The Abandoned Soul: Religious Wounding Within the Pagan Community 

By Roman Delgado. 

Disclaimer: This is by no means a post born out of professional knowledge of the subject at hand. It is born out of my own experience, wounding and, interaction with deity throughout my life. Please read with care, know that the subjects discussed can be great triggers. If you are moved in any way, including moved to anger; please discuss what you have learned here with your own religious community in order to foster growth and spiritual healing.  

So let us begin! 

As I write this, I sit in my home. A temple to many Divine Beings, I am very much connected to those Gods and Goddesses I worship. They have some things to say. I, just as a human being, hope that I can give their message justice and pass their message to their liking. 

To be truthful, it is Their pain that has birthed this writing. Seeing so many people in the spiritual community in times of distress, feeling abandoned and isolated from their own divinity. Yes, it may be true that it is hard to be spiritual when everything around you is falling apart. However, it is in those situations that we need our faith the most! So why is it that for so many, when we are falling apart, we reach out to divinity only to come up empty-handed? As a Norse Wiccan and Folk Magic practitioner, I will tell you my Gods and Goddesses experience heartbreak when they see that happen. 

One thing I was told by my own patron God Njord, is that the Gods - while they wish us to be happy, healthy and whole - cannot protect us from all of the storms that life brings about. Some storms are unavoidable, not only for our own individual growth but also for the cosmic web of creation. We all have a part to play in the cosmic dance of creation, as such all of our experiences are valid and needed, including the unpleasant ones. We each carry within us the ability to birth into reality lessons unique to our own soul essence. Lessons that no other being can provide in the exact same way we can, after all our souls are unique in their own vibrations. However, this is not something we should be doing alone. This should always be an act of cooperation with the Gods and Goddesses of our own respective faiths. This can be particularly difficult in the case of faiths where Gods and Goddesses are seen as divine beings, removed from the earthly plane and more concerned with the big picture of life and the universe than individual lives of those that worship them. 

Yet this is not the case, you see we are all the working tools of a creator. Divinity expresses and works its magic through us. It is why Njord feels heartbroken when he sees me feeling depleted or removed from him and my other Gods and Goddesses. Because the Gods need us as much as we need them. We are two sides of the same coin. One cosmic, the other earthly and grounded. 

So many of us have experienced wounding from religious communities where politics and hatred have been justified by a misplaced and mistaken sense of moral and ethical responsibility. The atrocities humanity has committed against each other and the planet itself throughout history has not gone unnoticed. Both humans and Gods bear the scars upon our souls for the deeds done in the name of Good both in a macrocosmic scale, and in the microcosm of everyday life. 

Yet - so many of us go our entire adult lives avoiding cleaning out those infected spiritual wounds and letting them heal! We avoid the triggers that remind us we have been wronged in the name of Divinity, and we project our wounding onto religion itself or people we come in contact with. We feel alone and isolated. Our very souls cry out from spiritual starvation and lack of connection to community. 

It is sad to see how our needs are not being met, be mindful I am not victim shaming or blaming here. I am however pointing out that blaming religion and avoiding spirituality will do nothing to extinguish the pain within you and only make the wound deeper and more dangerous to live with. I am also not trying to push my own beliefs onto anyone. What I am pointing out is that any human being can see that there is benefit from some type of spiritual experience. What that spirituality path looks like is completely the choice of the individual. However, if we allow our own wounding to isolate us from divinity and spiritual community, it creates a vicious cycle of wounding in which pain and illness only get worse and worse. 

I am not asking you to believe in my Gods or anyone else’s, believe in your own divinity and sovereignty if needed be! However, believe in something that gives you strength and hope through the hard times. Because in the end when we are going through the storms that life brings. It is not the Gods who have abandoned us, but our own wounding that is creating the illusion of separation from the divine. Nothing can take that away short of faith and divine intervention. 

We need to be willing and able to know and see that as the Gospel of Thomas says: “The kingdom of God is inside you and all around you. Not in mansions of wood and stone. Split a piece of wood and I am there; lift a stone and you will find me.” It is time to move beyond the wound and find the sacredness of the inner sanctum of our body, mind, and soul. It is time to find the beauty of creation, not only the awe of nature, but also in the concrete jungles of human creation. 

Listen, Children of Earth and Starry Heaven as divinity speaks from within each of us. You have never been, nor will you ever be alone. The only reason you can’t see the Gods is because your pain has been so intense that you have been blinded to all other things outside your suffering. The Gods speak and ask you to surrender your suffering to them, that you may once again see that you are a sacred being, living in a sacred world. It is time to take away the power of the wound and reclaim the sacredness of our very souls. 

May the Gods Bless and Keep You. 

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Roman Delgado is a Psychic Reader and Shamanic Healer at Teotl Tonalli Intuitive Arts. He is an active member of the Keepers of the Flame Coven, ATC (Aquarian Tabernacle Church) (The Ever Green Hearth) Please check our Community Connections page to find ways to connect with Roman or other members and Affiliates of The Ever Green Hearth.