Category: Community Notes

Community Notes

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This newsletter usually looks ahead to upcoming events. This week we’re looking back at the year that was 2011 in Paganistan.

Despite some challenges, groups forged ahead, festivals persisted, and there were no reports of any local Pagan groups or businesses ending. In fact, there were several bright points and lots of growth. Here are several that stand out:

We had the first Paganicon, our very own Pagan conference. By all reports, it was highly successful and is poised to be highly successful again. http://tcpaganpride.org/paganicon/

With a change of leadership, Sacred Harvest Fest dedicated itself to healing and personal growth. http://harmonytribe.org/

The Twin Cities Pagan Pride event was astounding at their new outdoor location near one of this community’s sacred sites. http://tcpaganpride.org/paganpride/

Keys of Paradise opened its own location. Their products are now carried in more stores, they have implemented drop shipping of many products, they have greatly expanded their merchandise lines, and they generally had a great year. http://www.keysofparadise.com/

Eye of Horus launched the world’s largest Pagan eBook store and the first eBook store of its kind. http://eyeofhorusbooks.com/ They also used their new location to bring in many nationally known speakers. http://eyeofhorus.biz/

Northern Dawn CoG continued to produce astounding rituals.

Local Pagan, Nels Linde, made it onto an impressive list of influential Pagans, which you can read about at: http://paganinparadise.blogspot.com/2011/12/walking-talk-10-pagans-who-made.html

There are dinner parties with primarily Pagan guest lists. There are birthday celebrations where most of the attendees are Pagan. People are calling each other, chatting, emailing, and generally being friends. The local Pagan community is as strong as ever. Possibly stronger because all of this continued despite the lack of any big Pagan emergencies to rally around.

2009 & 10 saw lots of big growth with the opening of new businesses and reorganization of established organizations. 2011 saw them all doing the work once the hype was gone. It wasn’t glamorous or entertaining but the work continued. What we saw was that they did the work well and established themselves for a very good 2012.

Community Notes; December 19-25

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Yule is this week!

December 25; Meals on Broomsticks: http://umpaganalliance.com/
This might be the most important event to attend. It’s a Pagan outreach into the non-Pagan community. This is a chance for many non-Pagans to see Pagans helping out on a day when many of us aren’t busy anyway.

Kari Tauring, performer, teacher, and author of Runes a Human Journey, has a new podcast on the Eye of Horus website. You can check it out at http://eyeofhorus.biz/podcasts/dnr/episode-1-runes-and-raidho.htm

Paganicon will be here soon! March 16-18. http://tcpaganpride.org/paganicon/

Sacred Harvest Festival has a theme for their August 6-12, 2012 festival, and now they need artwork. The theme will be “Unveiling the Sacred; Immersed in the Luminous Light of Love”, and they will be accepting artwork submissions for that theme until January 15 at SHFArtwork@harmonytribe.org

If you want to be part of defeating the proposed marriage amendment in November 2012, there’s an event for local Pagans, Wiccans, and Folk on January 1 that you might want to check out: http://www.facebook.com/events/262181107173641/

This is a time when many people are exchanging gifts. Just a reminder to please support your local Pagan merchants. For a more complete list, please check: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TwinCitiesPagans/links/Local_Stores_001218489581/

Eye of Horus: 3012 Lyndale Ave S, Minneapolis, MN 55408; http://eyeofhorus.biz/minneapolis

Keys of Paradise: 713 Minnehaha Ave E, Ste 111, Saint Paul, MN 55106; http://www.keysofparadise.com/

Magus Books & Herbs: 1309 1/2 4th Street S.E., Minneapolis, MN 55414; http://www.magusbooks.com/

Sacred Paths Center: 777 Raymond Ave, Saint Paul, MN 55114; http://www.sacredpathscenter.com/

Shadow Lights MN Candles and Metaphysical Shoppe: 4775 Dakota St. SE, Prior Lake, MN 55372; http://www.shadowlightscandles.com/

Local online stores:

Eye of Horus eBook store; http://eyeofhorusbooks.com/

Hawkdancing Studio; http://hawkdancing.com/

Sprite Creations; http://spritecreations.dnsdojo.com/

Community Notes; December 12-18

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This is a time when people are planning time-off requests for 2012. Here are some dates to keep in mind when making those requests. They are not all Pagan events, but they are events for which many people in our community have expressed extreme fanatical interest:

January 27-29; Ceremonial Magic for Pagans with John Michael Greer: http://shop.eyeofhorus.biz/Ceremonial-Magic-for-Pagans-p/cls-jmg1.htm

February 3-4; Star of the North Tarot Conference: http://www.tctarotcollective.com/

February 16-20; Winter Witch Camp: http://winterwitchcamp.com/wwc2012/Joomla_1.5.18/

February 17-19; Con of the North: http://www.conofthenorth.com/

March 9-12; MarsCon: http://www.marscon.org/

March 16-18; Paganicon: http://tcpaganpride.org/paganicon/

March 30-April 1; Anime Detour: http://www.animedetour.com/

April 5-8; Spring Earth Conclave: http://www.earthconclave.org/

April 6-8; Minicon: http://www.mnstf.org/minicon/

May 6; In the Heart of the Beast MayDay: http://www.hobt.org/

May 19; MN Scottish Fair and Highland Games: http://www.mnscottishfair.org/

June 1; Climb Witch’s Hat Tower: http://www.pperr.org/events/icecream-social.html

June 14-17; Northern Folk Gathering: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=179255092128922

June 17-24; Earth House Midsummer Gather: http://www.earthhousemn.org/

June 22-24; 4th St. Fantasy Convention: http://www.4thstreetfantasy.com/

June 23-24; Twin Cities GLBT Pride: http://www.tcpride.org/

June 29-July 1; AniMinneapolis: http://animinneapolis.com/

July 1-6; Faerie Spirit Gathering: http://www.kawashaway.org/

July 5-8; Convergence: http://www.convergence-con.org/

July 12-15; Sacred Fire Circle In Paradise: http://sacredfirecircle.hawkdancing.com/

August 3-5; Diversicon: http://www.diversicon.org/

August 6-12; Sacred Harvest Festival: http://harmonytribe.org/

August 14; Primary elections

August 18- September 30; Minnesota Renaissance Festival: http://www.renaissancefest.com/MRF/

August 23 – September 3; Minnesota State Fair: http://www.mnstatefair.org/

September 8; Twin Cities Pagan Pride: http://tcpaganpride.org/paganpride/

October 5-7; Gaylaxicon: http://www.gaylaxicon2012.org/

October 12-14; Autumn Earth Conclave: http://www.earthconclave.org/

November 6; General election

December 21; End of the Mayan calendar. Also, I’ll be throwing an End-of-the-World party, and you’re invited. I’ve already booked the Sacred Paths Center.

December 25; Meals on Broomsticks: http://umpaganalliance.com/

Empowerment Training Day for OccupyMPLS

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Tuesday, Dec 6th, OccupyMpls sponsored Empowerment Training Day at Walker Church in S. Mpls. It was a day to focus on skill sharing. training, and discussion around the core issues facing OccupyMpls. It was designed to build a respectful and empowering culture within the movement.

Afternoon round table discussions

I participated for a few hours in both the morning and the afternoon. The event had a full schedule from 8am – 5pm.  I arrived about 10am to a room of about 60 people. Starhawk was going over the principals of meeting facilitation and consensus process.  Many present had some experience with these subjects before, and so the depth of the discussion during the presentation was directed at the particular problems facilitating a ‘general assembly’ presented to occupy organizers.

About 10.25 am the meeting was interrupted by an announcement the Plaza security had ‘raided’ the camp earlier that morning as about 8.30am and had taken all unattended items from the Plaza. Several county commissioners phone numbers, who were reported to be meeting Tuesday, distributed and calls were made in rotation as the workshop training continued.

The importance of incorporating core values into the consensus, and general assembly processes was emphasized, as well as the need to select the best decision-making process for each issue the group faced. Consensus Process is not needed for many movement decisions, just the major ones where core values are being defined.

I returned after lunch when open group meetings, now about fifty with many new people, were in progress. Five topics were under discussion at smaller round tables :

  1. Direct Action Strategy
  2. Visioning
  3. General Assemblies
  4. Guideline for “New Norms”
  5. Diversity within the Movement

Each group kept notes on its discussion with the aim of discovering insights, and gleaning items for later general assembly proposal and consideration. Every fifteen minutes or so, the groups paused and people rotated among them as they felt called. I participated in the visioning, direct action, and diversity groups. At the end of the session, spokespersons from each group summarized the discussion and outlined items that deserved further work to integrate the ideas within OccupyMPLS.  A contact person and email  was established for each work group and a sign-up for messaging within each group was posted.

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Community Notes; December 5-11

Keys of Paradise is launching a huge selection of some of the most beautiful cauldrons you’ve ever seen with an open house celebration. Stop by this Saturday between 11am & 5pm to check out their newly organized shop at 713 Minnehaha Ave E, Saint Paul. There will be food and door prizes.

Donald Engstrom-Reese released a list of upcoming events you can check out here.  Donald is wonderful, remarkable, beautiful, an honor to be near, intelligent, insightful and truly an amazing resource for this community. If you have a chance to join him in any of these events, chances are that the experience will leave you being a little bit better person than you were before.

Sacred Paths Center just released a new issue of their newsletter. One of the exciting announcements is that the SPC will provide free ritual space for groups offering public rituals. http://www.sacredpathscenter.org/spc-content/press/sacred_paths_journal/2011/12.pdf

Next Saturday, the Eye of the Boar coven will be holding a free energy-healing clinic at the Eye of Horus. The coven has a bunch of reiki masters and practitioners of other healing modalities, and they like to get together and practice. This is their way of having fun. So if you feel like you need some reiki, show up at the Eye of Horus after 7pm. It’s free.

Starhawk announced that she’ll be in town December 5&6 to do trainings for Occupy Minnesota. She’ll be at mayday Books December 5th at 5pm. You can read about it here and here.

There’s a new website for nature spirituality in the Twin Cities. http://www.naturalspiritual.org/

We are in the season of bell ringers with red buckets. Before dropping in your change, you might want to research the Salvation Army and consider if this is an organization you wish to support. Their values do not seem to match those of most Pagans.