Category: Interview

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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Epilogue – After the interview, and PSG – Melissa Murry

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After she returned home, Melissa sent me this statement, upon further experience and reflection:

Melissa Murry:

After the press event and while reading the response from the Pagan community at large who are affected by this, it remains clear that there is still confusion, pain, and healing that needs to be done. I am overwhelmed by the support of Ruth and myself. This shows to me that while we can come from different perspectives and beliefs there is a common ground. And while we don’t have to all agree with one another, that common ground can be a starting point for laying a foundation. That is what happened after this interview when Ruth and I spoke at length for hours. The conversation centered on misunderstanding, miscommunication, hurt, and healing around this event.

I finally began understanding where Ruth was coming from in regards to her perspective. I want to thank her for her time, voice, and passion. She told me that this was the first time a trans-woman had sat down with her and really talked to her about these issues in this way.

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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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Heartland Spiritual Alliance President – Interview

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I talked to sitting Heartland Spiritual Alliance President Angela Krout at Heartland Pagan Festival near Kansas City, Mo.  She was re-elected in April but has resigned for family reasons, pending the outcome of a special election.

What moved you to take the president’s role?

I’ve been a HSA (Heartland Spiritual Alliance) member for twelve years. I was treasurer last year when our then president stepped down for personal reasons. Myself and a couple others decided to run, and since we had an alternate candidate for treasurer I thought, “Why not me, Why not now?”

Do you have a new vision for the organization?
There is always room for improvement and growth. Some of it can be difficult to deal with, difficult to change. I would like to see HSA be not just a Midwestern voice, but an international voice in the Pagan community. Something that you will see and hear about all over the world.  We are no longer just a local community, we are a global community, and HSA needs to branch out and do that.

Can you share some of the problems you have encountered leading the organization and putting on a festival?
Personal accountability, that needs to start with someone. With me the buck stops with me, my personal accountability and responsibility. I know as Pagans we are supposed to ‘go with the flow’, but there is a certain time when you have to treat it like business, because that is exactly what it is. It can’t be a loose y goose y, very free flowing thing, a festival has to be run like a business. The more accountability we have, the more we will have organizations that run better.

Transparency is huge. From every dollar we take at the gate, to every dollar we disburse, it has been our goal the last few years to become more transparent, to have more layers of protection and accountability.

We have a great PR team this year, and they have been promoting us well. At this point we are still small enough, and even though we get national and international speakers that come in, people still see us as a regional festival, and we are not.  Next year we have Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone as speakers. They actually contacted us and wanted to appear. That blew my mind, so awesome. I am so excited about it.

Several ‘old timers’ here have stepped back and new folks are joining. Is that an obstacle or an asset?
It can be both. Those of us that have been in the trenches for so long can be resistant to change. Personally for me, change is growth and growth is life. A lot of people don’t realize it is the life blood of the organization. We can not have the same people year after year. We become too entrenched, to comfortable with the same set of standards when the rest of the world is growing. It could limit us to stay where we are, and get stagnant.

HSA President Angela Krout

What does the direction of the new leadership look like?
Yet to be determined. I plan to stay with HSA and support whoever is elected. At some point when my personal life is not taking over, I may run for President again.

Nels Linde