PantheaCon 2010

[arethinn]

This post isn't complete, but I'm going to throw it out there anyway as it seems (three months later) that I'm unlikely ever to do so, and I'd rather not have no record whatsoever in my journal (as I do of 2009).

Friday

1:30 PM
Black Heart, Shining Soul / heartssdesire

Meditation/pathworking on the Black Heart of Innocence, with stops along the way on Three Souls alignment and such. I couldn't get into the imagery of this one very well for some reason. I liked the "eclipse"


3:30 PM
Meeting the Dark Man at the Crossroads / Orion Foxwood

Orion was grounded due to weather at his origin airport back east, so he didn't actually arrive on site until ~9:00 this evening. Material from this workshop wound up being shifted into his third slot on Sunday, "Lifting the Spelle of Forgetfulness" (q.v.).


7:00 PM
Dance of the Peacock Angel / Storm Faerywolf

Cool altar and enotsola and I both coveted Storm's velvet coat, but I wasn't feeling the vibe here. Partly it was that I didn't find the "hosts" for the Serpent and Dove spirits that convincing, and I think I got thrown off a little by his invoking them as red and blue rather than green and blue as I was expecting (which I remembered from a previous Peacock Angel dance/rite thing that involved Anaar -- after all, blue and green are the dominant colours in the peacock's tail, neh?) but I guess that's just inflexible thinking on my part (and more evidence that I just don't jibe with the Feri current).


11:00 pm
Absinthe Cocktails: Mixing it Up with La Fee Verte / Jeff Winters

We'd both already had some of the beverage in question, tee hee, having already been up to the Green Fairy suite for a while. Historical bits were kind of interesting I suppose. Getting samples is neat (and we managed to escape without catching any con crud from the shared vessels). Last year this guy was talking about trying to get a distiller's license so he could actually produce his own absinthe "over the table", as it were, and this year when we chatted with him he talked about having discovered he could essentially contract with an established distiller to produce his recipe (read: he gets to work the equipment himself under their authority) without having to get a license himself. His stuff was awfully good when we tried it before, so I hope this actually gets underway.


Saturday

11:00 am
The Original Instructions: Encountering the Wisdom Keepers / Orion Foxwood

1:30 pm
The Living Tree: Uniting the UnderWorld and OverWorld / R.J. Stewart

7:00 pm
Raising the Great Crossroads / Hyperion

8:00 pm
Asatru hospitality Scotch tasting


Sunday

11:00 am
Lifting the Spelle of Forgetfulness: Dismissing the Uninvited / Orion Foxwood

afternoon
spent some time at Stone City's "Gypsy Cafe" having Turkish coffee and fresh-made chai and baaaaklavaaaaa.


7:00 pm
Visceral Magick / Peter Paddon

The power of magic in physical, body-centered "gut" sensations, rather than headspace or even emotions.


9:00 pm
Discordian.com Desires Destruction / tyrsalvia, darkmoon, metaphorge, and I don't know if the fourth person is LJ-enabled although he kinda reminded me of dor_satyr

Like with Feri stuff... this was neat I guess, but I think it just reinforces to me how this is not the path for me. The idea was clever and most of the audience/participants seemed into it (and I'm told there was an amusing moment in the solemn Goetic invocation workshop next door when Destruction's yelled "I'M HERE ALREADY!" came at a humorously timed moment for them), but I have a really hard time finding sacredness or meaning in this sort of content.


Monday

1:30 pm
Creating the Sacred Oil: the Origins of Magical Oils in Ritual / Patrick McCollum

Patrick said that ritual oil / flying ointment / etc. type preparations actually, perhaps surprisingly, tended to follow a certain very similar group of ingredients down the ages, and there were archaeologically documentable traces of this that or the other ingredient in this context, etc. etc. There's not time to go into that in depth in an hour and a half, but still, I'd have liked to see more proof that "the magical oil is always the same" (which it seemed was what his claims came down to). You have to be given some to use as a "mother oil" to put in your new batch, of which you save a little to be carried forward into the next batch, etc... and so on backwards: the batch made onsite was made with oil he'd made which had (ultimately) traced back to oil he'd been given 30 years ago... etc.

Well, whatever the truth of all that, the information about the ingredients themselves (briefly: olive oil, Balm of Gilead buds, belladonna, henbane, cinquefoil, deer musk; don't try this at home, kids, although the actual poisonous constituents are quite dilute in the finished product) and the process was rather interesting, and we all got a little sample to take home and use to start our own batches.


Additional:

Does anyone out there happen to knowBasalt? (a large gentleman with a beard; I believe an Asatruar -- I know, I know, really helpful description) He was at the Scotch tasting and somewhen at the absinthe suite, and was talking with enotsola about maybe getting him work, but enotsola failed to get his email address.

Comments

[popelaksmi]

PantheaCon sounds absolutely delightful! Were these ALL the workshops you attended? Or just a recounting of what was available?

I am particularly intersted in the oil workshop. That used to be my speciality back when I worked at the local pagan/ occult/ giftshop. Despite giving basic ritual oil workshops myself, I'd never heard of this concept of requiring a "mother oil". I can see why it would perhaps be more energetically charged (and I'm not arguing that's a bonus) but there's noting stoping someone (IMHO) from creating a new batch and working from there. I mean, don't all things have a beginning and an end?

I am a bit surprised yet incredibly pleased there was a Discordian workshop. True, it's not for everyone and I can't say that I can find the divine in it myself, at least not most of the time but i consider myself a Discordian nonetheless. It's hard for me to explain why. It might be because this is my reminder that we should never take ourselves too seriously and that sometimes through incredible silliness or incredibly chaotic moments in our lives, the divine can be felt or perceived and not just at a church or in a circle etc.

Anyway, I didn't realize you had these interests and am feeling quite joyful that you posted about your con experiences. Thank you!

[arethinn]

PantheaCon sounds absolutely delightful! Were these ALL the workshops you attended? Or just a recounting of what was available?

Oh goodness, those were just the ones I personally attended. There's over a dozen simultaneous tracks going on at the busier parts of the weekend. http://pantheacon.com/programming/2010schedule.html

PantheaCon is possibly the largest Pagan convention in the US (certainly the largest indoor one), and we outgrew the hotel several years ago IMO; it's already sold out for next February.

there's noting stoping someone (IMHO) from creating a new batch and working from there. I mean, don't all things have a beginning and an end?

This was something passed down his line of Brit-Trad Wicca, as I understand it. I would assume the oil did have to be created at some point, and that the old oil he had was not itself created from a "mother" that went back hundreds of years, but I can see the virtue in keeping a single "strain" going like this.

I am a bit surprised yet incredibly pleased there was a Discordian workshop.

There were two or three Discordian rituals, actually (see the schedule). There's a couple of local groups that each do one every year (dunno how long ago that started tho).

[popelaksmi]

Wow, I feel so... secluded now. I thought 3 or 4 tracks was a good con (speculative fantasy, pagan or other) but there were 12 at the busiest times? And it's already sold out for next year? That's INSANE! Even WorldCon doesn't "sell out". Why don't they just book more than one hotel?

You've really peaked my curiosity though. I never really thought of looking for pagan conventions beyond locals ones (and they are few and far between). Since I have made up my mind to go to WorldCon in Reno in 2011, nothing should stop me from going to a pagan con outside of my usual haunts.

[arethinn]

I thought 3 or 4 tracks was a good con (speculative fantasy, pagan or other)

I think, but am not sure since I haven't been in quite a few years, that Further Confusion (furry con) and BayCon (SF/fantasy/comics/etc) both have a lot of simultaneous tracks too. They both used to be in the same hotel as PantheaCon still is, but both have moved (to bigger or just better digs, I dunno).

And it's already sold out for next year? That's INSANE! Even WorldCon doesn't "sell out". Why don't they just book more than one hotel?

There are overflow hotels for booking rooms in which I guess they have negotiated con rates with, but as far as the function space they only use the one hotel. I think they're the only one of that size right there (the overflow that comes to mind is a nearby Holiday Inn -- a pain to back and forth to even if they did have meeting space, which I think they don't, not much anyway.)

"Sold out" here refers to the room block, which I think at this point is practically the entire hotel, not badges/memberships -- I think they sell as many of those as people will buy.) There was a poll a couple of years ago about moving to the Santa Clara Convention Center, I think it was, but some other group had that facilty on "our" date (President's Day weekend) and either primacy of the date won out or they didn't do it for some other reason, because here we still are at the Doubletree.

(I think DragonCon sells out its entire gigantic hotel, FWIW.)

A thing to keep in mind for all of this is that the SF Bay area is densely populated. The metro area of Ottawa is somewhere over a million, I guess; the SF Bay area is basically one giant metro area encompassing some 7 million or more, and we have one of the highest percentages of Pagans (and geeks, and other assorted weirdos) around.

[nytemuse]

Pcon is definitely hugs and good, but I also recommend ConvoCation in Michigan. It occurs the weekend after Pcon and while I haven't been personally (only due to lack of funds up till now), I know some of the people that run it. It's definitely smaller, but has some great presenters.
http://www.convocation.org/