Before I started down my path into paganism, I was already a nature-minded person. I was a strong advocate for conservation, eco-minded policy, and climate change awareness. I didn’t really think I could become any more impassioned about the natural world.

That is, until I started exploring paganism. When I first heard about Wicca specifically, I was all, “Hell ya, screw organized religion, let’s worship nature!”

I was leaning hard into that rebel phase, but it got the ball rolling. As I tempered out and sorted through what I felt and believed — separated the fact I believed from the fiction I felt, if you will — I started living and thinking like a pagan, and my world exploded in color.

I kinda made a choice when I went down this road. I could believe in nothing, accept general skepticism, and be an agnostic, or maybe I let myself breathe. Play it safe and walk the fine line, or eat the apple, walk the alluring road, and see where it led me.

Obviously, I ate the damn apple. And gods, did the world bloom.

Turns out, when you unshackle your mind from modern skepticism and monotheistic dogmatism, allow yourself to accept the superstitions, see the hidden, and read the stories of our ancestors not as fairy tales but as history and insight into the divine… well, trees become sentient beings, rocks become spirits, and a walk in the woods becomes a magical experience.

The world blazes to life when you sprinkle a little magic into it and let the hidden reveal itself to you.

Something I was told once while first getting started in paganism, specifically Wicca at the time, was, “Oh don’t do that, they worship nature,” as if it were the craziest thing one could do. Nothing could seem farther from the truth when you see how the world glows through pagan eyes.

To clarify, here I use “paganism” as an all-encompassing term. This idea I’m describing could be even better described as animism, one of, if not the oldest, religious traditions on Earth.

But for simplicity, and as it pertains to my personal story, given the interconnectedness of paganism with animism (it is, after all, paganism’s foundation), I use the former as synonymous with the latter. Just know they are technically separate, and being animistic may not necessarily make one pagan.

The flip side of this worldview, which I would be remiss to neglect, unfortunately, is the immense sorrow this can create in a modern world. When you view the natural world as a living being, not just in the literal but spiritual sense, imbued with sentience and divinity, then deforestation, mining, drilling, pollution, wildfires, and climate change become not just contentious political issues, but deeply emotional tragedies.

I read once, I believe in a book by Scott Cunningham, that the pagan version of tithing is giving to conservation organizations. Be it financial aid, volunteering time, leading your own local clean-up, community gardening, or simple social media advocacy, I’ve stood firmly on that idea since I started down this path.

Not all of us can afford to donate money or time, but we can all do something to support our mutual home and build a relationship with the Earth.

Blessings of Fjörgyn, radiant Earth-mother, may her wounds be healed and the fullness of her beauty restored.