Category: Festivals

Earth House Announces Festival Layaway Program

In response to festivant requests, the Earth House Project of Minnesota announced a Festival Layaway Program for Paypal registrants. Several participants reportedly approached members of Earth House’s Midsummer Gather last year and asked about the availability of a payment plan, and others  said they had issues raising the registration fee all at once.

The Earth house plan allows participants who sign up through September to submit automatic payments of the total registration cost over 10 months. Registrants  pay $13.00 a month until June through a subscription payment through Paypal .  The plan will adjust payment amounts based on the remaining months before the 12th Annual Midsummer Gather, if registrants sign up after September. There is also a youth option for the Festival Layaway Program, children 10 and under attend free with any paid adult.

Earth House Project of Minnesota sponsors the Midsummer Gather at Eagle Cave Campground and the Coffee Cauldron every 1st and 3rd Wednesday of every month at the Edge Coffee House and the Sacred Paths Center.  Contact: 1 (877) 538-4121,  email Earth House Project of Minnesota or visit www.EarthHouseMN.org for more information.

An online informal survey of national pagan events reveals few offer payment plans for event costs that are under $300, if at all.  No definitive statistics are available about the use of payment plans to aid Pagans in budgeting for the festival experience or increase festival attendance.

Nels Linde

PSG2011 – Parade of Homes

1 Comment

The summer Pagan festival season is almost over, but we have a few more stories to share with our readers while you clean your gear and start planning for next year.

If you’ve never been to a outdoor camping festival, you may be surprised by how comfortable and fun some of the campsites are. At Pagan Spirit Gathering 2011, one of America’s largest and oldest Pagan festivals, attendees go all out to make their campsite unique. Finding a full bar, a queen size bed like what you have in your bedroom at home, an attached Hoodoo temple, and stocked baby nursery is not unusual. PNC-Minnesota was no slouch in ‘glamping’ (glamorous camping) in the Media Camp at PSG. We brought lime green leopard print curtains and a plant for decor’. Not to mention enough tech gear to land on the moon.

A Senior Festival Experience – Interview

1 Comment

Larksong is a new Sacred Harvest Festival festivant and joined Harmony Tribe last February. At age 70 she is possibly the all time senior in both categories. I asked her about her experiences.

Larksong

Have you camped before?

When my kids were little we camped, but this is the first time we have camped in quite some time! At least twelve years ago, and then we had a pop-up camper.

What does it feel like to travel 600 miles from Michigan to be with people you don’t know and spend a week?

Great! It really has been great. We brought our three nieces, so that they could have a drama free week and we have just been having a ball. They have been having a ball. The only problem for me here is everything is so far away. I’m in the middle, but it is a long walk either direction. After two or three trips I need to take a nap! Continue reading →

Sacred Harvest Festival survives The Tower

14 Comments

The Tower card from the Rider-Waite deck

When the Tower card appears in a spread it is not greeted with cheers and smiles. Although Pagans recognize the cycle of destruction must happen in order for new growth to thrive, it isn’t an enjoyable process. It’s painful. At times it can be downright ugly. While a group or organization is in the midst of conflict and tearing down of the old, it can be difficult to manage the process in a way that achieves a positive outcome.

Local festival in crises
For the last year Harmony Tribe, the group that produces the Sacred Harvest Festival, has been dealing with the aftermath of the Tower. Shortly after last year’s festival the board, Tribe members, and festival attendees became embroiled in a serious conflict. Tensions came to a head after a controversial move was initiated by Harmony Tribe to ban two Tribe members and the walls came crumbling down as the entire board of Harmony Tribe resigned en masse early last fall. A rift formed and community members began to choose sides. To make a painful situation worse for all involved, this played out in public.

For many in the wider community, the escalating conflict and subsequent rift struck from out of the blue. “This entire episode was so hurtful and angry. It wasn’t anything like the community I had come to love,” said one attendee who asked not to be named. “I was stunned. I shut down. I almost didn’t come this year.”

Continue reading →

Pagan Sweats – News? No, an Interview!

3 Comments

Jim Esralian, and Karen have been leading Sweat Lodge ceremonies at Sacred Harvest Festival (SHF) for many years. He is so unassuming many don’t know his connection to this ceremony. I interviewed him at SHF.  He first off declared proudly he was Armenian, “A conquered people as well”.

Traditional Sweat Lodge

You have a pretty deep connection to Native American traditions?

Back home I live in central Michigan, near the Saginaw Chippewa reservation. In addition I have become friends with folks from Turtle Mountain reservation, and other places, that have brought traditions from that area, to Michigan. They are actually mixed traditions themselves. They are combinations of Metis, Cree, Ojibwe, Ashinabe, and Lakota. A lot of the medicine that was passed down was already fairly multi-national. Turtle Mountain is in North Dakota, in an area where several tribes border each other and their cultures inter-mingled. People came from that area bring with them what is called the ‘Thirsty Dance’, very similar to a “Sun Dance”. They also brought some of the Lodge traditions, as well as some of the songs. Continue reading →