It’s the final stretch, y’all: one week from today, Aradia and I will be disappearing into the woods to begin setting up the site for this year’s Heartland Pagan Festival. The thirty-first of its kind, it will be my second year as a member of the ritual crew and my first year as a ready-to-take-the-blame committee head. I’m stoked. I’m scared.
We have a lot of fun and excitement planned for you all. We’ve got great pagan speakers and musicians from across the country, and a local legend for our Saturday night concert. Three days of workshops and rituals led by both our honored guests and members of our own communities. Public rituals on all four nights, as well as the traditional night-hike Vision Quest on Saturday.
I don’t want to give too much away, or overstep myself by blurring the line between my HSA work and this, my personal blog, but I’m really excited about the four rituals. For most of my time as an attendee, there were three main rituals: opening ritual Thursday, main ritual Saturday night, and closing ritual Monday (moved to Sunday a few years ago). Then, for a while, there were only two rituals: Thursday and Saturday. Last year we re-introduced the Sunday night closing ritual. This year we’re upping the ante by taking the elemental theme and escalating to four rituals.
First, Thursday’s Earth Ritual will banish the outside world and welcome everyone to the festival by introducing us to the spirit of the land.
Then Friday’s Air Ritual will clear our minds to find our truths, and help us name our ambitions in order to pursue them.
For Saturday’s Water Ritual, we will dredge up our individual fears so that we may confront and conquer them as a community.
Finally, with all obstacles out of the way, Sunday’s Fire Ritual will stoke our divine spark to roaring flame and impel us back into the world charged for action.
I really hope to see some of you there.