While discussing this holiday with my local barista, I ended up mentioning the psychic church I went to growing up - and she was surprised because she associated Christianity (distinct from Catholicism) with being very anti magical things. A close friend disclosed recently that she has deeply Christian relatives that are part of a sect that does snake-handling, not getting bitten or surviving the poison were signs that your relationship with God was good. My research on it suggests this is a very specific manifestation of Christianity mostly amongst Appalachian communities - also the birthplace of a very distinct quality of country music. She grew up in the mountains in Chattanooga Tennessee, so maybe it is less surprising then how deeply Christian parts of Florida are - I often have to remind people that the northern half of Florida is included in the Bible Belt, in my home town there was a church at almost every street corner. Similarly, my grandmother on my father's side studied at a Virginia Beach institution created by Edgar Cayce - one of America's most famous clairvoyants during the 20's and 30's, when mediumship was trending all over the western world. Edgar Cayce was deeply religious, and his new age teachings are deeply founded in spiritual practices involving the bible and even Jesus like powers of healing. It is bizarre to notice language I use in my day to day life be used on wikipedia pages to describe the doctrine of this person. She died a few weeks before I was born - apparently she was an extremely studied astrologer and I grew up with a small library full of books that include notes in her lilting, spidery handwriting.
My mother chose to get baptized (she was raised Baptist) when she was 16, and was compelled to marry my father whom she was living with while attending community college - because her father considered it sinful, in 1983 (and also to get away from him and that property in Labelle Fl with no running water). She was not in love with my father - but wanted an education, and wished her high school boyfriend would come interrupt the ceremony and take her away on his motorcycle. Years later, in the church we regularly attended after my stepfather was incarcerated the last time during my childhood (The Seraphim Center) my mother would be ordained a minister and briefly held an office in the space for mediation/reiki/tarot reading/feng shui. The psychics I have encountered always spoke from a place of angelic connection, their tone was as pastel colored in my mind as any other kind of Christian ceremony I've ever witnessed. My grandmother dresses mostly in white, owns a white Cadillac and has a house filled with kewpie dolls and angel figurines that I'm glad I won't have to deal with, and I just read an article in the Economist about Evangelical Christianity sweeping South America - especially in places like Guatemala, where my uber Christian cousin goes on mission trips every year.
While in my kitchen awhile back, my roommate's new boyfriend cornered me to talk about Chaos magic (something he's into, while also being a physicist) and I was kind of gently horrified - it makes me think of kids in silly costumes larping in a park - but I realized a core difference in my experience of astrology/tarot etc were not things I chose, were not symbols of a witchy personality and a middle finger to modern religious practices, was not something I came to as a fully formed adult, but embedded in my experience of the world and my sense of connection with the divine that still mirrors what I understand most Christians experience of worship to be - kind of like a child trying to read a book about quantum physics.
I remember celebrating Easter pretty hardcore growing up, when I was younger we did egg hunts at the non-denominational church, the Easter baskets waiting for us when we woke up, the pastel colors and perfect sunshiney day it always seemed to be, where it was still cool in the shade but just getting really hot standing in full sun. A day of artificial tasting candy and plastic grass in fake wicker baskets. The kind of day I went on Garage Sales with my grandmother and poured through other people's stuff looking for flashes of selfness to leap out at me - a kind of rebirth I suppose. But maybe there are clues in that ritual with my grandmother - was it a practice born from growing up during war time, of rationed fabric like the box of scraps we got from my great grandmother since she made all of her and her children's clothing back then? Or is it evidence of a deeper practice of sharing, stemming all the way from pioneer communites who bartered with neighbors and reused everything they had collectively? Is my tendency to save every scrap of food, even the bones to become stock - part of a cultural behavior that began long before the great depression?
My great grandfather on my grandmother's side, Reddick Bowman Rives (everyone called him R.B. I think, he died when i was in high school) seems to have inherited those family names from the pioneers who left north Carolina to settle what eventually became Gainesville, the town I grew up in. From the bizarre family history my dead beat father hoisted on me after college (and my own research based on his writing) shows that I am also linked to North Carolina folk on his side - and he repeatedly referred to my mother's family as a bunch of 'hillbillies' - the same name given to Appalachian music - 'hillbilly music' before it was absorbed into the Country genre. I am descended from true Florida crackers - cattlepokes, cowboys that settled the backwater (referring to the swamplands) it was before becoming a popular vacation destination during WW1, when Europe tours were not possible for the upper classes. My grandfather (a monster we haven't talked to in decades) owns a cattle ranch today, worked by my cowboy hat wearing redneck Uncle Ben.
I've written a lot about the kind of backwoods family I'm carrying the baggage of, but I think I was missing a fuller view of the lens until I took a deeper look at the religious aspect of my upbringing, a clear thread back through time that reveals the places and ways of being that imbue everything I do, that makes available to me the choice making of my family members that felt so disconnected from the people I grew up around in a university town full of academics and people from all over the country. I also am starting to understand the people I have found I almost magically seem to resonate with in this big city - people with roots along the Appalachian trail as well.
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