I was born with a different name. Given by parents who didn’t want me and didn’t love me, yet selfishly my father named me after himself. I grew up acutely aware that I was unloved. When I heard the beginning of the story of Sleeping Beauty as a little girl, that her parents named her Aurora after the dawn, because she brought light into their lives, I wished to be loved like that.
When I passed through my first initiation in my teens, I was asked to choose a new name. I chose Aurora Victoria WindDancer – “Light’s Victory”, because I knew I was loved as a source of Light by the Gods and Goddesses, and the ancestors, and the guides, and guardians and I was a wanted child of the Universe. WindDancer – because of my affinity for air and the pure joy I feel when I call the Winds to dance around me.
I changed my legal name to Aurora in my 30’s when I realized that there was no one in my life who knew that person I used to be anymore.
Taking a magickal name is a sacred act of self-actualization, and the creation of connection between one’s mortal self and one’s immortal Soul and the Divine. Most people use their spiritual names only in private, or among their closest friends in their spiritual community. And for many years this was true for me as well. However, as my life within the Pagan/Tantric/Spiritual communities in Oregon/WA grew to become the largest part of my life, as my Community became my Family, as I trained and studied and learned and taught and served, as I became a Queen, and a Priestess – more people in my life knew me as Aurora, than as the name I was given by those biological parents so long ago. So I made a decision to fully embrace Who I Am and to take My chosen name as my legal name, and to let the past of my painful childhood fade away with the birth name that I let go.
Words Dancing On The Wind 