Whose Religion?

The way I see it is this ...

1) I don't feel that my ancestors can dictate my choice of religion. I don't necessarily identify with a culture or religion just because it happens to be (or have been) practiced by people from the same genetic pool. Some of them frankly sucked. I believe that religion should be a conscious choice, made freely, not forced upon anyone from outside.

2) Some places have energy and spirits of their own. As people migrate around the world, they may encounter new spirits and come to a mutual enjoyment of each other's company. If the land and spirits have a preference as to how they wish to be reverenced, and the current residents are amenable to that, it is a relationship worth pursuing.

3) Anything with power tends to have protections; this applies to plants, religions, magical systems, and many other things. Frivolous or careless use of powerful items or activities can cause harm and is foolish.

4) It is not okay to hurt other people in pursuit of your own needs and be oblivious to the mayhem caused.

What makes this kind of situation difficult is that harm can come from either direction:

If Person A practices a religion which was historically done by the ancestors of Person B, then Person B may have their feelings hurt because this adds to oppression.

If Person A dictates what religion(s) Person B may or may not practice, then Person B may have their feelings hurt and be spiritually stifled.

We are left with this obnoxious mess because a bunch of long-ago dead people did vile and inexcusable things to each other. We therefore have to figure out ways to do less harm to each other.

One idea I've found useful is that spirituality evolves, and you get out of a practice what you put into it. So for instance, one of my totems is Wolf. I don't just "say" that and decorate my home with wolves; I also work to protect wolf habitat and discourage people from killing wolves. The more I learn about wolves, the better I can connect with this totem; and the more I do for wolves, the happier Wolf is and the more likely I am to get a favorable answer if I ask for help.

When practicing religion, it's important to know what you're doing. When leading a religious group, it is absolutely crucial to know what you're doing. Many people don't care to do that much work, and doing things right is often much harder than it looks. I certainly wouldn't be inclined to try something as complex as a sweat lodge without training, or at least exhaustive research if training was unavailable. And for any religious leader, a sound knowledge of human psychology and biology is a darn good idea, because being such means the universe starts treating you as a grease trap for melted-down human beings.

In our coven, we enjoy exploring different magical and spiritual techniques. Some are things we've read about, especially things that have lots of conflicting descriptions -- we like to test different options and compare the results. Some are things we've invented on our own, like the hand-to-hand circle casting. We customarily test new ideas with a small group, in private, usually at an esbat (which is coven-members-only). That gives us a chance to work out any bugs before we introduce the technique at an open sabbat. We do research as needed. We have some safety features, like appointing a Fire Keeper if we are doing a bonfire. So we have a pretty good record of successful rituals, with only a couple of occasions where things got slightly out of hand and we needed to damp them down -- and we're celebrating our 13th anniversary of doing rituals here, on Saturday.