This is going to sound snarky, and I really don't mean it that way at all;  I am just curious about something that you posted under coram's  goodbye post.  You said that you didn't feel right paying for spiritual or path information because you would feel obligated to make sure you used paid for material and it would mess up your focus.   Haven't you ever even bought a book about witchcraft or crystals or herbs or anything like that?  Or Tarot cards?   Or ritual tools?    How do you learn things  if you never buy any books or anything?    Or did I completely misunderstand your post, which is possible, I'm a flaky old thing!

wow this really is a question for me....lol I thought it was one of those subjects where it posts whoever's name is looking at the thing...

anyways, nope, never paid cash money. acquire my knowledge and tools through barter and trade, gifts, offerings, and borrowing. make divination tools via beads earned in trade, tarot cards from the fiance, dremmel and the trees will produce my runes. rune book acquired through trade. i return the same.

sometimes I'll pay money for fabric to make fabric and pillows, and tools to produce what I need like my mortar and pestal, but usually it goes towards bills. Will stop by the store and farmer's markets for veggies, fiance shoots, processes, and freezes the meat. Grow my own herbs, but will drop a bill at the herb shop from time to time.

no cable. that's a big one. no cable tv. no need for mass media either. earned a BA in that, know all about it, don't like it. money goes towards paying for that piece of paper, and will for quite a while.

learned most of what I know and can share with you through this site, and will continue to do so. up until i started frequenting this site, i learned what i needed to know through, well, thinking. and journaling, and long walks in the woods. and running around the country in structured chaos. now i use focused meditation, gardening, children, homemaking. learned herbs from people, learn lore from my local druid. you'd be amazed what you know and what direction you can give yourself.

I have a feeling this post will be continued...

Can I be you?  

lol I knew I'd come back to this...

I took a shower and was thinking this over, and I did pay for information one time, although it was not path information at the time. My BA is actually in Communications and Media Studies, and that Communications part I use EVERYDAY to the depths. Interpersonal (between people), cultural (between different cultures or two subcultures within the same one), and especially InTRApersonal (communication between you and yourself), which I use to communicate with everything that will talk back to me (an easy example of this is trees), and am using now in divination to communicate with other forces that be and myself, where I always neutralize the medium to be a clear and unbiased channel of communication from sender to receiver (for example, I'll neutralize my pendelum, but if divining for others I'll neutralize myself to the best of my ability)

I also surround myself with people who I trade well with, and learning my "craft" (pillowmaking) has empowered me to trade for all sorts of neat and exotic things at craft shows (I find those who divine like my pillows to place their crystal balls on, which opens a door for me for oils, gems, rocks, crystals, etc etc).

Direction and sign posts abound in my everyday, and I thank you for "snarking", as you've revealed to me that, with daily focus, I am never without a lesson to learn, never lost, never without my next direction laid out perfectly in front of me. This brings my guardian deity one step closer to my conscious knowledge, which I've been trying to get acquainted with since I pinned him to my headscarf about a month ago.

Ahhh...loving life  

and of course i pay for the internet, but that's access to cross-referencing material (and bill paying ability). knowledge comes from actual experience.

Tipping my hat to you realeyez!!!

Wow!     Can I be you too?    

(bow)  (bow)  (bow)

I wish I was as self-reliant as you Realeyez. I think if more people were like you we would have a more harmonized society. You Rock!!!!!

Ok now if we don't watch it she's not gonna fit thru her doorway!!!!  LOL

LOL I thought they had extral wide doors here in the castle.....

it's cool Novia I'll just walk through this wall here...  yeah

now...*ascending her pedastool...*

it's "I think, therefore I am", not, "I think, therefore I am God",  you all, go, do it to. go. now.

life is so much more rewarding when you think for yourself, instead of reading what other people thought at one time and just agreeing with that....

this 50 page rune book i acquired was the first book i've finished since 8th grade   . I haven't read a lot, or seen a lot of movies. Always did well in structured schooling, though. I can write, that got me pretty far.

Take stock in your original thought, and i'll see you on my path  

*decending her pedastool, stubbing a toe or something clumsy on the way down*

Weeeell.........It isn't so much that I am reading things to find out what to think, it's more that I read things to find out where to begin.   I love to perform my rituals and cast my circles using similar tools and similar words to other witches because it gives me a sense of community and continuity, even though I am a solitary practitioner.  And I was raised a strict Catholic, and if I had never read about Buddhism, Wicca, Judaism, Tarot and all the other spiritual practices I find interesting, then I don't think that I ever would have found a secure path.  I just would have remained a Catholic and  felt forever uncomfortable and empty.  I might not even have known there were other paths, and probably would have  thought there was something wrong with me.   I admire you, RealEyez, I really do.  I would never be able to intuit everything  all by myself the way you do.

Ohhhh now I could never claim I got here by myself, nor that this "here" is some exclusive, unattainable place for any individual to be.  

Rainbells said, " I just would have remained a Catholic and  felt forever uncomfortable and empty.  I might not even have known there were other paths, and probably would have  thought there was something wrong with me."

I was a weekly Catholic from birth until about 22 - read around the boards I blab all about it.  I did start to think that there was something wrong with me.  Seriously different, in a way I had been scared out of adopting (my mother's a diagnosed schiz, and I was fiercely taught that that was a weak, unstable, and scary thing to be, and above all that made you an incapable, disabled being, annoying and a burden, and an inescapable victim of stress.) I was crazy. And after seeking protection, courage, and a complete imperviousness to what anybody thought, that was the inkling I followed. I think it's the Hanged Man card (then again, maybe not) on the Cosmic Tribe Tarot that says "if someone calls you crazy, you may just be on to something." When my 2 year old called me crazy (then waved her hands over her head a made kind of a tongue-flicking "loolooloolooloo" noise), I followed the sign.

It doesn't hurt the cause to have friends who leave steaks out on the street during thunderstorms to offer the passing dragons...and a fiance who's into Shamanism.

I did buy books in college (actually, now that i think about it, i didn't buy the books I needed after my sophomore year. huh.), and this included books for elective course including "the history of Buddhism". it didn't take long to see the experiences of peace, enlightenment, etc, that the Buddha was trying to communicate to the masses equated to the messages found within Jesus's stories about entering the kingdom of God. These two ideas formed a thread for me to follow to find the common truth that runs through everything, and can be taught anywhere, and I'm starting to think now this is always achieved through a process of some sort.  Maybe the common truth is 'process'.

If you gave it all up, if you never read a book, you would still know where to begin   We all have this ability, although it is my observation that pharmaceuticals can make this more difficult to recognize. That's another discussion altogether.

"I love to perform my rituals ... because it gives me a sense of community and continuity,..." This quote is interesting to me, as I find a similar reason made it difficult to begin the process of leaving the Catholic church. In the small town I attended church in community ran right within the family ties, all meeting together weekly at mass. It was tiiiiiiiiiiiight.

and I do read articles about spiritual practices, rituals, and beliefs...all around the internet, mostly here at this site. for free. internet's the biggest collection of information I know.

I'm gonna have to donate now so I don't come off as some smug ass    This site is totally worth whatever they want to ask for it.