm dancing naked in moonlight every night (well, at ceremonies I'm sometimes skyclad, but only at the Sabbaths), and cause babies to be born with deformities (marrying cousins is common practice in Freehold). They have missed some 2000 years of more progressive thinking.

We then went to an Apostolic church for several months before my family started attending a Methodist church, where both my younger brother and myself were baptized of our own free will.

I was baptized as well, here at Landover, not of my free will, of course. I rejected the mindless hatred of the bible when I was about 16, at which point I was excommunicated.

While there are a few certain aspects that I feel to be true in the Bible, and in Christianity in general, I just had this strange feeling that there was much more truth in the world that’s not explained, or even acknowledged, by Christianity.

"Love thy neighbour as yourself" and "do unto others as you want them to do unto you," are nice (and, of course, stolen from earlier pagan traditions), but for the rest, I never found the bible to be very suitable as a moral guide. Especially infinite punishment for finite crimes seems a little barbaric.

So, I started to learn about all sorts of religions, political views, and such. Then, I came across several books in Wicca. Unlike other, more widely spread organized religions, Wicca doesn’t have a specific set of dogmatic rules that state how you must live and act, which I found rather freeing. After several months of searching and learning, I had decided that Wicca was the path for me.

That's also what I like about Wicca. I don't have to listen to some supposed "authority," but I can just listen to the whisperings of the Mother Goddess in the wind. Do you worship the Dual Godhead as well?

So, for now, I say “Farewell”

Blessed be, Sister! I hope to see more of you on these forums!