Wow, I never finished the diary, and almost a month has passed. Well, when last we left, it was …
Thursday night. There was a big dance party, “The Rumble in the Jungle.” I went down but I wasn’t feeling it, so I wandered over to the Roundhouse and as I approached, the drumming slowed, which hardly ever happens, and just as I reached the gate, it stopped completely, which really hardly ever happens. So I sort of took it as a sign and visited at Dalton camp for a bit and went to bed early. I kind of had an epiphany: Hey, Deb, you’re not a night owl. It’s rough not being a night owl at Starwood, because there’s so much night life, but there you are.
Friday: I’ve got my rhythm, now, and can make a big pot o’ coffee, brush my teeth, and get myself ready for the day with some facility, but the thing I like least about camping is mornings. Wander across half the campsite in a state of dishevelment in order to get to the shower, or pretty up just to take it all off and redo it? Or shower in the afternoon and hope no one is displeased by the aroma? But anyway, I make coffee without fail, although by the last couple of days, I’m thinking I could just bag this French press racket and run down to the cafe and buy coffee.
At 11:30 I taught Part Three of Spellcraft. This is my workshop class, in which I ask people to bring spell ideas and we brainstorm them. It’s always incredibly rewarding, because people share pretty deeply about what concerns them, and we can be intuitive in finding their needs, goals, and spells that will work for them. One gentleman in particular stuck out. He was a documentary filmmaker and was feeling stuck and overwhelmed by the way in which you didn’t really know, with a documentary, what film you were making until after you filmed it, because you didn’t know what would happen, and then you had this enormous amount of material you had to edit into a movie. But it was all empty space, filming without knowing exactly why, and he was just stuck. This was fascinating because I’m such a film buff, and I’ve wondered exactly those things, but I never had the chance to look at it magically. (Plus the guy was charming, with deep, evocative eyes.)
So I talked about creating a Water spell, and talked about To Dare, and we worked on using Water to empower “going with the flow” and letting the creativity just happen.
There was also a woman whose bird had flown away. Should she do a spell to bring it home, or a spell to have it be safe where it was? We talked for a bit, and I asked what kind of bird it was. A cockatoo, she answered. Well, that changed everything! Cockatoos can’t live safely in the wild in Massachusetts, where she’s from! So obviously the spell has to be to bring it home. And it was a great lesson for everyone in making sure you have enough information and ask enough questions. So we talked about constructing these and other, more complex, spells, and it was a very productive class.
After lunch, I attended a “Pagan Speed Dating” session, which didn’t hook me up with the love of my life, but I had fun meeting new people.
In the evening I attended Don Kraig‘s talk on Sex Magic. It was a good class, Don’s a consummate speaker, using the right amount of information, humor, and interaction. I was a little disappointed because I had somehow gotten the impression that this was a new lecture, not his usual sex magic lecture. Now, I have no objection to speakers re-using lectures, we’d all collapse if we didn’t, but I simply hadn’t expected it.
At nine o’clock was the healing ritual for Frank Barney that I’d been asked to High Priestess. (Yes, High Priestess is a verb. Deal with it.) There was a lot of chaos in putting together ritual materials and an altar, a lot of rapid meaningless motion the last hour, a lot of holy shit we forgot to have water on the altar sort of thing, but we pulled it off. Just as the procession into the ritual was assembling, Dave had to go to the bathroom! So we kept them there, chanting and drumming, at the gate, and when he came back, we let them in. About 50 people, which was quite a lot for something that wasn’t on the schedule.
We explained what we were going to do, and cast a circle. I kept quarter callers who were well known to me at their quarters so I had a sense of being held by magical adepts. I got people saying yes by asking “Who here has loved this land?” “Who here has built a fire on this land?” And so on, until I finally asked “Who here will heal Frank Barney?” “I will!” they all shouted.
Now I had ’em.
We brought Cate Dalton into the center of the circle, and she invoked the energy of Frank Barney. We made sure she was good and connected to Frank, so that giving power to her was giving it to Frank. The key to addressing his Parkinson’s was connection, we’d decided; neural connections, connection to life and love and the will to live. Love and connection. We raised this power and sent it into her.
Then we brought Elspeth in to speak about the Barney family, and their commitment to the land, and to one another. We talked about the healing needed for all of them, to sustain them as a family and keep them loving one another and caring for one another during this difficult illness. By the end of this second power raising everyone was in a giant puppy pile, a huge group hug, in the middle of the circle, holding Elspeth and one another and sending love, love, love.
Next we just talked about healing. I asked people for stories. Orien talked about Orien Rose and the healing we’d been doing and what it meant to be a part of the healing circle that sustains his family as his daughter miraculously recovers from a devastating accident. Oberon talked about the enormous healing given to Morning Glory, such that healing networks were springing up on the web, because it was too big for just one person. Frank Dalton’s stroke. Hell, my knee! (And how connected was that, because Oberon and Frank Dalton were two of the three people who picked me up, got me out of the circle, and put me on a stretcher when my knee snapped at Starwood, and here we all were, at Starwood, healing together.) It became a circle of sharing the miracles of healing we could achieve, and I closed by saying, “Look around you. If you want to know who the healers are, you’re standing with them. And if you need healing, know that. And if you didn’t count yourself among them, know now that you can.”
Then we closed the circle. It was beautiful.
