@Wolf_Witch honestly, only my husband & children, plus a couple of close friends, know that I am a practicing pagan/witch. Regardless of what I wear, say, or do, the same or different. My neighbors think I love animals & this year, my mobility is better to be able to work in the yard. I do anything else in my home, specifically in my room. Unless I am home alone, I may venture to the kitchen or living room. It depends on who is home & the general atmosphere of the people that may be here too. I do have an oak that I sit in front of or a spot on my back porch where I will sit in the sun & watch nature happen in my backyard.
I was raised Roman/Irish Catholic; talk about judge, jury, & executor because of hearsay… I get it. We had all but stopped practicing religion by the time I had moved out & had my children. I tried to go back to church here, but in the end, we didn’t end up following through much past my children being baptized. So YEARS later, when I was thinking about, who knows what, it dawned on me that when I was a teen, I used to practice with a friend of mine & started looking more into paganism, Wicca, witchcraft & I was very comfortable & happy. Then I landed here in 2020.
My father & brother, though… have no idea. I feel like it’s more of a don’t ask, don’t tell, or a who cares because my father is at one end of the coast & my brother is deployed. So we don’t talk about spirituality or organized religion anymore.
I have a pentacle chandelier hanging on a shepherd’s hook by my fire pit with five mini cauldrons hanging from each point. I recently had someone ask if it was from Halloween; I said no. I use it when I have a fire… so I’m pretty sure they think it’s a permanent Halloween decoration?
There’s no way to tell how others are going to react. I came from a very Catholic family, Italian & Irish, so I remember things from when I was younger happening that were based on the church’s beliefs, or we were being given reasons based on the church to find out later, it was the most straightforward explanation to save face at the time.
(IE: I have a half brother & sister. We were told that the marriage to their mother was annulled… there is no divorce or annulment record anywhere & on the marriage certificate. They weren’t married in the church. They were married by a justice of the peace in 1967. I found them in 2021, but I haven’t reached out because of conflicting information from other family members about what was or wasn’t relayed to the children whose names were completely changed to reflect the other man that their mother was with at the time after she left my father when he was deployed)
It’s going to be up to you whether or not you are ready to share the information with other people. How they react is up to them. I would say you will need to be prepared to hear things that may not be helpful or supportive based on belief systems that are different & don’t understand what a “witch” is or does or that it’s a very personal journey so no 2 witches are the same.