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February has been a very busy month for me.  The biggest deal has been moving to Mountain View California.  After fourteen years in the frozen Midwest Ari and I decided it was time to leave Michigan.  So far so good in California.  The biggest adjustment has been trading in our four bedroom house for a two bedroom townhouse.  Adjusting to significantly less space and neighbors just a wall away has been the hardest part.

I might be lying there, the hardest part might be having a kitchen the size of a very small closet.  Near the end of unpacking the kitchen I said to Ari "well I've got all of our stuff for the kitchen unpacked and put away.  Unfortunately we don't have any room for food."  That's not quite true, we have some limited shelf space for food, but no pantry.  Perhaps it's a good thing, it'll force us to make better decisions about what we eat because there's no room for junk food.

While I'm sure many of you want to read about my adventures as a domestic engineer, I think I'll move this blog post along to talk about the usual February festivals.  Like I do every year, I went to Pantheacon in San Jose over President's Day Weekend.  There were several differences this year for me.  The easiest to deal with was that it was the only 15 minute drive, no plane rides and ten hour travel days for me.  It was great to be there hanging out with people, especially the sheer amount of people who remember me from year to year.  I heard my name yelled quite a bit while I was there, and being remembered is alway so flattering.  

I had great conversations in an (unfilled) bathtub, over Druid mead, and at the bar of course.  In a lot of ways it felt like Pantheacon normally does for me, lots of great people to see and talk to in a very limited amount of time.  The odd part was not doing any workshops this year.  It just ended up not working out, and considered the very recent move, it might have been for the best.  Besides, everyone knows I love Pagan Festivals for the parties.  With no workshops to worry about in the morning I can party until the wee hours of the morning.  (Though it's rare for me to make it until the wee hours, cider, scotch, and rum do take their toll.)

This past weekend I flew back "home" to Michigan for Convocation.  What a blur this year.  I don't know what it was, but it was over in the blink of an eye.  I can tell when a festival has been truly great, I'm exhausted for a full day afterwards.  I've been home now for 18 hours, got a good night's sleep, and I'm still tired and wrung out.  It's a good feeling, it means I gave it my all at the festival and left it all out there on the ritual floor.

I did three workshops this year, nothing that set the world on fire, but I thought I did a solid job at them.  Attendance was a little off by  my standards, but I think that had a lot to do with the topics.  Going in I didn't think i was really presenting very much that would have mass appeal.  I did workshops on Jim Morrison, the history of alcohol in religion, and Paganism across North America.  The alcohol one was the usual Jason lecture, Morrison close to that too, and it really wasn't about Jim as an occult figure either, more about the misconceptions about Jim's life (and death).  The "Across North America" workshop was my first thinly veiled attempt at doing something like an Ivan Stang (Church of the Sub-Genius) devival/comedy performance.  Sure, I shared information about the various festivals I've been privileged enough to attend over the years, but it was peppered with jokes, funny experiences, and experiences with various "Pagan celebrity*" types.

I think I'd like to figure out a way to do more "rant" type workshops, situations where I just make fun of Paganism (and the people in it) for a good ninety minutes.  When I look at that previous sentence it sounds pretty harsh, but in my head the ribbing of my own faith is more like a long celebrity roast.  People take religion too seriously, and they take their own religion far too seriously.  Sure, you should take your commitment to deity seriously, not to mention the moral guidance provided by faith, but after that you should be able to laugh at it.  I'm not a big fan of mixing vampirism and Paganism for example.  I think it gives all of us a rather weird reputation, but then I stop for a moment.  I think that I speak to Pan!  How is that any less absurd?  How can I in all seriousness make a judgment call about someone else's Pagan experience when I'm doing rituals to Jim Morrison and using Raspberry Hard Cider as a sacrament?  I can't.  

That doesn't mean I shouldn't make fun of it though.  If we can't laugh at our religious foibles and start placing people up on pedestals that they don't belong on, Paganism risks becoming what it's different from, monotheistic faiths that seem to have lost their senses of humor thousands of years ago.  I want to laugh at things, I want you to laugh at things with me, and I want our faith(s) to bring us joy, to me laughter is joy.  I get the joke, I hope you do too.

That went to places I had not anticipated . . . .  . . .

In addition to workshops I did a ritual on Saturday night (which has become kind of a tradition at Convocation).  The past few years I've done Morrison Rituals, Pan Rituals, and a Horned God Ritual, but this year I went for the serious jugular and submitted a "Traditional Greek Ritual Honoring Aphrodite and Dionysus."  Sure, I picked fun deities, but "traditional Greek Ritual" is not a bacchanal, and is a pretty straight laced type of ritual.  I thought I had explained that in the program book, but as the weekend went along and people kept coming up to me telling me how excited they were about the "Dionysus Ritual" I started thinking that I'd have to change it up a little bit.

I didn't change much other than my attitude, less serious with more jokes, and then adding a "calling down" portion.  The ritual was supposed to simply contain Homeric Hymns, sacrifices, libations, votive offerings, and prayers.  The early pre-ritual feedback indicated that people were expecting more of the "Mankey Pop," deity energy and transformative experience.  So at the end of the ritual we did some "calling down" of the gods, with some success I think.  I certainly felt the push and pull of Dionysus and Aphrodite all night and into the morning.  I don't think the pop wore off for until 12 hours later when I finally took a quick nap at 9:00 am before getting up at 10:00 am.  

So the ritual was pretty successful, and fun, and something I'll keep on the books for awhile and might do again when I get involved with a group out here.  About the only complaint I got was about the wine, which was mixed in the traditional Greek manner, meaning it was 3/4 water and 1/4 wine.  That saves me money on ritual supplies at least, but I can see why people didn't care for it very much, our palettes are just not accustomed to watered down wine.

Speaking of wine, I got a new wine glass while I was at Convocation.  There was a bellydance group there named Belly Dance Underground and they had these fabulous glass looking wine glasses that were really plastic.  Every time I saw them around I sampled their drinks (mostly fabulous!) and ended up being given one on saturday night, with the promise that I mention them on my blog.  So here you go, living up to that promise.  On a personal note, when I see a group of girls dressed up in bellydance gear at a Pagan gathering with drinks in their hands, they have to know I'm going to bug them.  I'm not made of stone.  So fun times.  

So between workshops, parties, and ritual I had a great time.  Even though it's only been a few weeks it was good to see my Michigan peeps again.  Leaving this time really felt like I was closing the door on that chapter of my life (though I'll be opening it at least once a year).  I'm not much of a karaoke guy, and have tried hard to avoid it the past few years, but I had an itching at Convocation this year to sing Black Sabbath's "War Pigs."  I left a party I was enjoying just to go sing and butcher the song.  Unfortunately someone taped it, and when I say I like being laughed at you can take it to the bank, because I'm sharing the link to my warbling:

*There is no such thing as a "Pagan Celebrity."  Sure, there are people smarter than you tout here, and certainly people smarter than me, but at the end of the day we all shit on the same portajohn and eat the same sub-standard room service food.  No one is dining on caviar, and only a few of us are drinking 21 year old scotch, and that's only because I'm super nice and I enjoy, you know, talking to people.