My Life as a Neo-Pagan

My name is Fran Wolfe-Johnson, known in the Neo-Pagan community as TygerMoon Foxx. I have been involved in the pagan community for twelve years and until 2000 held the office of priestess and Elder in Star Moon Coven, Covenant of Kernunnos located in Denver, Colorado.  I now reside in Clay County, Florida with my husband (also a practicing Neo-Pagan), three cats, four dogs, and a rabbit. We are expecting to add horses to our growing family soon. From 2000 until 2005 I am worked with a mixed group of Georgians and Gardnerians in the Sarasota area. I hold the office of teacher and priestess but do not yet consider myself an Elder. Current circumstances force me to work as a solitaire.

I grew up in a marginally Christian household. My father had a career in the United States Army as a medic and did not care for the nondenominational services held on the military bases where we stayed, as he was Catholic. We moved too often for us to attend church in the community for any length of time. I did learn bits and pieces of the Catholic faith from him when he was willing to talk about it, but he fostered an active interest in the occult through exposure to other cultures. I spent hours sitting in his lap while he played music from the British Isles, Germany, Eastern Europe, and the Caribbean Islands and talked to me about their beliefs and way of living.

Although he had lived most of his life in inner city New York, my father had a great reverence and love for nature which he passed on to me. We visited Colorado infrequently, usually between post assignments, but when we did visit he would take me hiking in the mountains. On these outings he taught me the names of the flowers and the animals we observed and educated me about their dependence on one another and our dependence on them for a healthy environment. He also showed me how to hear the voices of the mountains and the streams and what it meant to draw on them for strength and comfort. On one of our last excursions I questioned the nature of the Christian god and asked for an explanation. It just didn't seem right to me that so many good people would be punished for not venerating deity in a specific manner or calling that force by a different name. He told me that the names and rituals might not be the same but ultimately those efforts return to the same greater source and the intent will be judged, not the words. It is a piece of advice I have endeavored to integrate thoroughly into my spirituality.

My father passed away in October of 1982.  I preserved the wisdom he had imparted to me by living according to those guidelines as best I could. I did not have time to re-examine my spirituality until I left for college. In late 1994 an internet search yielded a small article on Wicca with some book references. Most of the books had been out of print for quite a while but I obtained a copy of Scott Cunningham's Wicca for the Solitary Practitioner. Later that year, I met a practicing Wiccan couple who shared the housing unit next to ours.

Until they moved off campus in 1995, I shared esbats and sabbats with them and explored the medicinal and arcane use of herbs and crystals. In September 1996 I returned to my home town. An e-mail address given to me by an acquaintance on a mailing list led to a meeting with Lady Rhiannon and Lord Balan that November. I was accepted as a petitioner and given a list of reading materials along with the requirements for first degree initiation.

I relocated to the east coast in 1998 to Gloucester, Massachusetts. A visit to Salem, where I discovered for the first time the historical accounts of the Puritan witch hunts, marked a turning point in my beliefs, which had until now been based on the mythology that Wicca was an ancient religion handed down mother to daughter through the ages. Once more I began to question my beliefs and started researching historical and archeological accounts in search of a more factual history. This course of studies eventually led to more intimate involvement with the Georgian Tradition.

Blessed Be,

TygerMoon Foxx

"Cultivate your own spirit. Do not look for something outside yourself."

-- Barbara Ann Kipfer