Story and video by Corinne Konarska
Every morning, Central Michigan University junior Caroline Sharbaugh stirs her coffee counterclockwise to create a blessing on the day.
This morning ritual is just one Sharbaugh’s new found practices after leaving behind her Roman Catholic upbringing and embracing Paganism.
Within the past year, Sharbaugh has rejected her past teachings in exchange for magic, rituals, tarot, earth work and much more.
“Generic as it sounds, (Catholicism) never felt quite right,” Sharbaugh said. “I always felt there was something off.”
Sharbaugh has a distinct memory from fifth grade when she first began to realize how flawed the Catholic religion actually is.
“I wanted to write a research paper on comparing and contrasting Zues, the Greek king of gods, and God the Father,” Sharbaugh said. “I was just kind of like, it kind of makes sense. Like, both religions they are both the top guy. My teacher got really mad at me and she looked at me dead in the eye and went, ‘You never compare God to anyone.’”
For Sharbaugh, this was the first spark that ignited her skepticism toward the Catholic Church. However, she said her fear of going to Hell kept her from exploring other religions until she became a college student.
Sharbaugh said leaving home for the first time was rough. On top of that, she had been experiencing a toxic relationship in which her partner up and left. The combination of these situations happening during what she said was a difficult time in her life led her to question God’s will.
“It was a straw that broke the camel's back because I was in a new place, I was alone, I really didn’t know what I was doing and I was lost,” Sharbaugh said. "Something in me finally clicked that said, ‘If God really is there for you, this wouldn’t be happening.’”
Sharbaugh considered her life as a Catholic to be quite rocky. She didn’t see things getting better by continuing down the road of being a devout Roman Catholic like her parents expected. She said something had to change.
“I guess in a moment I just stopped believing in anything,” Sharbaugh said. “It’s like, why would someone let this happen? And that’s when I started doing different research about other religions thinking they had the answer, and none of them have the answer you look for.”
Regardless of whether or not an answer can be found as to why bad things happen, Sharbaugh said she immersed herself in the history of Greek and Roman gods to occupy her time at the start of the global COVID-19 pandemic.
Since then, Sharbaugh has been practicing tarot spreads, making offerings to her deities and using pendulums to answer yes and no questions. She said she gained self-confidence by unlearning past teachings and accepting her new identity as Pagan.
“How I see (Paganism) is, it’s not manipulating or trying to change things within the universe,” Sharbaugh said. “it’s just using the energy within the universe to influence things.”
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