My Vision for the Military Pagans, and some exciting updates!

So, I have my own little Pagan House vision, but then I also have my own personal vision..... and it is all about the military, since I am serving on active duty in the military and all that. So anyway, in my last journal entry over on The Pagan House blog I had answered a question about what I planned to do with the knowledge that I gain from taking the Owls class. In my response, I mentioned something about sharing my knowledge with other military servicemembers I said, "One of my dreams is to be able to teach other military service members who are new to the path or who are just curious about it. I want to be their walking, talking Pagan encyclopedia and aid in their spiritual growth and development."

This is me expanding on that sentence and going into my actual vision for pagans in the military. Someday soon, I'd like to organize a group on base (I'll start out with just people on base, and if things go well I will expand to all servicemembers in the area [San Diego County]...) that would come together at an agreed frequency to perform rituals with a military tone to them; kinda like a military coven, I suppose. However, the group would be so much more than just that. The main purpose of the group will be to provide military servicemembers with a community in which to exchange knowledge, ideas, information, and resources. Whether it be teaching curious servicemembers about the pagan spiritual path, or even teaching established pagans about certain things that they do not know yet or have not heard of, one of the main goals of the group will be to exchange information within the community. One of our goals within this would be to set up classes every now and then covering a vast array of topics, such as circle casting, calling the corners, making smudge bundles, how to build and use an altar that complies with barracks regulations, etc. I am currently reading a book called "Faith and Magick in the Armed Forces: A Handbook for Pagans in the Military" by Stefani E. Barner, and one of the things that I want to do with the knowledge that I get from the Owls class and the information that I will gain from reading this book and doing other personal research is to kind of act as an unofficial pagan chaplain for the group. By that point, I should be able to answer most questions involving pagan life in the military (like rights to worship, getting time off to be able to go to rituals, etc.). My services should suffice until the day that an official pagan chaplain comes into the armed forces.

So there you have it, my grand vision for the military pagans out there... On to the exciting updates lol.

So last post that I made, I completely forgot to mention that I CAN FINALLY SEE AURAS. It's still in its infancy stages right now, so I don't see any color yet... But I can definitely see an energy field around a person's physical body. I think it might have been awakened that time that I saw Maureen's shield (in fact, maybe it wasn't her shield that I was seeing, but her aura!)...So anyway, that's big update #1... Big update #2 is that I performed my first act of Reiki healing last night! It felt amazing while I was doing it, and Jennifer said that my hands and her foot were really hot (so yay, I did it right [or just for the Pagan House, "I wasn't doing it wrong!!] lol). I ended up being REALLY hungry after that, and it got real bad on the drive home... which stuck me as funny since I had already eaten like 4 times at The Pagan House that night!

BIG update

So I haven't posted anything on here in a while, sorry but the mundane life took hold of me for a while.... There are a lot of things to talk about but I will try to keep it as brief as possible. First of all, I am now taking two year-and-a-day classes. The first one with Carrie Hammond of Indigo Paths up in Oceanside, and the second one with Aaron and Morgan Taggert of The Pagan House up in Carlsbad. I don't have a car, though, so transportation to and from classes is my biggest problem. Or so I thought. At first I thought that maybe I was overloading myself or that I should ease up on it a little bit, but then I looked at the situation and I realized that there was a HUGE sign that I was right were I was supposed to be, and that I really am on the right track with taking both of these classes right now. Somehow transportation isn't really as big of a problem as I thought it would be, because I always manage to find a ride to classes and then back to where ever it is that I need to be. If that ain't a sign, I don't know what is, lol. I also finally answered the call of Reiki. It's something that has been calling out to me for the past couple of years, but I have never really had any resources or teachers around to teach me. Now I'm down in San Diego county where there pagan community is just overflowing with Reiki practitioners and Reiki masters who are excellent teachers. I am learning Blue Fire Reiki with Carrie Hammond, again of Indigo Paths. These are all great people and I am just really excited about everything that I am learning about in all these classes. I'll be part of the priesthood in no time, lol.

Which brings me to my next topic of discussion, the pagan priesthood/pagan clergy life. That is definitely a goal of mine, not just so I cam walk around saying that I am a 21 year old high priest or whatever, but so that I can use my knowledge and title to help others in the military. I want to study anything written about rules and regulations for worship and religious activities, etc and be able to answer any questions about it when other military servicemembers come up to me with questions or complaints that they were not let off of work to go to rituals or whatever. Kind of like a Chaplain, I suppose. I want to unite the military pagan community, first here on base at MCAS Miramar, and then in the entire San Diego county. Because I know there are others out there who have questions and concerns related to issues at work that deal with their pagan path. There are chaplains available for these generally, however I'm sure there are many people out there who just aren't comfortable talking to chaplains because of the religious differences. The only reason I feel comfortable talking to chaplains when I need to is because I was raised in a Catholic environment, and I was once Catholic myself. So there you have it, my vision for the future of military paganism.

Another big deal that recently happened is that I recently finally built my altar in my barracks room. Shocker, ain't it. Who would've thought that it would ever be possible to set up a functional altar inside a military barracks room, where generally you cannot have anything burning in there? I had been holding back on building my altar for the longest time because of that reason in particular, however my teachers at The Pagan House made me realize that using the flameless electric powered candles isn't so bad. Basically, it's all about the intent and purpose so if you use those things intending for them to be representative of the actual flame and wax candles, then they will be as such. So I took all the extra effort to even wrap each candle in tissue paper to match the color correspondences of the elements. I was really excited to see the final results. In addition to the intent, though, my teachers also pointed out that technically speaking, electricity represents fire anyway so it would be alright.

So there you have it, my big update. I was going to write a lot more, but it's 0343 and I'm really sleepy so I will have to continue some other time.