Drawn By Moonlight

My First Encounter with the Goddess

The Beginning of My Journey into Goddess Spirituality

There are moments in life when something inside you responds before your mind understands why. A pull toward the moon. A feeling in your body when you stand beneath the night sky. A longing for something ancient, feminine, and familiar that you can’t fully explain.

A Moonlit Encounter

At sixteen, a full moon and a night alone sparked my first encounter with the Goddess. I didn’t know Her name, but I felt Her presence—and the moment changed everything.

I was home alone. The moon shone full. Scattered across the midnight-blue sky, the Milky Way glowed. I’ve always loved the full moon, and this night, she drew me to her like a moth to a flame.

I stood in the middle of our front lawn, my arms outstretched, my head thrown back, drinking in the beautiful moonlight. As I connected deeply to the energy filling me, I clasped my hands together, index fingers held out straight. I turned in a circle, seeing and sensing energy pouring from my hands, and called upon the Ancient Ones.

I didn’t consciously understand what was happening, only that something ancient and deeply familiar answered me beneath that moonlit sky, and I acted from a purely instinctive place. There weren’t any books about Wicca, Paganism, or the Goddess back then.

I don’t remember much else about that night. But that image and feeling have stuck with me and guided me throughout my life. I didn’t quite understand it then, but that night shaped the rest of my life. Something inside me began turning toward the Goddess, changing how I approached the divine. At the time, I had no idea I was beginning my journey into Goddess spirituality.

Praying to the Moon Goddess

After casting that first circle (I only realized what I did years later as I studied Wicca), my prayers changed. No longer did I pray to the god of my Mormon parents, but to “La Diosa de la Luna”, the Moon Goddess. I don’t know why, because I don’t speak Spanish. I think calling to her in a different language—and one my parents didn’t speak—felt safe. Even then, part of me knew I was stepping onto a path that no longer fit within the world I’d been raised in.

Leaving the Mormon Church

However, I still lived with my parents and in Northern Utah, so I attempted to follow the church of my parents throughout the rest of my teen years. True to my rebel nature, I couldn’t follow those teachings which were at such odds with what I intuitively knew, and at 25, the church officially excommunicated me. That act of defiance changed the course of my life. Even before the church made it official, I knew I no longer belonged there. My path had already begun changing years earlier beneath that moonlit sky.

Leaving organized religion wasn’t easy, but staying would have destroyed something essential within myself. I couldn’t force myself to continue denying what I knew so deeply in my own spirit. For me, leaving patriarchal religion wasn’t about rebellion. It was about survival and spiritual truth.

Finding the Goddess

For years, my connection with the Goddess remained instinctive and private, something I felt far more than I understood. I think many women experience this connection to the Divine Feminine long before they consciously understand what they’re feeling.

Finally, books started being published about witchcraft, paganism, and the Goddess. I remember buying my first tarot deck in 1985. There weren’t any metaphysical shops in Salt Lake City, and bookstores weren’t selling them, so I went to the only place I could find them: a smoke shop. The bongs and pipes were on open display upstairs, but the pagan, witchcraft, and new age items were hidden in the basement.

From there, my dance with the Goddess unfolded slowly over the years, with one prayer, one book, one act of devotion at a time.

A Lifelong Devotional Path

It’s now been over 40 years that I’ve continuously connected with and worshipped the Goddess. (Much to my parent’s dismay, I won’t ever return to their church. I’ve now been out of it longer than I was ever in it. 🤣)

My connection with the Goddess deepened over the years, and through her, I slowly began finding my way back to myself. I began to understand some of what happened that night so long ago. Deep in my heart and bones, I know I’ve always been Her priestess, in many lives and in many places. This is just my most recent incarnation of serving Her.

I have a deep love for the Goddess, and I am so grateful for that first moonlit encounter. It sparked the beginning of a lifelong relationship with the Divine Feminine—a sacred, personal path of awakening to who I truly am that continues to unfold. And even now, that journey continues to shape the way I move through my life.

Living Between Two Worlds

Because of how I was raised, I don’t take this path or my connection for granted. I know how easily I could have remained disconnected from myself and the Goddess. Every Sunday, I’m reminded of this while caregiving for my elderly parents, and they turn on the televised church services. I know many women carry this same tension between the spirituality they were raised in and the deeper truths unfolding within themselves.

For so much of my life, I’ve kept this essential part of me hidden, protecting it from judgment or condemnation.

Returning to the Goddess

As I reflect on how hidden the Goddess was back then, I’m so grateful that I can now openly speak about the Goddess who has danced with me for so much of my life. Every day I dive deeper into my spirituality, connecting more intensely with the Goddess and my Feminine Divine Presence.

Looking back now, I realize that night beneath the full moon was never really a beginning. It was a remembering. A returning to something my spirit recognized long before my mind understood.

And I think many women carry that same remembrance within themselves, even if they haven’t fully acknowledged it yet.

I hope sharing my journey and story helps other women on their own journey into Goddess spirituality and reclaiming who they truly are beneath the chains of patriarchy’s expectations.

Sometimes the moments that shape us most don’t fully make sense until years later. A feeling beneath the moonlight. A pull toward something ancient and familiar. A part of ourselves that responded long before we consciously understood why.

As I look back on my own path, I realize how much of it began with instinct, longing, and an inner knowing I couldn’t explain at the time. Perhaps you’ve had moments like that too—experiences, feelings, or truths that stayed with you, even when the world around you told you to dismiss them.

These reflections are simply an invitation to sit with what your own spirit may already recognize.

1. When did you first experience the Goddess in your life?

2. Have there been moments when you felt drawn toward something sacred, feminine, or ancient that you couldn’t fully explain?

3. When you think about your own spiritual path, what experiences or moments continue returning to you again and again?