I feel a swirling host of deep emotional currents within me as I sit to begin this post at a quarter to eight in the evening, reflecting on the outstanding day I had and the transformative, evolutionary weekend at Paganicon 2024 this has proven to be for me. Powerful feelings of jubilation and gratitude wrestle with an increasing melancholy as my mind and heart come to terms with the fact that save for the long drive back home tomorrow, this weekend of fellowship, discovery, learning, sharing, and connecting has come to an end. Winter winds whistle through the night air, as if nature itself is keening, partaking of my waxing sadness. Swirling currents. As within, so without. But what wondrous things I have to regale you with, my friends. Do read on…
As I type these words, a winter storm advisory has just been issued by the National Weather Service and my little corner of far northeast Illinois is getting coated in snow. Given that the ancient Celts recognized November Eve as the start of Winter, I don’t mind the presence of snow one bit. Once I publish this post, as the last light of the afternoon dies, I’ll head out into my woods out back, strike the earth with my blackthorn staff, and welcome the Cailleach. This is Her time.
This ritual, which is meant to be performed outdoors as the sun begins to set, leans into my hardcore Gardnerian background whilst also lending expression to the shared non-Wiccan Trad Craft sensibilities among the majority of the coven’s members.
There are a few songs and chants in this ritual and these absolutely have to be committed to memory weeks in advance. It would be advisable to do a group rehearsal too, even if no members of the “public” are there to witness this. It would be ideal for all the lines of the ritual below to be memorized well in advance of the ritual’s execution; if that isn’t possible, understand the gist of what is to be said by whom and when—and speak from the heart. Don’t carry printed scripts around, please, because getting caught up in the head space of “speaking lines” dissipates the focus on the energies that the ritual is meant to build and direct. Act from a place of mindfulness.
We’re well into the night as I begin typing this entry. My heart feels weighed down with melancholy. It’s hard to believe that this amazing weekend Pagan conference experience has ended. I couldn’t imagine driving back 7 hours to get to my Illinois home this evening on the heels of another intense day of learning, of appreciating the power of our community, and of holding space for the raw emotions that came up during this afternoon’s panel discussion on “The Future of Paganism.” Hence I am very glad I had the sense to stay here another night and process my experiences through my writing.
I am thinking of what Kristoffer Hughes mentioned in his Mythology workshop yesterday on how all of us are tasked with going on The Hero’s Journey. This conference experience has felt like such an archetypal journey, layered on top of the literal physical journey to get here. The most important and daunting lesson for the Hero after the mission has concluded is to reintegrate the lessons they gleaned in the Otherworld with the life they lead in their community going forward. I know I will need time to decompress and continue to process this amazing Paganicon 2023 experience. I’m sure my long drive home tomorrow will have my Deep Mind busy at work as my Alpha Mind pays attention to my vehicle’s GPS. At any rate, here is my summary of the wonderful things I saw and did today.
On this second full day of Paganicon, March 18, I recognized that my body-mind has its limits. I did attend a full plate of workshops (four total) that began earlier in the morning than they did yesterday, but I made sure to decompress between content-heavy sessions (sometimes it’s not easy having your brain run in “sponge mode” absorbing new information for hours on end) with some walking about and stretching my legs and my dollar bills y’all in the fun-filled aisles of the Vendors’ Gallery. I called it “quits” on the workshops altogether at 3:45 p.m. so that I could quickly grab the mead offering I’d specifically brought for The Morrighan. A Morrighan Meetup was being organized by my friend Gerrie in the party suite run by the Druids of the Midwest and I didn’t want to miss out!
Tonight is also the night of the Equinox Ball and I did bring a gown and mask (my ensemble is meant to evoke a specific character) and thus do plan on attending so I’ll also have to write this post in stages. Here we go!
Today (Friday, March 17) was an incredibly full first day at Paganicon. Even before the workshops began, I spent 90 minutes volunteering to help a friend unload her cargo van outside the hotel (in the fabulous 17° sunshine) of shelving and her original (and quite heavy) multimedia works of her art she would be showcasing at the Art Show. The experience definitely counted as my cardio and my strength training workout for the day! Thankfully I’d had a hearty breakfast beforehand (food in the hotel restaurant as opposed to my road trip staples of cereal bars and Fruit Roll-Ups strips), and, more importantly, three cups of coffee, so I felt more than alert by the time the first of my three workshop intensives began at 10:30 in the morning.
In the Gregorian calendar, today is Good Friday for millions of practicing Roman Catholic and Protestant Christians: the most solemn day of the liturgical year as it commemorates Jesus’ torture and death by crucifixion (a common method of capital punishment meted out in ancient Rome) on the hill of Golgotha. For many modern Pagans and Witches, celebrating the holidays of Christian family members or loved ones is a common occurrence, especially in the interests of maintaining interfaith harmony and treating any religious devotee’s holy day with the respect accorded to it.
Easter for Witches: Celebrated or Not?
Several of my friends, current and former coven members, and acquaintances I’ve made in the broader Pagan community in the past 23 years express a wide variety of attitudes and behaviors on whether or not to celebrate Easter. Many Witches (Wiccan, Trad Craft, or other/non-specified), including my adored friend and current ritual partner A.H., are militantly anti-Christian and want no trace of Christian symbols, liturgical references, mythological constructs, etc., influencing (some might say “tainting”) the practices of their Craft. Other Witches, especially those involved in interfaith ambassadorship through formal group associations or civic involvement, swing the proverbial pendulum to the opposite extreme and are content to join their Christian family members, neighbors, or fellow civic religious leaders in celebrations of Easter, whether that means participating in a religious service or an interfaith communal meal or partaking in more secular activities such as supervising children’s Easter egg hunts and the like.
Easter and European Traditional Witchcraft
In the annals of Traditional Witchcraft as practiced in various European countries, celebrating Easter was par for the course. In Sweden, for example, there’s a folkloric belief that witches fly off to the island of Blåkulla to meet the Devil on Maundy Thursday. The sense of spookiness has been diluted into the contemporary custom of children dressing as “Easter witches” known as påskkärringar, who go go-to-door asking for Easter candies in the same manner of American children trick-or-treating on Halloween. And in Traditional Witchcraft as it developed in the mid-to-late 20th century under the tutelage of Robert Cochrane, Easter is actually seen is a high tide of magical power (Pearson 164).
One of the central tenets of Traditional Witchcraft, in distinction to Wicca, is an emphasis on bioregionalism: leveraging the energy currents of the climate and seasonal changes that are specific to your area at a given time of year instead of relying upon a fixed system of seasonal rites, which may not reflect the conditions of your bioregion at all (Kelden 141-142). In my current climate and my specific locale (Chicago), the seasonal shift to Spring began pretty much at the month’s outset. Thus, I’m not waiting for the arbitrary date of the Spring Equinox to honor the Goddess Who, in Serbian culture, represents the new life and renewal associated with the concepts of dawn, reemerging/blossoming vegetation, clear skies, and fertility (of people, domesticated animals, and wild animals) that we associate with the season of Spring: Vesna.
In this era of social distancing amidst this pernicious COVID-19 global pandemic in which we find ourselves, focus on how your solitary spiritual practices can not just grow, but thrive. One helpful method of personal spiritual battery replenishment takes its cue from the swelling Traditional Witchcraft current in contemporary Paganism, whose tenets include, among other things, establishing a dynamic relationship with the spirits of your local landscape.
It isn’t often that celebrated Reclaiming and Feri Tradition Witch, published author, and artist Gede Parma, who also uses the name Fio Aengus Santika, comes to the United States, but when they* do, it’s always a reason to celebrate! I have had the pleasure of sharing heart-centric ritual space in Traditional Witchcraft contexts with Fio during their last two Chicago visits in 2014 and 2017, respectively. They are a highly dynamic ritual facilitator and conductor of spirits. I’ve always left their workshops and delightful time spent socializing feeling elevated and transformed for the better afterwards.
amor et mortem 