It's a long time coming, all things considered.
Christian Witch Informational Book Progress:
Introduction written
Change of plans on traditional publishing: more on that soon!
3 Chapters in Progress
We have good news today! The first volume of Where the Gods Left Off is going to be published on September 20, 2023.
The closer we get to the publishing date, the more options for pre-ordering your e-books and paperback books I'll have, so sit tight!
If you're a member of my Patreon, check the latest Patreon post for more details about options for grabbing a copy of this collection!
And now, I'll be I never really thought I'd be writing something sort-of-maybe-a-little resembling a memoir before I even turned twenty-six—but then, I also never thought I'd have reached out and spoken to even one pagan deity, never mind a collection of fifty different spirits (and counting).
After all, Christians aren't "supposed" to believe other gods exist. Christians aren't "supposed" to talk to anyone but God. Christians aren't "supposed" to do anything but listen to the white-collar man at the front of the church repeat the same few verses of the Bible every Sunday, just the way the cows on a farm aren't "supposed" to wonder where the miraculous two-legged creature gets all the delicious hay it piles up into the troughs.
But one thing that never sat right with me is how people could say that our God exists but none others do. Where is the logic in that? How can one invisible entity that is all knowing, all powerful, and everywhere yet sentient enough to manifest and talk to you real... but no other invisible entities that can control rivers or time or volcanoes are?
And if none other such entities really existed... why the hell did God have to specify not to worship any other gods before Him in the first place?
Cue someone saying "because He said not to worship false idols!" when the language of the Ten Commandments has no such thing about false idols in it and my own Bible explains that in the time of Exodus, Gentiles were not expected to worship only God.
Forget all that for now, though. I want to talk about why I started this little adventure, which I lovingly call Spiritual Jackass. After all, what inspires a Christian to start mucking about with spirits completely outside the scope of Christianity?
To be truthful: a bit of FOMO, a lot of curiosity.
I'd see the folks on #witchtok doing all kinds of interesting things with their deities, having full and beautiful relationships with their gods just like I have with my God, and I'd get curious as to what these gods were like. I'd wonder about their stories, or about their histories, or even just their everyday personalities, and I'd think about how cool it would be to talk to them, too—just to see what they had to say. And I mean, given how badly people have twisted God's Word, and made a mess of people's perception of Him, I couldn't help but wonder if maybe there was more to any other god (and later, any angel, demon, or Saint) than the stories had to offer, too.
So I took the plunge in May of 2022, starting with none other than Norse god of mischief and chaos, Loki. And the rest, as they say, is history.
I have so much to talk about in Where the Gods Left Off, so much. I have learned more doing this than I could've ever learned just reading online—and I've heard from not only the gods, but the people who love and worship them, too, making some wonderful friends and connections along the way.
While I'll leave all my real big musings and takeaways for the book, I will say that if there's anything this whole process brought me, it's a sense of peace, camaraderie, and such concentrated love. The appreciation and respect I have for all of these beautiful entities that work together to guide and shape the world extends into the admiration and good will I feel for those that love them; it makes me feel so much more connected to every other person around me, like everyone is, and can be, a member of my cherished community (and I part of theirs).
The whole "cut oneself off from the world" shtick has created too many wounds because of how irresponsibly it's been applied. We might cut ourselves off from the "earthly" things—the things that poison communities, like love for money or from obsession with things that don't really matter—but how could we, and why would we, ever cut ourselves off from one another, and the many spirits and deities that guide us all? Why would we seek to divide friends and family apart for how they choose to try and be the best person they can be?
Before anyone quotes Matthew to me, let me just say: if there's anything father and son or brother and sister should fight about and divide themselves over, it's whether or not they actually are trying to be a good person in the first place—not who they ask to help them do so.
But all that said, I cannot wait to put this out there and share a little bit of this knowledge with you all. Stay tuned for even more updates on all these things to come!
Sara Raztresen is a Slovene-American writer, screenwriter, and Christian witch. Her fantasy works draw heavily on the wisdom she gathers from her own personal and spiritual experience, and her spiritual practice borrows much of the whimsy and wonder that modern society has relegated to fairy-and-folktale. Her goal is to help people regain their spiritual footing and discover God through a new (yet old) lens of mysticism.
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