Major Religions

[silverncold196]

Going through the forum, there seem to be a lot of people who practice Reiki, Wicca, et cetera. So, out of curiosity, is there anyone here who practices or used to follow Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, or Islam? If you don't anymore, why did you leave that faith?  

[Kilgimet]

I was raised Roman Catholic. My experiences were pretty bleak. (If you might get offended, you should probably stop reading at this point.) I noticed a lot of things in the faith and practice that didn't resonate with me on a personal level. Also, there were a lot of points that no one would explain to me. I was expected to just accept it on faith. I was told that some of my personal life experiences (I kept them to myself for fear of being ostracized or worse.) were evil when I knew in my heart they weren't. I began studying different religions and belief structures, trying to see where they were the same and where they differed. I studied everything from the Satanic Bible to religions of the Orient to druidism to Wicca. When studying the different books that can only be found in the "new age" section of bookstores, I finally started to find answers to some of my questions. In a more mundane light, I had some personal family issues due to different aspects of the Christian faith that wasn't present on the pagan circles I became exposed to. After meeting different pagans and experiencing the rituals and "families" these social circles exposed me to, I finally started to feel whole, my questions were answered, and the healing finally started to commence. The rest, as they say, is history.  

[DKMG]

I was born into, and still am, in a Roman Catholic family. Thus, i was sent to Catholic skewl for 6 yeers and a yeer n a half or two of sumwut of a catechism group before that. i was miserable there. sure, i made frends quickly (and they still r my best frends now evn tho we go to different skewls), but sumthin wasnt rite. all my life wen my family prayed or went to church i didnt feel the "connection" w/ God that i was supposed to have (and i still dont) instead, evr since i was a very young child, i was drawn to other religions and practices.

i began reading books on various subjects and gained the knowledge of other religions and practices, giving me my current beliefs system. And that is how my interests began. While still being in catholic skewl at the time, the nuns, priests, and teechers hated me. i was apparently a "foul mouthed child/ teenager that needs an attitude adjustment." and so forth.

i was a strait A student, but my personality and behavior wasnt exactly wut they wanted. the obviously unfair disposition towards me reely set me off altogether from having anything to do with the skewl evr agn. So, i became the girl in the principal's office for little things that no one else wuld get in trouble for...From then on, i continued my studies and began to have my own connections with my patron deities. Of course, i nvr told any1, but i was and am still happy w/ o tellin ppl openly about it XD i personally dont believe that i need to share my religion openly w/ the world, so i keep it somewut of a secret (except here on the net XDD >.<)

thats a bit of meh story..sorries fer the long post sweatdrop XD  

[Captain Chemosh]

I was raised Roman Catholic, found out about other religions via a few occultist friends, and started to experiment. First it was atheist (found it too self-absorbed towards the mind and evolution), next was pastafarianism, found that too many people around me didn't "appreciate" my following of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Eventually looked into Satanism, but it just didn't sit right with me for some reason or another. So I moved onto Wicca and looked into oriental religions when a D&D pal of mine brought it up in a campaign. Found Shintoism, however I live in the U.S. so there are no shrines for it here and so ended up developing Neo-Shintoism as a way to embrace it in my urban settings. I did borrow some parts of other religions in forming Neo-Shintoism such as chakras, karma, and a few others as well. And yes, generally a religion dies before a Neo version of it is founded, but since only one country in the world has the proper shrines for its worship, I made due with my available resources and my faith in the Kami...  

[Magus Initi]

Well, I'm the first responder that wasn't raised Roman Catholic.

I was raised Protestant, Methodist to be exact.

However, most of the people on my Dad's side of the family are psychic in some way or another, and/or have had experiences with ghosts/spirits, and a few (like my dad) can astral project quite easily, as well as various other events that have happened in the family, which has lead to my family to be quite open minded about such things.

My mom's side of the family, on the other hand, is the sort that thinks that Astrology is the work of the devil and don't believe in ghosts, etc etc. My mom, however, after knowing my dad and his family, is also open-minded about that "sort of thing." In fact, she was heavily into astrology at one point.

So, growing up, I was allowed to buy books on occult subjects, so long as they didn't have words like "wicca" or "witch" on them, because my parents didn't want me to start worshiping other gods. I also wasn't allowed to have tarot cards or other tools for possible divination (as far as they knew) because they were afraid that, with my young impressionable mind, evil things would use the cards or whatever to try to trick me.

So what am I today? I still keep my Christian roots, but have expanded my spiritual beliefs to include many pagan ideologies. That's always a mouthful to tell people, so I've started calling myself an "Eclectic Monotheist".  

[Underworld Priestess]

My family is not very church going but when I was growing up they pushed me to go to church and since it sortof is the social norm around here I went to go to church. I tried different Christian churches, I went to a Baptist, Assembly of God and Methodist. Nothing ever felt right, and the entire time I still held on to my own beliefs. So I just decided what was best for me is what felt right and so I stopped going to church and focused on being a solitary Pagan practioner.  

[Ishtar Shakti]

I was raised non-denominational christian. I tried out several different religious fits or belief systems from budhism to atheism as a sort of natural progression of faith. I am currently agnostic I sort of just made up my own religion  

[Chieftain Twilight]

my mom is a Witch of some type, i would assume wiccan, because she follows alot of it's fluff, and has a certain monotheistic influence....

and my stepdad is Hindu (Shiva is his Patron, and he makes alot of prayers to Krishna and Ganesh).

i am Shamanic, myself, and i have to say that alot of Hindu influences me, as well as Shinto, and Chaos Magic. i also have some Daoist and Buddhist influences.

i have alot of respect for Islam though (and i adore it's art and architecture), and even more for Baha'i.

i am non-religious myself, just a Spiritualist, so i take what fits my philosophy and it works out fine. i am Ordained by the ULC though.  

[Ishtar Shakti]

I was raised in a buddhist christian family. My parents were divorced. I guess i was christian because buddhism is a philosophy. I mostly went to church for the music. Jesus loves the little children. All the Children of the world. Jesus loves the little children all the boys and girls!

I stopped going to church around the time the singing stopped. I was dragged to church periodically and had to sit through coffee and snack church gatherings. I didn't really like... how fake the people were. How false they seemed, like they weren't honest with their feelings.

The coffee and snacks church was all right. Their were games that focused around moral measures. More taught morality and being nice to people then God is right in all things and that seemed good to me. I hate being prosteletized... That church I went to moved and the other churches in the area were just Bad churches.

I don't like fire and brim stone churches which try to guilt or threaten you. I don't like false happiness sermons. I like singing and I like morality and being nice to people but also the Human aspects of people, acknowledging that its ok to feel sad seems important to me.

So I am currently invested in the church of Psychology. I am still technically christian... I just don't like most christians.

Though I was an aethist for a while... but then I kept seeing the affects of spirits on the physical and I couldn't really explain invisible forces affecting the world... so I created a view of energy and influencing energy to explain that.

Oh and I don't like Buddhism because it focus' too much on suffering and I don't think pain is really all that Bad since I'm in constant pain and I don't think people are constantly suffering. I don't think you have to give up attachment just to not hurt. I think thats the out for people who want to kill themselves. I only Really Like the thought that pain doesn't Have to have meaning... you give it meaning  

[Jokoria17]

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

Well, I was raised Roman Catholci/nondenominal (father and mother respectively).

Out of the four of us in my family (me + three siblings), I believe me and one of my sisters were the ones with the most Catholic influence on ourselves. My parents are divorced. My brother and I share the same two parents. One of my younger sisters doesn't share either parent and is part of the family due to the marriage of her mother and my father.

The other is my half-sister, same mother.

The sister whom I state to have had a heavier influence of Catholicism is the one that shares neither blood parent with me, as she lives with my heavily Catholic father.

The other sister doesn't live with my dad and thus has no huge Catholic influence.

If you're wondering about my brother, I suppose the reason as to why he wasn't put under as much of a Catholic life as I was was because when my parents divorced, we went to our mom's custody. He was 3, thus too young to really "get started" on religion.

All but the half-sister are baptized. My step-sister and I both had Communion and I was Confirmed. (She's still a devout Catholic unlike myself but too young for this).

---Now as to why I left Catholicism---

Reason #1: I had an interest in the supernatural from the very start of life. This, I suppose, just naturally led me to question other belief systems, and eventually my own.

Reason #2: Puberty. Sexual tendencies...it wasn't much, but I noticed at the start of my freshman year that I had a slight interest in females...even though I myself was...(surprise surprise!) female! Of course, this led to a break with Catholicism.

Reason #3: The Satanic Bible by Anton LaVey. You know what the weird thing is about all this? I'm NOT a Satanist! But the essays in the book made me look at Christianity in a new light, reinforcing beliefs that I'd already had.

Reason #4: The Vatican. I don't understand the issues with them, and why Holy Men asked to live simply...don't.

Reason #5: Evangelicals. Ever seen "Jesus Camp?" That made me very ashamed to be Christian.

..and so many others, not to bash Christianity. It's a good religion, but not for me. Not personally.

As for how I found Thelema...research. The book, almost literally, fell into my lap. And the rest followed suit. It took a long time to understand it but today I'm very happy to be a Thelemite. It works perfectly for me.

Love is the law, love under will.

Mihi Cura Futuri

 

[Koigokoro Konjou]

I was born into a combo of Christian and Shaman beleifs.  

[xxravenohayexx]

I was raised by a non denominational Christian. My mother, who was previously part of a hereditary tradition, converted to Christianity. After studying the both religions, and many others (I used to be a Shugendoist) I decided to become a Witch, but not under the hereditary tradition in which I was initiated.  

[zombanie]

I was adopted, at the age of 3, into a non-denominational Christian family. Through the early years I considered myself to be Christian, following the rules and stories of the bible. But after I turned 13, I woke up and realized that the world doesn't work the way the bible says it does. I realized that there was no way to prove any of what the bible says. So I delved in reading it further, and found a plethora of contradictions and statements that are so immoral that I couldn't begin to force myself to believe in them any longer. Despite the overwhelming evidence that this religion was not for me at all, I let it go and continued believing in it. Shortly after I turned 14 I was reminded of everything I didn't believe in or didn't agree with in the bible and stopped calling myself a Christian.  

[Necromandy]

As for my origins. I was originally brought up in a completely non-religious family. My mom and stepdad were vaguely christian (I say vaguely, because they never went to church, and my mom was really into meditation, and claimed to be able to Astral Project [she even demonstrated it to dad, by going into a room, closing the door, and staying in there for 2 hours. She came back out and recounted everything he had done for the entire time, with uncanny accuracy.]) I was too young to remember this, though, and only have their stories of it to go off of.

When i was around 9, my mom married a fundamentalist christian. She soon became just as much of a fundie (most likely just to please him). They made life very uncomfortable for me, and forced me into christianity. I actually believed it for a while, but i never really read the bible or anything. I was really happy with christianity for a few years (until i was around 13 or 14.), until i started reading the bible. [See note#1]

After My mother inevitable divorced him (He was fairly abusive to my younger brother, physically, and verbally/emotionally abusive to me), I fell into full-blown atheism. I literally hated everything that had anything to do with religion. He made me believe that i had not been religious, and was "doing it wrong", because i did not follow everything in the bible.

I only stayed an atheist for a year or two, end soon ascended up to being agnostic.

While an agnostic, I met a girl, and we soon fell into a romantic relationship (this was when i was around 16). I soon learned that she was Neopagan (She called herself "Wiccan". I know now that she was just an eclectic neopagan.) I wanted to know more about her beliefs, so i began studying Pagan religions and witchcraft. I soon became another one of the "Wiccans". The more i studied Wicca, the more i came to dislike it. It was too "good" for me. It felt very restricting, almost as much as by-the-book christianity.

I began studying all religions, and the Occult in general. I learned of Chaos Magick, and adored it. I liked the idea of using belief as a tool, and not a thing to model your life off of, casting Sigils, doing my own thing. It was pretty perfect for me. While studying Chaos Magick (as well as ceremonial magick, folk magic, voodoo, etc.), I began to compile my own belief system, which is what I follow now (I am 19 now)

Note#1: This experience has led me to believe that every religion is viable for those who follow it. Religion is a deeply personal thing, and I don't believe any one religion is right or wrong. They are only as correct as their followers believe they are. The only qualms i have with any religion are towards the ones who believe they hold a monopoly on truth, and see fit to make sure everyone knows it.  

[Ghisteslwchlohm]

I was raised agnostic (and I still am agnostic), which is rather ironic because I went to a Catholic elementary school out of family tradition. My mother still tends to follow catholic practice but with an open mind toward the possibilities of what God actually is, while my father is an atheist who introduced me to the general idea of the paranormal when I was little (x-files fan...).

The nudge in that direction has stayed with me and made me realize that organized religion (for me, anyways) could limit my ability to believe three implausible things before breakfast. As I don't often turn my mind to the questions religion tends to try to answer--my mother has managed to instill her sense of practicality upon me, in part--I found that agnosticism was the appropriate term for my beliefs. While my experiences with reiki have left me with a leaning towards wicca and other nature based religions, I still get an innate feeling something is missing in them and I suppose I will search until I find it.