Central Puget Sound Pagan Pride 2015

Yes folks, this weekend is Central Puget Sound Pagan Pride 2015!  It's going to be an amazing weekend and I am presenting both days.

• Saturday 8/29 at 3pm "Conflict Resolution for Magickal Communities"
• Sunday 8/30 at 2pm "Pop-Up Ritual"

For folks who are unable to attend or just want a little more information on these workshops I am posting the basic information below.

Conflict Resolution for Magickal Communities

Identifying positions vs. underlying interests.

• Positions are a person's assertion of opinion about what they want.
• Positions are often "my" statements. E.g. "My way is 'x'" or "I need you to do 'y'."
• Underlying interests are the needs and desires that motivate people. E.g. Safety or validation.
• Ask "why"? If there is more than one possible answer to "why do you want that?," then that is not the underlying interest - it's a position.

Check your understanding.

• If you want to be listened to, you must be willing to listen.
• Make sure you really understand what is being said - don't assume.
• Reflect back, paraphrase, and ask if you got it right.
• Restate what appear to be the most important points to the speaker, not what is important to you.

Validate and respect emotions without buying into them.

• The experience of emotion is always valid and genuine, even if the reasons they are being experienced doesn't seem to be.
• Empathize with the speaker's experience, but remain objective.
• Excessive buy-in (over identification) clouds judgment.

Pop-Up Ritual

The purpose of Pop-Up Ritual is to be a flexible and responsive alternative to formal planned ritual. The point is not to replace formal ritual, but to supplement it and to hone your ritual skills so that you can adapt when things don't go as planned.

Setup

• Know 3-5 different ritual formats from different traditions
• Keep a Ritual Toolkit
• Items that represent elements, dieties, spirits, etc.
• LED candles
• Smokeless incense, cleansing spritzes, salt water, etc.
• Duct tape
• Other fun items that you find inspiring
• Have a collection of ritual appropriate poetry, evocations, incantations, etc.
• Have a variety of ritual music on an MP3 player and a set of wireless speakers
• Be proficient in several quick and dirty magickal techniques that can be deployed in a ritual setting and performed by a group including novices
• It can help to have a mechanism on standby for the most common magickal needs: healing, prosperity, protection, devotions, etc.

 Before the Ritual

• Know your attendees
• What traditions are represented in your participants?  
• What belief systems? 
• How able are they?
• If you've got several attendees with movement impairment, perhaps a spiraldance is not the best idea.  
• Have you accounted for any sight or hearing impaired attendees?  Etc.
• Ask them if you're not sure
• Ask if anyone has any pressing magickal needs
• If several people have sick relatives it might be time for a healing ritual, if many people are concerned about wildfire then perhaps a weather working would be best, etc.
• Once you've decided on a goal for your ritual ask if anyone has a particular technique they'd like to use to achieve it
• Your attendees are your best resource.  Let them be as active participants as they'd like to be (within reason).

During the Ritual

•  Be flexible
• Weather, bystanders, and sometimes participants can throw a monkey wrench in your plans.  If one plan seems to go off the rails, just go with another idea.  
• Pay attention to your participants
• Your ritual isn't just for you - keep an eye on participant energy levels, attention, and of course safety.  Adapt accordingly.
• Have fun
• Ritual is supposed to be enjoyable and satisfying.  Don't take yourself too seriously and allow things to unfold (within the bounds of safety, sanity, and reasonable timing).

After the Ritual

• Be sure to ground!
• Set up social time to allow participants to decompress
• Get feedback from participants.  How else are you supposed to get better?

A previous post on Pop-Up Ritual


 

Pagan Pride 2013 Opening Ritual

At the beginning of October I had the privilege of leading the opening ritual for our local Pagan Pride Day celebration.  Despite being rather frantically stressed at the time I think we managed to pull off a pretty decent ritual for building the local community.  Though the actual words we spoke on the day were a little different than what I originally wrote, you'll get the gist from the transcription below.

Feel free to use this ritual however you please, but if you're going to use it wholesale in public please do give me credit.

Pagan Pride Day 2013 - Opening Ritual

Opening remarks:  

We’ve come together today to celebrate Pagan Pride Day.  In this ritual we celebrate coming together and supporting one another and we will pledge to continue to create and strengthen our local community.  We will not be casting a circle because our work today needs none.  Our working is about the magickal and the mundane coming together without barriers.

Have everyone stand in a rough circle.

Call elements (earth, air, fire, water, spirit)

Invite deity:  

We stand together as people of many individual faiths.  We are witches, druids, magicians, seekers, curious onlookers, supportive family and friends, and many other variations.  I invite you all to silently call on your deity to stand witness to this rite.  If you know your deity doesn’t play well with others use your judgment on whether to call them or not.  If you don’t work with deity call on whatever it is you cherish.  This ritual is for all of us.  

(take a moment for everyone to do so)

Statement of Purpose:  

Today we celebrate coming together.  This morning we all took the heroic action of actually getting out the front door and coming to a public gathering.  In this age of twitter and tumblr it’s actually a big deal.  We’ve all taken the risk of leaving the safety and comfort of our homes to interact with people we don’t know.  People we hope we have something in common with.  And we do.  Just by being here we’ve made a statement.  We are proud of who we are and we support each other.  

With all of our differences and all our variety we have come together.  We are not alone.  There are many of us, across the county and across the world.  We believe that there is still magick and mystery in this world and we want to know it.  We may each come to that mystery in a different way, but we all want to know it, to delve into the depths and find our joy.  That we can see past our differences to the heart of the matter shows great spirit.  

We all have our own reasons for coming here today.  Perhaps some of us will share our hopes for this day.

(popcorn people saying something the want to get out of the event)

(Thank everyone that said something)

Working:

We are all stronger for having this amazing community available to us.  We are all better off when we know there are people near us that we can go to for advice and aid in times of need.  Let us all pledge to build and strengthen this community.  A little effort can go a long way.  It can be coming to local workshops and rituals, supporting our local merchants, or even as little as trying to be a little kinder to those who take a different approach than you do.  

What will you do to support our community?

(popcorn and have people say what they individually will do - make it clear that no one has to say anything if they don’t want to)

And so we are pledged before that which we each hold dear.  We will be brave.  We will be patient and we will be kind to each other.  We will do our best to create the community we want to have and we shall.  So mote it be.

Dismiss deity:

Let us each take a moment to thank what we cherish for witnessing our pledge.

(take a moment)

Dismiss elements

Closing:

Take the energy we have raised with you throughout this day and make it a little brighter.  Blessed be.

Pagan Pride Day is almost here!

This Saturday, October 5th, is the Central Puget Sound Pagan Pride Day celebration!

This year the Grey School (represented by me and Rae du Soleil) will be running the opening ritual at 11:30am. Come on down and join us in celebrating all things magickal!





Saturday, October 5th, 2013 - From 11am - 6pm
Freighthouse Square 2501 E. D St. Tacoma, WA 98406
www.cpsppd.org

Schedule:

11:00 – 11:30 - Bellydance By April Dickenson
11:30 - 12:00 - Opening Ritual- Grey School
12:00 – 1:00 - Workshop: Elemental Meditation
1:00 – 2:00 - Workshop: History of Herb Use
1:30 – 2:00 - Bellydance by Jewel
2:00 - 2:30 - Midday Ritual - COBM Church
2:30 – 3:00 - Workshop: Pagans in the Military
3:00 - 3:30 - Workshop: Elements
3:30 – 4:00 - Workshop: Primal Paganism
4:00 – 5:00 - Drum Circle - BT Rhythm- bring your drum & join in the fun!
4:30 – 5:00 - Workshop: Shadow Magic
5:00 - 5:30 - Closing Ritual - Hawk's Hearth Kindred

Magickal Community - I Want It

A few weeks ago I attended a local Pagan Pride Day planning meeting down in Tacoma.  The current group running PPD are a hard working and incredibly welcoming group.  It was so nice to walk into a group of people I barely know and instantly feel welcomed and respected.  I knew it was a group where I could make suggestions and give my opinion, and that they’d form their opinions on the quality of what I said, rather than what group I was a part of or who I studied with.  It made me realize just how much I miss being a part of an open-minded local community group.  

When I first started practicing magick, back at Wellesley, I was blessed by being part of an incredible group.  We were all beginners struggling to learn together.  Everyone was pretty much equal and everyone pitched in and helped the group to learn and grow.  In retrospect I realize how incredible that group was.  I found a second family in that group and some of us will be sisters forever, even though we’re spread across the globe now.  The most remarkable thing was that because none of us had any “lineage” in the craft, we could only judge each other on what we actually said and did.  We had no past to be judged on.  

When I came back to Seattle I expected to be able to find local groups that would be as open and welcoming as the group I left.  To say that I was disappointed by what I really found would be a gross understatement.  What I found was a community shattered by politics.  I found people who didn’t care who you were unless you were introduced by someone with status,  I found “open” groups with no interest in even saying hello to new people (let alone welcoming them), and I found it almost impossible to even find the community without an “in.”  My friend and I once went to an open sabbat and spent 30 minutes in a dark room while the group hosting the event came in, late, and one by one passed us by without even saying hello.  When we asked if we were in the right place we received looks that clearly stated we weren’t welcome - even though the event was advertised as open to all.  Gotta love the Seattle freeze.  I’ve found people that wouldn’t give me the time of day because I wasn’t 50; I’ve had others that wouldn’t talk to me because I wasn’t under 25; and goddess help me if I mention that I don’t “embrace the warmth and light of the great mother.”  I once had a fellow practitioner tell me to my face that I was evil for working with Kali - way to be understanding lady.  

I had almost lost hope that there were, in fact, decent groups out here.  Then I started hosting Grey School info booths at the local PPD events.  The thing about PPD events is that their entire purpose is to foster community strength and understanding.  The folks that take the time and trouble to come out to them are, generally, friendly people who genuinely want to talk to new people.  At this point PPD is pretty much the one day a year I spend out in my local community (other than supporting local magickal merchants).  Through PPD I’ve met several local community leaders that don’t make me want to pull my hair out.  (There’s a really terrific Dianic group here - too bad I’m not Dianic.)  

I’ve met some amazing people in the local area, so what on earth is stopping us from coming together?  Terrible inertia? A lack of leadership?  Fear? Come on people, getting together in a coffee shop once a month isn’t exactly rocket science.  I suppose if I want local community I’m going to have to put on my big girl pants and make it happen.  *sigh*