The Birth of a Webpage


     I'd been toying with the idea of scripting a Wiccan/Pagan site for several years before this page ever became a reality. I certainly could have written one long before I created this particular site. But there were already so many other pages out there, and I wanted to do something a little more relevant than adding another "me too!" entry into world of Internet Paganism.

     The end result of those reservations is Morgan's Rites. Read any link off the main page, and you should get a fairly good idea as to what I'm about. For those of you who'd prefer more of a cut and dry biographical introduction, start here.  
 

     I became a Pagan at a very early age, and soon discovered that it is a difficult religion to practice while you're still young enough to be in grade school. Luckily, my parents (a devout Christian and a Buddhist, respectively) left me to my own devices, although my choice of religious paths resulted in may frequently raised eyebrows on their parts. Understanding as they were, I was soon confronted by the fact that most people considered Neo-Paganism little more than an affectation.

          "We need to get you involved in a real religion," my father said to me.
          And I'm not already? I thought.

Still, I could be fairly open with my parents, close family, and circle of friends about my choice of spiritual paths.  
 

     Later, however, I was not so lucky. The summer before my sixth grade year, my family moved from Pittsburgh to a small Indiana town in the dead center of the Bible Belt. I can remember sitting in the kitchen of my Pittsburgh house, reading Gerina Dunwich's The Magic of Candle Burning, and trying to understand why my mother was warning me so stringently to keep my Occult books hidden once we moved . (My confusion was justified. While experience has taught me that one can find fundamentalists of every color wherever one goes, the bigger the city, the more diversity there is, and the less threatening it becomes to anyone who lives there. For instance, when I took my first deck of Tarot cards into my 3rd grade classroom, they were greeted with nothing more than mild curiosity by the other students.) I nodded my head and promised to keep Candleburning and its other bookmates safely hidden away once we moved. But in the end, a combination of naivety and pre-adolescent rebellion won the battle, and I showed up for class one day bearing The Complete Book of Saxon Witchcraft in my backpack. It was spotted by my English teacher, who, to make a long story short, had me expelled from my elementary school.  
 

     Nothing in life is ever inherently good or bad. The above experience, more than anything else, turned me into both something of a Taoist and a crusader against exclusionary thinking. Put more simply, being condemned for my private, personal beliefs convinced me that the best opinion to have about anything is the most open one possible. In other words, if someone isn't actively harming another person, I believe s/he has the right to think and act as s/he sees fit without taking static from anybody. That, more than anything else, is the direction from which I approach any discussion, be it about Neo-Paganism or life in general.  
 

     As far as my personal beliefs are concerned, I worship within the Celtic pantheon, particularly the Welsh and Scottish deities. I've long since moved on from the more traditionally Wiccan "raise the cone of power and call the four directions" SOP to rituals more closely based on historical fact. While I may feel compelled to write more specifically about my beliefs later on, right now I'm concentrating more on the realities of living day-to-day life as a Neo-Pagan.

Let me know what you think! Email me!  
 



Back