The rituals at the last two Heartland Pagan Festivals were deep, dark, and powerful \u2013 digging up years of accumulated pain in the attempt to cleanse and heal them. The climax of last year’s main ritual featured the enactment of a confrontation between Demeter and Hades over the abduction of Persephone, where each participant let go of something, or honored something which they had lost.\u00a0 At the end of each ritual \u2013 and several of the workshops \u2013 nearly everyone was crying.\u00a0 (That I wasn\u2019t, actually, was one of the Clue Phone calls I got that year: apparently I am still more emotionally retarded that I had allowed myself to believe.)\u00a0 This was at the height of a blue moon, following the full moon at Beltane.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
This year the rituals were somewhat less focused.\u00a0 The opening ritual was about finding the fun and awakening the inner child; the main ritual was about blurring the line between the Sacred and the Mundane; the intensive workshops were largely aimed at the BDSM and polyamorous communities, so Aradia and I did not attend.\u00a0 This year, however, was not a blue moon but the last bleeding edge of waning and the first night of the Dark.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
<\/a> <\/p>\n There had been storms for most of the week, and tornadoes Wednesday afternoon.\u00a0 The forecast for the weekend had been deteriorating slowly the closer we got.\u00a0 Camp Gaea was soaked and battered when we arrived.\u00a0 <\/p>\n The opening ritual began strong [1] with an invocation of the Four Elements.\u00a0 Guest speaker Orien Laplante cast the circle with a bell \u2013 more like a miniature gong on a string \u2013 a feat which I will have to reproduce at some point.\u00a0 Into that circle, we [2] called our various patron Goddesses and Gods, and spread that circle to the corners of the land.\u00a0 We were encouraged to reclaim our childish sense of fun, and given a length of string with which to affirm our purpose in being at the festival.\u00a0 Mine was to reconnect with the life I have<\/em> \u2013 before moving on to my new life at Earlham, and I believe I ultimately achieved that goal.\u00a0 As always, the circle was left open, to be dismissed at the conclusion of the festival.<\/p>\n The main ritual echoed the first in structure.\u00a0 The Elements were invoked and Orien cast the circle with a musical instrument \u2013 this time a drum.\u00a0 As the elements were invoked, the circle was drawn in colored sands.\u00a0 The ritual leaders did a bit of sermonizing \u2013 telling us how we, outside the circle, could not know the things they experienced inside the circle \u2013 then directed us to step into the circle, and back out, to feel the difference.\u00a0 We danced in and out of the circle, walking and eventually obliterating the line, both literally and magically.\u00a0 It was fascinating to feel the edges of the circle unweave, blur, and eventually disintegrate.\u00a0 Ultimately, the ritual proved what we should always have known: that the distinction between the magical and the mundane is an arbitrary and illusory one.<\/p>\n The closing ritual, sadly, was weak.\u00a0 Firstly, I don\u2019t care for the new tradition of holding it Sunday night, rather than Monday afternoon; although I understand why that might be better for the Sacred Experience Committee and even for some of the attendees, Sunday night is usually the largest bonfire and the height of the festivities, and having the closing ritual right before the bonfire undermines both events.\u00a0 Secondly, the closing ritual was just that \u2013 a closing.\u00a0 No energy was raised, I didn\u2019t have time to enter a magical state of mind.\u00a0 We thanked the various powers for their attendance and bid them depart \u201cat dawn\u201d.\u00a0 This, I think, serves as an excellent example of the sort of drama that would work well in fiction, but not in real magical ritual \u2013 at least not for a group as large and un-integrated as a public festival; a close-knit coven might well find it effective.<\/p>\n As has been the case since I started participating it, the vision quest was my spiritual highpoint of the festival.\u00a0 This year\u2019s them was The Odyssey<\/em>, a narrative with which I can relate and whose characters I know well.\u00a0 Homer was the guide waiting outside.\u00a0 Athena [3] stood waiting at the first station, warning that though I had \u201csurvived the war\u201d, there were struggles yet to come.\u00a0 As is often the case, I wish now that I had taken more time to meditate on each of these things sooner, while they were still fresh in my mind.\u00a0 Each of the guides had something of value for me, but only these stick so firmly in my mind.<\/p>\n The second station was the Winds<\/a>, reminding that there was aid to call upon \u2013 a notion which was particularly helpful to me, given that so much of my magic is related to movement and progress, and who better to call upon for that (especially given my Wiccan ritual structure) than the Four Winds?\u00a0 The third station was a Kyclopes<\/a>, reminding me of the debts of hospitality and the dangers of overstepping those proprieties.\u00a0 At the third station was Kalypso<\/a>, followed by Tiresias, followed by the Siren.\u00a0 Eventually I came upon two suitors of Penelope, and finally stood before the great Queen, herself.\u00a0 Kalypso spoke of loneliness, and Tiresias warned of the debts to the dead.\u00a0 The Siren spoke of voices, warning against those that lead us astray \u2013 I am fortunate in that I can barely hear those over the screaming of my Muses.\u00a0 Penelope the Queen spoke to me of patience, a virtue I often neglect; my path is cleanly laid for the foreseeable future, now I have to walk it.<\/p>\n The sky was overcast for most of the weekend.\u00a0 The winds were high, and cold, hard rain threatened constantly.\u00a0 By the time Sunday morning came \u2013 and with it a much-hoped-for parting of the clouds – we were afraid that Thursday had held all the sun we were going to see that weekend.\u00a0 Spirits throughout the camp were low.\u00a0 People seemed to be trying too hard to have fun, and not succeeding.<\/p>\n Aradia and I attended only one workshop \u2013 a detailed and informative two-part lecture on the structure of spellcasting by Deborah Lipp, one of Aradia\u2019s newest favorite authors.\u00a0 Aside from participating in the public rituals, we spent almost all of our time in camp \u2013 drinking, smoking, and feasting.\u00a0 I picked up a few pointers on hot stone massage from the gentleman associate of one of the Taco ladies, and intend to incorporate that into both my massage techniques and magical practice.<\/p>\n When Monday came \u2013 usually a day of frantic last-minute shopping, goodbyes, and intermittent packing \u2013 I saw the camp empty faster than almost any year.\u00a0 Everyone was exhausted and yearning for their beds \u2013 \u201cto my babies and my fuzzies\u201d, as one friend put it.\u00a0 Aradia and I were no exceptions.<\/p>\n [1] I will say that the invocation of the Great Buffalo in the North bugged the shit out of me.\u00a0 Sorry, Sacred Experience Committee, but even if your North Caller is Native (or legitimately initiated into a First Nation tradition) and has a right to that invocation, not enough (read: \u201cfew or none\u201d) of your attendees have a similar right.<\/p>\n [2] Or, rather \u2013 the rest of the attendees.\u00a0 Although I am generally comfortable with Wiccan structure, the monism and gendering implicit in invoking Goddess and God in that fashion are still things I have trouble reconciling with my queer polytheism when I\u2019m not in control of the ritual.<\/p>\n [3] Athena, as channeled by a friend of mine who will henceforth be known as such on this blog.\u00a0 I could tell just on seeing her that she was at least half-ridden, and talking to her later learned that she could not actually remember any of the individuals who passed by her.\u00a0 The presence of Athena was adequately clear that I was able to name her without any of her major iconography \u2013 helm, spear, or owl.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The rituals at the last two Heartland Pagan Festivals were deep, dark, and powerful \u2013 digging up years of accumulated pain in the attempt to cleanse and heal them. The climax of last year’s main ritual featured the enactment of a confrontation between Demeter and Hades over the abduction of Persephone, where each participant let … Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[81,110,149],"class_list":["post-123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hedonism","category-witchcraft","tag-feasting","tag-hpf","tag-magic"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8kUcm-1Z","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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