Category: Editorial

Yeshe Rabbit – Sacred Harvest Festival Guest – Interview

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Lady Yeshe Rabbit
Sacred Harvest Festival Guest

I talked to Lady Yeshe Rabbit of the Come As You Are (CAYA) coven. We talked about her work in the San Francisco Bay area, her appearance at Sacred Harvest Festival, and her thoughts on gender issues in the Pagan community.

How do you like to be addressed?
For the most part you can call me Rabbit. My title in my coven is Yeshe, it is a word that has a few different meanings. In Tibetan it means “primordial wisdom”, and that is why I took the title, because I wanted to be guided by that primordial wisdom that resides within. It was also a childhood nickname, because I am Polish and my birth name is Jessica.

Tell me about CAYA?
CAYA coven is my coven.   There is within CAYA several different layers of membership. Some people have a casual relationship and may just attend our rituals. There is also an inner circle of trained clergy. These are people who have been with the group for a number of years. They would be my ‘closer’ coven you might say.

What is the role of CAYA in the Bay area?
CAYA stands for “Come As You Are”, and it is a coven that is built around the principles of eclecticism, inter-faith, and support for a wide variety of different paths. An individual who maybe has a very strong personal path, or, one who might be  just starting out and wants to learn about many different paths to see which one is the right fit, would find themselves very comfortable in CAYA. Each of us in CAYA feels that it is the utmost importance the we determine our own personal relationship with the divine. We then share our own individual practices and spiritual beliefs in the spirit of generosity without presuming that we know the one way that is right for everyone. What that means is that we are a coven “filled with solitaries” (jokingly), because everyone has their own individual practice. When we come together we join around a central core of protocols of how we do rituals in an outlined format, a baseline of ethics that we have all agreed to, and principles of community that we think are essential:  Cooperation, conflict resolution, clergy conduct and comportment. When people come into CAYA they feel very welcome, even if a beginner, or if they are extremely experienced and just don’t want to be told what to do because they are confident in their own path.

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M.Macha NightMare – Interview

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M. Macha NightMare

I was able to interview M. Macha NightMare as she waited for a plane to MSP airport, I asked her;

“What have you been up to recently?

Well, Cherry Hill Seminary, which I am always working on. I hope will develop into a more stable foundation. It is something that needs more support from the Pagan community. They have wonderful teachers and students.

I have been working on a Pagan elders study. I did a survey on survey monkey, and got over 800 responses and have been analyzing that data. I have been starting to present on that topic. We have never had elders because we are a new religious movement. We are not a tribe in the conventional sense, and we really don’t have any role models. We have to look elsewhere for models. There are two different kinds of elders, one is older people, and another is people who have been in a community for a while and have some perspective and are turned to frequently for counsel or lore and things like that. Those are the ones I am thinking about. It is not defined and very haphazard. I think it behooves us to examine what our assumptions are about elders and try to put some things in place within our various communities.

What do elders actually do?

That is one of the things that I believe we as the Pagan movement have to determine for our communities. Who are the elders accountable or responsible to? What kind of matters do they address, if any? I got a lot of answers, but they are all over the place. Any human community has occasions and individuals that are not healthy for the well-being of the whole group, and may be dysfunctional and that may be unacknowledged. Some people see that behavior and may be frustrated or alienated. They may withdraw from a community instead of fixing it, or they may not know where to turn to get it addressed. I don’t have the answers. What I have is a lot of questions. It is not up to me to determine what the answers are. I can share some of the answers I got in the survey. I have my own ideas, but I don’t have a nice tidy description of what an elder is yet, because of all the input I have been given. It is pretty interesting. I come at this from a selfish perspective in that people have turned to me as an elder, and have not really known what my role is. I want to respond in an honorable way, or refer them if that seems appropriate.

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Pagan Hangout: Online communities, Culture, Trolls vs Real Life

Pagan Hangouts are weekly live (and recorded for later playback) panel discussions about topics relating to Paganism hosted by Star Foster of Patheos.com.   This week’s Pagan Hangout featured Cara Schulz of PNC-News, Cathryn Orchard of the Tarot Art Project, and blogger Teo Bishop, who writes Bishop in the Grove.

This is the 10th video in the series.  You can watch the hangout live, or join in to participate, each Wednesday at 10am central on G+.

Becoming Columbia

From PNC-DC’s David Salisbury

Columbia atop the US Capitol building

I love living in Washington, DC. Just ask anyone who knows me at all. The first time I visited DC was in 2007 and as soon as I entered the District I knew I would live in the area some day. The call from the land to connect was stronger anything any other land call I had ever felt before. Two years later my life somewhat imploded in a way that pushed me to peruse my dream of living in the capital area and working for the civil rights organization I work for now. It turns out the call to live here came for very specific reasons. I immediately immersed myself in the local community here with activism, leadership, and community service. I joined a coven I’m still happily with that I’d give my life for. I made friendships that will last until the day I die. I believe that all of this was a call from Columbia. She wanted me to come her and also to become her. Let me explain.

Whether you think of Columbia as a goddess, a land spirit, or an archetype, most people who work with her in some way will tell you that she is very real and very alive. Standing atop the dome of the Capitol Building, I pass by her many times in the week as I leave my office and make my way around town. Her posture is regal and protective, sovereign and welcoming. To me, she is a goddess of the area I live in as well as the United States itself. She is known also as Lady Liberty or Libertas, protecting the largest city in the country, New York City. In New York, she welcomed hundreds of thousands of immigrants to the shores of America in our early melting pot days. I wonder if those settlers felt the same type of call I do when I talk past her in DC?

Columbia is a featured goddess in my personal pantheon because of the spirit she embodies, justice and freedom. And no, I don’t mean the overused patriarchal use of “freedom” as in the colonization of other countries and the greed of war. When I speak of freedom, I mean our ability to live our own authentic lives while we co-create a better world with those around us. Freedom to me means that I rely on myself to create the changes I need to make myself happy and to assist my beloved community I’m a part of. Like Lady Liberty, I pick up the torch and light my own path because I’m confident in my power to do so. This is becoming Columbia. When aspecting Columbia, she doesn’t seem to respond to lengthy invocations or petitionary appeals. Instead, she looks to see how I carry myself, how I speak, and what I do for others. Her words of challenge are “what have you done for others today?” She does not help those who do not try to first help themselves. She teaches me personal responsibility every single day.

Columbia with petition for the rights of women – artist David Savage

If Columbia is a patron goddess of DC and the US, then surely the Fourth of July would be among the most sacred of her feast days. Today I will make donations to social service programs that help the poor in DC. I will direct energy from my home to Columbia’s statue atop the Capitol dome and ask for her continued blessing. Most importantly, I will rededicate myself to a continued life of activism and service. In doing so, I become Columbia. I become the spirit of Liberty and Justice for all.

[For more information about Columbia and defending the rights of Pagan in the US, visit HailColumbia.us.]

O Liberty–the dearest word
A bleeding country ever heard,–
We lay our hopes upon thy shrine
And offer up our lives for thine.
You gave us many happy years
Of peace and plenty ere the tears
A mourning country wept were dried
Above the graves of those who died
Upon thy threshold. And again
When newer wars were bred, and men
Went marching in the cannon’s breath
And died for thee and loved the death,
While, high above them, gleaming bright,
The dear old flag remained in sight,
And lighted up their dying eyes
With smiles that brightened paradise.
O Liberty, it is thy power
To gladden us in every hour
Of gloom, and lead us by thy hand
As little children through a land
Of bud and blossom; while the days
Are filled with sunshine, and thy praise
Is warbled in the roundelays
Of joyous birds, and in the song
Of waters, murmuring along
The paths of peace, whose flowery fringe
Has roses finding deeper tinge
Of crimson, looking on themselves
Reflected–leaning from the shelves
Of cliff and crag and mossy mound
Of emerald splendor shadow-drowned.–
We hail thy presence, as you come
With bugle blast and rolling drum
James Whitcomb Riley – Liberty, 1878

Two PSG Women Speak About Inclusiveness in Public Ritual – Interviews

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I spoke with Melissa Murry late Friday afternoon at PSG, after her workshop presentation. This was her second year at the Pagan Spirit Gathering [PSG], her first year was a joyful experience.  She was concerned with the advance website ritual listing, though it was unclear then that it was a ‘main’ ritual. She expressed to Selena in advance of PSG that this was serious enough to consider canceling her registration.  Selena helped her schedule a late submission workshop on transgendered history in response.

*Note, from the PSG website:  [ A Dianic Women’s Ritual for Summer Solstice – Ruth Barrett

As a community of women who bleed, will bleed, or have bled our sacred bloods, we celebrate the Summer Solstice in a Dianic ritual that celebrates ourselves and honors the mythic cycle of the Goddess as She transitions from Maiden to fertile Mother/ Amazon/ Creatrix/ Manifester/ Maker. She uses her sacred uterine bloods to manifest tangible and intangible reality. We, in Her image celebrate our ability to heal, transform, and create our lives in this season of Her sacred fire. The ritual will also include a working around female reproductive rights. Think about in advance: As Creatrix in your own life, how do you use your sacred bloods? How do you feed and tend your creative fire? In honor of our sacred bloods and the summer solstice, please wear red as all or a part of your ritual garb. Bring drums and percussion toys if you have them. This ritual is for female born and raised women and girls. Facilitated by Ruth Barrett and women of the PSG community. ]

Melissa Murry at PSG Press Conference
photo: Bob Paxton / Circle Sanctuary

What led you to call Circle Sanctuary?
Melissa: I was concerned with the terminology used in the description of the Women’s Ritual as for women who  bleed, who have bled, or who will bleed. That is the definition that was used, but that does not define all cisgender women.  It is new definition that was created and used after Pantheacon to narrowly define the definition of women while the term “woman” is a broad term used in our culture to define self identified women. This is used to inadvertently define cisgender women, and it can be offensive because that use excludes trans-women who identify as women also.

Is it an unclear definition, what is there about it that causes concern?
The definition of that ritual was excluding women from PSG, but in the description for the ritual it was put forward as created and for all the women of PSG. I felt that there was an invisibility that was going to be created for transgendered women, like myself, who don’t fall within that definition.

So you objected to the limiting and exclusive definition of who the ritual was for, combined with the reference to the inclusive language describing a ‘community of women”.
Yes. I contacted Selena through the PSG website. Several people talked to me and eventually Selena called me, and we had over a four-hour conversation about the matter.  I can speak to what I took away from the conversation, but there was some confusion over the concern.  I understood the Pagan spirit Gathering was an inclusive event, and felt the exclusion of  a group of  women was not in line with the spirit of PSG.  Nor was it in accord with the values I believed Circle Sanctuary to have.

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