Winner of a COVR award in 2024
Are you leaving a religion, entering Paganism, leaving Paganism, changing traditions within it, or leaving religion altogether? Changing Paths is a companion for the journey.
How do you explain your new path to friends, family, former co-religionists, and yourself? How do you extricate yourself from your previous tradition and its associated ideas? How do you unpack your complex feelings about your path and why you are changing direction?
Individuals have many reasons for leaving a faith, including being in conflict with bad theology, bristling against a high-control religion, and disagreeing with conservative positions on gender, sexuality, and the body. Changing Paths offers resources for deconstruction, examining religious attitudes to gender, sexuality, other religions, and whether your religion supports you effectively through life’s ups and downs.
There are various routes into Paganism and Changing Paths offers resources on how to decide which tradition is right for you, how you know you’re a member of a group, and reasons for joining a group—or not. Exercises, journal prompts, and reflections explore how to deal with unexamined baggage from your previous tradition, the role of leaders, and how to find a beloved community.
You aren’t alone in your journey. A range of contributors who have trod this same path—from a former Christian who is now a Wiccan to a former Pagan who now avoids labels—also share their experience and wisdom.
Published by 1000Volt Press, 2025.
Buy your copy of Changing Paths
Praise for Changing Paths
“Hearing the deepest longings of our lives can be especially tough when trying to find our spiritual home, but thankfully Yvonne Aburrow’s excellent new book Changing Paths is here to help us. In this book, Yvonne invites us to a position of spiritual adulthood where our personal choices and preferences are honoured as an expression of who we are and aspire to be.”
—Steve Dee, Blog of Baphomet
“Changing Paths fills an important need in the Pagan community: a guidebook for how, when, and why to change your path, whether that’s within or outside Paganism. Compassionate and personal, this guide offers helpful journaling prompts and meditations for the reader to find the path that is right for them based on where they are in their own spiritual journey.”
—Enfys J. Book, author of Queer Rites, Sagittarius Witch and Queer Qabala
“Changing Paths by Yvonne Aburrow is a down to earth and extremely practical book on the complexities and intricacies of switching belief systems. Yvonne’s words will leave you feeling deeply seen, especially if changing religions is something you have already encountered in your life. If you have not yet made the switch, it will provide you with the framework and steps necessary to make those changes for your future if need be.
Yvonne’s tone is gentle, understanding and to the point which makes this book a refreshing change to others that try to tackle the dense topic of personal religion. Yvonne’s words are kind and accepting of all beliefs making this a book that is truly for everyone.
Table of contents
- Foreword by Mark Townsend
- Introduction
- Part One: Leaving Your Current Tradition
- Chapter 1. What is religion?
- Chapter 2. Leaving your religion
- Chapter 3. Religion and sexuality
- Chapter 4. Religion and gender
- Chapter 5. At the crossroads
- Chapter 6. The conversion process
- Chapter 7. Syncretism: blending paths
- Part Two: Joining Paganism
- Chapter 8. Joining a Pagan tradition
- Chapter 9. Arriving in a group
- Chapter 10. Unexamined baggage
- Chapter 11. Pagan values and ethics
- Chapter 12. Changing paths within the Pagan sphere
- Chapter 13. Finding beloved community
- Chapter 14. The road goes ever on
- Part Three: Experiences of Changing Paths
- A bad Buddhist but a good witch—Jasmin
- The God’s Honest Truth—Ambrose Heath
- Reconnecting with the mystery—Èlia Viader
- Wandering Away from Paganism—Nick Hanks
- Wobbling, but not falling off—Yvonne Aburrow
- Finding My Way to Love: In Search of a Good Life—Calyx
- My Journey from Judaism to Wicca—Karen Dales
- Thanks
- Further reading
- Getting help with leaving your religion
- International resources
- In the USA and Canada
- In the UK
- Bibliography
- Playlist
Each chapter includes exercises, journal prompts, and reflections.
Changing Paths is available now
“I truly wish I had a copy of this book during my own transition from evangelical Christianity to Witchcraft.”