Tag: Pagan Festivals

Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone – Interview

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I had the opportunity to interview Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone  who were guests at Heartland Spirit Festival near Kansas City this past Memorial Day Weekend. They took several hours out of their hectic schedule to simply hang out in our merchant booth and chat about a wide range of subjects, for which I am extremely grateful!

There are few people left who directly experienced many of the legendary figures of the rise of Neo-Pagan spirituality. Janet has a wealth of knowledge and stories from this era, and vivid descriptions of what they have experience.  Gavin articulates where their practice has led them  since he became part of the most famous Pagan triad, and the subsequent passage of Stuart Farrar. Together they represent a vision of an evolving practice of deity centered witchcraft.

This interview is about 9000 words long, but to me it is just too interesting to edit much content out.  It will appear in three parts over the coming weeks. First some history and an overview of their current work, then more details about their current practice, and finally a look into the future.

Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone

Nels (N): You’re back in the states. How long has it been since you have been in the states?

Gavin (G) : Nine months.

Janet (J) : Yeah, nine months. We actually travel here a lot.

G: We’re generally in the states every year. The last time we were in the Midwest was about 2002-2003.  We did INATS (International New Age Trade Show) the big trade fair in Colorado promoting Progressive Witchcraft. Before that we were in Wisconsin, so we haven’t done much in the Midwest for a while. But there’s been a lot more interest. We’ve been invited out towards Ohio August/September next year. Generally we spend a lot more time on the East Coast: New York, Connecticut, Florida. Those areas, mainly because we have connections there.

J: We are actually linked to a group of covens in these places.  We don’t actually call them “our covens,” they are covens in their own right, but they are all linked together through us.

G: Because they are covens that all follow the same philosophy.

N: What is your philosophy for ritual, coven work, and magic now?

Doreen Valiente 1922-1999

J:  Ok, well let’s start at the beginning. Thanks to knowing, long before Gavin ever met her, Doreen Valiente, I had a totally different perspective on Witchcraft. Even if you look at that book, The Witches Bible. When we started off, Stewart and myself, we started off with Alex Sanders. After that basic training, we were running an Alexandrian coven. Far too short, to be honest, to have real experience. We winged it, as they say, but we learned as we went along. And when Stewart and I moved to Ireland in 1976, Stewart took a look through our Book of Shadows and said “There’s no meat on the bones of this. Let us start by investigating old Irish folk customs, and from that comes a great rise in Celtic mythology, and a lot of people are becoming fashionably Celtic.

We lived, for the most part, in the most beautiful Celtic land, and a lot of those old festivals are sadly dying out now. We actually started resurrecting them ourselves, village folk festivals. We used to go along to them, and we used to experience them, and from 1976 to 1981 we traveled in various places across Ireland renting property to learn about what the locals still kept alive. Including the Midsummer bonfires, the Lughnasadh/Lammas festival, and we would glean knowledge. We would talk to the local people, the older people who remembered “ back in the days of my youth we did this, that, and the other.”

We put all that into the first book we wrote, before it became The Witches Bible it was Eight Sabbats For Witches. And with Doreen Valiente’s permission, I hasten to add, because a lot of the original Book of Shadows was her work. She took one look at the work we were doing, because we got to know her, and we said “Look, do you approve of this?” And she said “Well, there’s a bit more to it than that. A lot of this is my material, the Charge and etc… You have my permission to print it and be damned!” We said, “Well, fine if we’ve got your permission it goes into the book.” Continue reading →

The Makings of a Priestess – Editorial

Rainbow and Janet Farrar

Rainbow and Janet Farrar

I was able to connect back up with Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone after twenty years or so at Heartland Spirit Gathering  last week. I am transcribing over two hours of recorded interviews into something manageable for publishing next week.  Our interview was interrupted by  a personal ceremonial commitment, and so I left them on their own to relax in our merchant booth.

A young lady of eleven, Rainbow, had been working all day for various merchants, doing service and selling what she found to raise money for a small drum for herself.  She started earning by helping me deliver ice as a community service task that morning. She came to the booth frequently to report her fund-raising progress and so returned with a report in my absence that she gave to Janet Farrar.  Just a few dollars short now, Janet took her by the hand and went visiting merchants and shoppers, explaining her young friends plight. Within a few minutes the balance needed for the purchase was secured, and when I returned the drum was purchased, and Rainbow ran off overjoyed. The interview then resumed.

The next day I tracked down Rainbow’s parents for permission for a photo, and I learned more about Rainbow than I knew from the experience the day before. She had announced to her family she was going to get a drum that day, and they had every confidence somehow she would make it happen.  We rounded up Rainbow and took her over to Janet for this photo.  She only knew Janet as that nice lady who helped her, and was delighted to discover she was also a guest of the event.

The interviews next week will include a lot of Pagan history, assessment of the present, and a view of the future. Janet and Gavin have strong views of what it means to be a priest or priestess, to speak with the gods, and where the leaders of the Craft of the future will come from. This selfless aid to help fulfill a young women’s goal illustrated to me a beautiful example of the daily work of a priestess, and the simple experiences that empower a determined priestess of the future.

Watch for the interview series with Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone next week.

Nels Linde

Pagan Elder Interview by Estelle Daniels

John Stitely

John Stitely

Estelle Daniels is a native resident of Paganistan and is interviewing elders in the Pagan Community in the Midwest who attend Earth House Midsummer Gather to get their stories.

Earth House Midsummer Gather takes place from June 16-23 at beautiful Eagle Cave campground in Wisconsin, a short 4-5 hour drive from the Twin Cities. It’s a medium sized festival with a definite family feel. This is the 13th year it will take place, and there has grown up a community of Earth House attendees—several of whom are elders with many years festival experience. Estelle will be interviewing some of the elders who attend Earth House to show what a rich variety of people attend the Festival from all over the Midwest. For more information or to register for Earth House, go to earthhousemn.org

Rev John Stitely is the current Chair of Earth House. He is originally from Iowa, born and raised there—went to school there and worked as a lawyer there for many years. He has been attending Pagan Festivals for many years and I talked to him about his experiences. I interviewed him about his experiences at Pagan Festivals.

What was the first festival you attended? I can’t really remember—I graduated from Law School in 1987, and I guess summer of ’88 was my first Festival—PSG 88 then. I decided to take the suit off for a week.

  Continue reading →

Crossed Quarters – Guest Editorial by Lisa Spiral

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Photo: http://www.pagangrove.com

Most Pagans are aware that the eight sabbats of Wicca are an artificial construction. They combine festivals of hunter/gatherer peoples with festivals of agriculture and animal husbandry. When you add to that an international following and crazy modern scheduling you have a practice of worship that is truly Neo-Pagan.

Our quarter celebrations, the solstices and equinoxes, come to us from people’s who understood astronomy. These are real and measurable events in time and space. The tools and precision of measuring when these sabbats occur have changed over time. The events that they celebrate are fixed.

The cross quarters, however, are seasonal celebrations. They mark events of weather and harvest that happen when they happen in the local area. We know from the names we call them by: Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasad, and Samhein that these are sabbats from more northern climates. These are celebrations of a people who were dependent on an unpredictable weather.

They may have marked migration cycles. They may have marked the end of a harvest season. They may have marked blooming plants. They may have marked fertility of farm animals. But these kind of events occur at different times in different places in different years.

Our calendars come to us from the Romans and the Roman Catholic Church. When these local festivals were assigned patron saints and attributed to saints days on the calendar they became more fixed in time. Of course the church calendar has changed once or twice over the last several thousand years and saints come and go. Continue reading →

Gifts and Thank You’s – Editorial

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Photo: vec.ca

Gifts, they are on most of our minds this time of year.  We anguish over giving them and receiving them, who needs one, who might give us one, why we give them.  It is residue from that dominant holiday in our culture, at least the anguish is.  Most of the gifts we really appreciate are the ones given from the heart, and specific to ourselves and the receiver.  There is a strong alternative movement against all the commercialism.  Give some cookies, or a hand-made necklace, a poem, hand-made card, or a special artifact of nature.  Give something really personal, these things often have more meaning.

Thank you.  Our thank you conversations are the flip side of gifts.  We always say thank you, but we can’t help but betray what we feel most often.  The enlightened honor that old saying, “It’s the thought that counts.” and really endeavor to feel it.  It doesn’t matter if we already have two, or don’t need want or like it.  It may even feel like an obligation or burden.  Why did we not think of them and have a gift?  Whatever we feel, as we accept it, we also know most times the giver instinctively senses our reaction, and it falls into a couple of categories.  We loved it and appreciate it, we are ambivalent and it is a little awkward, or they sense our subtle dread at the responsibility of accepting it.  However it takes place, we complete the gift-thank you ritual and keep moving, it is that busy time of year.

Twin Cities Pagans

How can we avoid the stress of this time of gifts and thank you’s?   What got me thinking about this was the ending of the Paganistan weekly. What a gift.  JRob took the task of building a network of people, and a place to share personal and community events, applied his love and vision of a better community, and just ran with it.  The list, Twin Cities Pagans had been around since year 2000.  I found the post when JRob got involved , message # 649, Aug 18th, 2008:

Blessings All,
I couldn’t find a place which listed the area Pagan events in one calendar, so I asked Robin and he said I could use the calendar from this group to keep track of events.  So if you want to keep up on local Pagan events, check this group’s calendar.  I’m on a bunch of local groups and I continually add things as I find them.
Oh, and I also updated the links section. But I’m not calling dibs.  I hope that other people also feel free to add things.

Many Blessings, Jrob

Continue reading →