Paganistan: Notes from the Secret Commonwealth

In Which One Midwest Man-in-Black Confers, Converses & Otherwise Hob-Nobs with his Fellow Hob-Men (& -Women) Concerning the Sundry Ways of the Famed but Ill-Starred Tribe of Witches.

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In Praise of Festival Romances

As summer festival season begins in the Pagan Northern Hemisphere, I sing in praise of Festival culture's magical child, the Festival Romance.

Festivals are magical, places of discovery: hotbeds of intensive growth, where Pagan Modernity recreates itself.

In so charged an atmosphere, people meet. How can they help but fall in love?

Here, in a place where time runs differently, how should a love not run its entire course—birth, consummation, and death—all in a few shining days?

There's love and love, as there's life and life. Life in the temporary pagan village is good; so too is life in community at home.

So too with festival romances. Some fruit into ongoing partnerships. Most don't, but there's no shame in that. A flower is no less beautiful because it bears no fruit.

Festival romances are a gift. Winter will come, and parting. Maybe we'll visit and maybe we won't; maybe we'll keep in touch. Maybe we'll meet again next year.

But that's all as may be. Some things are beautiful precisely because they don't last.

For now, at least, it's now, and beautiful.

The drums are throbbing, the fire is leaping. Come take my hand.

Let's dance.

 

 

 

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Tagged in: pagan festivals
Poet, scholar and storyteller Steven Posch was raised in the hardwood forests of western Pennsylvania by white-tailed deer. (That's the story, anyway.) He emigrated to Paganistan in 1979 and by sheer dint of personality has become one of Lake Country's foremost men-in-black. He is current keeper of the Minnesota Ooser.

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