Unpacking Your Religious Baggage – So You Can Live a Magical Life
Introduction
Course 11, Module 0
By: John Beckett
Transcript by K.D. Echols
Hi, I’m John Beckett, Druid, priest and writer, and I want to help you unpack your religious baggage so you can live a magical life.
I grew up in a small, fundamentalist Baptist Church. At first, I believed what I was taught, because that’s what you do when you’re four or five or six years old. You listen to the stories, you sing the songs, and you just assume that’s the way things are. But as I got to be 9, 10, 11 years old, I started having some problems with what I was being taught.
The church told me that the Earth was 6000 years old when science clearly shows that the Earth is 4.6 billion years old. The church told me that humans were created in our current form, when science shows that humans evolved from other life forms over a very long period of time.
More importantly, the church told me that only the people who believed the right things in the right way were going to heaven and everyone else was headed for eternal damnation. That included many other Christians and everybody who followed other religions, even if they grew up in a place where everybody was Muslim or Buddhist or something else, and they never had any realistic chance of becoming a Christian. What kind of a God comes up with a plan like that? Certainly not a God who is all knowing, all loving and all wise.
I told myself that, well, God would take care of everybody in the end. I believed that intellectually, but the tentacles of toxic religion had gotten into me. All those stories and all those songs were already in my mind, in my soul, and I kept wondering, “What if I’m wrong? What if I really am going to hell?”
As a young adult, I tried to be a liberal Christian. I met some good people doing some good work, but that path never really inspired me, and I still had those fears. What if the fundamentalists were right?
Then I discovered Paganism. Finally, here was the religion I had been looking for. Here was a religion that said God is all genders, not just one old man. Here’s a religion that said nature isn’t fallen. Nature is sacred. Here’s a religion that said magic is real. This is what I had been looking for.
So I started reading books and buying tools and casting spells…and I went nowhere for eight years because I had never dealt with my religious baggage. Every time I started getting a little deep into Paganism, every time I started touching something real, those old fears would come back to the surface, “What if the fundamentalists are right?”
Then I had an epiphany. It was like all the Gods were yelling at me at once: “Get serious or move on!”
I didn’t know exactly what that meant, but I had a clear vision of what would happen if I kept following the path I had been following: I saw myself much older, sitting in a nondescript Protestant church, bored out of my mind, still afraid that I might have believed the wrong thing in the wrong way and was still headed for damnation, but now also wondering what might have been if I had followed that Pagan path that called to me.
That got my attention, and I knew I had to begin by unpacking that religious baggage. I had to examine my beliefs – what I was told I was supposed to believe, what I really believed – Did I really believe it? Did I have good reason to believe it?
I read some Christian books, some Christian history, and learned some things they didn’t teach me in Baptist Sunday school. I read some Jewish authors and got a completely different take on the Old Testament. I read some Buddhist authors and got a completely different take on what religion is.
And because I was called to this Pagan path, I started reading Pagan books and studying. I knew I needed to be practicing as well, and so I started meditating and following the Sun and the Moon and celebrating the seasons. Eventually, I found a group so I could have somebody to celebrate the seasons with.
That’s been over 20 years now. Now, I am a member of two Druid orders. I’m a priest of Cernunnos and of Danu. I’m the author of two books on Paganism and 17 years of blog posts. More importantly, I’m happy and satisfied and confident on this spiritual path that I’ve been on all these years.
I never could have done that if I hadn’t unpacked my religious baggage, if I hadn’t stopped and examined all the things I was told I had to believe, find out why I believed them: Did I really believe them? Why do people want me to believe them? What did I really believe? I had to exorcise the toxic religion from my soul, and then I had to fill that empty space with something new and good.
My story is not particularly unique. For me, the toxic religion was fundamentalist Protestantism. For others, it is conservative Catholicism or Mormonism or fundamentalist Islam or any one of a hundred different religions and sects that insist they have the one true way and everybody else is headed for eternal damnation.
They’re wrong.
But it’s not enough to say that they’re wrong. We have to understand why they’re wrong. We have to feel the wrongness of it, and then we have to understand what’s right, or closer to right, so we can fill that empty space.
If you grew up in a toxic religion, if you’re stuck in a toxic religion, if you’ve been trying to move on to a new spiritual path and you just can’t get moving, then this class is for you. It’s time to unpack your religious baggage so you can live a magical life. You
Signs You Have Religious Baggage
Let’s start by looking at some of the signs that maybe you have more religious baggage than you think you might.
You feel called to something else but you’re reluctant to commit. I discovered Paganism, and this was what I had been looking for. I discovered that magic is real and while we can’t do the things that fictional witches can do, we can do some pretty good magic on our own. I intellectually accepted that all this is real and understood that the things I had been taught in the church were wrong, and I still was reluctant to commit because I hadn’t dealt with my religious baggage.
Every time I would start to get into some depth in whatever book I was working through, I would get nervous. I would get scared. I would start thinking, “I don’t want to commit to this.” I’d go back to church for a while. I wanted it. I was just afraid to commit.
Dreams are our subconscious way of working through things that are going on in our lives. I like to call it routine sorting and filing. Occasionally I’ll have a prophetic dream, but they’re rare. Most times, routine sorting and filing. When bad things keep coming up of a religious nature, of a spiritual nature, stories that you heard about a long time ago keep popping up, that’s probably baggage.
You hear a song, or you hear a story or just mention a story, and that brings back a time when you were in a church where you were told that you were a lousy, rotten sinner and you were going to hell. You keep having these you keep having these bad reactions, even though you don’t really believe it anymore.
There’s a subtle fear and that thought of: What if they really are right? What if the only salvation in the Catholic Church, and I’m going to hell because I’m walking away from it? What if the Calvinists are right. What if they’re right? What if they’re right?? And you can’t get away from it because you haven’t worked through that baggage, you haven’t gone back and done the work necessary to examine all of these beliefs, all of these ideas and put them into their proper place.
Celebrity Reversions
There’s been some celebrity reversions in the not-so-distant past. The biggest one: 2017, Doreen Virtue. She wrote like 50 books in the New Age Movement. She came out with all these tarot decks and oracle decks. Then she converted to Christianity, well, probably reverted to Christianity. She had grown up Christian and then left it all behind In 2023, tattoo artist Kat Von D went running back to Christianity.
When those things happen, I always hear somebody say, “Oh, it’s all about the money. They made all the money they could make in in the New Age business, in the witchcraft business, and so they’re going to go back and they’re going to fleece the Christians.” Well, I’m not going to deny that doesn’t happen sometimes, because sometimes it does. But I’m almost positive in these two cases, it wasn’t about the money. Virtue could have made a lot more money and just kept pumping out more New Age material.
I can say it’s not all about the money because it happens all the time with people who aren’t celebrities, who had no money involved at all. A spiritual crisis sent them running back to the religion of their childhood, or to a related religion that somebody was pushing at the time. They left a path that was meaningful to them, in some cases even profitable to them, because they never dealt with their religious baggage.
Do You Have Religious Baggage?
Do you have religious baggage? I come across people who say, “Oh, I never believed any of that stuff.” Well, good for them, if they’re not lying to themselves. “I ain’t afraid of no ghosts” only goes so far. At some point just saying, “I never believed any of it,” when you really did, even if you didn’t recognize it as belief, doesn’t work. It doesn’t help you get over it.
And ultimately, this isn’t an intellectual problem. That was one of the things that I really struggled with, because I tend to be an intellectual person. I examine the evidence and I see that Christian fundamentalism is clearly false, and the whole idea of Christianity as the one true way just doesn’t make sense. But that wouldn’t let me move on because it’s not just an intellectual problem.
Don’t pretend it doesn’t bother you if it does, because it’s not going to go away on its own.
I lived in fear for most of my youth – fear of going to hell, fear of missing the rapture, fear that I was doing the wrong things in the wrong way, and I wasted eight years of my Pagan journey. That bothers me more than any of this. Even after I had decided to move on, I couldn’t start being a good Pagan, a good Druid, a good witch, because I hadn’t dealt with my religious baggage.
Toxic Religion Gets Into Your Soul
It gets your soul like tentacles. Knowledge will loosen the tentacles. Practice will sever them. Moving on allows the roots to decay and scatter. and now you finally got a clean break, and that allows you to live the magical and spiritual life you want to live.
I really like these two different variations on the same Tarot card in the traditional Waite-Smith deck number 20, The Judgment is the Christian resurrection. Robin Wood drew her card as the Phoenix rising from the flames, something new coming out of the ashes of what was old. Kristoffer Hughes took it a step further in his Celtic Tarot. He renamed the card Rebirth, and the illustration here is the rebirth of Gwion Bach as Taliesin. Wonderful cards, great Tarot decks, great stories. This is what you can do if you get the toxic religion out of your soul.
Religion versus Spirituality
Some people say, “Oh, I’m not religious. I’m just spiritual. This doesn’t apply to me.” Well, the whole idea of ‘religion is bad and spirituality is good’ is just not helpful, because people are mostly playing semantics with themselves. When people say “religion”, it usually just means “the kind of Christianity I don’t like”. Religion is more than fundamentalist Christianity. It’s more than Catholicism. Religion is Buddhism. Religion is Hinduism. Religion is what we do as Pagans. Religion isn’t the problem. Toxic religion is the problem.
What makes religion toxic. What do you do instead? We’re going to cover those in depth in this class.
What you call it isn’t important. If you want to call it spirituality, that’s fine. But if you don’t deal with the baggage, if you don’t go back and examine all of those stories and songs and sermons and the things that you heard growing up, if you don’t make a conscious effort to examine those, discard what doesn’t work, keep what does, build something new, then you’re not going to get to where you want to be.
What This Class Will Do
(and what it won’t)
So, we have this class. What will it do? What will it not do?
First of all, and I want to be very clear about that, this is not therapy. I’m a Druid and a priest. I am not a mental health professional. If you need therapy, go find therapy. This isn’t it.
This is not cleansing, as though a ritual bath and burning some sage or some mugwort or some rosemary could get rid of years of indoctrination.
It’s not a ritual. One ritual isn’t going to fix this, although the class will include a ritual, and we’ll talk a little bit more about that later.
This is a spiritual process. We begin the process in this class, and we make good progress. It’s something you’re going to be continuing for a very long time. It took me a couple of years to do this, working on it fairly diligently. But if I hadn’t begun with that process of unpacking my baggage, I never would have gotten there.
A Three-fold Approach
We’re going to take a threefold approach.
We’re going to begin with intellectual reasoning. You got to have a strong intellectual foundation. You have to have an intellectually honest foundation.
We’re going to build with spiritual practice and from their spiritual experiences. We can’t just dismiss the bad religion. We have to crowd it out with good experiences.
Living a Magical Life
The subtitle of this class is, “Living a Magical Life”. What do I mean by that?
I mean living a life of wonder and possibility, looking at nature and being in amazement at it, in awe of it, sometimes a little scared of it. I mean tornadoes and hurricanes are kind of scary things. But living a life of wonder and possibility without fear.
It can mean actual spellcasting. You want to take off on magic? I have another class for that. This isn’t it. This isn’t going to be a class that focuses on magic per se. I just want to set you up so you can live a magical life, whatever that means for you.
Who Should Take This Class?
Who should take this class? Anybody who wants to exorcise toxic religion from your soul.
It is designed for Pagans and witches, but it can be used by pretty much anybody, including people who are interested in moving on to more progressive and inclusive forms of Christianity. If you consider yourself spiritual but not religious, if you’re a Unitarian Universalist, you’re kind of hanging out in the big tent of Paganism but you’re not big on the devotional side, you’ll fit in here just fine.
Modules
The class has eight modules, actually nine because of module Zero. This is Module 0, Introduction, where everybody can see up front what’s involved.
Module 1: What Makes Toxic Religion Toxic?
What is religion? Probably not what you’ve been told by popular culture.
Module 2: The Baggage of Belief
Belief, by itself, isn’t bad. Believing things that are false and harmful is bad, and it creates baggage that we’ve got to unpack and examine.
Module 3: The Baggage of Sin and Guilt
We’ve got to look at the baggage of sin and guilt. If you do something to hurt somebody, you should feel guilty so you don’t do it again. You should never feel guilty for being human, for being who and what you are.
Module 4: The Baggage of Controlling Relationships
Religion is not just about what you believe. It’s about who you are and who your wider family is. Some of those family members like to make sure you stay in line, as they see it. When you start challenging their religion, you start challenging them. They’re going to try to keep you in the fold. We’re going to talk about how you can work through that, work around it, and if necessary, set some boundaries and learn how to enforce them.
Module 5: Stopping the Bleeding
After we understand what we’re doing and why we’re doing it, we’ve got to stop the bleeding. You can’t start getting well until you stop being injured over and over again. How do you stop the bleeding?
Module 6: Exploring Alternatives
What are the alternatives? It’s not enough to just dismiss toxic religion. If you just dismiss it, it’s going to creep back in. You got to fill that hole with something else. There’s lots of options. We’re going to talk about many of them in general and about the kind of Pagan path that I have followed in more depth.
Module 7: Cutting the Cord
There is value in cutting the cord. That alone won’t fix the problem. There is still value in crossing a line, in cutting a cord and burning your bridge. We’re going to talk about how you do that.
Module 8: Living a Magical Life
Then finally, living a magical life. One of the things that bothered me so much about the fundamentalism of my youth was the emphasis on, “Get saved so you’ll go to heaven when you die!” Well, what about the rest of this life?
This may be the only life we get. Now, I don’t think that. I think we live on in another world. I think that we come back to this world in future lives. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe we only get this one life. Let’s not waste it. Let’s live as freely and powerfully and magically as we can. We’re going to talk about how to do that.
Course Format
If you’ve taking courses with me before this will all be familiar. There are weekly videos. Each Thursday morning, I will send you an email with a link to this week’s class. You go watch the video. It is on-demand, which means you do it when you’re ready to do it. If you want it on Thursday morning, that’s fine. Friday afternoon or Sunday night or the next Wednesday. You do it when you’re ready.
So many classes I’ve come across are taught live. I can’t arrange my schedule to do them. I decided to do something different with my classes so they’re on-demand.
There will be recommended reading, not a lot, but some other voices I think you need to hear, and in some cases, my own voice in different formats.
There will be homework. I don’t think it’s excessive. I don’t think it’s something you’re going to spend hours on every week, but this is a process, and you should be prepared to do the homework. There’s work to be done here. I can show you how to do the work, but I can’t do the work for you.
There will be two video Q&A’s where I take questions from everybody in the class, and then I answer them on camera, then post the video. One will be after Module 2. One will be after Module 5. Typically, I’m looking for questions on the material we have just covered, but I will answer any questions related to the class in general.
There will be a cord-cutting ritual in Module 7. This will not be something we all do together. Number one, for the same reason that the modules are on demand, this needs to be on demand. You need to be able to do it when you’re able to devote an hour or so to doing nothing else. I will provide a script. I will provide some suggestions for tweaking that script to fit you. I will provide a video of me doing the ritual so you can see one way it might look.
UTAO Facebook Group
We have a Facebook group. It is a secret group that means only members can find the group, see what’s in it, see what they post. If you sign up for the class and you’re not already in the group, don’t go looking for it. You can’t find it. You’ve got to contact me. It will be best if you send me a friend request, and then I can invite you.
The Facebook Group is a good place for questions. I will respond to your questions either in the Q&A’s or an email or another thing. But you may have some questions you want another voice on, you want another opinion on. It’s a great place to do it.
It’s a place for conversation among classmates. “Hey, I came across this. I think it applies to this class.” Everybody else might be interested in it.
It is for all UTAO class participants, so the people who have taken other classes are there. If there’s something that you want to restrict to just the people who are taking this class, it might not be the place, but I don’t think you’re going have anything with this class. When I did the Tarot class, we set up our own group because we were doing some Tarot readings and sharing our results, and you kind of had to be there. I don’t think you’re going see that for this class, in this group.
Participation is completely voluntary. If you don’t like Facebook, you don’t want to do the group, that’s perfectly fine.
Cost
The cost is $99. As always, I struggle with how to price these classes. I’m looking at the amount of time and effort and resources and equipment that I’ve put into these classes. I look at what other people are charging for similar classes. I think this is a fair price. It might be a little underpriced compared to some people with similar things. This is what I think is a fair price, an appropriate price. It’s $99.
I prefer PayPal. Some people don’t like PayPal. It’s just the easiest way for me to get paid. I can take Venmo. I can take Zelle. I can take credit cards. I can take some other forms of payment. PayPal is just easier.
No Scholarships For This Class
This is a change. For my other classes, I have offered scholarships for people who were having financial difficulties. Now if you have been one of those people, and don’t take this personally, because some of you have done an excellent job with that. But in general, the people who take the classes on a scholarship basis simply aren’t as engaged as the people who pay for themselves.
In talking to my friends who run similar classes, they say the same thing. I have some friends who will not offer any scholarships at all, no discounts, because they have too many people who sign up for it, they get it for free, and then they never do anything with it. They don’t value it because they’re not paying for it.
You will not be successful unless you commit to doing the work. It’s just that simple. This is an investment in your spiritual future.
That also means that if I’m not going to offer scholarships, I can’t ask for sponsorships. You’re a pretty generous group. You’ve never covered all the scholarships, but you’ve covered a fair amount. Because I can’t ask for sponsorships, I’m going to end up taking in less money in total. But I think it’s the right thing to do, because I think everybody needs to have that tangible commitment to the class, so you’re invested in it and you’re doing the work,
Schedule
August 18, Module 0 is released. Registration opens.
Thursday, September 4, Module 1.
There will be eight weekly modules. You can see them on the calendar all the Thursdays in September and into late October. You see the Q&A’s in there on the calendar. The last module is released on October 23.
Questions
If you have questions about the course, by all means ask. If you’re trying to decide, “Is this the right class for me?” send me an email, contact me on social media. I will be happy to answer as best I can. The same thing is true during the class. If you have questions that come up, email generally works best, but I’ll take questions wherever you can find me. Ask the questions, I’ll do my best to answer.
Ideally, they’ll go into the video Q&A’s. I may answer by email. I may ask you to post it in the Facebook group. I’ve been known to turn them into blog posts. I’m probably not going to send a carrier pigeon, but hey, you never know. There’s a first time for everything.
If you’re looking at this and it’s 2026, 2028, know that I am always available to answer class-related questions. So even if you’re too late to get in on the Q&A’s, if you’ve got a question, ask.
The one caveat here: I don’t do casual conversation. Don’t send me an email or send me a message, “Hey, here’s this cool thing I found. Go check it out.” I’m probably not going to do it. I don’t do that with my friends. It’s just not something I like doing. But for questions about the class, ask and I’ll do my best to answer you.
Signing Up
Ready to sign up? Send me an email to: John@UnderTheAncientOaks.com or you can use the contact form on the website.
When you tell me you want the class, I’ll send you a PayPal invoice. When you pay that, I will register you for the course.
Expect a 24-hour turnaround. I have given some thought to try to automate this, like some people do, but I would just rather put my efforts into building better classes rather than learning e-commerce. This rarely becomes a time-sensitive thing. So register well in advance, and you’ll be ready to go when Module 1 comes out.
Recommended Reading
I am recommending my book, The Path of Paganism, as recommended reading for this class.
The Path of Paganism – An Experience-Based Guide to Modern Pagan Practice (2017)
You can get it at any of the online booksellers. You may be able to find it at a local shop or ask a local shop to order it.
If you get it or if you already have it, read Chapter 1 “Foundations” before we start.
It’s not required. If you don’t want to buy the book, you don’t have to buy the book. But the book came out of my journey out of fundamentalism, the process that I went through from about 2001 to 2002 and 2003, and then the other years up until I started blogging in 2008. That’s where this book comes from, so you can see what comes out of that experience. You see me talking about Paganism with all that stuff much more fresh on my mind than it is.
It’s the best book to accompany this class. But if you don’t want the book, don’t want to buy the book, you’ll be fine.
When I was a kid, and I realized that what I was being taught just wasn’t quite right, I thought that when I got away from home and I could quit going to the fundamentalist churches, everything would be okay, and it wasn’t. Now, certainly things got better because I wasn’t there, but those old fears were still there. When I tried to move on, when I found Paganism, I couldn’t move on because I hadn’t dealt with my religious baggage.
Then I finally realized I have to do this, and I started at the beginning, and I worked through the baggage, and it’s been a wonderful journey ever since.
If you are young, I hope you will do this now, so that you’ve got your whole life to live magically, live in wonder and awe and not in fear. If you are older, what are you waiting on? You don’t have that much time left. Don’t waste any more time in fear with that baggage dragging around behind you.
This is an important thing. So many people absorb the religion of their childhood, and even if they try to leave it, it’s still there.
Let’s examine our religious baggage. I want to help you examine your religious baggage so you can live a magical life.
Let’s go do this.