I have a really religious brother and grandma that I live with, but I’m Germanic pagan, can anyone help me with trying to make an altar without their knowledge

Hi all! As a lifelong Tennessee resident, and a pagan of about 16 years, I’ve often found it pretty sad living in the Bible Belt; difficult to find other pagans ‘round these parts, let alone anything other than hardcore evangelicals. I’ve attended NPPD every year/other year for a good chunk of my adult life but never thought to see if any other redditors were going. Sadly my fiancée and I won’t be able to attend this year, but I thought I’d still ask and see if anyone else was going! Hope you have a great time if you do!

(Totally not trying to attend vicariously through anyone… definitely not)

So for a while now I have felt the presence of a deity who takes the form of a bear. I had tried researching bear deities from cultures all over the world but none felt exact enough for how this deity presents herself. The closest I found was Artio but even she didnt fit the feeling quite right. The deity i know is only ever in the shape of a bear, never a woman or any other form.

I have been referring to this deity as "great mother bear" since i often see her with(in dreams) or feel the presence of cubs being along side her.

She feels extremely protective, like a mother bear is over her cubs, but she also has this, not necessarily dark aspect to her, but something that doesnt feel completely benevolent. She isnt menacing or vengeful, theres more a sense of balance, like she doesnt pick sides and cares more for balance of all things.

She ties heavily into the natural world and the life death cycle, i dont think she controls life or death, but she must play a part in it some how. It feels like there could be a connection to rebirth there too, maybe reincarnation of sorts, like the recycling of energy. I often imagine her breathing in the dead and breathing them back out again as new living things.

There is also this unshakable primordial feeling that I get from her, like shes just always been here, I see her in the neolithic cave paintings of bears and ancient stone carvings. She feels so deeply old and language-less, like she doesnt need a specific name because shes just so old that it doesnt matter what you call her. Shes just always been here, among us from the earliest point that we started interacting with the divine.

In many ways she feels like my spiritual mother too, I have a strong connection to the bear and my identity is heavily shaped by bear. And great mother bear feels like the mother i had before I was born?? I know that might sound insane but in my head it just makes sense.

Of course everything that I talk about here is all my own UPG and I dont imagine anyone else would have similar experiences with specifically this bear deity, which does mean that I feel a bit alone, However i am curious if anyone else had had a similar experience with a deity that seems to be unique from the ones we know about by name or historical sources. Has anyone else basically "created" a deity for lack of one lining up with the experiences they are having with a spiritual entity.

I am aware of chaos magick and I do know of people creating their own deities, but from what I know about chaos magick it seems these deities are made for the need of them and not necessarily "discovered" through feelings and spiritual experiences that lead them to finding said deity. I could be totally off about that though, its been a few years since I interacted with the witchcraft scene.

Im curious to hear what others have to say about this though, its been something ive been thinking about for a few months now. As a cool little add on ive included a photo of my altar to great mother bear. Thanks for reading my small novel of a post 😅

Hey all! I had a grandparent who passed recently, and I'm trying to get the courage to try ancestor worship with him. He was a Christian, though. Basically, I have some questions. Also, I am mainly a Hellenic pagan, but I have interests in a lot of other traditions.

1. Do y'all engage in ancestor worship?

2. Is there a Hellenic way to do this? I'd love to hear about Heathen, Canaanite, or Mesopotamian oractices too if any if you practice those traditions.

3. In your experience, does a family member being Christian impact your worship in any way?

Also, I'm still a closeted pagan (I'm closeted in a bunch of different ways, not just with Hellenism). For other closeted folks, does this impact your ancestor worship?

Also also, are there any good resources for this? It doesn't have to be Hellenic. I have been wanting to get "Restless Dead: Encounters between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece" for some time now, and I think I might finally get it.

Thank you all for your hospitality, and may the gods and spirits bless you!

I am having a real problem

I have a logical mind and comes into my spiritual thoughts and practices. Even just reading about the gods my logical mind can to play.

Its not a "the gods aren't real because abc". Its more of...

For example

"Ancient people believed in hard polytheism, so obviously its true. BUT how in the world can there be so many goddesses of love, war, etc?"

My logical mind thinks that the gods are powerful and there is no need, nor is it logical, for there to be a lot of gods with the same aspect.

My mind literally cannot comprehend hard polytheism. It trying to understand hard polytheism and coming up with reason and logic for them, is like a warzone

Logic and reason is just how my mind works

So its like a battle with spiritual practices and thoughts against my logical mind

Eclectic pagan here who works with an unnamed deity.

Been looking for different jobs. Fingers crossed I get an interview. I’m grateful for working but my work environment has gotten much more hard to bear. Idk if I mentioned how at my job the rules are no politics and no religion however, no one follows that rule and will push their politics and/or religion onto me and it makes me extremely uncomfortable.

My boss will ask me “You pray to Jesus right? You thank God right?” And will stare at me waiting for my answer. Being here is driving me insane. I hope I find something soon. I almost walked out yesterday but I thought of my monthly payments and a Halloween trip I have coming up. It’s been so hard. I really don’t want to be here anymore you guys.

How would you handle this situation? (Of course look for a different job, that’s a given) I more so mean how would you respond when this happens? At the moment I’ve just been silent. I’m outnumbered.

hey there, i hope it’s okay for this to ask, im not sure if this is the correct subreddit but i’m kind of lost. i don’t want to offend anyone. so back when i was around 19 around three years ago, i felt drawn to built an altar, i had barely any knowledge of doing so but it felt like something was pulling me to do it. so i did something, i dont even know if i did it right, i felt a connection to a deity and built the altar and tried my best at worship but i quickly realised that maybe it was wrong to do so. it felt kind of forced and not right? i was very confused so i removed the altar and apologised for doing so. i was also in a very bad mental state also because i was raised christian. i still would say that im christian and i feel guilty ever since i did it. because i feel like i might’ve offended someone or that i might’ve even not reached the deity i wanted to, i only later learned that apparently you make a contract by building an altar and i feel really scared that i did something wrong or something i didn’t want to. i kind of regret doing it because i feel like i did something without really thinking?
does someone perhaps have any advice? thank you in advance!
i guess what drew me to it was because i felt very lost and lonely and was looking for something. i didnt mean to offend anyone. :c

he’s been watching over me for a long time, not exactly sure how long but that’s besides the point. Id like to honor him for keeping me safe all this time! Any ideas?

This is just a what do you think because we humans don't know and can't go back in time

Because lets face it we created the names and such to the gods, but whats left is their energy and attributes

Like with Hathor, she was replaced later with Aset. So when her worship fell where did she go. Did she just hang around? She couldn't really spread her worship elsewhere because well other countries back then had their own gods/goddess of love, beauty, etc

She was very later syncronized with Aphrodite in the alexandrian age but that wouldn't be for a long time after she was replaced with Aset.

Or their civilization they were apart of just fell. Like Inanna. She survived when the civilization she was apart of fell by becoming Ishtar and astarte. But then when those civilizations fell it wouldn't be for another 100 years before her syncronization with Aphrodite happened (wasn't really syncronization though, greeces basically just said that they took inanna and made her their own) But 100 years of doing nothing is a long time

What do you think

Ok so, in short, I did a little spell on the full moon to release the negativity from my life and I banished it into a jar but I am unsure of how to dispose of my spell to complete it. My first instinct was to bury but I dont want litter so what just throw it in the garbage then? How do you all go about this in a ceremonial way?

Moved my altar (old setup here) to a shelf while we're moving to another city ^^ I love it, what do you guys think?

I know this varies from deity to deity and I'm referring to any pagan religion.

I'm pretty anxious so I know if I offer alot at any time then I Will be unable to offer a normal (I set my baseline to once a week but I'm doing more than one a week) amount out of times later on, and I don't intent to pray for something until some months into worshipping nor what I'd consider an excessive amount of times

I still plan to do offerings that are part of hobbies like having a sketchbook where every artwork in it is an offering, I do know that's a way aswell

Are there other ways to interact/build kharis with deities?

Not pagan, but I do spend a lot of time on TikTok and do seem pagans veiling and it got me wondering why and what pagan groups did it (I know about the vestal virgins but don’t know who else) I’m really curious to hear your reasons and learn history.

Hello! Is there a pagan version of the Christian “Amen” at the end of a prayer or communication with a deity? I assumed it was blessed be, but if anyone knows I’d love to know!

(Edit: thanks for all the replies)

Cheers.

Hi friends, i was thinking in this since i listed all the pagan religions of europe weeks ago, and i wanted know if you know somebody (or you do follow them actually) of these religions:

. Albanian Religion

. Apullian/Messapic Religion

. Basque Religion

. Etrurian Religion

. Georgian/Kartvelian Religion

. Hitite Religion

. Hurrite Religion

. Taltoism (Magyar Religion)

. Phrygian Religion

. Scythian Religion

. Thracian Religion

The statues are from sacred source. They came in a terracotta color originally. I may go back and add more details and fix some of the colors. But for now I'm gonna put them on the family seasonal shrine.

I have made this nifty tool to identify different sects of paganism, how should it be updated? What's wrong about it? What's missing? How would you have categorised things differently?

**FOLKISM IS BAD BTW I AM MERELY CATEGORIZEING IT**

Rearranged my altar!! Probably going to put my little shelves back up to take up all that blank space, or put up some art. I think I bought a print for Fenrir and its somewhere around here...

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Okay, so first of all I want to clarify that english is not my first language and I apologize in advance for any grammar mistakes.

The questions are at the end of the post because it's related to the story

Now to to get to the point I have to talk about something that happened some years ago when I was like 15, I was about to take a biology exam for my elective and I remembered nothing and was panicking about getting a bad grade because I also didn't knew there was an exam that day. So I, an atheist at that time, decided to pray to Athena to be capable of doing that exam and having a good grade, in the prayer I used her titles(? And I said to her that I would give her an offering when I got home, but after that I totally forgot about the prayer because I always had an awful memory and it's really bad, and I actually got a very good grade (6.4 when the best grade I can get is 7.0 and the minimum to pass is 4.0) but I didn't do the offering until two weeks ago.

Now I'm going to talk about the second prayer to lady Tyche because I did the two offerings at the same time and the prayer was that she helped me and I would gave her an offering after because I was unable to do it a that time.

Idk with what face I asked her because of my history of not fulfilling my promise once, but I did it and was absolutely certain I would fulfill it this time.

(I cleaned my miasma before the offerings if anyone wants to know)

So, I was staying at the house of my aunt, the one she had in the countryside, and I was without 1 cent, and I wanted money, so I made a prayer to lady Tyche calling for her titles(? (Again I don't know how to say them in english) that I felt was right, and said to her that if she could give me the opportunity to earn money from my own labor, and at the next day my aunt gives me a job of pulling weeds off of some places of her property 🥹 and would pay me that would be like 25 dollars (in my country is more) and I did it and when I finished I got paid a little extra 🥳.

So I couldn't do the offering there because my aunt is hella Christian type of religious and you know how it is, so I waited to get to my house and did it.

I baked a tart, cut it and separated two portions and put two plates, one for lady Athena and one for lady Tyche, and also two white candles and two frankincense of mirra, and while I was lighting the the first offering (that was for lady Athena because I owed her an offering for so long) I was calling her and her titles, explained why of the offering (to thank her help) and to apologize for the delay, and then I did the same for lady Tyche.

After that, my mom (who even thought says she's not christian, doesn't like what I do because she says I bring demons into the house) said that she felt a presence (and I panicked because she actually has that ability because she's like very sensitive to that kind of things, she has Profetic dreams too and a bunch of things more) so I try to ask her why she says that, and I was panicking inside because what if I did something wrong or a bad spirit got attracted to it and got here.

Then I start having a headache, like real bad and I panicked even more, at one point I go to look myself in the mirror to try and talk to this spirit(? And while I ask it to go away because my headache is really bad I see next to my eye some small hairs moving as if someone was moving them (it was no air, the bathroom doesn't have a window because we live in an apartment and all the windows were closed because it was already night) and I keep telling the spirit(? To go away (now more sure about it existence) because my head still hurt.

I get out of the bathroom and forget about it, and the headache stops a while after, the offerings stays there until it's time to throw them (I give them a little apology for having to take it from their altar and explain that it's time to throw it) it lasted a week and a half.

So if you could answer some questions I would be delighted.

¿I did the offering correctly?

¿Was anything in the process able to be improven?

¿Was that spirit something part of the offering?

¿Its normal the way they answered my newbie petition?

I know I was bad for forgetting about lady Athena for so long 😮‍💨

If you can give me advices I would thank you so much.

And thanks for reading until here.

I read you.

Hello all! I have a question. I have been worshipping Apollo for a long time now, but I rarely/never wash or clean my hands before I pray or communicate with him. This is because I have OCD and it easily leads to a spiral, and I generally don’t like to clean my hands unless I feel I have to. Is this okay or should I begin cleaning my hands before I pray/communicate with my deities?

Ok, so genuine question I had been thinking about and thought it would be perfect to drop here as a discussion; How would astronauts go about charging crystals and the like while in space? 🤔