Writing Wild: Crafting the Pagan Memoir

By TJ Burns

Where has the road taken you? What wisdom have you gained on this journey?

The world needs our stories, tales of both passion and pain. Told from your deep truth, the words can cleanse the soul and heal the heart.

Writing Wild was crafted for new writers and non-writers who identify with an Earth-based spiritual path. It combines writing assignments with personal ritual, guided meditation, and other exercises to connect a budding memoirist with their own story on a deeper level.

Unlike other books on the art of writing memoirs, Writing Wild approaches the subject in a manner that is both practical and magical.

• Language: English
• Publisher: TJ Burns
• Release date: Apr 13, 2014
• ISBN: 9781938397820

Book preview

Writing Wild

Crafting the Pagan Memoir

T. J. Burns

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Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2014, T. J. Burns

License Notes: This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Pagan Writers Press

Houston, Texas

ISBN: 978-1-938397-82-0

Edited by Rosa Sophia

Cover by Angelique Mroczka

http://paganwriterspress.com

Dedication

To Lance, from whom both love and coffee pours without end.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Birth of a Witch

Notes on Using this Book

Chapter One: Memoir Defined

Chapter Two: Gathering Your Tools

Chapter Three: The Ritual of Writing

Chapter Four: But It Might Upset the Ancestors

Chapter Five: Invoking the Spirits

Chapter Six: Your Life as an Arc

Chapter Seven: Power Round

Chapter Eight: Wielding the Blade of Revision

Chapter Nine: Opening the Circle

Bibliography and Suggested Reading

About the Author

Introduction: The Birth of a Witch

Despite my silent prayers to make him stop, Mr. A lifts up the back of my homemade peasant blouse to unhook my training bra. It’s a Wednesday night, Junior Bible Study night. It’s winter, and I’m wearing pants under my below-the-knee length skirt. The locked door of the bible study room stands solid behind my back. It doesn’t wobble as my closet door had a few months before when my father, red faced and pointing a mean finger, came in to yell at me about something. Mr. A’s face is red too, but his flush looks different than my dad’s. The door behind me feels as if it’s made of steel—impenetrable. I pray for the same quality. In my mind I shout His name three times as I’d been taught to do when ever Demons were near: Jehovah, Jehovah, Jehovah. The slick painted surface of the door chills my skin. A chalkboard hangs on the wall just a few inches away to my left. I could touch it if my hand were free, maybe grab the chalk and write HELP in large print.

I focus on the tight, neat writing on the chalkboard but can’t decipher the words from my sideways angle. I don’t recall which scriptures we’d been studying before he dismissed the rest of the small class. The size of the group had dwindled in the past few weeks. Mom said not enough parents were willing to be tough on their kids these days. But I’d be ready when Armageddon came if she had anything to do with it. The smell of chalk dust fills my nostrils and makes my stomach lurch.

He finishes and with a gentle tug pulls my shirt back down to cover the elastic waistband of my pink skirt. Mom and I had chosen the fabric from the sewing section in Woolworth’s basement. Pink roses on a pink background, it was heavy and soft, a thick double knit for modesty and warmth. I loved the fabric and it was one of the few skirts I was willing to wear to school, but only after rolling the waistband over on itself to bring the hemline up a few inches the way some other J.W. girls had taught me. Mr. A gives the crooked hem of the blouse a few neat pats, as though he’s straightening the clothes of a messy child. As though he’s doing me a favor.

During our quick, private lecture before he pinned me against the door, Mr. A warned that flaunting my new breasts and rounding hips after this day would cause nothing but trouble. Did he know how I’d shortened my skirt and dashed a smear of shoplifted lip gloss on my smile in the Girls before heading to homeroom in the morning? He assured me he’d been sent by God, acting purely on His instruction. Jehovah had guided him to teach me the importance of remaining humble before men. I accepted his explanation. I was thirteen and he was older than my own father. An Elder in our Kingdom Hall, and the father of one of my best—In the Truth—friends.

I wonder now how many other young girls he’d groped and sucked at with his shoulder pressed against a locked door, and if he believed his own words. Like most young victims of skilled predators I certainly believed Mr. A when he said I shouldn’t tell anyone, that telling would mean my mother and the whole congregation would find out about my Worldly behavior. They’d know how I’d let him press my hand over his trousered crotch while he bucked against it. If I told, I’d be disfellowshipped, he said, and if that happened no one would help me.

I locked that memory behind its own sturdy door and declared myself over it, and there it stayed until about fifteen years later when I attended my first women’s Full Moon ritual. I’d been drawn to the event without really knowing what it was but somehow certain it was exactly what my soul had been longing for. After a bumpy arrival to the circle I settled in and took the advice of the Priestess who suggested we take note of who sat directly across from us because no doubt that woman acted as a special mirror for the evening.

A young, fairy-like girl sat across from me. I remember her sharp nose and pixie haircut. At one point in the ritual we passed a conch around the circle. As each woman held the thick-lipped shell she also held the group’s full attention and was given the opportunity to speak about the greatest challenge she’d encountered since the last full moon. I felt heat rise on the back of my neck and flash across my face when the young woman across from me spoke about her efforts to forgive the man who’d molested her, a man who’d broken her trust as a child.

That night I didn’t understand my anger at this young woman’s efforts for compassion. Her desire to forgive her attacker reached beyond my understanding and a small piece of me resented her for it. How dare she be so magnanimous, so collected? When my turn came to hold the conch I passed it to the next woman, seething in silence.

And that’s how I became a witch.

Well, it’s not the whole story. But it’s the birth of my two decade-long journey of practicing Witchcraft as a spiritual tradition that empowers each individual to say yes and to say no. One that teaches love and not fear, one that is healing.

So why should I write about that? Why should anyone sift through the rubble of their broken past looking for the sharpest shards, and stick them on a page for everyone to read? Because the act of writing is healing—at least it is for some. It is for me. Writing allows me to examine, map, reexamine, walk away from, get a different perspective on, and find resolutions to some of the most difficult and painful moments of my life. It also allows me to laugh, honor my loved ones, honor the past that shaped me and recall some of the best times of my life.

Memoir writing is especially valuable to me as a Pagan because the path to becoming a Witch burgeoned with gifts, with glorious moments of revelation and healing as well as painful moments of loss and misunderstanding, and perhaps most importantly, with a sense of kinship I found missing in my biological family. Through participation in rituals and sacred ceremonies I began to realize many who follow a non-traditional spiritual path found their way, as I did, by first rejecting something else—sometimes with grave consequences. My mother disavowed me for a short time after I came out of the broom closet and confessed I was studying Witchcraft. There are still members of my family with whom I haven’t shared the details of my spiritual path. To Know, to Dare, to Will, and to Be Silent is a wise maxim indeed.

Whether we are rejected by a community we once held dear or we are rejecting a belief system that no longer holds power over us, we who seek our own spiritual path are propelled by an anchor-deep desire to understand our lives and develop a more meaningful relationship with Spirit than what we had previously known. Damn the torpedoes.

After my own awakening and months of focused study in Dianic Wicca, I felt called to provide a safe place for women to explore their spiritual awakenings. That place was in personal and group ritual. Believing every person has an important story to tell and that if we could all share our stories there would be greater compassion in the world, my focus as a ritual leader was and still is to create opportunities for personal sharing.

It’s that same focus I bring to Writing Wild: Crafting the Pagan Memoir.

Of course, not every Neo-Pagan or new ager suffered childhood trauma or was denounced by their family when they stopped going to church on Sunday. Many spiritual seekers have come to a new understanding about religion and spirituality with relative ease and support. Some may have been born into a family that encouraged personal discovery. Imagine! It isn’t preferable or necessary to have overcome a shattering past in order to tell an interesting story.

True, if you’ve never climbed over an obstacle, never been hurt or felt betrayed, never been afraid, never learned from a mistake or stared down any unpleasantness, your memoir may not be a best seller. But can anyone really lay claim to that description? Every living person faces obstacles. Conflict is the essence of nature. The lion competes for the antelope foal that follows the lush growth of prairie grass that waits