Growing up as a young child, I could just make out an old dark house through the trees at the back of our yard—but only in winter, when the branches were bare. In the warmer months, it disappeared completely behind the dense woods, almost like it faded into another realm. I was curious about it, naturally, but my parents warned me to stay away. They said a witch lived there.

I believed them. It kept me out of the woods.

Later, when I was older, I learned they weren’t entirely making it up. There was a local legend that the house had been built by two sons for their mother, who had fled the hysteria rising in Salem, just a few miles down the road. I’ve never confirmed the story, but it felt truer than the one about the witch. Still, both versions stayed with me—one shaped by fear, the other by a history that had been half-buried.

I also grew up Christian. I was taught to read the Bible as if it spoke with one clear voice: declaring one true God and condemning all traces of paganism. There wasn’t room to question that. I learned to read the text selectively—skimming past parts that didn’t fit the narrative I’d been given.

It wasn’t until much later, when I had the space to look at the Bible differently—both as something meaningful and as a historical record—that I began to see what I’d been missing. The Bible, for all its declarations, still holds echoes of a past that isn’t purely monotheistic. In between the lines, and sometimes right on the surface, there’s a record—both explicit and subtle—of a world shaped by older, pagan traditions. It had been there the whole time. I just needed to learn to see it.

This blog is a collection of those things I have learned.

N.B. I am not a historian or academic – I need to state this up front. These thoughts are from a layman’s perspective, so please read accordingly. I WILL make mistakes, but I also promise to correct them as they come up. But in a way that is one of the points of this blog – to learn. My professional training is in the field of educational psychology, and I like to practice what I preach.