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“You're glowing,” says my friend. “You must have had a good year.”

It's been three since last we talked: Paganicon as family reunion.

Actually, the year has been anything but good: difficulty after difficulty, setback after setback.

He's right, though, and not the first to remark on it: I am glowing. These are the people among whom I can be my truest self, people that speak my mother tongue.

“I'm always at my best among my own,” I say.

He laughs and shakes his head. Corny, maybe, but it's true for him, too. His family threw him out, literally, when as a teen he came out of the broom closet. Pagans have been his people, too, for more than 40 years.

Seriously? Stormtroopers? At Paganicon?

I'm hanging out in the Druid hospitality suite when the masked and armed trio shoulder in through the doorway, scanning the crowd. The room falls silent, like the cantina scene in (speaking of which) Star Wars.

Thank Goddess for precedent. I step forward.

“These are not the Druids you're looking for,” I tell the leader in his white Darth Vader mask.

He turns to his comperes.

“These are not the Druids we're looking for,” he tells them. “Let's keep searching.”

They turn and go. Behind me, the room erupts in laughter and applause.

Like most tribal elders, I worry about my people. Is there a future for pagans?

In a group of, say, 50 pagans, one could make a case that, arguably, there are actually 50 different religions represented. How can so fragmented (not to mention self-obsessed) a group possibly have a future together? How can we possibly achieve anything lasting?

Well, something that I heard at a workshop at Paganicon 2024 gives me hope.

Hero Tales

His great-grandfather was a drunk.

He had recently moved back to the old family farm, land in-taken by said great-grandfather. According to family tradition, the old man had liked his booze, and then some.

So at Samhain, he'd take down the treasured bottle of 40-year old Scotch from the shelf and pour a dram or two for his ancestor-in-the-land.

After a year or two of this, one Samhain night, great-grandpa himself turns up in a dream and slaps him up side the head.

“What's this shit?” he says. “I want Blatz!”

(Blatz is a local beer that could charitably be described as a “beer-drinker's beer.”)

The man who told this story on himself was a respected local elder, founder of one of our regional pagan land sanctuaries.* When he told his tale, my heart leapt up and I thought: Ye gods, maybe there's hope for us after all.

The rite is complete. I turn to bestow the final blessing, and see something that I have never seen before in ritual: people preparing themselves to receive the blessing that I am about to pronounce.

Some bow their heads and lower their eyes. Some pull themselves up straight. Some brace to receive, as if I'm about to throw something at them. I suppose that, in a sense, I am.

The trust, and strength, of this so-willing self-opening moves me deeply, and calls forth a corresponding tenderness within me.

A tear courses down my cheek. I raise my arms and pronounce the final words.

Around us, the horns of sunset blow.

 Paganicon 2024

Gathering

(7:15 a.m.; sunrise 7:25)

People gather outside Ballroom A (Scandinavian Ballroom).

Welcome (priest)

Horns blow

Procession
People proceed outdoors, led by:

Stang

Libation bearers

Priest

People

People assemble, facing East.

Sunrise

As the first limb of the Sun touches the horizon, horns blow.

People pray, pour libations.

As the Sun clears the horizon, horns blow again.

Song: Turn to the East (all)

Lift thine eyes, behold the light:

turn to the East, where dawns the day.

Hope and love, forever bright,

guide and protect us on our way.

Hail the Sun's rays, shining bright

after Winter's long, dark night.

Lift up thy voice, with praises ringing;

turn to the East, where dawns the day.

Blessing and Dismissal

Priest

(Turns to face people)

Hilary Lee Meyer

August 3, 1956 - February 26, 2023

Reborn to the People

Order of Service

Lighting of the Brigid candle

Brigid was Hilary's patron goddess.

Invocation

(Hilary Lee Meyer)

Welcome/Statement of Intention

Casting the Circle

Chant (all):

We are a circle within a circle,

with no beginning, and never-ending.

Blowing of Quarter Horns

Opening the Gates (all)

Together we open the Gates between the Worlds

Prayer for a Witch's Funeral

Hilary: Three Remembrances

(First remembrance)

(Second remembrance)

(Third remembrance)

Reading

The Charge of the Great Mother

Lyke Wake Dirge (all)

The Lyke Wake Dirge opens the way for the passage of the deceased.

Closing the Gates (all)

Blowing of Quarter Horns

Round Dance

Chant (all):

And so return, return, return / return to the Mother. (x 4)

All over the world, the waters are breaking;

the waters are breaking, all over the world. (x 2)

Final Blessing and Dismissal

Hilary Lee Cook Pell Meyer

August 3, 1956 - February 26, 2023

"The Union of the Gods renews the world."

Hilary Lee Cook Pell Meyer was a big woman, big in every way: big of spirit, big of voice, big of body, big of heart.

Even in a community of weirdos, she was a stand-out weirdo.

She served the Goddess, the Craft, and the People that she loved, fiercely and fearlessly, for more than 40 years.

I lived just around the corner from Hilary here in the pagan neighborhood in Minneapolis for many years. One morning, waiting at a stoplight, a vision in black crossed the street in front of me: skintight black bodysuit, thigh-high black boots, black cloak and raven-black hair flapping behind her as she strode.

It was Hilary, of course. It was 8:30 in the morning.

“Ye Gods,” I thought, “I am proud to know this woman.”

Hilary lived a big life, and she died a big death. When she went into the Fire on the morning of Sunday, February 26, 2023, she took along with her her grand old Victorian house and everything in it. No viking chieftain could have done it better.

Hail and farewell, Hilary. Reborn to the People.