I’ll be writing a series of posts on Building Your Own Paganism. I’m updating these from a series I did on Medium during the pandemic.

I’ve been Pagan for over two decades. During that time, I was:

• a solitary
• studied with a Wiccan coven
• had a loose association with a group of friends who did ritual together
• studied with another coven where I worked my way through three degrees
• taught under the auspices of my High Priestess
• got ordained and hived off
• ran my own group for 12 years
• retired from actively leading a group but still act as a mentor to the groups that hived off from mine
• currently doing things solo or with a few friends

Why Build Your Own?

During all this time, I’ve met many people who were solitary, didn’t quite find a group they were happy with, or who were what I’ll call “general Pagans.” Folks who did not refer to themselves as Wiccan or Druid or Asatru or put any label but Pagan on their spiritual paths. Many of the people that I’ve talked with about this want something more. It could be a structure that fits them and their life and schedule. Maybe they want a fuller understanding of how to create their own rituals. Or possibly a deeper way to think about the universe.

The problem is that they’ve never found a path that is already out there in the world that fits them. Everything they’ve tried is an ill-fitting coat. Some of the problems include:

• too much rigidity in structure
• an insistence on believing something that didn’t make sense
• they found a group where all that made sense but the person running the group had an ego that was just too big
• the group suffered from all the things that can happen when group dynamics go wrong.

And so our Pagan friend, who might be you, goes solo but might not be satisfied with that either.

So then what?

What is a Religion?

I recommend building your own Pagan path. Create your personal religion.

First, let’s talk about what religion is. Let’s see what the boundaries of this project may look like.

Here is a quick definition from the BBC: (https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/ )

Religion can be explained as a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.

There are some important aspects of that definition:

• belief concerning the universe
• possible superhuman agents
• rituals
• a moral code (see my post on ethics)

I’ll be talking about those in more detail in other posts. Right now I want to point out something that isn’t in that definition. Nowhere does it say that “religion” cannot be a personal creation. None of the definitions I found did. It may be that the people writing those definitions assumed they were talking about a big monolithic church structure designed to lead millions of people. Pagans don’t take big churches as a given. We’re more independent than that.

All Religion is Human Made

Here’s the thing that most people don’t think about. All religion is made up. By someone, somewhere, sometime. Even if you believe that a God or Gods walked the earth, they didn’t create the religions, their worshippers did. For example, Jesus isn’t the Catholic church. That came later and was organized and developed by human beings, mostly men.

Once you understand that religion, however divinely inspired, was written down by human beings, the thought of developing your own should feel empowering, rather than sacrilegious. Many of us have done this informally. I have a friend who was Catholic. She ignored the parts that she thought were stupid (particularly their attitude toward LGBTQ+ people) and referred to her belief system as Catholicism by Ann (not her real name). If we take on building our own path purposefully, we aren’t treading completely new ground.

Considerations

Here are a few things to consider when getting ready to make your Paganism by You religion:

• Inspiration, adaptation, and appropriation
• Ethics
• Sacred space
• Rituals
• Creation story
• Nature of deity
• Cosmic maps
• Cycles
• Magic
• and much more

If you want more detail, I’ll be writing on these subjects. The key thing to remember is that all religion has been made up by someone, so why not you?