r/paganism

First off I want to say that I admire the art and statues that Jeff Cullen makes, he’s a brilliant artist! I’ve also mostly had positive experiences purchasing from him. However I purchased some Hecate art prints from him in mid-November 2025 and I still haven’t received my order. Communication with him has been minimal at best but mostly non-existent as he mostly doesn’t respond to any of my emails. In January he told me he was dealing with a family illness, his car got totaled, and there was heavy snow in Syracuse as reasons for falling behind and limiting how often he can travel to the post office. I acknowledged that and gave the matter a rest until this month. I did make the mistake though of letting the 90-day window to file a dispute with my bank pass, I didn’t know there was a 90-day window and going forward that is a mistake I won’t repeat.

That however is excuse for the lousy customer service on Jeff’s end of things. I reached out to him last week and told him I either wanted my order shipped this week or to cancel my order and give me a full refund. He responded quickly saying he doesn’t do refunds and that he’d get me my tracking. I then pointed out to him that on his website it says refunds and cancellations are possible if an order hasn’t shipped yet, he didn’t respond. The following day I sent an email expressing my frustrations to him and warning him of the consequences such as reporting him to the BBB and posting a thread on here should he not resolve this issue, I also asked him what day he planned on shipping my order, he didn’t respond but a few hours later I got an email confirmation that my order was processed along with tracking info. While I had thought perhaps the wait was finally over, it’s been a week and he still has not shipped it out, all he’s done is create a shipping label. I asked him again when he planned to ship it out and still nothing.

While I’m understanding of the fact he may not be able to ship it out right away, the lack of communication has been beyond frustrating because I have no idea what’s going on. It’s causing me to lose trust in him and wonder if he actually plans to ship it or if he has no intentions to and is just trying to rip me off. I’m also not the only one who’s had negative experiences with him. There is another Reddit thread(closed now) called Jeff Cullen - Potential Fraud with some users who voiced similar complaints.

I’m hoping Jeff can resolve this, if he does, I will provide an update. I hate that I’ve had to escalate things to this level talking about my experience on here. My purpose in sharing this is to try and spare anyone from potentially experiencing something similar. Anyone considering buying from him, all I can say is make sure you protect your purchase.

things got weird today 😭

does anyone know ANY deities that might be this 'lady of the lost'? even google isn't helping me with this😔

thanks!

i've tried all the books and resources including google that i have and NOTHING at all, so any info would be greatly appreciated

As I've mentioned quite a few times in this subreddit, I'm devoted to an unnamed Storm Goddess. A lot of my practice centers around storms and lately I've been called to share more of that more widely. This is a ritual I've been doing in some variation for a few years, and at its core centers around raising storm energy. You can raise it for protection, for energy, for the strength to do something that's difficult, but I've also found it to be a powerfully centering ritual especially if I'm anxious or stressed and want to gather my inner strength.

You don't need any supplies for this ritual, you just need yourself and your energy.

Without further ado:

The Ritual

Find a space where you can stand and take one or two steps in any direction without bumping into anything.

Stand in the middle of your space with your arms down by your side. Storms rise by feeding off of the latent energy around them, in the ground and in the air. Extend your hands and your feelings outwards and search for that energy. Pull it towards you. You can move your hands in a gathering motion, too, inwards and upwards, like a rising column of convective air (in towards your body; then upwards; then outwards; then down; and repeat in circles). Pull that energy into a rising column of storm air. Give it a spin, like a tornado or cyclone. You can start spinning yourself, too. Feel the rising storm. You are at the center of it, with storm all around you.

Feel the storm's energy as your own. When you breathe, the storm breathes. When you move, the storm moves. Notice how your stress and worries are taken away by the storm. Anything that might attack you or threaten you has to contend with the storm before reaching you. Your strength is that of the storm; what seemed difficult is now easier. This energy is your own and you can set it into motion in whatever way you see fit.

Stand in the middle of your space and feel the storm flow through you for however long you want. Once you're ready, gradually stop your spinning motion and your arm movements and slowly dissipate the energy. You can let it dissipate on its own, or you can gradually bring it back down into the earth and outwards from where it came.

Take some time for aftercare; grab a snack and drink.

Notes

I've been doing this ritual for a long time. I learned it a few years ago as I was working with the Storm Goddess—she showed it to me when I was starting out in my practice. It's proven to be useful to me in many situations. It's helped me with my anxiety and stress, especially if I'm facing a difficult challenge that I want to gather courage for. I've been doing activism work; it's helped me with protection. It's helped me move more calmly and with focus. And, in my work with the Storm Goddess, it's helped me connect with her and feel her energy as my own.

I hope this is helpful to you.

Some more notes:

• If you can't stand, you can still do this ritual while sitting.
• I prefer to spin counterclockwise in the Northern hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern hemisphere, to follow the natural formation of the storms.

I don't have a lot of info to go on, but I was hoping someone here might have had a similar experience and can weigh in with what worked for them?

I recently quit at an incredibly toxic (but high paying) workplace without a backup plan. I know I was taking a risk in doing so, but I prayed to "whomever was listening and cares what happens to me" that I would find something soon and not have to live in survival mode anymore. I have been spiritually a shell of myself since last year when I took that job, so I really was afraid that the added horror of job hunting in 2026 would kill me somehow.

The day I quit, I somehow landed an interview the following day with a coffee house I've always wanted to work in. I've since been reached out to by almost every place I've panic applied to and booked solid all week with interviews. I have no idea how, or why, but I have strong intuition that someone intervened for me in a major way and I have no idea who to thank.

Is there any practice I can use to determine how to repay the favor and to whom?

Thank you in advance

I know this could seem cringe but I have a small handful of songs on my playlist that talk about god, heaven or hell from the perspective of Christianity. To me they're just good songs that I also happen to vibe/relate with to some degree. Ik some of us (myself included) like to criticize and poke fun at Christianity and lately I've been questioning if it's weird for me as a pagan to be listening to Christian music even though its mainly just because I genuinely like these particular songs.

Here's a few examples:

God's gonna cut you down - Johnny Cash

God's Country - Blake Sheldon

Workin On - Colt Ford

Crossroads - Adam Calhoun (Yes Ik he's controversial but I just really like this 1 non-political song by him)

The Devil went down Georgia - The Charlie Daniel's Band.

In contrast I probably have over 100 songs by pagan groups like Heilung, Danheim, Skald, and Warduna that I listen to.

Question for the hellenists

Hey, so recently I've as a joke asked my friends what they'd want to be the god/goddess of if I worshipped them like the gods. But now I'm actually considering doing this. I feel like this might be some type of heresy but I'm new to Hellenism so idk.

Just would like to ask yalls opinion on this!:)

Hi, I'm new here. So I'm mildly pagan, also atheist/humanist. But I strongly feel the real dates are the pagan ones, and I acknowledge the pagan holidays, not the christian ones. I'm 51 and have felt this way since I was 17ish.

My Mom was raised by an atheist father and christian mother, was voted most likely to fall from grace in bible college, and married an atheist, and raised me religion free, except for having sent me to church run kids' summer camps a few times as a kid, thinking it "wouldn't do me any harm" (it did). She comforted me when I got home saying she hadn't known it would be like that, and made me chicken soup.

In her 70's my mom became a born again Evangelical after a minor stroke, which she interpreted as a revelation from god, not knowing what was happening to her, and recovering on her own without a doctor. She had a second minor stroke later and went to the hospital, which is how I know the first time was also a stroke. I spoke to the doctor.

She told me I'm going to hell simply for saying, "Oh my God", Blasphemy. Oh yeah, she also denies evolution. I am beyond hurt at the betrayal, especially as she knows what happened at camp when I was a kid (threatened with hell if I don't accept Jesus). I also experienced religious abuse at the hands of my Aunt when I was 12, when my parents were out of country and not able to protect me. Graphic video on a giant screen in a giant auditorium style church, of the Crucifixion, along with persuasive sickening preaching, and a participatory card to say if you were swayed tonight. (you can imagine).

I maintain minimal contact with her now. But with mother's day coming, each year I get into a panic about what to do. I know it's not her fault as her mother indoctrinated her, and it was also medically induced, but it's not the only thing to cause the rift (boundary/enmeshment/loyalty issues). She's in her 80's now. I haven't seen her now in 4 years, and I didn't enjoy it last time I saw her. I couldn't wait for her to leave basically.

It feels like she's backing everyone who ever said anything bad about me, and that she's sided with the enemy, that she's kind of gone mad. She should be telling people who think I deserve hell, to go to hell, not joining them!

How to handle this?

Disclaimer: I am extremely new to this, so please forgive me if you find this offensive. Most pagans I ever saw looks like some kind of hippies, goths, metal fans, and alt-people and subculture people, etc. Obviously I don't consider pagan neo-nazis and their styles and customs as referents. I dont want to generalize, but I also kinda would be kinda surprised if a pagan looks like a preppy kid, coquettes or Ned Flanders-type suburban dads.

gods/guides

Would it be... Uh heretical to pray the the greek gods more as guides out of a need for someone to talk to and ask for guidance rather then to directly worship them?

Sorry if this is a very rude thing to say it's just I'm very very new to Hellenism and as an ex Christian I'm kinda used to having a god to ask for guidance rather than strictly divine worship:(

What are your tougths on this?

Are there any finnic pagans here? I wanna hear ur experiences

Hi all,

I’m not a pagan myself. However, a very close friend of mine was. Sadly he passed away on Monday. He was a pagan.

Reason for my post is that, he previously expressed to me that he wanted a pagan funeral when he died. I’m looking for advice on somethings I can do to make his funeral “pagan”. I can only find so much on google so figured I’d go to Reddit. So if anyone has any suggestions that would be very beneficial.

Thank you all in advance

My sister has been wanted to get rid of this painting of her uncles. He was a somewhat famous artist and lived in a renovated church in the later part of his life that he had set up like a gallery with his work. It was given to her when he passed. His children wanted it but their relationship was strained and it fell through the cracks. It’s got awful energy and she’s kept it hidden in the garage away from the main part of the house. Honestly looks straight out of the Addams family. She wants to get rid of it but we’re not sure how to do it without something bad following her for trashing it. Any ideas on how to get it out or in someone else’s care without it causing harm to my sister or her family? For context, she is an Irish/Italian family living on Pennacook land.

hello! while I'm an Omnist myself, i have been worshipping Hypnos lately. unfortunately, I'm a somewhat broke college kid with very little ideas on what to make an altar for Hypnos with, and with what as offerings. if anyone can help, that would be quite appreciated!

im very new to this stuff even though i have been researching on and off for years now. a few weeks ago i was in desperate need of something and i prayed to lady Aphrodite to please help me with the situation and that i’d give offerings every single day for three months if it happened. well it happened and bc i never gave offerings before i set up a white candle on a seashell, cleansed my space with incense, asked my spirit guides and ancestors for protection and lit the candle. i introduced myself and talked about my situation. ever since then i am lighting the candle everyday and giving offerings like a rose quartz, a rhodonite, incense and sea water i collected myself and always thanking her for her help but i noticed ever since i started doing this my life has been going to a very hard path and im just having the worst weeks of my life. is it possible that she’s angry with me? am i doing something wrong?

I believe in a Pagan God, not a Christian one. Sometimes I prefer to call it 'the Infinite One' or 'Unus Mundus', since I lean towards a kind of pantheism with panentheistic tendencies.

This God is not someone up in the sky, it is something that is everywhere. It doesn't really 'exist' as a separate being, but rather is all things, without being exhausted by any of them. It is constant change, generation, destruction and transformation.

It is not a God to pray to, but a God to know through its many expressions, which I call gods, principles, powers, or natural forces. I like referring to these forces using names of Greek or even Egyptian gods, but de-literalizing their mythological meaning and treating them as cosmic and natural forces.

I don't believe in a beginning of the universe, since for me the cosmos is eternal and infinite. The planets, the zodiac and the fixed stars and their multiple combinations are visible nodes of these infinite divine expressions. I don't like to map gods and planets 1:1. What I do is more combinatorial, as a single god can manifest through several planets.

What the Greeks called daimones are the more concrete manifestations of these finite astrological nodes in the sublunar world, although each planet on the cosmos has their own set of daimonic manifestations. "Daimonic" means more "concrete, particular, multiple" from a human point of view. But these daimones form a continuous with the cosmic forces I call gods. It's just a matter of language and perspective.

Daimones are natural forces on earth, sea and sky, complex and not anthropomorphic, but they manifest in my imagination, which acts as an interface, through images or phantasmata. These can take human, animal or hybrid forms, sometimes beautiful, sometimes grotesque, and sometimes ambiguous, containing both at once. These images are usually highly personal, not defined by any kind of mythology, as Greek mythology left daimones and the impressions they leave in the imagination as pretty undefined on purpose. I usually imagine these phasmata besides statues of the gods from where their daimonic sources "derive" from. My rituals are imaginal and internal. The Art of Memory provides with tools to build Memory Palaces to practice it properly and in a structured way.

I also don't believe in a final salvation as the goal of the soul. My goal is to feel existence.

I don't believe in a single divine savior like Jesus Christ, although I respect him as a great teacher, just like Buddha or Lao Tzu. Instead I listen to many Greek, Egyptian, Roman and Renaissance thinkers, like Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Plato, the Neoplatonists, Hermes Trismegistus or Giordano Bruno.

At the same time, I am open to Neoplatonic Christians who can contribute ideas to my worldview without imposing dogma, like Synesius of Cyrene (who already was quite heterodox and emphasized the role of dreams and imagination), Marsilio Ficino, Nicholas of Cusa or even the physician Paracelsus, who, despite working within a Christian framework, integrated hermetic ideas and intuited that imagination has effects on the body, and vice versa.

As I mentioned earlier, my main spiritual tool is imagination (Phantasia) and the Art of Memory, based on the Platonic idea of Anamnesis, that to know is to remember.

As I mentioned, imagination works actively and operatively as an interface between my inner images and the forces of the universe, together with bodily sensitivity, and the sacralization of everyday tasks by associating them with gods or treating them as offerings to them (assimilatio).

I see this spiritual view as hermetic-neoplatonic, filtered through Renaissance ideas, and I wanted to share it with people who might find it interesting. Giordano Bruno is the philosopher who helped me make the most sense of everything I had been studying for years.

I also recognize that Hindu Tantra, especially Kashmir Shaivism, despite some differences, is the closest living spiritual tradition to my worldview and practice today. I sometimes study it to help connect the pieces of the Western tradition that have come to me in fragments, which, once brought together, form a coherent and beautiful whole.

Thanks for reading.

im i guess a spiritual occultist, im more a nature guy but into way too many traditions & topics. Im not part of a coven, cult, or group yet, into too much, know too little so clueless. But im trying to find (big or secluded) public or private festivals/event for the wheel of the year. I suppose more of midsummer, solstice, lammas, equionox, & samhain. Any tips or known ones can anyone suggest for me? Don't get me wrong id love to make flower crowns, go around the maypole, fire jumping, bonfires, hang nude as a naturist anyways & meditate, & whatnot. Heard of the stonehenge one in june, the beltaine fest in uisneach in may, and another in edinburgh, but no idea. Id love to meet people and maybe gain knowledge or connections from like minded individuals. Any advice appreciated!

I have been worshipping Hellenism Gods for a period. And recently I read the story of Enuma Elish and I just found Tiamat is so charming for me. However, I didnt find much materials about her so I would like to ask if there is anyone who has such experience.