The Story
When I first started the site in early 2001 at it’s original Angelfire address, I was just coming to be intensely involved in the craft, as well as beginning to understand who I was as a woman, a human and a spiritual being. I originally began the site as a way to save what I had learned and give myself a reason to learn more (although I realize now I didn’t need a reason.) I was fascinated with everything witchy, occult or new age and it seemed like there was so much to learn. I started with faerie magick because it sounded interesting and at the time I was learning about the idea of otherkin (non-human souls that have reincarnated into human bodies.) I was so intensely interested in the idea that I even contemplated making the whole site into a big otherkin information database but soon discovered it would be incredibly difficult as it takes from the mythology of all cultures and some of the "races" that exist have very little information about them because humanity has never even heard of them (such as the brrn or brynn.) Therefore, I decided I would have to save my otherkin site idea until I knew more about the magickal world in general and began to make more contacts in the pagan world. Never know- one day I might decide to pick up the idea and put it on a subdomain but at this point in time I’m not ready to deal with it as there’s so much more I need to add to the site.
Anyway, after the otherkin idea I realized that one of the things that really bothered me about the internet in reference to paganism is that there’s a lot of pages with little bits of information all over the place, while there are very few that have a lot of very easily read and referenced information. This began to bother me so much that I started trying to put the site together in a way that I thought could provide the most information in the clearest possible way, while explaining it as thoroughly as possible and causing the reader to begin to ask more questions. I was incredibly fired up about the site until about 2002 when I hit a bout of depression and some family issues and had to put the site aside for awhile as it takes up a lot of my time.
However, just after my birthday last year, I realized that 2002 had drained me so badly and had taken such a toll that I needed to begin to do something for myself. I’ve always been an avid reader and a person who is incredibly interested in spirituality so I thought I’d go back to researching the site as it had been incredibly interesting for me and had become something that relaxed me. I started working back on the site in about March of 2002, slowly building up the information base and learning. Suddenly, in late July of 2003, a friend of mine decided he was going to start offering domain sales and hosting. I had always wanted to move the site to a domain and make it into a big site with a good reputation but I could never figure out how to buy a domain and hosting without a credit card and with a relatively low income since I’m in university. Fortunately Chris (different Chris than the author of Pagan Tails) was able to offer me extremely cheap hosting and domain registration, as well as a way to pay without a credit card and his services for tech support. The deal was far too good to pass up and so I took him up on it and bought the domain www.brigids-haven.com in early August.
The Vision
Since the site has been on it’s own server and it’s own domain, it’s exploded in size. It’s gotten a lot bigger, has been overhauled several times and has had a huge increase in patrons. I’m really proud of how well it’s done and I definitely want to encourage it to keep growing. I’m currently researching aspects of christopaganism and satanism to add to the site, in order to create some clarification around both systems, as well as show that neither is anything to be scoffed at. I’m also in the process of writing an article on runes, similar to The Art of Tarot which should probably be out sometime in February of 2004 if all goes well. In the future, I hope to add a shop to the store (though that may be awhile off), a partnership with Amazon through their booksellers program and a lot more reference information. I’m also currently finding that although the site is heavy text info, I’m lacking some information on the unification of the ideas and how the fit into paganism, so I’m currently going back and adding some explanations and articles. If possible, I’m also looking to reach out to the pagan community more by creating some forums and a chat room, as well as offering space for people to share their experiences and wisdom in a similar way as Chris has done in Pagan Tails. If you’d like to write, please contact me and we’ll have a chat about your experiences and what you’d like to write.
As far as the site in relation to myself goes, I intend to write some articles about my own person experience in the section I’ve created just for me: Passions of Webmistress (otherwise known as simply "Webmistress" in the link bar due to space issues.) I don’t intend to ever make the site into a "personal site" because I really don’t want it to be about me- I want it to be about the knowledge and about learning and understanding. However, I do feel it’s important to show that there’s a real person behind the site who has real experiences and knowledge. In the same vein, I’d like to mention that because I am a university student, I’m not sure how long all of this is going to take. Currently the upload rate is depending on how much work I have to do, how many hours I’m spending at my job, how much work I’ve created for myself with the site and how readily available the reference information is. Therefore, I’d like to ask you to be patient and keep sending me suggestions as I’m always working, just not always at the same rate.
I’d also like to thank you for your continued patronage and support as Brigid’s Haven wouldn’t exist without the people it serves.
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