nonfluffypagans: PTRD Case Studies Wanted!

woolysw (

woolysw) wrote in

nonfluffypagans,
@ 2006-03-27 13:08:00

Current music:

Flight of the Tuba Bee - Canadian Brass

PTRD Case Studies Wanted!
PTRD (Post Traumatic Ritual Disorder) may be a growing problem in our community!

I feel we should better document PTRD, and, by sharing, help heal us all.

Please post what your most traumatic Ritual was (regardless of whether you were leading or just a participant).

*grin*

X-posted to wiccan

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princekermit
2006-03-27 07:34 pm UTC (link)

Well, I'll start with a Samhain ritual where, due to a logistical problem on behalf of the organizers (not me!), we spent three hours walking widdershins chanting "She changes everything she touches AND everything she touches cha-anges."

Three hours.

I will cause greivous bodily harm to the next ritualist who uses that chant in circle.

Lesson learned: A ritual that works well for a coven of 10 will not work well for a public gathering of 90.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	joxn 2006-03-27 08:23 pm UTC (link)
	2 minutes of chanting per person? That'd kill me with 10 people. My sympathies. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

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green_fae, 2006-03-27 11:07 pm UTC

kadiera
2006-03-27 07:44 pm UTC (link)

I once attended a public "women's" ritual at an indoor festival, where the whole point of the ritual was to invoke Isis. It was the second or third public ritual I attended, and I haven't attended another since.

The schedule said an hour and a half, the ritual ended up being over 3 hours. The length was a long time to be expected to maintain the dancing and drumming intensity that the invocation involved...

But I realized long before reaching the point of exhaustion that this ritual had issues.

First...the initial invocation involved a priestess who appeared to be in some sort of trance. She was brought in wrapped in a sheet, and then dressed in "Egyptian" clothing while one priestess read "Egyptian" words, and a second "translated" them in English....

The priestesses ran out of alcohol for "Isis" part way through the ritual - and I know they had a six-pack of beer and at least 2 bottles of wine when the ritual started. "Isis" was so insistent on more alcohol that they sent the (male) wardens standing outside the ballroom doors to the hotel bar for more...

Add to that the fact that the "Isis" was confused by modern clothing, including trying to eat one woman's hair scrunchy, and forcing one woman to remove her bustier...

Yeah. Could have been a powerful ritual, but since I always figured the Gods were capable of comprehending modern clothing, I just found it to be another case of playing dress-up....

(Reply to this)

Nevar again the public rituals

hagazusa
2006-03-27 08:03 pm UTC (link)

Two spring to mind:

One in which the normally scheduled rune reading was interrupted by a woman channeling the spirit of the malachite frog she carried in her purse.

Second: an outdoor Heathen ceremony of the "We have to dress like freaks, shave our heads or wear totally weird wigs, and shout REAL loud or else the Gods won't hear us" which attracted a heckling audience of anti-social teenagers who had no intention of leaving us alone. The person in charge said we shouldn't be bothered by said anti-social teenagers if we were on the right spiritual plane. And he went on--much to said teenagers' wicked amusement--screaming REAL LOUD and yelling "Hail!" like someone in a Hitler youth rally to make sure everyone within a five mile radius would hear.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	Re: Nevar again the public rituals bulvai 2006-03-27 09:33 pm UTC (link)
	was interrupted by a woman channeling the spirit of the malachite frog she carried in her purse. blink !Bursts out laughing! (Reply to this) (Parent)

	juliaki 2006-03-27 08:12 pm UTC (link)
	How about PTRD by association? Although I wasn't present for this particular bit of interestingness, I think that having Little Debbie snack cakes (still in the wrappers) for cakes and Lil' Hugs (you know, those single-serving plastic jugs with neon-colored pseudofruit-flavored stuff) for "wine" would have traumatized me for life. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	dbmyrrha 2006-03-27 08:31 pm UTC (link)
	This reminds me of a Mass I went to (yes, a Catholic Mass, although in a home, not a church) wherein they used Tang and Wonder Bread for the eucharist. Jesus and I both wept that day... (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

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rimrunner, 2006-03-28 07:17 pm UTC

faeryl
2006-03-27 08:30 pm UTC (link)

Tossup between a so-called Day of the Dead celebration with nary an actual DOTD tradition included. The organizer just decided to call the quarters using Aztec gods. Including a death god(name escapes me) who he insisted was purely symbolic. He asked everyone to invite deceased friends, relatives, and pets too....but never actually bothered to close the circle.

AND:

A "Beltaine ritual" which started with a teenager running around the circle blowing bubbles to "call the fairies" because "They're our friends! They love us and want to help us!"(UMmm, please STUDY your lore folks!). Moving on to the hokey pokey and ending in a conga line to the food.

NEVER again. Scary thing is that the second group is actually quite public around here.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	zenturbo 2006-03-27 09:24 pm UTC (link)
	Perchance, was this a ritual put on by The Crafters, or members thereof? They are of the "Pythonic Tradition" of Wicca in which they claim puts humour into ritual, but gives them free license to be morons. That sounds like something they would do. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

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faeryl, 2006-03-27 09:57 pm UTC

stitchwhich
2006-03-27 08:33 pm UTC (link)

Going to a public ritual that was 'women only' and finding out that it was a mony-raising scam for the 'HP', who had insisted that we all wear the same sort of clothes (which she was willing to make for folks 'for a slight fee'), special foods that caused many of us to have to drive to a different town for the ingredients, and then in the middle of ritual, after the wards had been set up and we were warned we shouldn't leave, she tried to shake down the participants for cash as 'donations to continue my good work' and to get us to promise under oath to take 12 paid classes from her so we could 'fully understand the nature off all that we do here today'.

Uh, yeah. It was my first experience with someone who was not an initiate and didn't encourage me to take others who I met seriously until they'd proven themselves (I got over that after time. But wow...)

(Reply to this) (Thread)

faeryl
2006-03-27 09:03 pm UTC (link)

*smacks forehead*

Oh good grief.

That's worse than the Southern Baptist orchestra I played in during junior high school.

The one with the gym inside the church. And a coffee bar.

We toured Germany - and we all had to buy these hideous, waay overpriced polyester blouses for concerts from a member's sewing business. And when some of us complained the music director stood up in front of us and made a huge show of breaking down into tears and railing about how "the devil" was trying to keep us from doing the good work...
(of lining someone's pockets, that is...)

But then, I never saw a Sunday service in which the preacher *didn't* equate getting to heaven with filling up those tithing trays.

OK, slightly off topic. Wrong religious paradigm, sorry. :-)

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

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sunfell, 2006-03-27 09:31 pm UTC

	NEVER AGAIN THE PUBLIC RITUAL TIMES!!!! dbmyrrha 2006-03-27 08:36 pm UTC (link)
	A "Beltaine ritual" which started with a teenager running around the circle blowing bubbles to "call the fairies" because "They're our friends! They love us and want to help us!"(UMmm, please STUDY your lore folks!) Yeah, I have issues with that, too. Big Time. it's even better when they do it at Samhain. :) (Reply to this) (Thread)

	Re: NEVER AGAIN THE PUBLIC RITUAL TIMES!!!! tryst_inn 2006-03-27 09:02 pm UTC (link)
	Saw a group invoke the elements by shimmying in the individual quarters with element color corresponded feather boas. Kid you not. You'd have thought it was a ritual done by drag queens! (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Re: NEVER AGAIN THE PUBLIC RITUAL TIMES!!!! -

lookingforwater, 2006-03-27 09:28 pm UTC

Re: NEVER AGAIN THE PUBLIC RITUAL TIMES!!!! -

glowroper, 2006-03-27 10:14 pm UTC

Re: NEVER AGAIN THE PUBLIC RITUAL TIMES!!!! -

tryst_inn, 2006-03-27 10:16 pm UTC

	My first marriage? edwarddain 2006-03-27 08:45 pm UTC (link)
	Picture a historic Unitarian Church that has had an entire grove of trees (potted) brought into the sanctuary and let your mind go from there... (Reply to this)

sunfell
2006-03-27 08:45 pm UTC (link)

I won't go to public rituals any more, and I definitely will not conduct any, either.

Two memories, although not terribly traumatic (to us, anyway) stand out:

The public circle in which a woman brought a stroller. We did not move during that circle because the baby was asleep.

The private ritual which was outside and off a country road that got 'buzzed' by local hicks screaming "Jesus Loves You!". Twice. The third time the car came by, it was being towed. Nothing quite like having the 'whammy' put on a car's computer by three Adepts...

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	wyrdsister_x 2006-03-27 08:51 pm UTC (link)
	ROFL!! I would have paid to see that! (the car towing, not the baby in the stroller. ;) (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

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sunfell, 2006-03-27 09:28 pm UTC

brock_tn
2006-03-27 09:03 pm UTC (link)

Oh, gods...

From my own trad:

The HP (a 6-ft-plus Vietnam vet) is casting the circle with a sword, using a newly-written invocation. At the climax of the invocation, he thrusts the sword vigorously skyward, having totally forgotten that he's doing this in a room with an 8 1/2-foot ceiling. The sword ended up stuck about three inches into a 2x6 ceiling joist, and required the efforts of 3 male coveners to remove it.

Stuff I've seen:

A Samhain ritual by an eclectic pagan group, now long defunct. The ritual began with the HP casting the Circle by wandering around the outside of the group scattering fireplace ashes from Ye-3-LB-Maxwell-House-Coffee-Tin-Of-The-Art. A member of the group spent the entire ritual sitting next to the fire pit muttering to a number of pebbles held in his cupped hands, but never quite loudly enough that what he was saying could be made out. A junior priestess, who was evidently under the mistaken impression that she was a bel canto soprano, sang an excruciatingly long song about Morgan le Fay in the key of off. The HP gave a sermon on the subject of abundance, then announced that the last part of the ritual would be taking place at another location on the property, so everyone present simply walked out of/through the established Circle and over to this other location, where most of them did something that involved tying candles and bits of paper to bushes and shrubs with bits of red string.

At a national pagan gathering, the HP tasked with running the MAIN RITUAL for the entire event, for which a total of 2 hours have been blocked, which time includes 30 minutes for the procession up to the ritual site on the hillside overlooking the camp, and another 30 minutes for the participants to stagger back down the hill in the dark, announces that he wants to subject EACH OF THE 300-ODD PARTICIPANTS to a full-scale, all-four-elements cleansing before that person may step into the ritual space. We didn't quite cut his throat and bury him in the woods, but it came close to going that way. Hearing a chorus of junior priestesses chanting "Blood makes the grass grow," does make one wonder...

Stuff I've heard about:

A gathering way, WAY up in a National Forest, ninety minutes driving time AFTER you go past the End Of The Pavement. The first night, all of the gathering is sitting around the bonfire, and people are introducing themselves. Call it a community-building ritual. And a Sweet Young Thing gets up, and says: "I'm Honeysuckle Sunflower, and I'm having a baby."

"That's marvelous, dear," comes the expected response. "When are you due?"

"No, you don't understand. I'm having a baby RIGHT NOW!"

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	lookingforwater 2006-03-27 09:38 pm UTC (link)
	"No one can sing bel canto without training. God doesn't allow it." I was reminded. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

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brock_tn, 2006-03-28 02:44 pm UTC

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paigemom, 2006-03-28 06:40 pm UTC

Where do you live? -

moon_ferret, 2006-03-28 06:37 pm UTC

Re: Where do you live? -

brock_tn, 2006-03-28 08:54 pm UTC

Re: Where do you live? -

moon_ferret, 2006-03-28 09:09 pm UTC

Re: Where do you live? -

dolmena, 2006-08-11 09:27 pm UTC

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brewhexe, 2006-03-29 05:19 pm UTC

	fionnulaharp 2006-03-27 09:26 pm UTC (link)
	The Jesus ritual on Good Friday. Our Open Full Moon group still hasn't recovered. Gah! (Reply to this)

beckyzoole
2006-03-27 09:26 pm UTC (link)

A Samhain ritual in which each participant, two or three at a time, was invited to approach the bonfire and silently commune with their beloved dead. Most people spent about a minute, then returned to their place in the circle. But one young man sat next to the fire and stayed there.

Everyone else had finished. We stood in the circle, in the cold and the dark, waiting for him to finish communing. He stayed there.

The HP approached him and asked if he needed help. He shook his head, and stayed there.

Time passed. Some people started to wander away from the circle. Others smoked cigarettes and told dirty jokes. He stayed there.

Finally, finally, the HP led the young man out of the circle, and the ritual re-commenced.

We later learned he was tripping on acid, enjoying all the groovy patterns in the bonfire.

Urgh.

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	falinia 2006-03-28 12:36 am UTC (link)
	oh man, substance abuse shouldn't happen until after the cakes and wine. Everybody knows that the gods prefer their entertainment _after_ the work is done (they're godly that way) (Reply to this) (Parent)

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moon_ferret, 2006-03-28 06:38 pm UTC

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beckyzoole, 2006-03-28 08:23 pm UTC

breklor
2006-03-27 10:30 pm UTC (link)

I've been pretty lucky; I've been to some rituals that fell kinda flat and some that just didn't quite do it for me, but only two that were genuinely traumatic.

The first was a Beltane ritual in a clearing in the forest near Vancouver. The ritual had been written in Gaelic, and was delivered in Gaelic, but none of the priesty-types (who were reading off scripts) had apparently had any instruction in Gaelic pronunciation, so they were massacring the language. Meanwhile, there was no translation for any of the rest of us, so they could have been delivering the Gaelic Black Mass or reciting football scores for all we knew.

The second was supposed to be a healing circle. Well, what it was *supposed* to be was the friendly, pagan-lite "Skyclad Circle" that is held at one of our local pagan gatherings every year. The intention is to have a nice light-hearted circle to introduce people to skycladness in a mellow environment. The HP announced that it would be a healing circle for a little girl who had terminal cancer. Well, of course, we all flocked to the circle. Then once we were all in circle it was announced that we would be offering blood as an "intervention" to Kali (i.e. "Hey Kali, take our blood and spare this little girl"). The blood offering was optional, but still... Once the ritual got started, it went from bad to worse. The HP was fairly snarling, calling Kali "bitch" and "sow". The HPess fainted and had to be carried away. The blood bowl got knocked over. And in the end I never did hear if the little girl got better.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	faeryl 2006-03-27 11:09 pm UTC (link)
	?! Invoking Kali, offering her blood then calling her "bitch" and "sow" is just asking for trouble. I'm really fond of that particular Goddess, but Holy ($%)#! Children are still kidnapped and sacrificed to Her over in India from time to time. smacks forehead yet again Hate to see what they'd consider to be a darker working... (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

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breklor, 2006-03-27 11:33 pm UTC

	mepoindexter 2006-03-27 10:52 pm UTC (link)
	WTF?! Is that supposed to be like Seasonal affective disorder? The desiese that technically doesn't exist? Am I the only one who understands the psychology of environmental determinism? (Reply to this) (Thread)

	breklor 2006-03-27 11:34 pm UTC (link)
	Yes. Yes, you are. Lucky, lucky you. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	blackdragon5 2006-03-27 11:19 pm UTC (link)
	This whole discussion makes me extremely glad I'm solitary!! (Reply to this) (Thread)

	breklor 2006-03-27 11:35 pm UTC (link)
	Eh, I think you might be throwing some pretty decent babies out with some admittedly stinky bathwater... YMMV, of course... (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

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blackdragon5, 2006-03-28 01:43 am UTC

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dbmyrrha, 2006-03-28 12:24 am UTC

cateriona
2006-03-27 11:29 pm UTC (link)

Let's see...

I was at a "social event" during Samhain called the "Witch's Ball" in Reno, Nevada and they did a spiral dance. Without proper grounding and enough protein in my system I lost my sense of "time." Unfortunately, almost all of the sensible people were drinking and there was no one to help me, so... Well let's say that it would be a good time to invest in Circus Circus stock because the new addition to the one in Reno is going to be a big hit!!

(Reply to this)

green_fae
2006-03-27 11:39 pm UTC (link)

Lessee,
I've weathered so many public as well as private ritual trainwrecks...
•Person who commandeered ritual invocation to tell a story of her traumatic life, CURSE the gods and throw
blood-stained clothing onto the ritual pyre...
•Fluffy bunny coven where noone knew the Directions and where to put the Elemental candles. They read the labels the mall store put on them to decide which was which. ("uh, this blue one says, "Fire" on it, so um, we'll put it... where? Oh the south?") They passed a "talking stick" *during the ritual* and invited us to "share" (and the other guest and I were struggling to keep a straight face). The HP of the occasion decided to "share" that she hated everyone and was quitting the group. Then they contiued the rest of the ritual as if nothing had happened. When they started quoting Heinlein novels, we were kicking each other to keep from laughing impotlitely. It was our fastest feast-and-escape ever.
•Closed all female coven where one day there were suddenly male visitors without any prior notice.
Large, sky-clad men one member thought would be great to invite along.
•Small ritual in a small apartment where somebody's guest invited several total strangers along without trifling to
check in with her hostess.
•Public ritual where the "inner court" left the ritual space to perform a private initiate-only ritual 15 feet away leaving the guests shivering in the dark, in silence, with no explanation, for what seemed like forever but was probably about 20 minutes (duh, I wasn't wearing a watch)
•Ritual where one bowl of objects-to-be-blessed was passed around to close to 40 people.
Cue "This is the chant that never ends/it just goes on and on my friend..."

(Reply to this)

lucifera_shadow
2006-03-27 11:48 pm UTC (link)

Taken directly from my own journal, from this past June:

"You had THREE WEEKS to write a ritual for the Summer Solstice celebration that YOU planned. The gathering is supposed to start at 5pm. I call you at 4 and you tell me you just had just started and were still ~~stealing from the internet~~ working on the ritual that you are supposed to lead, that you haven't ~~plagiarized~~ written all of the quarter calls yet, and that you haven't even taken a shower or cooked whatever it was you were bringing to the potluck. You say you have been ~~sitting on your fat ass in front of your computer in those stupid BDSM chatrooms~~ "busy" all this time. You being unemployed, I find this ridiculous, but don't say anything.
You tell me you'll be at the gathering by a little after 6. I get there at 5:30 and hang around and chat with everyone, we all eat, and then I leave at 7:30, when there's still no sign of you, to take my husband and son home. I get back 45 minutes later and you've just arrived.
This is supposed to be a sunset ritual. It's pitch fucking black by the time we get started, because we have to scramble around searching like mad for tools because you forgot absolutely everything, including candles, the chalice, the athame, the salt, and the vessels to keep the salt and water in. Oh, and that's not the only thing you forget, dear...you neglect to include any kind of energy-raising, so the whole ritual fell as flat as yesterday's beer. Once we're actually able to get through the entire ~~comedy of errors~~ ritual, we realize you have forgotten to ~~plagiarize~~ include the quarter dismissals, so we all have to make them up on the fly, which some of our participants stammered through horribly and embarrassingly (but not me, because I actually know how to LEAD A GODDAMNED RITUAL!)"

It would be almost funny if this were actually the first time this sort of thing has happened with this woman in our pagan group.
Needless to say, that was my first, and last, time I ever participated in a ritual with that person.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	brock_tn 2006-03-28 02:34 am UTC (link)
	Please, tell me how and where you met my first student? (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

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lucifera_shadow, 2006-03-28 02:38 am UTC

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blackthornglade, 2006-03-29 02:34 am UTC

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lucifera_shadow, 2006-03-29 02:48 am UTC

	goddess allergic to cheese? falinia 2006-03-28 12:28 am UTC (link)
	1. When doing a ritual requiring an offering try to be prepared so as not to be forced to use kraft dinner. 2. When offering kraft dinner, do NOT burn it (smells worse than hair) 3. When stupid enough to make an offering of kraft dinner by buring, avoid doing so indoors. 'nuf said. (Reply to this)

	Not exactly a Pagan ritual akennett 2006-03-28 12:47 am UTC (link)
	But there was this bris thing...And the worst part was, my parents just stood there and let the guy do it. Talk about your post-ritual trauma! (Reply to this) (Thread)

	Re: Not exactly a Pagan ritual moon_ferret 2006-03-28 06:42 pm UTC (link)
	You have to stop trying to get me fired. IT said that if I ruined one more keyboard with coffee that came out my nose... (Reply to this) (Parent)

frauholla
2006-03-28 01:28 am UTC (link)

The worst ritual I have ever been to was one in which they invited various death/dark goddesses in place of the four directions. I do not remember what directions were for each, but they invited Kali, Hecate, The Morrigan, and one other that I do not remember. The "purpose" of the ritual was to transform negative things in your life into positive things. When it was over they did not thank or bid farewell to the goddesses called. They just opened the circle and that was it. Within 15 minutes of the end of the ritual I was in my car and miles away.

I later heard that the campground where it was held had problems with people behaving very badly that night and a week after.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	firedrake_mor 2006-03-28 03:14 am UTC (link)
	I remember a Beltaine rite gone horribly wrong when the young lady invoking the Morrigan (who -is- one of our regulars), insisted on blood, death, gore and the choosing of the slain as the aspects she chose. We had one student never come back after that -- she got all the wrong energy. (Reply to this) (Parent)

deadgirl4life
2006-03-28 02:26 am UTC (link)

It wasn't a ritual, but there were rituals involved.
A few days ago I went to a "psychic fair" at the local UU church. It was described to me as follows by one church official: "There's going to be drumming circles and free everything: card readings, psychic readings, food, classes and dancing." When I got there, nothing was free. Nothing (if I'm going to pay ten dollars for a brownie, it better make me trip balls).
There were classes, but they cost $25 dollars each. There were readings, but those cost up to $150 each. There were no drumming circles and no one was dancing. There were booths set up by ladies with pentacles as big as my fist, selling spells for $30. As in, written instructions. There was a group of teenagers in heavy black eye liner performing various spells for people. For $20. Some people were actually performing a ritual. But there was bloodletting involved, so I didn't get too close to see what it was exactly.
I felt so out of place. I was the only person there not dressed up for a night of D&D.
There were people trying to show off their "powers". Regardless of if they had any psychic ability, there was an abundance of people who were practicing psychic vampires. My life force, and my cell phone, were not pleased.
Highlight of the day: some guy trying to pick me up by telling me I looked like the evil chick from The Craft. Saddly, this is not rare.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	cumaeansibyl 2006-03-28 05:29 pm UTC (link)
	And people wonder why I don't trust the UUs. Can psychic vampires steal cell phone battery power? That might actually be useful. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

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deadgirl4life, 2006-03-29 02:06 am UTC

kallisty
2006-03-28 03:15 am UTC (link)

Midsummer ritual that was cancelled due to the organizer/space owners deciding to do the ritual of "go to bar, pick up guys", with no warning to anyone who showed up...

*facepalm*

They were running a pagan supply shop at the time, which went under - I believe they blamed the local fundies...

Right. Snub most of your customers and just WATCH them be willing to drive half an hour further out.

Farther back, down in Atlanta, there was a student pagan group. We had meetings to discuss each others faiths and brought in guests from a lot of the local groups. We also took turns leading rituals. This one lady says she wants to do a healing ritual, and takes us nearby one of the dorms, where there is a tree.

Well, she starts reading from some book on druidry - those words she uttered had no relation to the poor, abandoned words in the book. At this point, she asks to borrow someone's athame - the club sponsor. He gives it to her, at which point, she cuts her palm open and presses it against the tree.

Cue all the energies going for a whole damn new sense of shifting, with everyone looking like they've been suckerpunched, especially the sponsor. It ends quickly, and the lady says she's exhausted, and wanders off. The rest of us just kind of collapse in the meadow nearby and try to figure what the hell just happened.

Funny what happens when you ask some of the guest speakers in the next couple days how word gets back to the original person. Apparently, she claimed it was some great secret that I wasn't ready for. Riiiiggghhhhtttt, even at that point, my BS-o-meter pinged off the scale. She said something or another about how I needed to watch my back. Being cocky, I walked off shrugging, and then the sponsor looked at one of my necklaces (yes, I still had tons of fluff to me), and the fema was crumbling on the spot.

Odd, could have been anything, but I figure that it MIGHT have been something or another, so I became more circumspect, and the sponsor disinvited her from future gatherings.

Ah, the joys of Ma Tech,
Larry

(Reply to this)

firedrake_mor
2006-03-28 03:18 am UTC (link)

I fear I may have caused some trauma once.

I'd been invited to speak on the subject of Male Mysteries at an annual gathering in the San Fernando Valley, that was hosted normally by a group called "The Pallas Society" that, as you might imagine was primarily Goddess oriented.

Being the good Celt that I am, I walked in in leine, cloak, elk-hide boots, and the headdress you see in my icon. I understand that conversation -stopped- when people saw me. As it was, I had several prominent female pagans in my class, and stood up and said, "All right gentleman, we've been hearing the womyn talk about regaining their "HERstory". I'm here to tell you we need to reclaim our "HIMitage."

I actually got some complements from some of the female authors present, but I got the feeling they were rather startled to be giving them *grin*.

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singswithtrees
2006-03-28 08:05 am UTC (link)

A Beltane ritual being given by a local Druidic/Wiccan (I never did figure out which one they were supposed to be) where the circle was outlined in red string. The only thing that happened during the ritual was that one pre-teen girl read us "Celtic fairy tales", which turned out to be Victorian-era modern stories about sweet little pixies with butterfly wings. They also had a gorgeous Maypole set up, but none of the people running the ritual actually knew how to do the dance.

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