Megan is a sophomore in my french class. I’ve known her for a year. She’s a sweet, very soft spoken intelligent girl. She loves horseback riding. She’s majoring in creative writing and wants to be a screenwriter for Pixar one day.

When I first introduced this project to her she got real excited because she loves mythology. Megan is not religious but spent a lot of time trying to figure out of she was when she was little. When I brought up examples to her, in explaining folklore more in depth, her ears sang when I mentioned “Greek Mythology”. She starting spewing out how much she loved taking basic latin in middle school.

When she was in middle school, her latin teacher assigned all the students new names for the few weeks they would be in the course. Each student was given a God or Goddesses’ name for the duration of class. Megan got assigned “Athena” goddess of War and Wisdom.

“I took this, and just…ran with it.” She laughed. She got very interested in greek history and mythology. She started looking up elements that were important to the gods. Sacrifice, prayer, and loyalty. So she started talking to friends and asked those that had religious affiliations or religious backgrounds what it is they did for sacrifice, prayer and loyalty. She took these influences and her own and came up with her own nightly ritual to her favorite goddess Athena.

She would lay in bed, hold her hands together and close her eyes. She would start off with “Dear Athena…”. Megan says that most of the time she would ask the goddess for superpowers or a letter from hogwarts. Very pre-teenage-ry thoughts. She then closed the prayer with “Amen.” then Megan would drink a glass of water. She drank the glass of water for three reasons. One, she wanted to prove her loyalty to the goddess. Water is as valuable as life itself. Ending the prayer with a sip of water let her know she truly believed in the goddess. Two, she thought it was most likely to make her “wish-prayer”come true. And lastly, she would drink water at night and not drink with her food in the morning as a way of sacrifice.

Analysis: It’s really interesting how she composed this Pagan-Christian-Harry potter religion. She took pieces from all the religions that she simply learned from some of the friends around her and came up with this new unique style of worship. A worship to a goddess that had a religion and had a way to worship her properly. I think it’s great that she took something taht everyone makes a large deal about in life – religion – and made it her own. Religion is a huge part of how cultures exist. By her transforming it she’s making it truly personal; between her and her goddess. Which is all that mattered in religion in the first place. That golden relationship between you and your God.