It wasn't long after that night that I set up an altar in my room. the altar I had would have looked like a random collection of pretty objects to the untrained eye, for which I was grateful. My altar held representations for all the Pagan elements; a stone for earth, incense for air, a candle for fire, a jar of water for water, and a moon jar with a candle for Spirit. I loved my altar and took time to organise it in different themes for changing times. I remember my first altar theme being harvest, with a large red rose my mother had given to me adorning it. From then on it took many different looks on. It sported Tarot cards at one point, and feathers I had collected from the beach at another. The strange thing was, no matter how dirty my room got, my altar and the area around it was never messy. No one had ever told me to keep it clean, I just instinctively knew that it was sacred and should be left out of the clutter of everyday life. I even started to pray at my altar. Not everyday, but just when I thought of it or felt the need. It was all very beautiful.

I graduated from high school that spring and still no one really knew. A lot of people even still thought I was a Buddhist. It was funny, but suddenly I found that I didn't care anymore what people thought of my religion. Where before all I had wanted was a strange religion I could wear like a badge, now I felt more like keeping my relationship with my religion to myself. It just felt more real not to have public eyes and opinions preying on it. I just sort of decided to let people believe that I'm Buddhist, it was all easier that way.

That summer I moved houses. I went from living in a large log cabin that my family had built in the middle of a pine forest to living in a small old townhouse with just my mom. From the moment I set eyes on our new house I loved it. It was what I usually affectionately call a "witch's house." A witch's house is an old house that has carried its way beautifully through the decades and has room for a garden. This house had both of those qualities. Vibrant wood floors met my feet, small rooms with odd twists and turns mapped out the house, and best of all, huge old style wood-rimmed windows. The woman who had owned the house before us had taken wildflower seeds and scattered them randomly around the backyard, giving it the appearance of a huge natural garden. The house breathed with magic and I knew it. It was also just several blocks away from the Peter White Public Library, and also several blocks from Lake Superior. For the unenlightened, Lake Superior is as large as an inland sea. Its the largest of the five highly reputable Great Lakes that surround Michigan. In fact, by surface area its the largest freshwater lake in the world. The reason I feel the need to describe this lake is that there�s something special about it, and if you ever see it you'd know what I mean. Its just awe inspiring and pure. I found a small, lesser trafficked section of the beach on it that I loved and came to call "my beach" as the summer wore on. All in all, as you can see, my atmosphere only inspired my Paganism to grow, and I haven't even mentioned my neighbour yet.

A lot of witchy things happened the day we moved in. At one point I happened to be carrying a box of my stuff into the house when I looked over at one of our neighbours houses and saw a nice car in front of it. It really wasn't the car that drew my attention so much though, it was its license plate. In big bold white letters the license plate spelled out the word "WITCH". I thought it was the coolest thing ever, and my mother and I immediately set out on a very subtle mission of finding out if she's a real witch or not. As it turns out, she is. Not that we ever asked her of course, but it became easy to tell after a while. She wore Halloween shirts almost constantly, she had sun and moon symbols in her garden, and to top it all off, you could always tell she was holding rituals on the nights of full moons. You can only imagine how cool I found all of this too be, and my mom and I now affectionately call her "The Witch Next Door." But that wasn't the only cool thing that happened the day we moved. I began my own Wiccan journey that day. I was totally bored, waiting for my mom to arrive with another load of stuff, and I decided to make the long trek up to the library in an attempt to find something to do. Well, I most certainly did find something. I found two separate books on Wicca smiling up at me from the shelves almost as if they had been waiting for me. One of the them, oddly enough, was entitled Teen Witch by Silver Ravenwolf. I say oddly because that same back, several months earlier, had caught my eye in a bookstore. It had been on sale, and I mean ridiculously on sale, but I still didn't allow myself to by it, though I almost did, I just had too many other books I had to read at the time. As a Wiccan I believe that everything happens for a reason. It was no accident that this book presented itself to me a second (and more free, I might add) time. So I read it, and found out about the amazing religion of Wicca, of which I would now call myself a part of. Wicca is a religion that is a part of the large spectrum of Paganism. Everything I believed as a Pagan was included in Wicca, and the things that didn't strike a chord with me were sheared away. I also learned about magick, which I also believe in and practice. I found myself constructing my own Book of Shadows, and one night while my mother was away with her international dance group I held a small ritual to introduce myself into Wicca. It was a great ritual held right on my great grandmother's old handmade rug. The only problem was that my mom came home a little early that night and almost walked in on it. It was kind of funny actually. I even had to run while I was closing the circle! Anyway though, I found myself as Wiccan and loving it. Besides my mother, though, no one knew.

So the summer lived itself out. Yes I had an altar in my room the whole time, yes I performed magick, and yes, mom, I did become addicted to the movie Practical Magic. I felt more happiness and peace that summer than I can remember feeling in a long time.

Well, that summer ended, and here I am now living in France. I still have an altar in my room, though its not as nice as my altar was back home. Its hard to find element representations here, but I've managed. The wall behind my altar is covered in pictures of the people I love, postcards I like, and quotes to inspire me. Its Halloween time now and I find the autumn harvest colours inspiring me too.