I put together a list of metaphysical bookstores in the area and set out to find one. Most, I am sorry to say, had closed. I had no idea how old my list was, but there were buildings on the (former) sites of some stores that had been there for years.
I thought I had found one, it turned out the old bookstore sign was still up.
I went inside and found a magician's paradise....if you were a 10 year old boy adept at sleight of hand.
But I asked the owner about the bookstore sign and he said that they had moved and gave me the new address.
The owner there was very helpful and gave me a copy of....ta da! Cunningham's Wicca for the Solitary Practitioner.
Looking back I feel very fortunate. Cunningham is just the right blend of spirituality, magick and 'there is more to learn' for many novices such as myself, unsure of exactly what we are looking for.
If I had picked up some of the whack-job books out there....or even one of the more advanced books on magick, I probably would have run for the hills.
Instead, like so many others in my shoes, I read with fascination that the things that I felt and believed and was afraid to say to anyone else for fear of being ridiculed, was a real religion. And further more, it was based on the idea that people have always worshipped the Goddess, the God, the Divine, the Source, whatever you want to call it, from a basic belief in the value of nature and its natural cycles.
A whole new world had opened up for me.
At the time I was working in a job with a high level security clearance and most of my friends leaned more toward the atheist and agnostic variety than the church variety, so I did not run out and buy a big gaudy pentacle to wear, stick a "Goddess Bless" bumper sticker on my car or leave books on witchcraft laying around on my desk at work.
But what is more important is that I felt pure, unrelenting joy in the idea of what was to come.
