Rowan's Round of Days

PantheaCon is going very well I think. I got here on Friday in time to go to Le'ema's snake goddess slideshow on Friday. It was fun to see her again dancing with her snakes. She has gone a bit more new-agey than I remembered but it is partly that she used to concentrate on dancing and now she is talking/channeling more. Oh well, she is putting herself out there in a Goddess service so who am I to cast stones?

It took forever to get through the reception line at the hotel. I had tried before Le'ema's workshop but half an hour has only advanced me about 10 feet so I gave up. It took probably an hour or more but eventually I had room keys for the AMUH suite... none of which worked as it turned out. So another trip to reception (but not standing in line) and that got worked out.

We had everything set up in time for House members to arrive and begin preparing for Pomba. I took a nap in there which I certainly needed. I think Pomba went really well. I sat whilst the pre-ritual drumming happened and stilled myself in preparation for carrying Her. I had worked out with Pombagira Cigana Reinha and Pombagira Cigana das Almas that I would be carrying the latter if I had energy to carry. Reinha isn't particularly happy with the devotional and das Almas wanted to come. Das Almas liked it alot which was lovely. Except that I discovered that this cemetery path of Pomba isn't very fleshy. She has a skull face evidently and wasn't sure what to do with mine. I could hardly get her to smile. The little voice that is me in the back of my head was like "smile, it will show off your skull, I promise". LOL It was really nice to have a Pomba who grooved to the music instead of grumping about it. But I am not sure about this souls Path. Esp. since she really wants to come with Maman Brigitte and the Ghedes rather than with the Pombas. But that is a problem for another day. I carried for most of the ritual. Maman as Belle kicked her out before it was quite ended because she felt the horse looked worn out.

Folks came back to the suite and after-partied. We were doing dishes before bed at 3:00am. I had the intention of going to Le'ema's 9am snake yoga class but although I was up and dressed it just wasn't happening!

We had a lovely Saturday afternoon with a lot of traffic to the suite. Maia's children's storytelling and colouring session for Yemanja was wonderful and the kids who came were delightful. After that I napped for a couple of hours. My main thing I wanted to do today was go to Wendy Rule's concert. Kurt kindly offered to spell me in the suite. Wendy's concert was beyond wonderful. She created a sacred space and then too us from the sublime heights to the depths of the underworld of the soul and back out again. Her voice is amazing as ever and this set was truly fabulous. I am more tempted than ever to drive to Santa Cruz Tuesday night for her concert with Sharon Knight. Two amazing vocalists together. Hmmm.

The suite was full of chatting people when Chris & I got back and only when people starting trailing off to 11pm programming did we shut the doors (about 10:30pm). I am writing a few things and going to sleep. Despite napping I am feeling the deficit of Friday night's 4 hours.

I had a great time at PantheaCon this past weekend. Unfortunately, my stomach troubles continued through Friday and I missed Pombagira other than the very beginning. Then my stomach troubles cleared up and I enjoyed the rest of the weekend.

I didn't go to much programming. Friday, of course, I was setting up the suite and the Pomba altar there. I must say, once again, the suite is wonderful for getting a bunch of people ready for a big ritual. Space to sit and mirrors galore ftw.

Saturday there was a full day of interfaith programming. In the morning I went to a program Rachael did on "the Eagle, the Serpent and the Condor" about interfaith networking with native peoples in this hemisphere. It was quite interesting. I wanted to go to the "Guadalupe River Healing Ceremony" by Daniel Foor that was at the same time but I will have to check out what are doing a year of ceremony for the well-being of the Guadalupe Watershed. Hmm, or not. They want quite a bit of money. As much as I would love to send healing to our watershed, I'm uncomfortable with that model. Or at least those amounts. Just as well I didn't make their P'Con talk.

In the afternoon I went to a Pagans & Interfaith talk by Angie Buchanan. I do appreciate the work she does, esp. representing us on the CPWR board. But I'm afraid she just isn't a very dynamic speaker. Oh well. I showed the flag and supported her with my presence.

Then I went back up to the suite to get ready for our Afro-Diasporic Meet & Greet. I made two quatro leches cakes and cut up several pounds of cheese and summer sausage. I found I had left the sour cream for dip at home but Chris asked the hotel for some and I was able to make dip anyway. Huzzah for resourceful covenmates! And I made rum punch (and alcohol free juice too... but guess which one I had to refill 3x). Between 5pm and 7pm we had probably 40 people drop by to talk about the Orixa. Most were seekers but a few folks from a local Palo group came by as well. It was definitely as start!

Sunday I slept in and then went to breakfast with Kurt. The hotel has really cut back on restaurant service but the breakfast buffet was tasty if rather expensive. I tried to go to Don's talk on "Gobekli Tepe: The World's First Pagan Temple" but I was like 3 minutes late and the door was closed with "closed session" sign. Bah. So I hit the dealer's room and then back to the suite for lunch. I got Wendy Rule's new album, The Lotus Eaters and a lovely pendant of a fox shaman.

Russell came by and I joined him for "Folklore as History? The View from Colleges and Cauldrons" by Raven Grimassi & Sabina Magliocco. I was disappointed they used up their time talking about themselves (well actually each other) instead of the data they were going to present. I may well give the Raven & Sabina show the miss in the future and just look for her writings.

I went back to the suite to rest up a bit before preparing for our 6pm call to ritual. There was an amazing array of juicy rituals scheduled for 7pm. I was in "A Walk in the Garden of Polarity" which was a guided meditation. We had perhaps 60 attendees as people opted for more high energy offerings. I thought it came off quite well. Everyone's altars were very beautiful.

Monday Kurt & I packed up with suite and got everything in my car. I had about an hour before my 11am panel on Pagans in International Interfaith and went to the restaurant again. My friend DJ invited me to join her and it was very nice to touch base. Then it turned out there were only so many seats at the panel and Glenn dis-invited me. I headed off to Orisha 201: Spiritual Elevation by Baba Esuwemimo of Ile Orunmila Oshun instead. It was mostly about how one progresses in their Ile system. Not my style at all. But I knew that already.

There were some interesting things scheduled for 1:30 but I decided I just didn't want to wait around another hour. I headed home to unpack my very full car and do some laundry. I popped into WoW and hit some guildies doing Violet Hold so I tagged along. Fun!

Then Russell got home and we ate dinner and watched CSI and Dollhouse. Not sure about Josh's latest. Very sexy/edgy/tittilating. The blatant "we're sexy, so make us your Friday night date" advertising was off-putting to me I must admit. I do like Eliza Dushku and I see Summer Glau is slated to appear in future episodes (wow, she has grown up/lost weight since Serenity!). We'll see.

And that is all the thoughts I have for now. :-) Dinner tonight with Russell at Spiedo for a belated Valentines. He gave me a beautiful amber & jet necklace for the holiday (made by Prudence with two jet owls and obsidian swans among the beads). I only managed cards. :-)

Sunday I was up again doing a 9am panel, 30 Years of Wiccan Interfaith Work - What have we learned? with Don, Rachael, Michelle, Patrick, Macha & Angie. We talked about what we have learned and what we have to offer the interfaith community. We had lots of audience participation and I think it was a good panel. Patrick was (again) wearing asthma trigger aftershave. He was definitely one of my environmental challenges this weekend. I had to change places with Don to be able to stay at the table. *sigh* I never did get a change to talk to him about it since obviously this wasn't the right time.

Rayna felt like she needed some downtime so Mic & I decided to have sushi in the quiet bar. Unfortunately, it turned out that bartender from the night before had gone home with the keys to the refrigerators. So no sushi and only mixed drinks. My manhattan didn't even have a cherry as those were in the fridge. We waited for quite awhile for them to sort things out but eventually had to order from the Coffee Garden menu although we were served in the QB.

We went to the "Ancestor's Celebration" by Ile Orunmila Oshun. It started well with chanting and calling our ancestor's names. But the Luisah introduced a wailing chant and I kind of lost interest. I was feeling joyous and connected to my ancestors and didn't feel a need to grieve. Also, as with the Olokun ritual the day before, there were several people who just broke down and several Priest/esses were needed to attend each of them whilst everyone else looked on. The Ile obviously has a different ritual culture than I do. I am not adverse to helping those in need but I think their style encourages acting out to get attention and I think I'd find it quite wearing after awhile.

I spent the rest of the afternoon at the Live Charity Auction. I was available as a volunteer but I mostly sat there and bid on things. *grin* I got three items - a necklace, a staff and a certificate for a class at Cherry Hill Seminary. The bottle of Stag's Breath I had donated went for $200 which is a good thing for CoG. Some year I am going to keep one of those bottles and drink it myself though.

Russell and Erika came and rescued me and Mic & Rayna from the hotel and carried us off to Kubota in Japantown for dinner. We had a great meal and then got back in time for the Hekate ritual. This was mr_kurt's baghold and I really meant to go, but in the end I decided that helping Greg keep the suite open whilst everyone else went off to the ritual was the better idea. I had absolutely no energy and Hekate is not a Goddess to approach with less than full attention. I managed to stay lucid until everyone was back from the ritual (which was a smashing success) and then went back to the room, packed and fell asleep.

Thursday I worked half a day and then went home to start baking cakes for the CoG/NROOGD suite. I was to pick up rubibees and greenwapiti at about 2:35 but when I checked the aa.com site at 1:58 I found their plane had landed one minute before! Zoom! I picked them up and it was such a pretty day that we went and caught a cache together before heading back to the house to get things ready for P'Con. I made turkey curry for dinner. Afterward R&M and Russell & I enjoyed chocolate martinis and visited but got to bed fairly on time.

Friday morning I was way further behind getting my packing done than I had planned. But R&M pitched in and worked on the Quatro Leches and even iced my orange coconut cake whilst I tried on various combinations of clothes and packed for Con. Then we headed over to the hotel and luckily our room was ready for check-in. I had also arranged for AMUH to have a suite for Friday night but it wasn't ready yet. I had had this plan of actually going to programming on Friday afternoon and I actually managed to take in a bit of Filidecht: Poetic Madness and Healing by erynn999

We helped get the CoG/NROOGD dessert tasting set up in that suite and greenwapiti proved an amazing host. We had our two cakes, two different cheesecakes, brownies, cherry cobbler and lemon merangue pie. We were again charging $5 for 3 different desserts and we made about $160 between 6pm and 8pm toward the suite expenses. Go us! I ate our two and one of Crytal's brownies which had PB in them and were quite yummy. I am not sure though that I shouldn't have just had 3 pieces of Quatro Leches. That stuff is sooooooo good.

Mic & Rayna took off to go to various things and I went to the AMUH suite to set up altars. It was really nice to have the extra room to do our prep for Pomba. I think this was an amazing year for Pomba. My Pomba felt some of the bluesy stuff in the middle was a little dirge-like but it was very well done and the energy was fabulous. I got to bed about 2am.

Wheee! I'm back from PantheaCon. :-) It was a great Con. Sooooo... the details of the last several days. ( Wed-Saturday )

Hmm. Gotta get back to regular updates! I went home Thursday without carrying the removable that I do my journal on with me. But still. This is getting tres lame.
( cut for length )