Pagan Conferences

Blessings Darlings!

Let me state this, again, up front:  If Z Budapest trashed "Niggers" and "Kikes" as she does "trannies" - do you really think she'd be invited to any conferences? If she banned Jewitches, and said "Kikes are just animals in human clothes, so they can't come to my rituals. Oh, that's hurtful? They still aren't coming, but I'm sorry THE TRUTH hurts" ....

Anyway ...

I'm now going to talk about what the roles of Pagan Conferences are or should be in the US.


I'm not talking about conferences by any one particular religious group for its members or people who want to participate in that particular religion.  I'm talking about a conference open to everyone in the Pagan community who can and will pay the admission price.  Many of them will come from far away, many won't be affiliated with a local pagan group or local pagan community.  Those that come who are involved in a local group aren't at the conference to learn more about their home group even if members ARE giving classes - they can get those at home, after all.  They traveled to the conference to get stuff that is NOT available at home.


Let's look at the "about" statements of several conferences/festivals on my side of the country:


"The Sacred Space Conference is a place and time of respectful sharing and thoughtful learning among the many rich and varied traditions, beliefs, paths and organizations found in the DC/Baltimore metropolitan region, the surrounding Mid-Atlantic area, and the world.  It is our hope that through this conference we will increase understanding and religious tolerance between the many traditions within the esoteric community, as well as within the public at large."

"Between The Worlds is an interfaith esoteric conference sponsored by the Assembly of the Sacred Wheel, a Wiccan non-profit religious organization. This conference is an opportunity to experience learning and rituals from a wide range of esoteric Paths."

"The Free Spirit Alliance is a spiritual networking organization serving the Pagan and Pantheist religious communities. Founded in 1985, our focus is and has been on presenting national, regional, and local events where people from all backgrounds can learn and share ideas. "


Learning and sharing, among a wide-range of folks.   Nothing less than that.  

Learning. Sharing.  Being exposed to the thoughts and rituals of many different groups.   Rituals to experience how those groups worship and work with energy.

That's what I say Pagan Conferences are for.

That said .....

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AND THERE ARE SOMETHINGS THAT PAGAN CONFERENCES ARE NOT (IMNHO)

None of those descriptions have anything about deliberately life changing rituals.  No promises of healing. No offer of spiritual breakthroughs.  


NOTHING THAT IS GOING TO SHATTER THE LIFE YOU LEFT.

I really worry for folks who seek spiritual breakthroughs at Pagan conferences, especially those who go back to being without group and community back home.  

Because 'breaking' and 'breaking through' is relatively easy.  Putting things back together in a new order - that is hard.  And is best done with the support of groups and community, not alone.  


Non-magical example:  I lived in the middle of Illinois for years.  One local therapist loved to help women separate out all their different parts.  Like ... dissociation/multiple personalities.  She honestly felt that doing this lead women to emotional breakthroughs.  But she never put them back into a cohesive whole.  Breaking the old without putting a new framework in place - simple destruction - left a trail of less functional, more broken, individuals.

Magical breakthroughs are very similar.  Looking at the coven I'm now in .... The coven was created (at the auspicious time) and we all became members.  And even that energy - no initiations, no elevations, just forming a coven and becoming members! - manifested in chaos in members lives.  Divorces and marital issues, unemployment and financial problems, internal communication issues, etc.  

Or even an encounter with the sweet, healing Goddess Bridget as Crone - where She announced She was going to work me over like she works a sword on Her forge - left me physically ill for months. Worked over, indeed!


Change SOUNDS great.  Change INVOLVES chaos.  We had each other, the group, the tradition and it's other members/HPs/HPSSs/Elders to rely on, and it was still chaotic.  


An actual spiritual breakthrough, at a conference, away from home, and you have to deal with travel after it ... and then being alone to deal with the chaos if you aren't part of a group.

And it doesn't matter if the breakthrough is 'healing'.  Healing is equally chaotic, especially if you are healing from long-standing issues.  You've build structure in your life around being broken.  Yes, you've shattered the Tower.  But you are now in mid-air, with debris around you and on every place you would land. NOW the real work starts.  And the ritual leader/healer doesn't stay in your life.  You are on your own.  Who is back home to even talk with about what is good to keep and what must be junked in your life?  Who can see magically what is going on that you might not be aware of, now brought to the surface?   


Because healing one area is going to bring up other areas that need healing, or areas you overcompensated in.  There will be fallout.  It was be ... yes ... chaos.


And if you do not have group/community back home, you will be alone.  With new chaos. 

Which is why life changing rituals, healings, etc, are to be done in your area, with people who are going to be around afterwards finishing the job - helping you clear up the chaos.

Let me summarize:

Pagan conferences are for sharing.
Pagan conferences are not for breakthroughs unless you seek a break-down.

Frondly, Fern 





 

Secret Stuff

Blessings, Darlings!

Today I started planning for my husband's birthday.  Which is not until the end of August.  But at the end of August he will be in Phoenix at the Microchip Technology MASTERs Conference .... and I will be here on the east coast.

So getting him some birthday on his birthday is going to be a bit of a challenge.  However, since he NEVER reads my blog, I can plan it here safely.

The MASTERs conference - and I'll probably put up banners for it later, we tend to be the 3rd party vendor who out performs everyone else at promoting the conference - gets at least 500 people in attendance.  It used to get about 900, but since then they have started offering them all over the world, so far fewer Europeans and Asians come to the main one.  Still, 500 people in one dining room is a substantial amount of people.

So .. I've e-mailed one contact at  MCHP so far, and tweeted another, and may e-mail yet another.  What I want is for someone to lead the folks eating dinner in singing "Happy Birthday" to the Chubby Hubby.

Now, the fact that this would get a bit more attention to our business at the conference, and the classes that the Chubby Hubby teaches there, isn't the point of this .... but I suppose that type of thing could happen.

I did something like this once before.  Back in 1987 I was very pregnant, and we were on vacation in Oregon.  We were up at Timberline Lodge at Mt Hood.  I could not walk 10 steps without having to stop and rest.  The Chubby Hubby wanted to hike.  I sent him out without me - hiking was NOT an option for me.  It was his birthday.  I called the dining room, made our dinner reservation.  I made sure that they knew it was his birthday, and that his dessert should come with a candle, a group singing, and an extra helping of embarassment.  That night, as I did request, so it was done.

The Chubby Hubby LOVED it.  Ate it up with a spoon.  Loved the dessert, too.

This might be as epic, if I work it right.

Frondly, Fern

Penises are Weird and Scary

Blessings, Darlings!

I assume that most of my Pagan readership has read about the woman (separatist Dianic Witch) vs woman (trans woman, intersex women, gender queer women) issue at Pantheacon: that some trans women were not allow to attend a woman's ritual (apparently including one woman who had already had bottom surgery).  If you missed it - check out the threads at The Wild Hunt, at Patheos, and  most of all at http://fruitofpain.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/in-response-to-the-lilith-rite-at-pantheacon.  Oh, it's covered other places as well, trust me.

While I've posted a reply or two on all those sites, it's time for me to 'officially' address it here on my very own blog.

I'm going to focus on just a few things, and not some other things:

1 - I'm not speaking as a diplomat, so assume that if I screw up on some language/reference it's not to be offensive.  I promise to let you know when I'm trying to be offensive.  I'm trying to be 'good' here - I even left out the words 'just fucking' before the word "assume" in the previous sentence.

2 - Transexual women ARE 'born women'.  I'm not speaking FOR the transexual community here, I'm quoting the transexual community and my friends within it.  I cannot and will not deny their experiences and lives.

3 - The US constitution gives everyone freedom of association and assembly.  For the purposes of THIS blog post, however, I'm not going to address private groups and criteria for membership, or private (not mixed group) venues.  Instead....

4 - I'm going to focus on rituals/workshops/etc held at Pagan conferences/festivals, where the space is paid for by EVERY paid attendee (and where presenters may have rooms/meals/transportation/etc comped by those in charge of the event.  AND where everyone separates and goes home away from almost all of the presenters afterwords.

A) What are the PURPOSES of Pagan Conferences?

A conference is NOT a meeting of a tradition

I totally admit I have a set of biases here. 

A Pagan conference is not the same as a gathering of a particular pagan tradition. 

For me, a Pagan Conference is all about introducing people in the pagan community to others in the community, to find out about and experience open rituals for different traditions, to attend workshops, lectures, etc to find out about new things.

It's about open rituals, darlings, open lectures, open workshops.

In my view, at no conference would it be appropriate for, say, one tradition to be given a conference room by the conference management to do, say, their private initiations, leaving out non-tradition members at the conference.  I would see that as inappropriate.

Now, as Pantheacon's web site points out, many traditions there had their own hospitality suites (presumably paid for by the traditions themselves).   For a trad to say "hey, lots of us will be at this conference, how about we do some long-awaited working there privately, in our own suite" - cool.  A tradition-specific, and tradition-paid-for, hospitality suite is private tradition space in such a context.

But for a tradition to use conference paid for space for a tradition-only ritual - no.  Conferences should not be subsidizing specific traditions private events.

I'm going to copy and paste a statement from Sacred Space Conference, held last month in Maryland, because I love how they word this:

The Sacred Space Conference is a place and time of respectful sharing and thoughtful learning among the many rich and varied traditions, beliefs, paths and organizations found in the DC/Baltimore metropolitan region, the surrounding Mid-Atlantic area, and the world.  It is our hope that through this conference we will increase understanding and religious tolerance between the many traditions within the esoteric community, as well as within the public at large.

Sharing and learning among.

B) Conferences and festivals are NOT good places to do deep transformative work.  

I suppose that to some folks, I just typed heresy. 


But I stand by the statement.  


Truly deep transformative rituals should be done in a group close to home, a group that the individuals are already intimate with, groups that can and WILL do intimate follow up with the people afterwords.  You don't do life changing rituals - and that INCLUDES deep healings, not that anyone has said what the ritual in question aimed to to at Pantheacon - and then let the participants loose in the world.  At BEST, some level of personal chaos is going to be kicked up by such rituals.  At worst, psychotic breaks.


In either case, or anywhere in between, you don't abandon the participants to float off on their own after such a ritual.  


I'm going to end this here, tho' I believe that entire books could be written on this.


Frondly, Fern