During my first semester at Marshall University, when I was a Junior, I went to a Midsummer Night’s Festival that the campus Pagan community was having on and around campus.  That very week, before the festival, I had a very strange experience happen to me.

I was sitting at my desk, when this guy that had class with me plopped a book on my desk.  He said, “I think you need to read this,” and walked away.  The book’s title was “”Earth Magic.”"  At the time, I thought the guy was a loon.  I soon found out that fate had intervened that very day.    That was a Wednesday.  I went to the festival Friday night of the same week.

I had not taken a look at that book before I went to the festival.  I had been too busy and had not taken it out of my backpack since that class.  At the festival that night, I saw another guy from that same poetry class working a table.  He was giving Goddess Amulet Readings, a sort of tarot reading with stones rather than cards.  I decided to give it a whirl.

I sat down and he started shaking his bag of stones. He smiled at me and said, “I’ve been waiting for you.”  I sat there and felt this strange peace come over me.  He threw the stones on the table and proceeded to read them for me.  He told me that I was on a path to self discovery, that I was confused about where I was going and where I had been, and that my purpose in life was fuzzy.  He told me that I did not want children and that I would not have them, but that I was and always would be surrounded by animals, especially cats.  I sat there completely amazed and silent.  He then proceeded to tell me that I was in love and married but came from a divorced family and feared my marriage would not last.  He promised it would.  I was stunned.

Everything this man said was true.  Before I left his table, shaken, he said one last thing.  “Read that book.”  I looked at him and he smiled and went onto the next customer.  That night changed my life.  I went home that night and pulled that book out of my backpack.  The book was all about Paganism.  That book was the beginning of my spiritual awakening and I am now close friends with the guy that gave me my reading, a fellow Pagan.