Many gatherings, conferences, festivals, and so on have been canceled or rescheduled in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. I expect many more to do so in the coming months. It is the best and most responsible choice in this crisis. I am involved in a wide range of events as an attendee, a presenter, or an organizer. As such I have a fairly comprehensive sense of how these events work and the amount labor, resources, and money that go into these community gatherings. Having recently been involved in the process of canceling or rescheduling events, I have answered a prodigious number of questions that have reminded me of the need to share more of the nuts and bolts and nitty-gritty. Not all of what I share will apply to every event or cover every situation but will be generally true for many.
For the first time, but not the last, I attended Readers Studio. In my mind, this was always THE Tarot conference to attend. But I never did. I came up with all sorts of excuses as to why not. I didn't have the vacation. I couldn't afford it. But the underlying reason for every excuse and variation of excuse was this. I wasn't Tarot enough.
I'm not even sure what that means now after having been there. It has threads of inadequacy, low self-esteem, comparison monsters, and so many other negative self-thoughts. I began to unravel those at the NorthWest Tarot Symposium which was my first Tarot conference (and first time to present at a conference of my peers.) This year I went to NWTS for the second time and RS for the first.
Join us for The Goddess conference in Nashville, Tennessee to Empower the Divine Feminine within you! Held at the Four Points Sheraton Hotel, in Brentwood, TN, just south of Nashville, come share with a weekend to....
My wife and I just returned from PantheaCon in San Jose. It was our first time attending the event, and we were very impressed. It's easy to find things to complain about, especially at an event this big, but one thing that impressed me is how few complaints I heard - at least about anything substantial.
Complaining can be a natural reaction to disappointment, frustration and other emotions; the lack of it spoke volumes to me in a couple of respects. For one thing, it indicated that the people who put on this convention really got it right. It was well organized, communication was clear (the map, list of events and daily updates from the "town crier" just outside the elevators were extremely well done. There just wasn't that much to complain about.
The lack of complaints also speaks to the tone set for the event in the workshops, rituals, classes, concerts and other activities. There was a sense of unity among a diverse collection of people. We were willing to celebrate our differences and learn from one another, eagerly and without prejudice.
Sannion, Chantelle d'Eros and myself just got back from checking out hotels for the Polytheist Leadership Conference and have decided to go with the Quality Inn in Fishkill, New York. They were clean and spacious and economical and most importantly we were impressed by the efficiency and friendliness of the staff. So we signed the contract and this thing is now officially a go!
The Polytheist Leadership Conference will take place Friday, July 11th through Sunday, July 13th – though we’ve made arrangements so that you can get the block room rate if you want to come in earlier on Thursday.
We’ll begin on Friday at 3:00pm with an opening prayer to our collective dead and polytheist predecessors and then have a lecture and roundtable discussion with the rest of the evening devoted to socializing and networking.
We’ll start at 10:00am on Saturday with a full day of workshops, lectures and roundtable discussions ending at 8:00pm. There’ll be half hour breaks between each session and an extended lunch and dinner.
Sunday begins at 10:00am and has two sessions with a social lunch and then a closing ceremony at 3:00pm.
We’ve got the website for the Polytheist Leadership Conference up and running and are now accepting registrations.
Just a quick note to tell my loyal readers that the Canadian music anthology alluded to in my article on the Sun Wheel Pagan Festival is a go! It will be a fundraising effort for the Canadian National Pagan Conference and all artists have agreed to contribute their works entirely free of royalties; all profits support the Conference! Musicians who have agreed to participate so far include: The Dragon Ritual Drummers, The Ancient Gods, Raven's Call, Dano Hammer, Vanessa Cardui, Brendan Myers, Jamie Field (formerly of Parnassus before it was Chalice and Blade,) Tamarra James and me. We're still waiting to hear back from a few other artists and more information will be made available as it unfolds.
This has been a busy time for your Village Witch...mostly because she keeps leaving the village and hitting the road.
I've only just returned from the Pagan Unity Festival in Burns, TN and am pondering the differences between festivals and conferences, since I was fortunate enough to be included in the Cherry Hill Conference several weeks ago.
Thesseli
You should post on Substack too, where you won't have to worry about being deplatformed or kicked off the site for your views. (Also, I've archived th...
David Dashifen Kees
I feel it necessary to state, unequivocally, that anti-trans points of view are not an essential part of Paganism. As a trans Pagan myself who helps ...
