This Title is False

My name is not Cedric. However, I’m called “Cedric” by a lot of people, and I’ve decided to title this blog Cedric’s Pagan Thoughts. Get it? It’s not my name, but it’s who I am.

Anyway, some of the posts in this blog will be reprints of articles I wrote for the now-defunct Rising Wind magazine. Some posts will be music and movie reviews with a Pagan bent. Some will be descriptions of actual rituals I’ve performed or been involved with. Some will be classes I’ve written. Finally, some posts will simply be rants and explorations of my spiritual thoughts.

I suppose that I should start by telling a little about myself. I’m a freelance writer/editor by trade and a professional musician by passion. (You can learn more about my band at www.BedlamBards.com). The son of two Unitarian-Universalists, I’ve been a detached student of comparative religion and mythology all my life—yet I’ve also been a spiritual seeker as well.

My teen rebellion involved becoming a fundamentalist Christian and joining the Assembly of God church. My parents' reaction included taking me to many different churches and making me read about many religions. I hated it then, but it did give me a broad religious education that I cherish to this day. (I’ll tell more about that experience in a later post.)

As an adult, I’ve investigated many religious paths and explored a few first-hand. I’ve studied Wicca with both the American Tradition of the Goddess and the Sybilline Order. I studied shamanism with the Foundation for Shamanic Studies. I’m a founding member of the Circle of the Compass Star, a small Wiccan group that is nonheirarchic, eclectic, and egalitarian.

I have a deep respect for any honest spiritual seeker, and I feel I have more in common with a devout Buddhist or Christian than I do with a hypocritical Pagan. We’re all on our own paths to the same destination. Spirituality is a room with many doors, or perhaps a freeway with many on-ramps.

Oh, and here's the obligatory line about where and how I live: I live in a quaint cottage in the Lost Pines of Bastrop County, Texas, with (at the time of writing) five cats, three hens, two rats, a dog, a guinea, a snake, and a beautiful incarnation of the Goddess.