Last month I took my second turn teaching at HSA Spirit Circle.\u00a0 My first round, in October, was a reiteration of my Spirit Conjuration workshop that I ran at Heartland last year.\u00a0 This time, I tried something new: a class focusing on elemental energy and circle-casting.\u00a0 The course built on my oldest work – energy manipulation of that style that everyone I know from the 1990s learned somewhere, but which I have seen mentioned in few books and really explored in only one – and then intense elemental experiences of the rituals my crew and I designed and led for HPF 2015 and ’16.\u00a0 It was a really great class, and I’ll probably write about it in detail eventually — maybe after I run it a second time at HPF this coming year — but that’s not actually the interesting part to me in this moment.<\/p>\n
The class on spirit conjuration went fairly well, and the purification ritual I did after was\u00a0reasonably received (and exceptionally potent when I re-wrote it as an outdoor ritual a couple weeks later).\u00a0 But there was a …. dryness to it.\u00a0 I was definitely speaking from an academic place.\u00a0 It was a lecture<\/em> not a class<\/em>, and I don’t think anyone went back out into the world more ready to conjure spirits than they were\u00a0when they came in.\u00a0 \u00a0 Which, on the one hand, makes sense: I’m an academic as much as I am anything else.\u00a0 All the very best classes I’ve taken were lectures and discussions.\u00a0 My hands-on training was all much more informal, and over longer periods of time.\u00a0 But the Kansas City Pagan and magical communities are … not academics, by and large.\u00a0 And while the particular individuals who attend any class I’m teaching are probably not the anti-intellectuals causing so many problems in the community, it does no good to talk over their heads.\u00a0 Also, I was super nervous and it really showed.<\/p>\n The elemental energies class, however, was a different matter entirely.\u00a0 Rather than teaching from a place of expertise and authority, I came from a place of nerdy enthusiasm.\u00a0\u00a0Instead of\u00a0giving a lecture on a subject about which I was knowledgeable – though there was a citation-heavy introduction – I ran a hands-on class where I showed a half-dozen people how to do this thing I do.<\/p>\n It went fucking splendidly.\u00a0 We cast circles.\u00a0 We conjured the elements.\u00a0 We\u00a0passed around orbs of magical power.\u00a0 \u00a0 People were engaged.\u00a0 Lively.\u00a0 There was laughter.\u00a0 No one even tried to sit out the hands-on portions.\u00a0 New friends were made.\u00a0 It was a struggle to kick everyone out at the end of the evening.\u00a0 Aradia thinks it was one of the very best Spirit Circles we’ve done, almost if not just as good as Shauna Aura Knight’s chanting class and full moon ritual.<\/p>\n In the process, I (re-) learned a thing as well.<\/p>\n I am large and hairy.\u00a0 I have a resting bitch face that borders on serial killer visage.\u00a0 I have been accused (perhaps fairly) of arrogance.\u00a0 I don’t send the signals Pagans want and expect.\u00a0 These are facts.\u00a0\u00a0Teaching from a place of authority emphasizes all of that in all the worst ways.<\/p>\n Teaching from a place of enthusiasm, however, seems to mitigate all of that.\u00a0 Even when my enthusiasm strays into the citation-heavy academic side of things, people are less put\u00a0 off by it.\u00a0 As an added bonus, I seem to have more fun, as well.<\/p>\n For much of my life,\u00a0I have prided myself on my adaptability.\u00a0 When my behavior was not achieving my goals, I changed it.\u00a0 Tragically, that is exponentially more difficult at 36 than it was at 16.\u00a0 But this change … this change I think I can make.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last month I took my second turn teaching at HSA Spirit Circle.\u00a0 My first round, in October, was a reiteration of my Spirit Conjuration workshop that I ran at Heartland last year.\u00a0 This time, I tried something new: a class focusing on elemental energy and circle-casting.\u00a0 The course built on my oldest work – energy … 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":[5],"tags":[316,115,317],"class_list":["post-4605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-witchcraft","tag-classes","tag-hsa-spirit-circle","tag-musing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8kUcm-1ch","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4605","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=4605"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4622,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4605\/revisions\/4622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}