RFD 180 Winter 2019 by RFD Magazine Gay

Number 180 Winter 2019 â&#x20AC;¢ $11.95

RITUALS

RFD 180 Winter 2019 1

Issue 181 / Spring 2020

LOVE LETTERS

Submission Deadline: January 21, 2020 www.rfdmag.org/upload

We’re asking you to consider love. Recently, we’ve been reading Proust’s letters to Reynaldo Hahn, his first lover. Many of the earliest letters were suppressed by Proust’s family but even the letters available to us cast a light on how basic language engages the heart. On Hahn’s side there are his letters as well but also his wonderful music. So we’re asking you, our readers, to consider either love letters, poems or photos or artwork which came to you as a way of someone showing you their love and appreciation. Oftentimes, something passionate is caged in the moment of passion or love making and is fixed in time, while a letter, a poem, a note can act to fix the memory, to memorialize it as well as casting a spell of reverie, continuance of that moment. Such things often bring us closer to our desires and often scare us with the power of that moment. We both cherish it as precious and amazing and being a place of proof of something more than that one moment. Consider sharing those moments with us as a way to celebrate the divine wonder of passion, desire and its aftereffects release. Please look in all places where love was returned to you as a fragment fixed in time. Please share this widely as we’d love to hear from as many lovers as possible.

LEGENDARY CHILDREN Ritual Faeries Dancing Issue 182 / Summer 2020 Submission Deadline: April 21,Winter 20202019 Vol 46 No 2 #180 www.rfdmag.org/upload

Between the Lines Holler if you identify as QTIPOC. What’s that? And those who stand without, who see the dance You say you’ve never heard the term. No prob.

and do not hear the music—what more weird fantastic folly, the madness of the saturnalia, the people of color. And we wantfury to hear from you. sacred of eleusinian or evantian choir, ever dawns upon their dazzled darkness! —Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford For too long, qweer culture has pushed the lives (from “Sir Rohan’s Ghost,” 1860)

QTIPOC is shorthand for qweer/trans/intersex

and stories of people of color to the sidelines.

Ritual. queer as nature, to life, they (r)evolve us through These days we may beAs more familiar withintrinsic the work

the patterns, rhythms and repetitions that express the innovations of our same-sameness, difference by evolutionary difference. Our rituals, those son and George Takei, and Sylvia Rivera,of queer spirit initiate us to pageants ofBayard the FoolRustin and ecstatic ceremonies to come outwhat and, if onlyittemporarily, Chrystos andcontinue Audre Lorde—but does take to live guide now us into and through mythopoeic realms, the sacred spaces of our own co-fabrications. In as an everyday QTIPOC? How does the world embrace you? How does it restrict you? the fae-ephemeral we become gatekeepers and psychopomps tending Our diverse viewpoints flavor our interactions, theunknowables. interpersonal to the intra-comthresholds between life’s knowns andfrom death’s Rituals at their bestintersects revive to embody Atwhat their happens? worst they How munal. When the QTIPOC realm with the imagination. Faerie realm, perpetuate violence by pilfering other culture’s mysteries. As ritual artists has this intersection changed you? How has this intersection changed Fae space? how do our practices decolonize and unsettle supremacist paradigms? And in times of near despair, how do our endogenous rites renew our sense child-like-wonder? This editionand of RFD has gathered a coven and We’re looking for of essays and free verse, artwork autofiction, choreopoems* of poets, essayists, and the visually crafty to call us to back to our own pix: You choose the format you feel will best communicate your own QTIPOC experiinitiatory journeys, into the creative erotics of our own lives. Between ence. Think of the sheets QTIPOC who are just discovering themselves: these yougeneration will find magical recipes, mundane rants and otherWhat sex-blessing to guide us the through theQTIPOC challenging would you like to pass ontexts to them? And young out days there:ahead. WhatGiven info would the wisdom of the primary and deep connection to our ancestors we’ve you like your elders and teachers to keep in mind? What will it take to bring all of us— learned from indigenous practices, we begin this edition with pieces whether we identify as dyke, homo, Two-Spirit, polyam, pansexual, asexual or bi—to a celebrating the lives of two pillars of our extended communities, noting the amazing lives they’dyou led, have the gifts they freely offeredMaybe within you’d ritual be willing place of Radical inclusion? Maybe a piece of answer. settings. May the magic of our intersecting communities encourage us to to share. outwit the fear-fuelled monsters at our gate. May the portals to what Harry Hay called “new vistas of lovingly again through malice be So here’s theconsciousness” call, QTIPOC. be Now’s the opened time forand all never the legendary children to bring that broken. May our mystical rites continue to queer the wyrld-hole.

and voices of famous folk—think of Marsha P. John-

summer heat. Tell RFD what you think, show us how you live, reveal how you feel. We want to see you shine.

With big kisses from a hillside in Vermont —The RFD Collective

*“Choreopoems” comes from the playwright Ntozake Shange, in reference to her play “For Colored Girls who have Considered Suicide.”

RFD 180 Winter 2019 1 Photo: Josie Faser

Submission Deadlines Winter–October 21, 2019 Spring–January 21, 2019 See inside covers for themes and specifics.

On the Covers

Front & Back: “The Sisters of Fulfillment Sing Their Songs of Contentment Under the Autumn Night Sky,” by Donald L. Engstrom-Reese

Production

Guest Editors: robin hood and Rosie Delicious Managing Editor: Bambi Gauthier Art Director: Matt Bucy

For advertising, subscriptions, back issues and other information visit www.rfdmag.org

Visual Contributors in this Issue

Images or pieces not directly associated with an article. RFD is a reader-written journal for gay people which focuses on country living and encourages alternative lifestyles. We foster community building and networking, explore the diverse expressions of our sexuality, care for the environment, Radical Faerie consciousness, and nature-centered spirituality, and share experiences of our lives. RFD is produced by volunteers. We welcome your participation. The business and general production are coordinated by a collective. Features and entire issues are prepared by different groups in various places. RFD (ISSN# 0149-709X) is published quarterly for $25 a year by RFD Press, P.O. Box 302, Hadley MA 01035-0302. Postmaster: Send address changes to RFD, P.O. Box 302, Hadley MA

RFD 180 Winter 2019

01035-0302. Non-profit tax exempt #62-1723644, a function of RFD Press with office of registration at 231 Ten Penny Rd., Woodbury, TN 37190. RFD Cover Price: $9.95. A regular subscription is the least expensive way to receive it four times a year. First class mailed issues will be forwarded. Others will not. Send address changes to submissions@rfdmag.org or to our Hadley, MA address. Copyright © RFD Press. The records required by Title 18 U.S.D. Section 2257 and associated with respect to this magazine (and all graphic material associated therewith on which this label appears) are kept by the custodian of records at the following location: RFD Press, 85 N Main St, Ste 200, White River Junction, VT 05001.

Mike Kear. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,41 Joel Singer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Michael Starkman.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13,35 Joseph Minutello.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 David Monteith-Hodge.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Devlin Shand.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Kisses / Catherine Deneuve 26,57 Ryan Buchholz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Donald L. Engstrom-Reese.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30,32 Lux.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Madrone Jack.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Ian Douglas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

Samhain drum circle altar 2017. Photo by Kerfuffle aka mikekear.com.

CONTENTS Be Travels On, A celebration of Life and Death. . . . . . . . . Mountaine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Michael W. Hathaway. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 We Are Faery. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Michael Hathaway. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Bad Ritual Guide. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bad Dog. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Calling the Queer Corners. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Oshee Eagleheart. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Invocation/Out-Vocation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Andrew Ramer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 What We Faeries Learned About Ritual From The Dance For All People: ‘Structure Is Not a Dirty Word Any More’. . Kwai Lam. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Hot Seat: It’s Like Heart Circle, But Also a Gangbang. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . May. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Ritual: Walking Between Worlds . . . . . . . . . . . Sâde Gryffin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 The Winter Dreamers Are Singing. . . . . . . . . . Donald L. Engstrom-Reese . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 New York City Radical Faeries Yule. . . . . . . . . Donald Gallagher. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 The Importance of the Trickster. . . . . . . . . . . . Trixie. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Ritual, A Life’s Journey. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . West. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Ritual Queen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Shokti. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Interview with Keith / Cuz’n. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . robin hood. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Poem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . D.S. Humphries. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Rituals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Timothy White Eagle and Adrain Chesser. . 48 Faerie Sex Magick Turns Thirty . . . . . . . . . . . . robin hood and participant-facilitators. . . 50 Ritual In Performance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Crafty / Shelton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Kali Dasi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dossie Easton. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 Honoring the Vow to Prosymnos. . . . . . . . . . . Frater Guaiferius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 The Kisses of Ares. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Wes Hartley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Don Shewey on “The Paradox of Porn”. . . . . . Franklin Abbott. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

RFD 180 Winter 2019 3

RFD 180 Winter 2019

Be on the Short Mountain Sanctuary porch. Photo courtesy author.

Be Travels On

A celebration of Life and Death

By Mountaine

Be, a/k/a William Byron Whiting II, a/k/a Bundle Be, was born on March 21, 1929 in Delevan, NY, and took his last breath at the age of 90 on October 13, 2019 in Liberty, TN.

e was many things to many people. He was an unmissable presence at Short Mountain gatherings starting in 1980. He was the ultimate drag queen—his outfits were unique and often over-the-top in their fabulosity, and at 6’2” he and they were very visible! (Unlike many aging folks, he didn’t seem to lose any of his height over the years.) He immersed himself in gratitude for all the gifts showered on him in his life. His sunny personality and charismatic style were legendary. He often told new Faeries about the difference between clapping one’s hands (indicating approval or—heaven forfend—obligation!), and hissing (in solidarity). He once said, “I never met a dick I didn’t like!” And he got to like a lot of them! Sister Soami (“Mish”) was editor of this magazine for many years, and remembers Be as “the best proofreader RFD ever had,” able to read the entire issue in twenty four hours and return it with important corrections. He was known to express his views strongly in public from time to time. When he shouted, “Focus, people!” or “Shut up!” his words were heard across the land. He was the revered “bundle keeper” for the Tennessee Naraya / Dance for all People, and was very serious about his ceremonial role of keeping peoples’ prayers alive and vibrant. Be was a highly skilled actor, director, and puppeteer. From 1964-1974, he was a member of the famous Bil Baird Marionette Theater, based in New York City. He performed with the Bairds in their huge show in the Chrysler pavilion at the 1964/65 New York World’s Fair, toured with them for ten years, and joined them frequently on television, including a Muppet Christmas special, and their enactment of the landing on the moon. In later years, Be loved to regale listeners with his fabulous memory of the opening night of the

Bairds’ Wizard of Oz puppet show. Be had already played the Wicked Witch onstage, so he was the puppeteer chosen for that role. It turned out that Margaret Hamilton (the iconic wicked witch in the original movie) was in the audience. She sought him out after the show, and said, “Your witch was just marvelous. The torch is passed!” In telling the story, Be said, “I’ve lived on that, as almost all my friends can tell you, for the rest of my life. Actors don’t get that kind of accolade all that often!” In 1974 Be moved to Virginia Beach with his then-partner Henry, to be more involved in the spiritual work of Edgar Cayce. He was also active in professional theater there, and played many lead roles, including Lady Bracknell in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, and Malvolio in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Then in 1998 he relocated to middle Tennessee to be near his Faerie community. In 2005 he attended the first Tennessee Naraya/ Dance for all People, and those ceremonies led by native elders became a huge part of his life up to the end. For many years, until his health begin declining in 2018, he drove across the country every year to attend these events in Utah, Montana, at Wolf Creek in Oregon, and other places. To enjoy his long-distance driving, he praised the combination of frequent coffee and marijuana! Not many years ago, Be reconnected with his best friend Bill from childhood. When they found each other online, they hadn’t been in touch since high school. Be loved telling the story of his first visit back to the Buffalo area to see Bill again. They were taking a drive, revisiting memories of places they’d gone together as youths, when Bill asked, “Do you remember what we used to do when we pulled the car over?” Be certainly did! And Bill continued, “Do you think we could do something like that again?” Be eagerly agreed. His gorgeous blue eyes would light up when speaking of Bill as his “boyfriend.” Since around 2012, Be didn’t make it to most SMS Beltaine gatherings, because Bill’s birthday was May 1st, and Be preferred to drive twelve hours each way from Tennessee and spend the gathering week with him! In 2015, at age 86, I got to travel with Be, celebrating his first-ever trip to Europe. He told me (and the many friends who helped to pay for his trip) that RFD 180 Winter 2019 5

ever since the age of twenty he’d dreamt of being in England and returning on an ocean liner. So it was a really big deal, and fun in so many ways! He was an ideal travel companion, whether gawking at the Mona Lisa, taking in ballet and concerts, seeing Judy Dench and Kenneth Branagh in Shakespeare, meeting up with Faeries in Paris and London, or eating magnificent food. To complete his dream, we returned on the Queen Mary II ocean liner, a sevenday immersion in luxury. In reviewing the cruise ship itinerary, I saw that there was to be a masquerade ball one evening. I mentioned it to Be months in advance, and suggested that if he wanted to bring one of his ball gowns, I’d be his tuxedo-clad escort. Of course, he readily agreed. And what fun we had, appearing in the vast dining room at the top of the grand staircase, gliding arm-in-arm to our table, astonishing the ladies who were our nightly dinner companions, dancing together to a live jazz band, and then proudly winning a costume award. Be’s health had a resurgence for his fabulous 90th birthday celebrations, for a four-day trip to New York the same month, and for Short Mountain Sanctuary’s Beltaine 2019, where he again demonstrated the power of his flamboyant spirit at the Mayday ritual, calling in “Grandfather Sky.” He also made his final stage appearance at that gathering—in a fabulous cameo as Southern Belle Eve, one of the Seven Dream Eves in the powerful Faerie production of Paradise Lost in Space. His big line, delivered in an exquisite Southern drawl, was: “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” The following month, his seizures started. By late summer he was in a nursing home. When his doctor put him on anti-seizure meds, and said that cannabis would interfere with its effects, Be was very sad that he’d never be able to smoke weed again. Then, six weeks later, a few hours after his death in the home of a dear friend, some members of his (very fabulous and dedicated) care team smoked a joint, and one of us blew the smoke into his mouth. Picture that, and make up your own story about how he treasured the gift! A few days earlier, on increasing doses of morphine, Be had been less and less verbal, sinking into himself. But at one point he sat up suddenly, and with the clearly enunciated and well-projected voice we knew so well, spoke three words: “Grace under Pressure.” That was his final statement (at least while in his body) on how to savor this beautiful human life. It was a most gracious ending to the life of one of the most gracious people I have ever known. 6

RFD 180 Winter 2019

From about 2009-2012, Be worked on documenting his life through a series of performances titled “Be Live,” and interviews with Jacqalin Maple Keeling (known then as Free). The notes from these projects allow for the reconstruction of his life story, in his own words, in great detail. Here’s an (edited) example from the period when he lived in Virginia Beach: “In 1980 I got involved with the UUGC, the Unitarian Universalist Gay Community. At their Fourth Annual Gay and Lesbian conference on Memorial Day weekend, the keynote speaker was Harry Hay. His speech was about faeries—how faeries are born, not made—and about the respect we deserve as human beings with special gifts. I will never forget the final line to his talk. He said: The Day will come, though I may not live to see it, when a faerie child is born into a family (and make no mistake, they always know by age six or seven, or often earlier) and the reaction will be ‘Gasp! One of those!!!’ Not ‘Ew. One of those.’” “I also attended a workshop (with two of my friends) that Harry gave on subjectsubject consciousness, the whole idea of treating people as subjects, not as objects. Harry invited us to go to Colorado in August for the Second Annual Gathering for Radical Faeries. And we decided to go. I was working as a social worker at the time, back to my college major, and I got the time off. (One does have to eat, and the theatre scene in Virginia Beach did not pay all that well.) I had a ‘64 Ford Falcon at the time. The three of us piled in the car and traveled to Colorado. The trip there was an adventure in itself. But when we got there, it was mind-blowing: 325 or 350 people from all over the world, talking about their lives. There were a lot of Faeries there, and I realized I was one of them! So that began my career as a Faerie. The next year, in 1981, Short Mountain held its first spring gathering, and I decided I really needed to go. I’ve been going to the Mountain twice a year ever since. I’ve missed a few through the years, but not many.”

Michael W. Hathaway 11/11/1941–1/2/2019

Authored by Michael Hathaway, with edits by James Griffith, Richard Parker and BB Ha!

onderful faerie spirit Michael Hathaway (Billie name: Hank) died on Vashon Island, Washington, January 2, 2019. He grew up in Southern California and lived his long and notably peripatetic life in San Francisco, Sonoma County, Cambridge MA, Bavaria, the Greek Islands, Kathmandu and Prague. After decades as an environmental activist and poet, he wrote a multi-volume memoir demonstrating “the possible happiness of life.” His personal idealism and optimism were gifts from his mystical German-born mother and his loving American diplomat grandparents, gifts nurtured by seven years at the progressive and very liberating Happy Valley (now Besant Hill) School. He studied Russian language, culture, politics and history at Stanford —and also rowed varsity crew. Graduating with honors, he went on to graduate work at Harvard, the Free University of Berlin and ancient Charles University in Prague. With fluency in seven languages, he was a cosmopolitan global citizen. For a time, he seemed destined for teaching, writing and thinking—the quiet life of the scholar. But in his mid-twenties, the Vietnam War intervened, forcing choices on him (like millions in his generation) that fundamentally ended the prospect of an ivory tower life, just as surely as it overturned the nation and the world. Michael’s deep feelings about the war’s criminality let him to quit his Harvard doctoral studies to become a peace activist, and eventually to serve

Portrait of Hathaway by Joel Singer.

on the national staff of Eugene McCarthy’s 1968 insurgent presidential campaign. That summer, with thousands like him in Chicago for the Democratic National Convention, Michael got first-hand experience of the price peaceful protest can carry, and was beaten in the streets during the infamous police riots that enveloped the convention. It was a startling lesson for someone unaccustomed to violence, inexplicable in terms of the values he lived by and thought the country shared. (Sound familiar?) Sen. McCarthy’s heartbreaking defeat—and Nixon’s cynical victory that November—left him suddenly adrift, searching for a new path through which to live and teach those values. Learning—lifelong learning—and the love of teaching and nurturing were still at his core, but not to be lived out in the cloistered confines of universities. He morphed into a “longhaired, VW-vanliving hippie.” This alternative lifestyle presented a problem: he began to run out of money. Thus, in the early summer of 1969, Michael returned to Santa Barbara where with the help of friends he found work as a researcher at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, Robert Maynard Hutchins’ legendary progressive think tank. Here he could use his intellect and learning— but also keep his ponytail, VW bus, and spend his off-hours building the local antiwar movement. After two years at The Center, Michael returned to Europe, where he discovered the beautiful island of Hydra in Greece. Entranced by its beauty and the charm of its inhabitants, Michael realized that his $2,000 savings could buy a handsome five-arched, 440-year old ruin of a house. RFD 180 Winter 2019 7

For two years he restored his ruin with help from his new friend Yorgo, who had done the same to his own fallen house. The two men found deep connections, not only in rebuilding but in a wider world of spiritual passions. When Yorgo decided to travel to Kathmandu to immerse himself in Tibetan Buddhism, Michael followed his friend—with life-challenging results. While he had “wondrous experiences and shed many illusions” studying with Tibetan teachers, he also encountered hepatitis and lost 56 pounds— which forced his return to Santa Barbara for medical care and recovery. Kathmandu gave Michael new eyes and a new purpose. Inspired by Ralph Nader and thousands of then emerging activists, he wrote and published a “Calendar of Contemporary Saints” datebook, filled with vignettes of Michael’s personal “heroes and saints” and hand-illustrated by him in the manner of a medieval manuscript. The book was an instant critical success, winning praise from the incongruous likes of Marshall McLuhan, Buckminster Fuller, Jerry Brown, Lama Govinda, several members of Congress, and—in an unsought encounter with the commercial American mainstream—was featured on “The Today Show” by an enthusiastic Gene Shalit. For the next years, Michael deepened his involvement in Santa Barbara’s anti-Vietnam War peace movement (risky and scary back then, as you can see in Faerie Christopher Colorado Jones’s documentary The Boys Who Said No!). He helped found an alternative newspaper, and spent endless hours working in several other progressive causes. When restlessness returned, he moved to San Francisco. There he quickly became a full-time environmental activist, work he pursued for the next twenty-five years, first with David Brower at Friends of the Earth and then along with Brower as one of the founders of Earth Island Institute. Begun with modest borrowed funds, a dank office, and some old wooden folding chairs, Earth Island grew into a national success, a model for other progressive institutions of how to build a new society. Today, Earth Island sponsors sixtyfour projects worldwide, with a staff of more than a hundred (and as many volunteers), and a multimillion-dollar budget Michael said “was wisely managed and frugally spent.” While in San Francisco, Michael founded an “environmental-spiritual boarding house” called Magical Premises. He led a series of tours to the 8

RFD 180 Winter 2019

Soviet Union during the emerging Gorbachev Era that established some of the earliest working ties between American and Soviet environmental leaders. As AIDS became widespread, he took on the deeply painful work of helping to defend, celebrate and expand Gay freedoms while fighting the world’s inevitable fears as he cared for stricken friends. In the late 1980s, exhausted, Michael made a new home for himself in Guerneville, on the Russian River north of San Francisco. There he worked as a writer as well as a key figure in the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center’s renowned organic gardens. He regularly hunted wild mushrooms, gardened, and cooked festively for his many friends. He loved his magical home there. By the start of the new century, though, family called. His widowed mother Erica was growing frail and increasingly infirm, so he moved back to Santa Barbara to love and help care for her in her final years. She passed on in 2006 after ninety-six years of a truly rich, love-filled, rewarding life. After her death, he decided to devote his own remaining time to writing a series of book-length memoirs whose central purpose was to show the possible happiness and satisfaction of life. He hadn’t planned on more activism until the new Cheney-Bush administration revealed itself as astonishingly dangerous, destructive, and dishonest. So, though now well into his sixties, Michael threw himself for his last fifteen years into the task of exposing and discrediting not just Cheney-Bush but the ever-hungry Deep State behind them. He didn’t slow down after Obama’s election in 2008, as others did; instead he pushed on in a patient, relentless campaign against both the increasingly rapacious and mendacious right wing GOP and the Obama administration’s too-often-complaisant cooperation with “corporate Democrats” in Congress and business, who showed no interest in defending those they’re supposed to represent. But finally, toward the very end of his life, he decided the best use of his time was to finish his books, to offer inspiration, sustenance and comfort to the spiritually bold and persevering among us. In 2018, just a year short of his death, his magnum opus, The Possible Happiness of Life, appeared—a book which has inspired those few who have read it. He left a number of manuscripts unpublished, which may yet see the light of day.

We Are Faery We are Faery come to earth. We are Legend. Fresh embodiments of the Magical, Pure wildness is our nature and our home. Kindred of rocks, plants, and waters, yea, and all that truly lives, where wildness is, we are. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re transceivers, translators, gateways, loci for energies streaming. Other dimensions shimmer and play about our faces; their sheen defines our local shape. We love earthlife and human form. We offer freedom, passage and belonging, and bring developments till now barely tasted. Our lives blossom in unique and rigorous beauty: spiritual puzzles and assignments, the losing and finding of Love, and Spirit, playful adventures set in paradises in disguise. And always, in our mythic motion we serve the One. We are ancient, we are fresh creation. We are Faery. We are Legend. Feel welcome in our circle if you sense such things, or if you truly love, or hope, or dare. For indeed, ours is the intimacy of godly beings. â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Michael Hathaway (1987) From We Came to Love

RFD 180 Winter 2019 9

Bad Ritual Guide by Bad Dog

y odd life-story equipped me with natural suspicion towards cults, sects and guru/ follower dynamics. The quest to find the kindred souls has led me to various gathering and groups, alas often with single focus. Spiritual but a(nti) sexual, sexually aware but materialist, ecological but ideological—or various other combinations. Just not all that was important to me in one place. The discovery of Faerie space was sort of a revelation…at what felt like the end of this journey. The presence of sexuality, spirituality and nature among Faeries seemed almost like a synergy. The environmental respect for the ecosystem (that obligatory “Nature”) underscored by the feasts and festivities aligned with the wheel of the year, the sexuality rediscovered in the inspiration by the Two Spirit roles of shamans, healers, rite preservers. Everything interlinked. Now, the true irony comes. The more rituals I experienced with Faeries, the less eager I felt to entangle my spiritual needs in the communal mayhem. While the longing for experience of shared spirituality has driven me to the Faerie space, I often find myself fleeing the Faerie rituals into more personal and intimate space. The high concentration of esoteric species, gurus wrapped in dramatic rags, teachers of whatsoever kind—did not affect me more than with a rash. The cynical-me immunized against woo-woo, with the inbuilt suspicion as an obnoxious emergency valve. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind all the theater and the drag. It’s part of the synergy I have already mentioned—the shamans and tribal rituals always included costumes, role play, ritual reenactment of the archetypal stories—because the human mind is more susceptible to receive the “moral” through the story, through the emotion, through the sensual bewilderment. Colors, smells, music, dance, drama. It’s all in its place. I even developed an acquired taste for intrinsic Faerie subversion, for resistance towards ideology (and tradition), a sweet weak spot for farce or unexpected interruption or misplaced joke. Oh yes, sometimes I would love to experience also a ritual in more serious (what does it mean?… genuine? engaged? respectful?) manner—but I 10 RFD 180 Winter 2019

also see the value of the jester as a keeper of sanity and perspective. In connection with the medieval Mattachines or the other satirists—the challengers of powerful, the conscience of society, the dissenters. The questioning of ideology and tradition is a valuable skill—that this community is still exploring and learning. As a natural Taoist (i.e. not studied, but rather resonating with the core concept) I keep asking for the balance. Of the seriousness and farce, of the traditional and situational, reverent and innovative, didactic and creative. I keep asking how to convey the message of the ritual and keep it playful and alive. To honor something while keeping the sane perspective. To reaffirm the shared values—if we have any—and to keep the ritual non-imposing. To allow for the personal input in the rite, personal function of the ritual, the intimate dimension— while benefiting from the aspect of sharing. James Hillman, an archetypal psychology pioneer offers a beautiful image easily readable by most of the Faerie folk: The Tree. The spirit may be represented by the crown. Explicit, growing upwards, indulging in the sunlight. The enthusiasm, the aspiration. The High in all its deep and shallow meanings. All the worshipers of “light” (that is aspiring to beat the forces of darkness), eternal life, paradise, deities up in heavens, “let’s heal the world”, “let’s make everyone happy”, joy and laughter, positive thinking, be open to everyone and everything, let’s tear down all the walls and borderlines—the realm of the enthusiast absolutism. The heroes, the fixers, the saviors, the visionaries, the cheering crowd, the hooray. Sometimes a bit forced, a bit one dimensional, a bit ambitious or at least eager. Spirituality and aspiration come from one root—“spirare”—for breathing. It’s vital, no doubt, but perhaps focused in one direction only? There is a mirror image of the tree, lying underneath the ground, often huge as the crown itself, the root system—the soul’s metaphor. A beautiful Faerie connotation—as the word “radical” does not refer only to political radicalism, but often to the “radices”, i.e. seeking for our roots. The roots dig into the darkness (!), into the dirt (unlike spirit and spirituality that often venerate “purity”, “cleanliness”, “transparency”, or even “virginity”), sucking

the nutrition from the decomposed previous life. of the soulâ&#x20AC;? on the program. And even that smells The same way as the soul feeds on the memories, suspiciously ofâ&#x20AC;Śfrankincense? Churches are full nostalgia, old pictures. So much for the limitof â&#x20AC;&#x153;spiritual shepherdsâ&#x20AC;? (at least in my language) less idolatry of â&#x20AC;&#x153;focus on the present momentâ&#x20AC;? who claim to aim to â&#x20AC;&#x153;save my soulâ&#x20AC;?. Soul business or â&#x20AC;&#x153;donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t dig in the past, look into the futureâ&#x20AC;?! sounds almost menacing. So how does the Faerie The thread of the soul needs to be interwoven into culture feelâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;how much excitement we find for the the timeline of life, connected to the previous and spirit and how much nourishment for the soul? future generations (ancestors anyone?), it is that By the way, heart circle. That famous â&#x20AC;&#x153;speaking part of us that stretches out of our own short and from the heartâ&#x20AC;? (and not from mind)â&#x20AC;&#x201D;is reaching linear timeframe. Soul expresses in storiesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;not towards the spirit or the soul or both or neither? just personal ones, but narratives of the family, Heart is an organ, quite an unromantic pump, tribe, community, culture, era. And talking of the what entity does it represent in its symbolic value? darkness: soul sometimes (particularly when it Even bigger challenge for meâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;is often being needs to be heard through the loud â&#x20AC;&#x153;letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;sâ&#x20AC;? of the reminded by the facilitators to focus on the â&#x20AC;&#x153;here spirit) speaks also through the illness, depression, and nowâ&#x20AC;? and not to stretch far into the past, not sadness, tears, withdrawal, or other healthy and to tell the stories, not to unravel the complexnatural phenomena of ity of interconnections the soulâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s weather. It is of the current emotional a counterbalance for stateâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the way how we the pretense positivity, filter every present moThe more rituals I it is our capacity to ment by the sum of our experienced with faeries, accept and live (also) previous experience, the the darker aspects of way how soul is manifestthe less eager I felt to lifeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;that constitute ing in lifeâ&#x20AC;ŚI often receive: entangle my spiritual our wholesomeness. â&#x20AC;&#x153;soul, shut upâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;now the needs in the communal One of the reasons I spirits speakâ&#x20AC;?. And then I mayhem. While the longing fell in love with Faerie often see spirits (!) drifting space was the fact that towards socially presentfor experience of shared the darker emotions able positivity, flimsy spirituality has driven me seemed to be welmomentariness, yay and to the faerie space, I often comeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;unlike in many hooray. Is it the Faerie find myself fleeing the faerie â&#x20AC;&#x153;keep smilingâ&#x20AC;? cults tradition, or just a fancyand communities. sounding â&#x20AC;&#x153;guidelineâ&#x20AC;? rituals into more personal I do not want the passed on and repeated so and intimate space. spirit to feel as the anoften that it has become tagonist here. Maybe blindly revered instead of just a deity with too understood and felt? Do much attentionâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;on we know the pitfalls of this behalf of the others in pattern of monkeying and the pantheon. Think of puer archetypeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the panhooraying from the other religious practices? zer optimism of the youth. Spirit has its imporOut on The Land, I noticed two kind of exemtanceâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;working behind aspiration and inspiration. plary rituals indulged by Faeries. The first one I The incentive and the desire propel us towards call a â&#x20AC;&#x153;station ritualâ&#x20AC;? where I am led by the facilitainventions, recreation, revival. The above-surface tors from one place to place B to place Câ&#x20AC;&#x201D;in each part of the tree is important, without doubt. I one expected to do this and that, repeat, recite, surely do not want to just wallow in the pain-andsing, or just watch hailing to the directions or pleasure rollercoaster, meditating on it endlessly. I calling on the elements. And dress up well! I wear just wish to give attention to the overlooked entity drag and drag myself alongâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;more or less pasthat has its equally meaningful job down thereâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; sively entertained. I enact, publicly, aware of being the soul. seen. On the scene. I wonder how popular this In New Age era, it is not difficult to achieve sort approach to the festivity isâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and if this is indeed of spiritual saturation. Much of the esoteric explowhat draws many towards Faerie space, the preration calls upon spirit. Rarely one can find â&#x20AC;&#x153;care ferred way to experience the â&#x20AC;&#x153;queer spiritualityâ&#x20AC;??

đ&#x;&#x2122;&#x201A;

RFD 180 Winter 2019 11

It makes me think of an average —of the inputs by newbies and by elders, by spiritualists and by woowoo enthusiasts, by rationalists and by skeptics, by compulsive party-spoilers and by self-centered divas, the eternal performers and the inconspicuous shy ones, the sarcastic observers and wideeyed followers, those promptly interchanging chemical-high with spiritual-high or the genuine plant-medicine shamans. The other sort of the ritual may start in a circle, to feel the group support, the safety net, the fact that we do this together, setting the simple intention—followed by “go and experience!”…when each one on their own explores how the intention resonates with them and give the ritual a peculiar shape. At the end we meet again in the circle to share (if we need to) what was it like and to feel the group container again, making sure we do return, both in physical and spiritual sense. Caring, waiting, asking. I perceive this set-up as a simple structure—a “ritual skeleton”—that the soul can fill in with the personal and intimate content. To participate in a “shared ritual” and still being able to claim an intimate space for the soul—is a fragile balance that I do not find that often. There are spots on our land of a great spiritual value for me—where I prefer to go alone. Be it Ancestors’ Tree or Meditation Rock—I avoid those stations in most of group endeavors, not willing to be bound into a particular way how to engage with these symbolic places and the spirit/soul-connections that they represent for me. Shared rituals are sometimes shortcuts towards togetherness, sometimes they genuinely allow us to explore more dimensions of the interconnectedness. Those less obvious aspects of the meaning of “the community”. Sharing of the values and ideas. Being with the like-minded friends. But sometimes their gift is a feeling of solitude, loneliness, disconnection. Is it an invalid value? Not long time ago I participated in a sweatlodge-ish event, where I have found myself surrounded by dozen Faeries trying to imitate the wild beasts roar, me unable to look inside really and to experience anything intimate within me. All my space filled in with others’ loud voices. It made me think of another read: “your freedom ends where the others’ freedom begins”. Yup, I get judgmental (sinner!) and sink into sarcasm (bitch!). Am I trapped in a stampede of the urban intellectuals trying a spliff of exotic spirituality? “Liberating their spirit” by screaming—as is a popular spiritual cliché of the Faerie events? 12 RFD 180 Winter 2019

Surely, I do not want to inhibit anyone’s spiritual expression. Though, round after round—yelling, singing mantras, calling the “important keywords” into the space—again and again and again—is this it? Are we spiritually…ready? Is this the only spiritual expression we are capable of? “Yeah baby, let it out!” Anytime I hear terrified giraffes on the Faerie prairie, I tell myself: “Oooh, some spiritual ritual again.” But seriously—I wish and imagine that we resist that compulsive need to claim that silence as a stage. Not to fill it but rather feel it. Enjoy the shared silence—challenging, uncomfortable, weird as it is—denuded sweating bodies in a safe proximity with a ritual meaning (not an opportunity for a stolen touch!) and embraced by the darkness, Not a competition of spiritualist performance. “Being together” as a way of allowing each-other a deeply personal work—supporting each-other to get in touch with the intimate space inside. Group work that is neither torn by egos, nor dissolving the individual. A spirit hand in hand with the soul. Like those embarrassing and looooong moments in the heart circles when someone holds a talisman and does not speak a word for infinite minutes. Working in the technology sector, I often get reminded of a trendy term with quite a fundamental meaning—“robust”. Robust systems operate well even under changing conditions. I often recollect and laugh at my attempts for nude midsummer candle burning and spell casting rites, almost bitten to death by the mosquitoes with no compassion for the sanctity of the moment. The gods of ridiculous, embarrassing, twisted, turned-upside-down and hijacked—often call for their forgotten homage. Can we imagine a robust ritual not dependent on making the symbolic acts in proper way (as we often see in the outside world)—but welcoming the stumbles, cheering the surprising outcomes, caressing the failures and mistakes, where nothing’s going wrong? I have seen that abundant capacity in Faerie folk. The best rituals combine the prepared with the unexpected, incorporate the flaws into the flow of the ceremony. I love working with the props found on the way and on the spot. The leaf, the acorn, the feather…the lighting, the critters, the weather. Even amidst Faerie chaos, I love to experience the balance of the complements. Sometimes it’s a tug-of-war, of course. Practical, hedonist, esoteric, artist, political, outer-space Faeries all pulling the rope in their direction.

I find the â&#x20AC;&#x153;soul workâ&#x20AC;? most often in the least prepared of the rituals. The walk. The showering and bathing. The fire feeding. The berry picking. The dish washing. You still do what you doâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the grease and the bugs need to get off the platesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;but you can also introduce another level of â&#x20AC;&#x153;doing it.â&#x20AC;? On a physical level and in parallel as an inner workâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;for you and perhaps for the others. The â&#x20AC;&#x153;secretâ&#x20AC;? is in how you do itâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;just in the first plane or with some added value. Like when you wash the thing and in the same time you â&#x20AC;&#x153;washâ&#x20AC;? the soul. Ironically, the most enchanted and soul-feeding moments among Faeries happen to me when we donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t try so directly to â&#x20AC;&#x153;make themâ&#x20AC;?. During the shared meals (eating food, dressing up, decoratingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;but also receiving the someoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s service offered to the rest, chewing on the togetherness, digesting the conviviality of the moment), during the daily chores that become spontaneous parties or amazing discussions or new connections, also during the community weeks when we toil â&#x20AC;&#x153;as monksâ&#x20AC;? but with added value of mutual care and heart space, or when marveling about the mysterious coincidence and communal synchronicity also known as The Magic.

Contemporary art has a tendency to explore the concept, the installation, the set-up, the different variations in relation of the performer and spectator roles. In resonant simileâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;I appreciate the Faerie circles in their own wonder. Just the circle happening, realization of being here right now, holding your unique hands. The circle as a constellation. I may find some detailsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;e.g. rainbow gathering borrowings like kissing of the handsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; creepy and forced. I know some others who find sound of yoo-hoo toxic to the eardrums, some have shivers from the hissing, or from the repetition of the popular phrases, some just canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t stand the neo-pagan chorales (as in â&#x20AC;&#x153;Dear Friend Queer Friendâ&#x20AC;?â&#x20AC;&#x201D;oh dear, were I competitive, I could win the sprint racing in those moments) being the only know musical genre on that more ritualized and traditionalized side of the Faerie culture. We have our quirks. But we still hold the circle. We gatherâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;in flesh and not in virtual realities. We are there for each other. The very basic Ritual of our community. Being there, with awareness.

(untitled, from My Turn to Wear the Horns) by Michael Starkman.

đ&#x;&#x2122;&#x201A;

RFD 180 Winter 2019 13

14 RFD 180 Winter 2019

Calling the Queer Corners by Oshee Eagleheart

his piece has been germinating for about sixteen years—as long as I’ve been calling myself transgender—maybe even longer. I trace the idea back to a conversation with my friend Zot1, the first person I knew who was openly trans. Ze was telling me about a maypole rite (like Beltaine at the Mountain, but led by straight/cis people), at which the queer people present were looking for ways to participate without having to choose between going with the men to cut the pole or with the women to dig the hole. They ended up playing the role of communicators between the two groups, dancing around and exhorting the men to “raise it higher!” and the women to “dig it deeper!” In another conversation with Zot, years later, ze shared hir experience of a ritual at witch camp in which ze assigned hirself the role of sweeping unwanted energies out through the corners of the space, in between the cardinal directions, and spoke of how natural that felt to hir. That was the key for me: “in between the cardinal directions”! It explained why I’d always loved the cross-quarter-day festivals, the ones that are celebrated at the points midway between the solstices and equinoxes. Radical Faeries love to gather to celebrate the cross-quarter days, and often use the traditional Celtic names for those four turning points of the wheel of the year: Samhain (aka Halloween, pronounced sah-wen), Imbolc (aka Brigid, Groundhog Day), Beltaine (Mayday), and Lughnasadh (pronounced loo-na-sah, and also called Lammas). These four Fire festivals are celebrated around the beginnings of November, February, May, and August. If you picture the year as a wheel, with Winter Solstice in the North, Spring Equinox in the East, Summer Solstice in the South, and Fall Equinox in the West; then Samhain is in the NorthWest, Imbolc in the NorthEast, Beltaine in the SouthEast, and Lughnasadh in the SouthWest. In many Earth-centered traditions, each of the four elements is associated with one of the cardinal directions, with some variation depending on tradition and geographic location. For me, Earth is in the North, Air in the East, Fire in the South, and Water in the West. My wonderings about what elements would be associated with the in-between directions led me to these, the ones I now call the Queer Cor-

ners: NorthWest is between Water and Earth, which mix together to make Mud; NorthEast is between Earth and Air, which combine as Dust; SouthEast is between Air and Fire, which interact to make Smoke; and SouthWest is between Fire and Water, which together generate Steam. So, the in-between elements are Mud, Dust, Smoke, and Steam, ingredients that are so often essential to working the most powerful magic in fairytales the world over. What about the other in-betweens, the ones in the Center that don’t correspond to any particular direction? Well, between Air in the East and Water in the West are Mist and Fog; and between Earth in the North and fire in the South are Lava and Magma. And between Heaven and Earth—between Above and Below, between Mist and Magma—is where we humans stand on our two legs. We are in-between beings, channels and conduits of all the forces of Nature, bridges between the worlds.

In addition to the elements and seasons, the wheel of the year—or medicine wheel—represents and embodies every stage and aspect of life. For example, the in-between stages of life, the times of the most intense growth and transformation,

Left: “The Crone” by @hommage_aux_femmes, extract of the ritual : “The Lone Wolf ” Above: “What a Queer Medicine Wheel Might Look Like,” illustration by the author.

RFD 180 Winter 2019 15

have their places around the wheel: If birth is in the East, childhood in the South, adulthood in the West, and elderhood in the North, then toddlerhood would be in the SouthEast, adolescence in the SouthWest, menopause and midlife crisis in the NorthWest, and second childhood in the NorthEast. Like that the wheel can be applied every aspect of our lives and world. Discovering myself to be something other than a man or a woman has been like coming home to myself and knowing what I’m here to reclaim, finding out that I have a mission in life after all—after despairing of ever finding one. Connecting with and reclaiming the Queer Corners has given an added dimension to my life’s purpose: to bring awareness of the in-between directions to rituals and ceremonies and to reclaim the special roles of queer people in those ceremonies, one of which is to work with the magic of the Queer Corners. In 2005 I got the call to a gathering at Faerie Camp Destiny, in Vermont. Its organizers called it a gender “gatherette,” a smaller, more intimate version of a larger gathering. As soon as I read the call I knew I had to be there, and I went with the intention of getting to know other trans and gender-variant Faeries, and of sharing what I’d been discovering about gender and ritual. At that gatherette, our trans intersex shaman friend, Raven Kaldera, gave a presentation about the trans stages of life, stepping into the circle from a different one of the in-between directions for each stage of hir presentation. The evening after Raven’s talk we hiked up to the labyrinth, and there in the darkness of the Vermont woods, we co-created a genderqueer empowerment ritual. We converged on the center of the labyrinth from the four Queer Corners, spontaneously chanting things like, “Mud and Dust and Smoke and Steam, we come walking in between!” and “Smoke and Steam and Mud and Dust, in genderqueerness we place our trust!” Boldly stepping over the lines defining the pathways of the labyrinth, we gathered in the center to celebrate our fabulously diverse magical queerness. Ever since that transformational night, whenever I’m leading a ceremony that involves calling in the directions (or greeting or honoring them, depending on the beliefs of the people present), I include the Queer Corners, sometimes speaking to or for them alternating with someone else’s calling of the cardinal directions. That can take time, and it adds up to as many as eleven directions (including Above, Below, and Within), but it’s always time well spent and it invariably brings powerful elements of magic 16 RFD 180 Winter 2019

to the ceremony. At Beltaine at the Mountain five or six years ago, I convened a small of group of genderqueer Faeries to call in one of the queer directions as part of the co-created ritual that sets the stage for the raising of the maypole. We chose SouthEast, since that’s where Beltaine falls, and when our turn came, between the calling-in of East and South, we called in—and exhorted the assembled Faeries to call in—all the in-between spirits and beings and elements we could think of, like Trannymals, dragons, two-spirit ancestors, smoke, and seahorses… One more step in the direction of reclaiming the Queer Corners. The directions are also often associated with animal spirits, many different ones in the myriad Earth-centered traditions of the world. On Turtle Island, the North American continent, some of the more popular traditional ones are: Eagle in the East, Coyote in the South, Bear in the West, and Buffalo in the North. Which animal spirits live in the Queer Corners, then? I have found Grandmother Turtle in the Mud of the NorthWest; Grandmother Spider in the dusty NorthEast corner; all kinds of magical smoke-loving beings in the SouthEast—like Dragon, Wyvern, and Basilisk; and in the steamy SouthWest, Horse, Scorpion, Rattlesnake, Lizard: intense beings liable to strike without warning. Not to speak of the beings that inhabit the Magma and the Mist. In all my searching so far, I haven’t found any sign of a tradition of honoring the Queer Corners among the First Nations people of this continent. Perhaps there never was such a tradition, or, as I suspect is more likely, it was eradicated and buried along with the thousands of Native people who were tortured, mutilated, killed, and driven into hiding by the invaders and colonizers, because their identities and roles didn’t fit modern European ideas of binary gender. In many of the Native American nations, people outside the gender binary traditionally played ceremonial leadership roles. Nowadays such people call themselves two-spirit, and they are reclaiming their traditional roles, as they increasingly gain recognition in their tribes and nations. At one Native American ceremony I participated in, I was invited to lead the serving of the spirit feast, a role traditionally assigned to women. At that feast, the ceremonial leader introduced me to the participants, explaining my presence (as someone who was not a woman) by saying that I was ideally qualified to play that role, since two-spirit people are powerful channels for Spirit. In ways like that,

the walks-between people are being honored in the world once again, and we bring with us the honoring of the in-between directions. Queer people have a natural ability—and I would say a responsibility—to reclaim those in-between places, to work with our unique magic. It can be a thankless task, out of the spotlight that shines on the cardinal directions. And that can make the work all the more powerful, slipping through the cracks like the in-between elements do, invisible to the enemies of evolution. When I participate in traditional ceremonies, I often unobtrusively honor the spirits that dwell in the in-between directions, making offerings to them in their corners and inviting their participation. Things flow better when we pay attention to the Queer Corners, and I’ve witnessed powerful and miraculous healing taking place in those quadrants of ceremonial circles. Honoring them can be as simple as cleaning up that corner of the space, clearing out cobwebs and clutter, and making a humble offering of mud, dust, smoke, or steam. Just a few times, so far, I’ve gone so far as to perform ceremonies in which the Queer Corners are honored and the cardinal directions are asked to take a back seat—like that ceremony at the Destiny labyrinth during the gender gatherette. Each time we do that, it feels like breaking a strong taboo, shifting an established tradition, or even like violating an unbreakable law. And each time we’ve taken that risk, powerful, magical healing has resulted. I have to remind myself, over and over, that what we think of as the established way of doing things is, in the bigger picture, often a relatively recent invention. It’s time to rediscover and reinvent our more ancient traditions, the magic of our queer ancestors, as we reclaim and step into the roles we came here to play. It’s time to play our part in bringing about the shift to a sustainable relationship between our species and our planet, from Whom we were born and Whose blood flows through our veins. As we reclaim our gender identities and expressions, as we venture out of the binary gender boxes we’ve been stuffed into for so many generations, so many lifetimes, we unlock and release the powerful magic of our unique and desperately needed gifts. I know that reclaiming the Queer Corners is an essential part of our emergence. One step in that direction could be: next time you’re participating in or leading an event or ceremony, see what happens if you connect with and honor the spirits of the Queer Corners. Or at least be open to noticing what happens in those directions, how the energy moves, and how you might interact with the spirits that

hang out there. If you’re one who’s not comfortable in either of the socially sanctioned gender boxes, and have stepped out or are allowing the possibility of stepping out, know that there are millions of us—often invisible in our Queer Corners—here to welcome you and support you in sharing the unique gifts that only you know how to work with. For the good of our world, before it’s too late, won’t you join the dance of the queer magicians? What do we have to lose? Footnote about Zot: In the process of writing this, I tried to contact Zot, to verify what I wrote about our conversations. I discovered that she had died in September 2016, in a traffic accident while working as an electrician on a solar project in Georgia. Zot Szurgot was a brilliant, multi-talented, truly original thinker and writer, and a person of exceptionally high integrity, whose life challenged every kind of limiting stereotype. Among many other things she was a Reclaiming witch, a war-tax resister, and an environmental and animal rights activist. Her death is a huge loss to the world.

Zot Szurgot, photograph courtesy the author (unknown photographer).

RFD 180 Winter 2019 17

Invocation/Out-Vocation it isn’t the circle we cast (inaccurate – an oval would be so much truer) it isn’t the four directions we invoke (or is it six plus center?) it isn’t the outfit garments cloaks shoes makeup styles colors or being naked it isn’t the time season reason cause occasion what we gay men bring to our rituals that no one else can is what i once heard harry hay (or was it john burnside?) call “the silly sacred”

18 RFD 180 Winter 2019

—Andrew Ramer

“Clown Couture” by Joseph Minutello.

RFD 180 Winter 2019 19

20 RFD 180 Winter 2019

Queer Faith and TheMany, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Dancing,â&#x20AC;? whilst performing our Ritual in the Fringe Festival, photograph by David Monteith-Hodge.

What We Faeries Learned About Ritual From The Dance For All People: ‘Structure Is Not a Dirty Word Any More’ by Kwai Lam

The Dance for All People, aka Naraya, has been danced at Wolf Creek since 1999. I’ve danced since 2000, as have a number of other Faeries. When invited to look at the question faery/naraya, long time faery Wolfie/Fang/Little Green Muffin, myself and Clyde Hall, the initiator of this Naraya and dance chief had a little chat. Here are the juicy bits. Whoa, Structure? Nooo...but. For myself and many others the Naraya is by far the most structured ritual we take part in. So much more structured than Faerie rituals. As many of us walk paths outside of, around and oft forbidden by the structures we grew up with this can be an interesting journey and quite an education. I’ve done Radical Faery rituals for nigh of forty years. We can and often do raise a lot of power. But then what? So bear with us while we humbly offer some possibilities: Imagine a Gathering where everyone present is there to participate fully in the ritual from beginning to end. Imagine a gathering where it’s all about ritual. The ritual lasts for three to four days. Imagine that each person arrives with clear intent, what they want to celebrate/move/ release with the ritual. Imagine that each person prays for themselves and supports each other in their prayer. Imagine that setting the ritual circle and altars is done with the care and patience of baking a scratch cake, the process taking five hours or so. Imagine singing songs that have been sung for hundreds to thousands of years. Imagine feeling the previous circles of people who have sung a song in times past. Imagine signing each song till “it’s done;” which might be twenty minutes or might be two hours. Imagine elders watching over the circle, seen and unseen. Imagine ‘first timers’ welcomed in with special

care and delight. And each chooses a ‘buddy’. Imagine people caring for those ‘out of their mind’ in spirit. Keeping them safe. Helping them home. Imagine a group gathering in one heart. Imagine elders who bring decades of experience, rooted in their traditions, to leading this ceremony. Listening, listening, always listening to what spirit has to say. If you can imagine this, then you can imagine some of the Naraya structure. The Naraya is open and welcoming to everyone: that is a key part of Clyde Hall’s vision. We come together from many places and in many colors: we are “guests in Clyde’s house.” Clyde graciously shares ancient songs and other parts of northern great basin native traditions with us. We are asked to behave, as good guests do, with respect to the rules of the house. The house and its rules have evolved over the course of three decades. Always with reason, always to keep people safe and make the ceremony stronger. The songs that we sing—are ancient, most of them, are songs of the great basin tribal people and some from the Tribes of the Great Plains. They are ancient and sung with permission, respect and joy. Lesson One: structure can help focus and direct magic. (And this structure starts with intent, even before people ‘arrive’ to the ritual, and after they ‘leave’). Lesson Two: structure can and should be dedicated to keeping the ceremony and its participants safe. Lesson Three: incorporate a place for “the will of spirit” in your structure. Lesson four: structure can respect the different paths that participants walk, while still creating a cohesive whole. Lesson five: when you raise power, use it! Lesson five: when done, close the structure and invite guests to leave. Lesson one is pretty old hat, but easy to unRFD 180 Winter 2019 21

derestimate in impact. The common intention of participants makes the outermost layer of the structure. Are they all fully involved, are some there as spectators? Is someone there just to disrupt? Think of the difference—and challenge—of public ritual, say in a park with people coming and going, and private ritual, particularly with a group who have worked together before. Naraya walks a middle path: everyone is welcome, but must ‘pass through the gate’ by having a conversation with a gatekeeper first. This conversation makes sure that intentions are clear as are expectations for participation. Safety (and spiritual cleanliness) is the point of lesson two. The circle is cast with care, making a strong boundary. Folks entering the circle are smudged to come in clean. And sometimes further cleanup is required: the boundary is inadvertently crossed, or other need for further cleanup is needed. So we sweep again. Some folks are dedicated to this as their service. Let’s talk about lesson three for a moment. Have you ever been at a ritual where it felt like things were just beginning to cook, the energy building beautifully with a song or chant and then it ended? Did you feel left ‘high and dry’ or that ‘if we’d only sung the song another couple of times...’ it would have been really powerful? Oft this comes from an idea of ritual as set: ‘we’re going to sing xxx four times’. While it’s great to have a framework, the lesson of Naraya (and indigeonous rituals in general) is to keep listening: to the energy of the people, and to the other beings around. Are they done yet? Is someone still out on a journey? If the second, let’s bring them back before ending the song. In Naraya the call of when to end a song is made by the Dance Chief(s), after checking to make sure that it’s time to end. (Sometimes we think it is but then realize we must keep going to help someone back). Don’t drive by rote: listen! “That’s the magic of all of that,” says Clyde. He continues: “One of things people don’t realize about Native American structure and traditions there is always that room for spontaneity. You take that into the web of things. Nothing is ever done by rote. We call it the will of Spirit. Spirit is going to take your ceremony, and although there is a structure to it, it’s going to move in its own way. No ceremony is ever the same. Indians always incorporate the capriciousness of the will of spirit into their ceremonies. There is a very deep and very old framework, 22 RFD 180 Winter 2019

but it’s not something that’s unchangeable.” My favorite example of lesson four happens during the formal procession at the beginning. Most of the time we move clockwise, or sunwise in the circle. It’s the tradition for Clyde’s people, and also tends to help keep the energy spinning in that way, and also harmoniously so. But some of the other Elders at the Naraya have other traditions, where they move counter-clockwise. So in this formal procession some move clockwise, some counter-clockwise. Very deliberately, very consciously. A way of respecting both traditions, rather than forcing into a ‘this is how we must do it here’ mold. Using the power: at Naraya we use the energy that flows, to pray. (And often reminded to do so!) Clyde notes that at many Faerie rituals he has attended: “they raised lots of power, but never did anything with it! They wouldn’t direct or channel it to any specified purpose. I went around and gathered it up and sent it to someplace where it could do some good.” Closing things down, lesson six, is obvious but also oft forgot. You can probably remember at least a couple of rituals which were never closed (at least not publicly). Just do it! In conclusion: So Naraya to Faerie: structure begets focus, but don’t be dogmatic: listen. As Wolfie says: “What Naraya really showed the Faeries: when you have a thorough structure, then the power can get amplified. The Naraya is the first time that many Faeries saw the benefit in having everything be structured.” What do Faeries bring to the Dance? Innovation. The Two Spirit dances (Wolf Creek and Tennessee) are more free to experiment with rituals than the other dances. ‘Two Spirit people are the innovators; they can change traditions, that’s one of their roles,’ says Clyde. In fact, this innovative role was one of the deciding factors in Clyde’s approval for Light Eagle’s request to bring the dance to Wolf Creek in the first place. “I wondered how this would work’ recollects Clyde. “[The Faeries] are in essence Two Spirit people, although they don’t call themselves that, having knowledge of the Old European people ritualists. The magic is the same, the power of medicine is the same, regardless of whether it’s Indians or non-Indians who carry that.” Wolfie notes that “when self-identified straight people come to Wolf Creek they notice something different.”

Hot Seat: It’s Like Heart Circle, But Also a Gangbang By May

given me the most healing, most loving gift that we can sometimes give each other. He’d given me his skepticism.

I should know. When it comes to telling stories, I’m the ultimate showman. A year ago I had dinner with some Faerie friends, including Robin Hood and Kirk. Kirk, you should know, speaks with the bluntness of a Vulcan. Most of my relationship with Kirk is me trying to get his begrudging approval. Choose me! Choose me! And since Kirk and I hadn’t seen each other in some time, I pounced on the chance when he asked casually, “So, how are you doing?” I cleared my throat. “Well,” I intoned, and told him My Story, which involved me being severely suicidal and psychotic after a series of horrific and surreal events. When I was finished, trembling with sweat and ready for my Daytime Emmy, Kirk looked at me with an expression that can only be described as unimpressed. “How many times have you told that story?” he asked finally. I felt my asshole pucker, as though I’d sat in a vat of lemon juice. “It just feels,” Kirk said, in that inscrutable Kirk way. “It feels like you’ve told that story a lot.” “He has,” said Robin Hood from the couch. “So,” Kirk said. “What are you still getting out of telling that story?” I had no answer. Since that night, I have never told that story again. In the face of my regurgitated self myth, Kirk had

I know, skepticism is pretty much the opposite of what you’re supposed to do in Heart Circle. As a good Faerie, you’re supposed to listen with your heart. Without judgment. Or rolling your eyes. Or sticking a needle repeatedly into your leg to keep from falling asleep. So here’s a modest proposal. For a new ritual, a new kind of Circle--a game, if you will--to build on the work of Heart Circle. I call it Hot Seat. How does it work? Simple. You sit in a Circle, and people can ask you whatever they want. Nothing, and I mean nothing is off limits. Some of the questions are dumb. “How many testicles have you had in your mouth in the last week? When was the last time you shit your pants?” But often the questions dig into some place that hurts, or feels confused. “What keeps you up at night? What is the worst thing that your mind tells you?” And if you’re the one hurling questions, you “win” when you ask a question that the person in the Hot Seat has no ready answer for. This is when we are past the script. When discovery can happen. One of the key questions we ask is, “Are we getting any new information here? Or are we still in the same old story?” For example? You come in with a story that you were traumatized by childhood events, and this has caused you to become paranoid and anxious in social situations. “What happened when you were a kid?” the Circle will ask. They might then say, “Well, that sounds like a common experience,” or “Actually, that doesn’t sound so bad.” Or, “That sounds fuck up. I’m sorry that happened to you. Is there another way to look at this? Does it really merit building a whole life story around?” It’s a practice in taking risks. It’s a practice in Radical Honesty. Loving Skepticism. Or, as Robin Hood calls it, Loving Ruthlessness. Then come the hard questions. “What are you

recently attended an afternoon of auditions on Broadway, where I watched a dozen aspiring actors pour their hearts out in wrenching monologues they’d obviously spent weeks preparing—only to realize later that I’d actually been at a Heart Circle at Breitenbush. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good Heart Circle. Over and over again, it’s shown me that people are always more, more wet and glistening inside, and broken, and alive, than what I can see. It’s a kind of emotional peep show. But there is, is there not, an aspect of Heart Circle that is, can we say, a touch showbiz? A bit razzmatazz?

RFD 180 Winter 2019 23

getting out of identifying as a victim?” “What you are getting, or trying to get, by building your life story around trauma?” “What might you gain if you stopped telling that story?” See, this is the kind of stuff that’s basically heretical these days. It’s the kind of stuff that gets critics of Hot Seat to call it abusive, or uncaring, or un-Faerie. In this current culture of conspicuous trauma, where the identities of whole communities are based on the worst thing that has happened to them, these are questions that can never be reasonably asked. In Hot Seat, people have space to actually question their stories. Well, they say. If I say I have trauma, then I get to control the environment, to control other people’s behavior. People have to listen to me. If I’m a victim, I get attention, I get sympathy, I get to be right, I get others to care about me. From my experience with the game, I’ve seen that a dose of consensual ruthless, loving skepticism can free people. From blaming others. Blaming the world. From victimhood. The Gollum-like hoarding of pain. It frees people from the self-righteousness of having been wronged. If you come into Hot Seat to process a conflict with someone, the Circle will inevitably ask, “So what’s your part? What are you doing that’s so different from you’re accusing them of? Why do you get to be right?” In Hot Seat, saying “I’m right, and they’re wrong,” is like waving a red cape in front of a bull. The Circle is going to aim its horns right at you. Here are some of the basic guidelines of Hot Seat: • First, and most important, consent. That’s the difference between a gangbang being the best experience of your life, or the worse. If you get in the Hot Seat, know what you’re getting into. Be ready. Be open. Say Fuck Yeah. • Take a risk. A main goal of Hot Seat is to improve intimacy among the players, and no intimacy is possible without risk. If you’re feeling like you shouldn’t ask something, or say something, then you definitely should. • The ideal size of a Circle is six. At this size, it’s possible to everyone to get thirty minutes in the Hot Seat. • To create a container strong enough to hold the Circle’s shadow, there has to be strict confidentiality. I can write 2000 words on the importance of confidentiality, but you get it. • Intention. I’ve played rounds where people were absolutely ruthless, but the ruthlessness was 24 RFD 180 Winter 2019

given with love, and accepted with gratitude. With proper intention and consent, ruthlessness becomes, strangely, comforting. You care enough to ask the hard questions. In fact, a common complaint after a round is, “Why did you go so easy on me?” They feel let down, as though the Circle underestimated their capacity for truth, or didn’t care. • Everyone who asks questions will also get asked questions. No one just gets to dish out heat. I’ve seen many people think they’re cross examining a Mafia boss suddenly realize they’re next in the witness stand. If you’re an aggressive player, you’ll be honored by getting it thrown right back at you. You get as good as you give. It’s super fun. • Before the Circle starts, we ask everyone to state their conflicts of interest. Is there someone in the Circle that you’re dating? Or fucking? Or used to fuck? Maybe you just don’t like their pants? If you might have an agenda when you ask questions, declare it. But here the thing I realized: conflicts of interest aren’t a barrier to the game--it’s actually a feature. More on this later. • Everyone has to be sober. No alcohol, no weed, and certainly no Viagra. • Get specific. Without specificity, the game dissolves into psychobabble. If someone says, “I feel insecure,” the follow up question is, “Can you name a specific time when you felt that? Where? When? Who with?” • Hot Seat can only be played at night, preferably late. Trust me. It just works better that way. • Mirroring. In addition to questions, the Circle can offer mirroring statements such as, “I noticed your voice changed when you said his name,” or “I noticed you stopped smiling when you said that.” Other mirrorings include, “I notice you don’t say what’s on your mind,” or “I notice that you make a joke about Asians when you’re nervous.” • The person in the Hot Seat can also ask for mirroring. “Do I seem hostile? Do I seem cold? What do you think I want? Is my bra showing? What am I not seeing here?” • Do not offer advice. No one cares what you think is best. Seriously, no one cares. • I just farted. This isn’t really part of the article, but I thought you should know, in case you’re still reading. • What you can do is speak from your own experience. You can say as part of the Circle, “I really relate to that. I also feel insecure/anxious/Asian. This is what helps me.” • Boredom is an important tool. If you’re listening to someone’s answer and you’re bored, chances are

that the person is just recycling a script. The Circle is encouraged to interrupt and say, “Boring! I’m bored!” People will sometimes call out “job interview!” when someone is giving the “right” answer to a question. If you haven’t had someone yell “job interview!” or “boring!” at you, it’s really fucking scary. In softer versions, people will say, “That sounds like a script. It sounds like you’re giving the expected answer. Can you go a little deeper?” • Reality Checks. If someone has a story that others don’t like them, the Circle can call a Reality Check. “Go ahead. Ask if the people here really do find you boring/stupid/Asian. You don’t have to guess.” • The Circle has a facilitator, who keeps the time and keeps the process moving. The facilitator makes process observations such as, “It seems like we’ve hit a dead end,” or “We’re not getting new information. We got ten minutes. Dig!” • I farted again. Are you still reading? • Remember when I said that conflicts of interest are actually a feature of the game? I realized the game is often juiciest between people who have histories. Long simmering issues, old hurts, unasked questions. Many times I’ve seen lovers, old and new, or friends, work out misunderstandings, clarify past events, and ask tender questions, in the safe container of the Circle. “I want to ask you why we broke up.” “I want to know if you lied to me.” “Why did we stop having sex?” The Circle becomes electric at these moments, and it’s incredible to witness. • Finally, at the end of each round, we applaud the gamesmanship with golf claps. Well played, in asking questions, and well played, in answering questions. A round of golf claps, all around. None of this is set in stone. Hot Seat is still an adolescent technology, and like all adolescents, it’s full of hormones, horny for experience, and doesn’t like to listen to adults. But it’s growing, and growing up. A lot of the brattiness of the first iterations have softened. People no longer yell “job interview!” But always, and this is consistent, is the hushed thrill of entering into a new space together. One in which, as Robin Hood says, you can be anything and still be loved. Frivolous, who’s been leading Hot Seats in the sauna at Folleterre, says he likes Hot Seat because it’s efficient. You get thirty minutes, and the Circle does not like to waste time. As one Faerie said, “I don’t speak in Heart Circle because I often don’t know what I’m feeling or why. I need something like Hot Seat to help me dig.” If you have trouble digging into

your own material, the Circle has shovels. Often, within minutes, the Circle hits something buried deep in the bedrock of the psyche. Luna, a veteran of Hot Seat, has his doubts. “Is there something we lose by taking a speed highway to intimacy? Maybe we should be more humble and acknowledge that after Hot Seat we are not necessarily more intimate—what we are is more exposed, less masks.” Another thing that Kirk said to me that night. “You know, Hot Seat isn’t new. There have been group processes like this for decades. I’d beware,” he told me, “of making it your thing. You might get blamed when people get pissed off.” We’ve played Hot Seat at Breitenbush, at Folleterre. Alto das Fadas. Robin Hood has been playing it in, of all places, Canada. One Faerie said he got more out of a round of Hot Seat than thirty years of Heart Circles. This summer, so many people played Hot Seat at Folleterre that we had to run two groups simultaneously. People played it so late into the night that the facilitators actually asked people to stop playing it. There was even a Hot Seat for French speakers. Notice that I keep saying we “play” Hot Seat. That’s because, often, it’s fucking fun. When someone asks a killer question, the Circle claps and hoots. “Goddamn!” “Ouch!” Things that used to hurt suddenly feel hilarious. It’s a crooked kind of magic. And when people accuse Hot Seat of being an exercise in sadism, or masochism, they’re right. I can’t tell you the number of people who crave being intensely probed, who want to be interrogated like a murder suspect. “Is that all you got?” they taunt the Circle. “I haven’t cried once!” Some girls are just kinky that way. When I was in the Hot Seat, people asked me why I was so cold. How I could be so impervious to other people’s pain. They mirrored back that I seemed to not be in touch with my own emotions. That I was creepy. One Faerie asked, “Why is other people’s pain different from yours?” It was a fucking difficult round, and I spent the next day separated from the group, shut down. But they were right. I wasn’t in touch with my emotions. My father had just died weeks before and I felt nothing, even for my grieving mother. That isn’t true. I felt annoyed at my father’s funeral. When my mother collapsed in tears at his burial, I rolled my eyes. I did, in fact, see my own pain as different from that of others. Months later, I’m still unpacking my time in the Hot Seat—and these are good discoveries, RFD 180 Winter 2019 25

discoveries I would’ve missed had everyone just told me what a lovely gorgeous swan I am. Hot Seat is loving. It’s just not lovey dovey. Robin Hood calls Hot Seat a ritual. I call it a game. (I also call it a gangbang, or an emotional fisting.) Robin Hood says Hot Seat is a ritual because “in ritual, we are transported from one place to another and back again, with hopefully a new perspective. How we perceive ourselves in the world can be totally transformed.” I don’t know. I’m a workshop queen, not a ritual queen. But what he says is right: “Hot Seat helps us 26 RFD 180 Winter 2019

break through the pattern to see what else is there.” Hot Seat is not perfect, and it never will be. It’s messy, it takes risks that go too far, and there will always be people who think it’s dangerous. This is why it works in Faerie space. The Faeries, as Luna says, is an experimental community. We try things. But don’t take anyone’s word on it. Be skeptical. Try it for yourself. Hot Seat may be coming to a gathering near you. Pull up a chair. Ask something. Get asked something. Take a risk. Or don’t. You can always go to Heart Circle.

“Faery land and body art 1,” collaborative workshop work, model: Kisses / Catherine Deneuve

Ritual: Walking Between Worlds By Sâde Gryffin

Land Acknowledgment I am a white Welsh immigrant; I live in Huichin, Chocheyno Ohlone land. With gratitude, I humbly acknowledge the Ohlone people who tend and have tended this land for centuries. (Huichin is the original Ohlone name for the city known as Oakland.)

*Croeso Aer | Welcome Air Welcome, breath in my body, my lungs, belly rising and falling. Welcome wind on my skin; welcome air flowing inside and outside.

Croeso Tân | Welcome Fire Welcome heat in my body, my groin, passion and energy vibrating. Welcome sun on my face; welcome fire flowing inside and out.

Croeso Dŵr | Welcome Water Welcome fluid in my body, saliva on my tongue, blood flowing. Welcome river up to my chest; welcome water flowing inside and out.

river. Long white Great Egret and tall brown Goose feathers in the East for Air. Purple flowers in the South for Fire gifted to me from a lone Amaranth plant growing among the grasses. A hole dug in the mud to catch drops of the river, in the West for Water. A chestnut brown ripe acorn on top of luminous green lichen settles into the dirt in the North for Earth. I come to water often to create Ritual. At beaches and riverbanks we find the interstice of land and water. The threshold. Among my favorite places is where the river meets the sea. The potent river water heavy with magical knowledge from the mountaintop. I love to sit in the place where they merge and let the mix of fresh and saltwater flow over my body. The yellow leaf guides my eye on its journey as it gets dangerously close to the fast moving downstream current. I expect it to be immediately engulfed. It’s not. Instead, it’s propelled away like an anti-magnet and becomes trapped, no longer

Croeso Daear | Welcome Earth Welcome clay of my body, my feet, my hands, the mass of physical being. Welcome mud beneath my feet; welcome earth flowing inside and out. * My indigenous language, Cymraeg/Welsh. Take a moment with your senses; evoke your connection to the elements. Bring your awareness to your breath and the warmth of your body. Run your tongue around your mouth; rest your feet on the ground beneath you. Be here. Be present.

Threshold A yellow leaf drops into the river and floats; a small boat with sides curved upward, its stem a short mast. I watch intently as it travels upstream in the opposite direction from the strong downstream current, guided gently by an invisible force. It sails past the remains of my completed Ritual, an altar laid out on the riverbank. In the circle I drew with a short branch in the sand, objects are placed to evoke the spirits of each direction. Precious pieces of nature I found as I walked through the “Resplendent Gold,” photograph by Devlin Shand. Sâde Gryffin wearing his sacred ritual garment, a resplendent gold sequined cloak, lovingly made for him by a friend in the mid-80s when he regularly performed as a Drag Queen in London and around Europe.

RFD 180 Winter 2019 27

going up or down the river, held between the currents. I watch it for some time, bobbing around in this liminal space. My eyes turn back to my book, Kristoffer Hughes explains, “the hypnagogic state is what is balanced between wakefulness and sleep...where the analyzing rational mind is less likely to interfere.” In ritual, we consciously induce a similar state, the place between worlds. My ritual practice is earth-based Welsh Mysticism. As a professional Psychic Energy Healer, I walk between worlds and navigate these dimensions daily. I venture over to see the fate of the yellow leaf. On closer inspection, I see the two currents spiraling into small whirlpools. I arrive in time to see the little yellow mast disappear down a dark vortex. The risk of becoming trapped in liminality.

Annwfn I am reminded of Annwfn, the Welsh ‘other world’. Annwfn is not below or above, it’s around us on a different dimension, we can access it when we desire, and we may stumble into it accidentally. In the Mabinogi, you know that you are encountering Annwfn when you see white animals: dogs, wild boars, deer, and horses. The Mabinogi are the Welsh sacred teachings, often referred to as Welsh folktales or myths. 28 RFD 180 Winter 2019

They were once an oral tradition, transcribed in the 1200s for fear they would be forgotten after Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, the last Prince of Wales, was killed by the conquering English. The Welsh Celtic tribes once lived all over the British Isles we are the first Britons. Conquered by the Romans and the Anglo Saxons, pushed back to the West to inhabit the land we now know as the country of Wales. Colonization led to the destruction of our indigenous spiritual practices. The land knows you, even when you are lost. —Robin Wall Kimmer

Gors Fawr In search of those lost practices, I travel back to my homeland of Cymru/Wales, the place I was born and raised for decades. The land where my bloodline Griffin goes back hundreds of years and most of my immediate family still lives in the small seaside town I grew up in. It is land that my physical body has been estranged from for some time. My spirit was not estranged; I spoke Welsh to myself in my head and still felt pride and connection. Only in the last few years have I reconnected with family and ventured back, for reasons too complex to explain here. It’s a freezing cold early morning in West Wales.

“Gors Fawr Wild White Horse,” photo by Sâde Gryffin. The wild white horse that approached me during my ritual at Gors Fawr Stone circle, in West Wales.

Gors Fawr is the only complete stone circle left in the region. It stands in a field near the village of Mynachlog-Ddu, at the foot of the blue Preseli Mountains where Stonehenge was quarried. It’s a journey in itself to find it, even with a good GPS. Once inside the circle, I begin my ritual, collecting objects to place in the directions, raw black wool and white wool, spiral snail shells, heather, and slate. I ground myself and draw up earth energy through my feet, draw down the energy of the Universe, connecting my body and spirit. I begin to walk the outer perimeter of the circle, listening to my inner knowing for what to do next. I spiral into the center and create an altar with all that I have collected. Such great symbols of Wales, wool, slate, and heather. I brought a small bag with me containing water and herbs to burn. I anoint the altar with water to honor my ancestors: the Welsh ones, the Queer ones, the Transcestors, the Artists, the Psychics, the Drag Queens, and the Faggot Magicians. Gors Fawr is beautiful. As I turn to face the directions, calling in each one, I become aware of wild horses galloping in the field around me. I feel a little wary at first; their hooves are loud and forceful on the ground. They pay me no mind. I resume my meditation, moving back into my liminal state. Off in the distance, about two hundred yards away, a pure white horse catches my eye; it’s the only one of its kind in the wild band. It’s eating grass, as I watch, it raises its head and sees me. Looking directly at me, the white horse begins walking straight to me, not taking its eyes off me. When she gets close, I can feel her breath on my face, she stops, looks me in the eyes, softly neighs, and walks on. I do not reach out to touch her, she does not invite that. My whole being is vibrating, the land is sentient, it knows me, a white horse of Annwfn recognized

me. The sacred practices are not lost; they are waiting to be remembered.

Resplendent Gold My sacred ritual garment is a resplendent gold sequined cloak, lovingly made for me by a friend in the mid-80s when I regularly performed as a Drag Queen in London and around Europe. That cloak is saturated with the energy of Queer venues, Queer Rituals, Trans Rituals, Sex Magick Rituals, Solo Rituals, and Sea Rituals; it has pride of place on my home altar. At this point in my life, after decades of creating and participating in ritual, I see my practice as a sacred knowing. It’s not cosplay, it’s not ego-based, it’s holding space in authenticity. I’m honored to facilitate solo rituals with my clients, notably trans folks marking their journeys. Cocreating group ritual is joyous, I lead workshops, retreats, and Labyrinth meditation walks regularly. Ritual, whether solo or in community, is an embodiment of intention. Our container to soar, to shift, to remember, to heal. In ritual, we enter the liminal, walk between the worlds, and we return transformed.

Sources Kristoffer Hughes: From the Cauldron Born Robin Wall Kimmer: Braiding Sweetgrass Diloch yn Fawr | Thank you Gwilym Morus Baird: celticsource.online, for Welsh Mythology and language consultation. Jake Harpin and Snowflake Towers

“Croeso Daear | Welcome Earth,” photography by Ryan Buchholz. Altar for Alchemy of Desire Workshop at Into the Woods retreat, Groundswell 2019.

RFD 180 Winter 2019 29

30 RFD 180 Winter 2019

“May Day Blessing” by Donald L. Engstrom-Reese.

The Winter Dreamers Are Singing It is Midwinter Night. The Winter Dreamers are Singing. Listen. They are yoiking the secret names of snow, Sending their powers vibrating throughout the cosmos. They are chanting the chants of icy restoration, Crystalizing the probabilities of promised renewal. They are articulating a clarity that can only be held in Winter’s Breath, Knowing that it feeds the Breath of Life and the Kiss of Death. The Winter Dreamers are Singing. Listen. They are incanting the spells that enliven the deepest mysteries Dwelling within the nuclei of every molecule of wintery water. They are vocalizing the rhythmic magics of dream blizzards Howling into being transformative white hurricanes of frozen possibility. They are intoning the tones of the vibrant winds of wisdom, Encoding the mysteries of a life well lived onto the walls of our beating hearts. The Winter Dreamers are Singing. Listen. Breath deep … and join the chorus.

—Donald L. Engstrom-Reese

Following pages, “Winter Dreamers Singing the Winter’s Songs of Restoration” by Donald L. Engstrom-Reese.

RFD 180 Winter 2019 31

32 RFD 180 Winter 2019

RFD 180 Winter 2019 33

New York City Radical Faeries Yule by Donald Gallagher

2019 will mark the 20th anniversary of the celebration of the Winter Solstice at Grace Church Van Vorst in downtown Jersey City. Grace is an Episcopal church, which kindly has hosted this Radical Faerie, Wiccan based calibration all of these years, seeing that our ritual fits with their celebration of Christmas as another reflection of the return of the light. I am very grateful for their willingness to allow me and the NYC Circle of Radical Faeries to create each year a ritual of observing the darkest day of the calendar with a hopeful prayer of renewal of the slow but steady return of the daylights time. I first experienced this ritual at Fannie and Fussy’s beloved love loft on 3rd and 3rd on Brooklyn. The ritual that night was in the capable hands of our dear witch Endora who I give credit for this form which we have used all of these years. It was a gentle night of solemn participation of all attending. Beginning with a call of the directions and creation of a safe circle of protection and power, then without explanation the central altar filled with unlit candles became the place where each person came forward and lit one of the candles either in silence or with a hope or wish for the new cycle. I was greatly moved by the simplicity and beauty of that evening so was thrilled to be able to get the beautiful space,which I was recreating the look of the room when it opened in 1853. The first one was a most auspicious occasion as we were only a little over a week before the turn of the millennium. A time full of speculation and hope for a better time ahead (if we could survive the Y2K treat of all the computers crashing.) If you don’t know what that was google it. It was a wonderful night because it had what was called a super moon because 34 RFD 180 Winter 2019

it was particularly close to earth as was Mars which was riding close to the moon so the night sky was also having a bright light event. We began the ritual in as total darkness as we could make, helped that year by black curtains hung for a dance event. EverEddie led us in a chant with drummers at the rear of the room behind the black curtains, and walked through them to the center where the altar was set with hundreds of candles in beautiful candelabra and candlestick holders as well as many brought by the people. Thought no light was lit yet the super moon gave wonderful light and ambiance through the stained glass. Then the directions were called and each person came forward to make their contribution to the new light. By the end a warm glow filled the room both with light and love, drumming and a wild and crazy spiral brought a joyful conclusion to the evening. Each year that followed kept the basic format, with variations on how the ritual was presented, sometimes simply, sometimes with great theatrics. Always with a center alter of candles to be lit by each person as they wished silently or with a spoken hope or observation. Some years are quite full, others a smaller group. Sometimes fabulous drag, others mostly street wear, no matter, always a truly beautiful and thoughtful observant of the darkness of the day and of the sad conditions of the world we are all part of but with a hopeful energy to bring light to the darkness. It is such a joy for me to bring together the NY Circle of Radical Faeries and many of friends and neighbors here in Jersey City. Here’s hoping that this practice will continue either here or elsewhere. Blessed Be. Photograph courtesy author.

The Importance of the Trickster by Trixie

was sitting under a cool and drizzly October sky when a man dressed in a red mask with a huge penis flopping over the top of his head came straight over to me from the center of the courtyard. As he skipped over, the giant ribbed wooden dick on his belt swayed like a bright pink pendulum. The white yak wool spraying from the tip of the phallus caught the breeze, flowing back and forth with the rhythm of his steps. Maybe he chose me because I was the only foreigner on that entire side of the plaza. Maybe it was because he could sense that one reason I had come was to receive his blessing. Into his hands, I put three tiny penises—talismans from the famous ‘penis monastery’ Chime Lhakhang. ‘Sooooo small’ he said in broken English, ‘tiny, tiny, tiny’, he laughed. ‘Mine BIG’ he swaggered…’you soo, sooo tiny’. A similarly costumed friend had joined him by this time— and he laughed with him, joking in their own language.. And, gently, he handed me my tiny penises back. I was at Thimpu Teschu, three days of ritual Buddhist dances and plays in the royal palace grounds of the largest city in Bhutan. Over the hours, spectacularly costumed monks spun and leaped in ethereal religious dances. Elegant silk-costumed men and women joined and separated in beautiful choreographed routines. Masked players retold some of the great magical stories and parables of local Buddhism. But always, alongside them were these atsara, mocking the moves of the beautiful women, thrusting their huge dicks at the swirling monks, teasing and taunting. At one point, they ran into the audience and took up red monks’ robes. Then,

in the center of the plaza, under the gaze of the most important Lama in Bhutan, they mocked every aspect of monks’ temple blessings—from mooning the high lama in mock prostrations to a

water fight using the silver-spouted teapot used for dispensing holy water at sacred shrines. Throughout the day, myriad dancers and players came and went, but the atsara were always there—tirelessly playing their important role. They were the bridge between the audience and the performers, between the sacred and profane,

(untitled, from My Turn to Wear the Horns), by Michael Starkman.

RFD 180 Winter 2019 35

between austerity and debauchery. I felt a brotharound the circle. It seems the shaman was lost, erhood with these characters who represent what and they muddled the word marakame as they I consider one of the most important aspects of asked every single person jokinglyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;are you the Faerie magick: the comic, chaotic, magical, sexy maracuya (passionfriut)? Are you the macrame (it role of trickster. seems weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve lost our plant hanger)? Here in the Sometimes we intentionally play the trickster, dark, in a haze of dust and peyote, they dissolved and sometimes the trickster plays us. Like a huge the distance between me and the shaman, asking juicy fart that comes ripping out during the quiet- me to find my own inner marakame with a hint of est moment of a high holy massâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the trickster the ridiculous thrown in. knows just the right moment to burst into the After a time, the marakame reappeared, wearmost reverent and sacrosanct moments, reminding a grass maskâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; his hands filled with oodles of ing us to not take things movieri (feather-tipped so seriously. blessing sticks). This Watching these atsara time, he himself was the that I realized how crititrickster, mocking his own cal they are to the energy ritual. Where the shaman Sometimes we of the space, and how blessed and sacrificed a intentionally play the much the trickster emliving breathing sacrificial trickster, and sometimes bodies what I consider to calf, we were given cornbe core to my identity as meal â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;calvesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; for the mock the trickster plays us. a Radical Faerie, and one shaman to bless for our Like a huge juicy fart that of the great gifts I feel we own personal â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;sacrificesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. comes ripping out during as a community offer the This straw marakame was the quietest moment of world. both clown and teacher, But the trickster does pulling back the veil, helpa high holy massâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the more than just lighten ing us to realize we were trickster knows just the the mood, he/she sparks the real shamans in this right moment to burst us to question our realceremony, that the real into the most reverent ity and to walk between magic of transformation worlds. was within each one of us. and sacrosanct moments, I was in a small As we faefolk brew reminding us to not take WixĂĄrika community our own rituals from things so seriously. above Tepic, in central ingredients far-and-wide, Mexico for the homeI wanted to remind us of coming of a dozen or how important it is leave so pilgrims. Scratched a seat of honor open for and sunburnt, the pilgrims had walked from the the trickster. Whether itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s calling the four direcsacred desert of Wirikuta to the ocean shrine of tions to the tune of the Hokey Pokey at a memoAramara. Now, they were returning to the village rial for a fallen brother (thank you Paradox), or with gifts of wisdom and medicine, including the having someone try to pee on you while youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re sacred jicuri (peyote). singing your heart out at a no talent show (you We stayed awake through the night, a man know who you are ). with a whip keeping us from sleeping, a rasping So take a moment and give a nod to your inviolin periodically calling us to dance weaving ner trickster, that part of you that loves pushing infinite loops around the two sacred fires in dusty boundaries, offending and delighting, and genercircles. At one point during the timeless night, ally stirring things up. Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be afraid about we were allowed a slight respite to sit down. That the occasional bitch-slaps that come with the was when I noticed the marakame (shaman) was territoryâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;for your wisdom, humor, and magick gone. is more healing to the world than you could ever The dozen or so desert pilgrims then went imagine.

đ&#x;&#x2DC;&#x2022;

36 RFD 180 Winter 2019

“Blood Moon,” by Lux.

RFD 180 Winter 2019 37

Ritual, A Life’s Journey by West

itual is a way to create dynamic containers in service to our own and other’s extra ordinary experiences. Ritual is a means to alter our consciousness; to step outside the ordinary; to alter our physical space; to suspend time and place. Ritual provides a context for the manifestation of dreams and visions. This essay is the result of Rosie Delicious’ request to me to write about my personal journey and how it brought me to helping create the public rituals done by the New York City Gay Men’s Shamanic Circle. There is a tradition in India of a ‘house holder’ who, upon reaching a certain age, releases his responsibilities of family and work to take up his inner journey. While few can do that completely, many let go of what they can to open space for the possibilities of deeper inner work. I was raised Catholic. Toyed with being a priest. Met a guru. Left the guru. Practiced Bhakti Yoga meditation, solo, twice a day for twenty-five years, setting up an altar of the Guru’s photo, a candle and burning incense, completed the meditation, dismantled—ritual. Grew bored. Ceased all spiritual practices. In 2000 my life was in turmoil, I was headed for a nervous break down or a heart attack. I decided to quit my activism and my NYC teaching job of thirty-three years and retire early. I was almost fifty-four. In June, while walking in the Pride March with the Lesbian and Gay Teachers Assoc. of NYC, for what I had decided would be my last time, life became interesting. Robert C., an ally in LGBT activism, also a teacher and a Radical Faerie, dropped into our group. As we marched we chatted. He revealed he and three other Radical Faeries were about to lead a Sex Magic experience in the woods of Vermont. I knew of Harry Hay and something of his work. I was intrigued. A few days later I contacted Robert to see if I could attend. Faerie Camp Destiny was new to me. Camping was new to me. Smudging was new to me. Calling in the directions was new to me. The heart circle was new to me. Spirituality outside of organized traditions was not entirely new to me. Down time was as important as the heart 38 RFD 180 Winter 2019

circles. I learned about the work of Robert Johnson, mystic, Jungian psychologist, and jargon free writer. I learned about a NYC spiritual community that gathered on the full moon. I learned about this Great Basin Dance called the Naraya, similar to the Paiute Ghost Dance, which I knew a lot about. I was hooked. I started attending Faerie gatherings. I attended my first Full Moon Ceremony in September. The full moon ceremonies were planned rituals: smudge, set up a proscribed altar, call in the directions, sing songs, share, bless water, pray over and burn tobacco, all to the heart beat of a hand held drum. When there was a Pipe Carrier in attendance, a Pipe Ceremony was held. The Pipe is as mystical as any chalice at a mass to me since childhood. I had seen Plains People holding them on the Arthur Godfrey TV program. I felt connected to the Pipe in a deep way. My grandmother was Mohawk. She never spoke about her natal family. The Pipe is not a Haudenosaunee tradition. The Full Moon and NY Dance (Naraya) Community were 90% the same. Over the years, I have attended numerous Dances held around the country. I made myself acquainted with its many parts to create a sacred space; to the complexity of the altar; to the rhythm and flow of the energies of the three days. I learned how to approach the elders, to listen, to learn. I tried not to ask indelicate questions. I witnessed the differing energies of the various Dance communities and locations. I sought extra ordinary experiences through the songs and movement. I had dreams and visions. By 2004 I was initiated as a Pipe Carrier by the Dance leader. I became one of the Spirit Keepers whose job was to help manage the logistics of the Dance and support the spirit of the community. The Pipe Ceremony has a set way of loading tobacco and offering smoke in prayer. It is essential for many ceremonies such as Sweat Lodge. It is essential for the Dance. Our Dance community had a Ute teacher who added layers to the basic ceremony. He taught us a water blessing ritual, songs, creation of ritual objects. He gave me my Ute name in ceremony. At my monthly Pipe gathering, it is his ceremonies we honor…with some additions.

Back in the 70s I had deeply studied dream work based on the southeast Asian Senoi people’s tradition. Later I found out that the Haudenosaunee have a very similar practice. During those times, I also was intrigued by the Don Juan books written by Carlos Castaneda. There was a famous Lakota medicine man, Black Elk, who as a child had a major vision of bringing about a new world of unity between all colors of humans which the tribal elders saw as significant. They had the whole tribe create the dream physically. With that creation, the dream’s intent was given a path to manifestation. In most traditions such visions are initiatory into being a shaman. Robert Johnson advocates, in his book, Inner Work, for the manifesting of dreams in a concrete ritualized way. So, when I had a significant dream in June 2001, I created its parts as a series of wire sculptures. As the dream is told, the pieces are placed on a cloth and spiral inward to the center. The ritual is completed and it is dismantled. It has been witnessed. The parts of my dream have come true. I trained for two years in the Pachakuti Mesa shamanic tradition, where the altar has very specific and ritualized methods of set up: where to add anything requires a ritual, where power is centered. Where healings are done. The eagle and the condor seek to be united. I have trained in a number of Bon, Buddhist rituals of healing. Bon is the Tibetan pre-Buddhist shamanic tradition. I have ‘done’ one mantra 60,000 times. I have practiced core shamanic rituals of journeying and healing. I have trained apprentices in some of my traditions, amongst other things. Which leads us to the second half of Rosie’s request. I became a member of the New York City Gay Men’s Shamanic Circle in 2005. We all had differing traditions, Great Basin, Andean, Vedic, Celtic, Korean, Buddhist, Mexican, Core, Faerie, Reiki, Spiritualism, etc. We all had experience in other modalities: dream work, body work, tarot, breath work, scrying, etc. Each tradition informed parts of our regular gatherings. Because we were a closed group, we were able to explore where parts of our individual experiences fit to create a satisfying unified whole. When the New York City Gay Men’s Shamanic Circle decided to establish a public face with monthly meetings at the LGBTQ Community Center, the original members became stewards.

The steward who was leading the Open Circle would follow our basic ritual but do it within his own experience. Setting the altar was almost always the same. Sealing the space varied. Calling in the directions varied. The “Go Round’ was not as structured as a heart circle. Journeys reflected the stewards theme for the circle. Healings were mostly from core shamanic trainings. We often shared our outline within the steward circle to inform and also seek suggestions to adjust the parts of the coming ritual. So for example, when called upon to lead, I dreamt. In the dream I would be given an outline of how the ritual was to go. The other shamans used their own methods to create the ritual for their time of leadership. Consulting with each other would deepen the work before doing it. From my life time of training and personal experiences, I have learned that: The best rituals are planned. Intent is the guide. Flexibility is a necessity. All rituals come out of our individual traditions and varied personal experiences. Leaders must be humble in the creation of rituals, being in service to their own and other’s extra ordinary experiences. Doubt is as important as confidence. One must exercise a high level of integrity in using traditional modalities, while at the same time, being open to inspiration, to spontaneity, to creativity, to merging experiences . I strongly believe in learning all the rules, so when you break them you know exactly how and why. Time and place are important. If there is more than one person leading, their roles need to be clear to each other. The leader(s) needs to create, control and contain the forces of that dynamic space so that people can have extra ordinary experiences in as secure a setting as possible. The leader(s) of every ritual is solely responsible for how it goes. Within the ritual the leader(s) must be responsive to the needs of the people; responsible to the energies called in or that come without warning. The positive that flows from the ritual belongs to all in attendance. If negative occurs, it is the leader’s task to limit, dissipate or absorb it. Sometimes rituals seem to go on and on. They don’t. Their effects do.

RFD 180 Winter 2019 39

Ritual Queen by Shokti

hokti here, ritual mama of the Albion and EuroFaeries, Queer Spirit Festival organiser and facilitator of ecstatic full moon drum circles in London since mid 2000s, offering some history and practical tips from my 8th house Capricorn Moon... Ritual is deeply programmed into the subconscious patterns of humanity. Through ritual we can bring ourselves into alignment with the planetary energies. The movement of the earth round the sun and through the heavens creates a spiral dance—to which we can attune our hearts, minds and bodies. This is the way to wellness, wholeness and happiness. AIDS was my gateway to gatekeeping … the cocoon in which the witch/shaman/priest in me was birthed … in 2000 this butterfly emerged, looking for his tribe.... Accelerated: I came out aged twenty-one, in the final year of a history degree in the refined but peculiarly repressed atmosphere of Cambridge University in the UK. The genie finally out of the bottle, I rushed to bigger cities chasing joy, sex and love: entering the gay game in the mid 80s as ‘Don’t Die of Ignorance’ was broadcast on TV by the government, coming out into a gay scene tense with fear. Four years later I was diagnosed HIV+, then for five more years I was still well enough to continue feasting on life’s pleasures—the gay caterpillar, with no other ambition than to dance, to have great sex and to find love. It’s true what they say— the terminal diagnosis inspired me to live life to the full, I was out dancing every weekend, I did find deep passionate love. But aged thirty AIDS was kicking in, and everything changed. Individual: I had given up on god and religion in my early teens, and nothing had come along to make me think again until AIDS brought me an Accelerated Individual Discovery of Self. Fortunately, five years of taking LSD at weekends in fantastic underground 40 RFD 180 Winter 2019

gay clubs had, it turned out, prepared me well for this shock of the shakti awakening. I called out to God and SHE came to me—opening my mind and heart to the spiritual realms, old mental/emotional structures collapsed—I experienced an ecstatic rush of rebirth lasting months—suddenly my eternal soul was leading the way, and instead of being upset about dying I was more excited to be alive than I had ever been before. Discovery: Once I adjusted to the shock of the veils dissolving I dived into a study of philosophy, witchcraft, Taoism, Buddhism, mystical Christianity, Kabbalah etc; started to meditate and make up my own rituals. As my body faded my soul came alive, all fear of death vanished and during the painful journey of suffering that my body endured in the next three years I practised. Learning to open my heart to spirit I discovered the power of devotional spirituality, and studying the teachings of the worlds’ mystics from every race and faith I completely transformed my understanding of life. Of Self: Learning the mystical truths at the core of all faiths, I moved to a place of viewing life as one dance—which brought great ecstasies as I returned to the world post-AIDS but left me somewhat ‘empty’, unaware of my place within it. Spirit showed me then that our personalities and relationships are also part of the divine play. After five years in the transformational AIDS cocoon, in the year 2000 I stepped out into the world again, as a fragile, fresh butterfly. The shamanic witch in my soul was awake, but now had to face people (a task easily as daunting as death!) and it was time to find my soul’s friends and my tribe. I have been finding them ever since. First I met queer pagan witches in the south of England: many of them women working powerful nature and deity magic. I met gentle men at Edward Carpenter Community retreats, then among the Eurofaeries, at gatherings in the Netherlands and Germany I found my tribe of queer magicians, healers, teachers and artists. I came home. At Folleterre I became

known as Shokti Mama the Ritual Queen—it was for this role the Goddess had trained me in my AIDS cocoon, and I was conscious that there would have been many more ritual queens had not AIDS taken them away, but conscious too that those missing guys were actually right by my side. In the UK we have recently revelled in three manifestations of Queer Spirit Festival 2016-19, which brings together 500 queers for magical celebrations in nature over five days—here I get to co-create ritual for hundreds of people, and am left thinking this must be the first time it has been possible for so many of us queer holy folk to gather for such large-scale ceremony in Europe since the Romans took to slaughtering us in the fourth century. Collective ecstasy was once the regular sacred ritual of the people: calling on and revelling in the spirit of Dionysus, of Attis, Cybele, Diana, Pan— these deities who transgressed gender boundaries and sexual taboos were invoked to bring people into communion with the unseen world and into deeper relationship with each other and their own inner universe. These gods, at whose festivals people of all levels of society were welcome, including servants, slaves and outcasts, and who continued to be celebrated long into the Christian era, were basically queer as fuck. Their holy servants had been women and queers (in general feminine men, sometimes eunuchs) dating back millennia—for, as I found in my mystical transformation, it is through the ‘feminine’ that God comes into the world—spirit enters through our bodies, especially when engaged in ceremony, which in ancient times regularly involved sex and dance and drugs. Gender bending was a frequent feature of collective ritual, it still exists in carnival today, the vestige of this ancient rite. Celebrations led by the queer devotees of Cybele, Dionysus and other deities broke down barriers of gender, class and sexuality, brought the spirit of freedom—and threatened the growing power of the patriarchal, militarised states. From the late Roman Empire onwards the repression of the natural witch The author, photo by Kerfuffle aka mikekear.com.

es, healers and shamans of humanity has always had a political motive. The cosy relationship between the Christian church and state was a means to control the minds, morality and lives of the people. This required the suppression of the pagan gods, of their rituals of liberation and of the holy priestesses and shamans who led them. By repressing the feminine aspect of the Holy Spirit, religion was twisted into a societal control mechanism. When Europeans set out to conquer the indigenous tribes of the other continents they continued this dark pursuit—they killed the gender bending shamans, imposed their uptight Christian sexual taboos and banned the collective ecstatic rites that bound the people together. Just as had happened in Europe, the holy ones were eradicated, the drums were silenced, homosex was laden with shame, the connection to spirit cut off. Our beautiful lovely sexuality is the gateway to spirit. Under all organised religions of the past, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, there has been a separation of carnality, or shall we say of flesh or earth or sex, and spirituality. As far as I am concerned they are all the same thing, and what we need to do as faeries is to tie it all back together again. —Harry Hay In mind and spirit I journeyed along the Way with guidance from many of the incredible spiritual traditions of the world, but I came home in time to the core pagan practices of the western Celtic culture, seeing in its elemental, seasonal and astrological lore a powerful wisdom tradition that is some kind of balance to the great religions of the east, that synchronises with other indigenous pathways and practices, and contains within it the potential to offer a framework for a global spiritual culture that encourages souls to find liberation, understanding and love from the moment they arrive on the planet. But the rapidly growing modern manifestation of paganism and especially witchcraft, while doing great things to bring the goddess and magic back into the world, is in general lacking in one fundaRFD 180 Winter 2019 41

mental element—pagan and shamanic magic was always very queer. The Age of Aquarius is the queer age of the zodiac: because of the Aquarian mythology, back in the Middle Ages gay men were known as Ganymedes. The myth teaches about the sacred role that queers play in the human collective. Queer folk have a natural affinity with the stars and planets, and with this wisdom tradition that does not focus on deities and devils, nor on right and wrong. We are playing our role in birthing Aquarian principles in the world, and there is further to go. Aquarius takes us into an age of exploration of the mind and spirit—through collective experiences, the thing we Faeries are conjure so well. Our job as magical queers today? To be the bridges, the healers and the gatekeepers to bring this shift of the ages HOME. London 2005: with lesbian friend Anna I called the Queer Spirit Circle into being, intended as a space for evolving queers to find each other and make ceremony together. Fifteen years later, and aka the Faerie Drum Circle, up to a hundred queers gather regularly in a Victorian community hall or round a garden fire at full moons for an ecstatic evening of drumming, dancing and emotional expression/release. We bring a bit of genderfluid, world-connecting witchery to Vauxhall, once home of the Victorian Pleasure Gardens and now South London’s most famous gay locale. We each bring our own perception and experience of SPIRIT to this melting pot in which the sacred mystery is the focus of celebration and awe, offering acceptance and respect to each other’s unique paths as we summon the powers of the universe to heal us, uplift and manifest through us. Every trip into ecstasy changes something within. The Wheel of the Year There are many ways we can benefit from incorporating ritual into our lives, my main focus is to be a living example of the health benefits that living with awareness of, and ritualistic engagement with, the Wheel of the Year; also of how we can find balance and understanding through knowing our Selves, not only as the Self in all things, but as the interplay of elemental and astral energies that permeate every moment of our existence. Fireearth-air-water is the constant rhythmic flow of the energies of the Self, shining externally through the 42 RFD 180 Winter 2019

Sun’s light, and reflecting emotionally in tune with the moon’s monthly journey. From Aries to Pisces the Sun charts the twelve stages of the soul’s journey through life, death and rebirth—giving us a taste of the complete journey every year. The whole map is there for us, a map without rights and wrongs, without good and evil—a map that was first studied in the very queer Mesopotamian temples of Ishtar, long before the male mind sucked us all into those stifling polarities. Every month the Moon takes the same journey, mapping out the emotional energies affecting the collective energy field, giving us a simple formula to guide us through the ups and downs—every two and a half days the moon shifts element, in the pattern fireearth-air-water. Our ancestors would have always known the phase of the moon, and been aware of how it affected them. New moons are times for intention setting, full moons for expansion and expression, waning moons for contraction and inner work. Every full moon gives us a different polarity to examine in our lives, to understand and work on, a different vibrational field to operate in. At the London Circles we dance ourselves into amazing states of connection, awareness—love. We come back from the ecstatic journey changed, healed in some way. Making ceremony with the moon, and at the equinoxes and solstices, brings our personal energy fields into alignment and harmony with the planet’s own cycles. Connecting to nature and to each other through the heart is our global Faerie practice. We can then take this further by building the connection of our multidimensional souls in ritual. This builds over time, and by attuning ourselves, mentally and energetically, to the seasonal and cosmic energy streams we not only invoke healing in ourselves, we also each help to bring the collective human consciousness into alignment with the Universal Self. The Ancestors are on, at and by our side. When we gather and circle the veils are always thin. Rediscovering the arts of queer witches and gatekeepers Entering the places between the worlds Ritual is about what uniting the without and within That a new Way of Being may begin. Our task is to be the rainbow bridge, to remember our roles as the gatekeepers and open the gates the world is shaking, the wheel turns fast—but it’s not too late.

Interview with Keith / Cuz’n by robin hood

robin hood: In this interview I’m excited to explore your formative experiences of ritual leading up to how you presently incorporate it into your life and artistic work. What is your story of ritual? How has your relationship to ritual evolved from the first time and place it entered your life? How has it informed your life as a queer person? How do you use ritual to counteract supremacist conditioning? Cuz’n: I am responding to these questions in bed. It’s 11pm. A quiet Saturday night after a long bath soaking in warm water with Epsom salts and aromatherapy. For some people this might have been a ritual. What were the ritualistic elements of this bath? I did it with the intention of shifting my mood, my body, my state of consciousness. I wanted to spend some time outside of time, in a place outside of my habitual places. I mixed earth (salt) and water, supported by plant medicine. Warm water is a meeting of fire and water. I lit a candle and turned off the light. One expression I learned early in my witch trainings was, magic happens at the place where the elements meet. I have no idea how long I was soaking. I’m different now than I was before the bath. For some of the time I was reading Adrienne Marie Brown’s Pleasure Activism. These days, with the supremacy of my phone and screen based reading, anytime I read an actual book (even on my kindle) feels like a ritual. Reading about sex and pleasure and healing from political harm shifts my breath, drops me into my body, and moves me out of the habitual or quotidian world. I am not interested in most psychological or family narratives. I forget most myths I’ve ever read or worked magically at Reclaiming’s Witch Camps. I’m not a story person. Which is ironic because I’m a storyteller. I can talk all night. I can describe most performances I see in rich detail. All this to say that nothing much or too much comes to mind when I think about my story of

ritual. I’ve always been drawn to ritual and I haven’t unpacked why. I was raised Catholic, like a lot of queer ritualists. My godparents were eccentric artists/seekers who only once gave me a gift, at the age of fifteen, a course in Transcendental Meditation. This was very unusual in our family context. The only time I went to a summer camp was as a junior counselor on a small island on the Canadian side of Lake Huron, in Georgian Bay. The camp was run by an American psychologist who had an idea to start the summer with an encounter group featuring the entirely white and teenage camp counselors with a group of Anishnaabe (Ojibwe) teens from Manitoulin Island. This was very unusual in our summer camp context. I moved to San Francisco in 1982 and by 1984 I was involved in a ragtag community of anarchist artists; hippy punks who went from protest to late night

Hex City Hall by Annie Danger + Keith Hennessy, 2017, photograph by Madrone Jack.

RFD 180 Winter 2019 43

rituals in an abandoned brewery or the vacant lot at But the celibacy grew to be a self-directed training in the corner of 16th & Valencia, the site of a landlord better understanding my sexual body and desires in arson where several SRO residents died, and where relationship to the shitty sexual oppression strucin 1986 our dance collaborative Contraband would tured into every aspect of everything. I studied porn make a massive ritual performance called Religare. and my response to it. I read a lot. Spending a lot of The title, from the Latin root of religion, spoke to our time in solo sex, I learned more about my butthole, efforts to reinvent ritual and community, which we its connection to my dick, and then to my brain/ didn’t differentiate. We wore dirty white clothes as heart/attitude/voice. we dove and rolled through the dust. Then we would I had always imagined being able to learn about all pull black dresses over our clothes. We wore those sex, going to school for touch, specifically sexual dresses for years in multiple works and somehow touch, and more specifically a safe space for men they were ritual dresses, invoking ancestors and to not hide their ignorance about women’s bodies, unseen forces. Choreogradesires, and pleasures. pher/mystic Sara Shelton When my celibacy ended Mann asked us to meditate I shifted from a vague For the past decade my on light coming out of the bisexual to a queer faggot attention to decolonial and ground to bring healing to and looked for a sex school the site. Visual artist Laufor gay men. I found Joe anti-racist philosophies ren Elder built lights with Kramer and Body Elecand practices has made car batteries in plexiglasstric and after taking my it harder and harder to topped milk crates and first class, was invited participate in white gay buried them in the ground. to co-teach at one of the The healing visualized and summer intensives, where spaces, or white majority then represented. The permy contributions were in contexts, even the ones formance concluded with the areas of ritual, political that have been good for me. a massive circle around a context (understandtowering fire, first of the ing sexual oppression as six or seven folks from linked to authoritarian Contraband, then our large community choir, and regimes, and homophobia as linked to misogyny), then the audience. Hundreds and then thousands and basic body awareness. I was one of the three watched from the sidewalk above the sunken lot. founding teachers of the Body Electric’s Sacred IntiSomewhere in the mid-80s while at anarchist mate training. Earlier I met Jack Davis, a pioneering direct action protests we met witches connected faggot activist, Radical Faerie, fiber queen artist, and with Reclaiming and we started going to their rituwitch. We started co-teaching workshops aka leading als, which became our rituals. Rose May Dance and rituals focused on gay/queer male sex and intimacy Geoff Yippie were my first witch teachers. Maybe healing. In these sexual healing contexts I was able to Brooke too. It’s hard to remember because my recall show up in one place as what I understood as my full has fused many different rituals, classes, and meetself, a holistic hybrid of anarchist, dancer, faggot, and ings that happened in the ritual room at Blackcat witch/ritualist. house where Starhawk and Rose lived with several It’s past midnight now. I’m not going to write a others. Back then there was a network of anarchist full memoir. I have to get up at 8am so that I can collective houses in San Francisco, linked through be on time for day two of Tantra and Ritual Sex, monthly coffeehouses/political benefits/open mic a workshop in Oakland with Jason Tantra. At the performances. My relationship to Reclaiming is ripe age of sixty I’m in a process of returning to the ongoing and important to me despite my alienation work and worlds of sexual healing. Visiting ritualfrom groups in general, my perception that the informed sex workers in various cities and countries, rituals used to feel more politically radical, and my seeking out the bold and shamefree guys who use the allergy to deity and the awkward gendering of the terms healing, tantra, conscious, or love, I’m doing sacred. some important self-healing while getting some kind I was relationship celibate for nearly three years of overview of what’s happening around gay/queer in my late twenties. That was more of an initiatory men’s sexual healing. process than a ritual. It started unintentionally…I For those who aren’t involved, there is a renaistend to have long dry periods between relationships. sance going on. One of its manifestations is the 44 RFD 180 Winter 2019

Stretch festival in Berlin, and its cousins Ignite in Vancouver and Arouse in Seattle. These are weekend festivals that bring together many teachers – offering a smorgasbord of naked yoga, tantra, light BDSM, and all manner of naked touch rituals—for a hundred plus queer men, mostly white and cis, but with some leadership by men of color and trans guys. It has many roots and resonances with the pioneering work that many of us were actively developing during the queeruption of cultural production and political resistance during the pre-1995 AIDS era. One thing that has changed in the past twenty years is the possibility and even necessity for certification and professionalization. Both Joe Kramer and Annie Sprinkle (among many others who used to be renegades of the radical sex underground) now have PhDs in sexology. Joe created a legal precedent for queer sex workers through a program for Sexological Bodywork. And then there’s tantra, which is cited by many gay erotic bodyworkers in Canada, UK, Europe, as well as the US, often as a claim to legitimacy for a scene that used to be almost entirely underground. I see it connected to the mainstreaming of yoga. The lineage of neo-tantra, a mostly straight white money project influenced by 70s New Agers and the diaspora of Osho/Rajneesh’s ex-followers, was pretty homophobic when I encountered it in the 80s and 90s but Jason Tantra and Barbara Carrellas (Urban Tantra) are among those who have adapted tantra for queers with goals as utopian and meaningful as shame free sex, the body’s pleasure as a gateway to spirit, and the elusive ego death of enlightenment. Is tantra ritualistic? Sure. It’s a technology for shifting consciousness, healing the heart and the mind, and for opening one’s awareness to universal, mysterious, and powerful forces beyond language and knowing. While stroking your dick or someone else’s. Nice. How do you use ritual to counteract supremacist conditioning? For the past decade my attention to decolonial and anti-racist philosophies and practices has made it harder and harder to participate in white gay spaces, or white majority contexts, even the ones that have been good for me. One of the perspectives that is common in queer and QPOC artist contexts is that if a project or workshop or community is not actively anti-racist, then it is racist, or more specifically that it is upholding white supremacist structures. Due to the bitterness of getting older and of barely surviving a couple of sad gay divorces and the increasing fuck

ing fuckedness of climate change and neo-fascism, I have been less active as a ritualist, except in art and dance contexts with younger more racially and gender diverse communities. Instead of using ritual to counteract supremacist structures, including the internalized oppressions that they produce, I have spent more time critiquing how alternative cultures, including Faeries, contact improv, yoga, psychedelia, and Burning Man, reproduce supremacist ideologies and privileges. In my performing and teaching work I have been prioritizing collaborations with trans and queer artists of color, including indigenous Two Spirit artists/ritualists. I deeply question the role of the white artist, the white ritualist, the predominantly white community or gathering, and myself. Most of the white scenes I’m connected to continue to be resistant to the current discourse of younger anti-racist queers. I was one of at least ten gays who were troubled by the unintentional supremacist and colonial logics of the first Global Generate gathering so I assembled our comments into a written critique. It was mostly dismissed and several of the organizers had time to personally insult me but no time to engage the issues with me. This gathering has continued to evolve, offering activism and healing in response to global homo hatred. But if we can’t look at the settler colonial shadow, that we have all internalized and reproduced in Faerie and other alternative culture New Age post-Hippy contexts, then the potential for harm is more likely. I know that Free Cascadia Witch Camp (which has happened at Wolf Creek Sanctuary) and multiple gatherings at Groundswell have looked at whiteness much more closely and developed more decolonial approaches to ritual than any of the white-dominant Faerie and gay sexual healing communities. But it will surprise no long term anti-racist or feminist activist that there have been gnarly schisms in both of these organizations. It is not easy to renegotiate power and be destabilized by differing levels of understanding and commitment to radical change. The challenges are many for white and middle class folks with regards to cultural appropriation, colonial logics, white and male supremacist practices and how our niche communities might shift how we pray and celebrate, mourn and fuck, and depend on ritual to construct our gatherings and ongoing relationships with both spiritual and political integrity. Heart circle is beautiful ritual technology. Yes it is rooted in white observations of indigenous practices. But also in Quaker meetings. And in anarchist and feminist organizing. And so many traditional or contemporary practices of radically democratic horiRFD 180 Winter 2019 45

zontality. Faerie gatherings begin and end with light rituals where ancestors are thanked, the organizers are blessed, the guests are welcomed, and the histories of the land are acknowledged. And where the deities of delight, kindness, sexiness, and fierce fabulosity are invoked, are ritually called into our bodies and the body politic, the temporary society of the gathering. The no/talent show is an amazing ritual, a time outside of time, a magical place, where queer glamor and humor create powerful spells that sustain many of us into unknown futures yet to be revealed but sensed as not only possible but likely. No matter what happens, the performance ritual affirms that there will be queers in the future and their fucking/ fabulousness will be important. These ritual practices of heart circle and community open mic no/talent show have spread far beyond Faerie communities. Because they work. Because they’re simple and deep and adaptable. But I’m the bitchy queen who can’t stop asking, in the middle and at the edges of the ritual/community, what other spells are we casting? What are the poetic and magical impacts of the ritual when almost everyone is white? There are all kinds of reasons that we segregate, that we are produced by legacies of divide and conquer, that we seek safety in sameness. I want white and middle class Faeries

46 RFD 180 Winter 2019

and witches and queers to simultaneously sensitize ourselves and toughen up so that another kind of ritual, that we have not yet experienced or learned or channeled is possible. We’re at a really tough time politically right now, especially when we consider bringing together diverse groups of diasporic people (that’s almost all of us) to do rituals with widely divergent influences (Wicca, various indigenous and “generic” indigenous, Faerie, yoga/Hindu, mindfulness/Buddhism…) on what is often referred to as stolen or colonized land. The best way we might use ritual or let ritual use us might be to create rituals or prerituals where we can talk through these antagonisms and paradoxes. I’m still and always a fan of the nonverbal, poetic, improvised, and touch-based healing practices that have consistently changed my life for the better and kept me alive and inspired. But when group rituals seem nearly impossible, especially public rituals that I as a cis white man might lead, I retreat back to one-to-one practices where the personal-is-political practice might be a prayer that touches circles beyond the two of us who have dared to be vulnerable together and cross some structural lines of cultural difference where healing and love just might be activated, again, and again.

Solo performance ritual, “Bear/Skin,” by Keith Hennessy. Photograph by Ian Douglas.

On the Aqueduct If Parsival were to ask about the king’s sorrow, the land would be healed, the king would be healed, and joy would abound—but he doesn’t. —Joseph Campbell, Romance of the Grail. for Holger Silver stone against a solid silver sky as we approached on foot its base and walked up the mountain behind. New Year’s Eve im Hessichen Bergland, thick with intuitive cold. O Parsifal, take your older gracious Gawain to the rim of the aqueduct in Willhelmhöhe Park where in summer roiling adolescent waters released from the lakes above Kassel flow over its edge, its end, to the pond below— fountain plume of finale, now hardened cobalt blue. You skate along the frozen channel; I crawl the crusty snow, frightened, further out and along the shifting, slippery concrete, to the precipice: where you stand! My Aryan hero— my blond unreachable boy smiling cruel as Wagner— until at midnight fireworks burst like shattering ice in the sky, thrill of a year in flux. You pour a shot of schnapps into its bottle cap, pass it to me— the Chalice! We have discovered the Grail but your toast is silent, the only sentence comes through glacial eyes. You do not ask the question, and the liquor burns bitter. We return from the forest across the wasted three a.m. kingdom, the exhausted city, human once again. — D.S. Humphries

RFD 180 Winter 2019 47

Rituals

by Timothy White Eagle and Adrain Chesser

We gathered in a group on the rim of a canyon, we were AIDS warriors, survivors, widows, the newly infected, the not infected but afraid, we came to consider this thing that had invaded our life. We built an effigy, we wove into the costume our fears, doubts prayers and hopes, we called what we built the Specter. We each went for a walk inside, invading that which had invaded us. Walked almost blind on uneven earth under the heavy cloak, we fought with it and freed ourselves. And after sunset

48 RFD 180 Winter 2019

we burned it, releasing all of it. We made the art and magic we needed. Through ritual we brought into the world a monster and we slayed it. And that symbolic action gave us strength and hope. For one week thirteen people lived on the edge of a canyon and made art and ritual and prayer. And when finished we were transformed, by dwelling with our own creative force in the action of making we art we found power.

Left “: “Paula and Specter”; Right: “The Specter.” Photographs by the authors.

The Red Room was built as a sacred space to bring your fear and dissolve it. I knew the red room was about fear but I didn’t exactly understand why I was doing a project about fear. It opened in October and in November there was a presidential election and suddenly the project made more sense. I Invited people to participate in a simple ritual designed to relieve fear. The room became a gathering place and drop off point for fear and anxiety. My work is

most often simply self-centered; I create the work I need and offer it to my community to see if anyone else needs the same piece of work. I hold a basic principle that by documenting my ritual art practice and sharing we are spreading the medicine. I believe art contains a spark. The intent behind my art is almost always to create objects or experiences, which contains the convenience of spirit.

Left: “Jicama in the Red Room”; Right: “Starbird.” Photographs by the authors.

RFD 180 Winter 2019 49

Faerie Sex Magick Turns Thirty by robin hood and participant-facilitators

ome sundown July 4th, 2020 a circle of over a hundred loving companions will gather in the meadows of Wolf Creek Sanctuary, Oregon. We will disrobe one another and begin to sing and dance widdershins as we turn the clock backwards until we glisten in the fires of 1990 where Harry Hay and his lover John Burnside led the first Faerie Sex Magick workshop. We will call on our faggot ancestors and the names of the Faeries that attended the very first workshop. We will call our own erotic bodies home and hold one another close. Hands on the back of one another’s hearts, cupping one another’s genitals in testimony, we will scry into the flames until we return to 1950 when Harry first dreamed the Circle of Loving Companions into existence. How far back into the mysteries of erotic rituals might we go? We have a week together to play again, fall in love again; step through the portals again to what Harry called, new vistas of consciousness. The week welcomes all Faeries who have completed a Faerie Sex Magick workshop. Over the decades several hundred cis and increasingly trans fags have circled in counsel to help one another reveal and heal layers of sexual fears, social stigmas and related somatic traumas. As none of us got into our troubles by ourselves we know that none of us can get out of from beneath these burdens by ourselves. The practice of group consent means to share the risk of coming out from the body’s imprisoning shame and the heart’s coerced isolation together. Sex Magick has changed everything about how I see and live sex and intimacy. It’s taught me to be fearless in what I feel. To practice more patience with others and myself. It never fails to remind me of where I can be messy, can feel like I am falling apart, have room to grow—and that there is a community of love to catch me, if I lean into it (and even when I don’t). It shows me how relationships are something I choose—a commitment to connect, to share presence with one another, to name and respect conflict. It challenges me to accept everything about the people I love, and it surprises me when I find, yet again, that I too can be ritual queen. It dares me to make my sex about intimacy, too. It has remade my 50 RFD 180 Winter 2019

marriage and given me the courage to love the men I cherish. So in short: I’m a Sex Magick facilitator to build the community I want to have in my world. —Boyscout, participantfacilitator, Berlin.

What is a Sex Magic Workshop? For most of the past thirty years, one to six workshops have been offered annually. Currently we have a volunteer team of a dozen participantfacilitators running workshops in France, Germany, the UK, Australia, Canada, USA, and this year in Portugal and New Zealand. Members of the Circle of Loving Companions often act as local hostesses, organizers, and cooks. In preparation for a workshop three facilitators spend six months developing each ritual container. When an interested Faerie registers online (see faeriesexmagick.org) Sparkle lets them know someone will contact them in a few weeks to set up a confidential conversation with one of the facilitators. During the call we discuss heart circle experiences, barriers to intimacy and related patterns of romantic and sexual experience as well as substance use histories. The goal of this gatekeeping call is to see if the workshop feels like a good fit at this time. The workshop was born out of an observation that Heart Circles at Faerie gatherings were already emotionally moving and transformative. The question was could they be even more so, if the constituents were together consistently for a longer period, might even more intimacy be achieved if we allowed in our sexual self-expression? When we deliberately and explicitly acknowledge our desire for physical intimacy within the context of emotional sharing we facilitate a deeper level of trust and awareness of others and ourselves. With over a thousand Faeries having done the workshop, many have felt profound levels of transformation in their relationships to everyone including themselves. Most particularly affected are those romantic and intimate relationships where many participants report new levels of self-confidence and authenticity. —Chas, long time organizer and participant-facilitator, San Francisco.

Radical Faerie Sex Magick is grounded in the process of Faerie Heart Circle. Knowing that all twelve to eighteen workshop participants have experienced heart circles before offers reassurance, preparing us for the intensity of learning how to intimately see and be seen by one another prior to entering into what is known as ‘ritual space’. Once that veil is opened, and for the remainder of our time together, we often co-create playful and occasionally intense healing rituals through communal erotic touch. It can be sexual and it might not. As each participant is, so each workshop is unique. If we get snagged on an upset along the way we drop back into our central ritual of heart circle until the group feels the potency of our connection once more.

consensual agreements with lovers/friends. And I can see what might be reasonable for me to expect of myself and of others. I’m still working on how best to give myself permission for it to be OK the way it is! …. I love the fact that by engaging with this process and by cultivating a more developed discourse around how men (and by extension people in general) can physically/emotionally BE with each other, I am engaged in a joint ‘queering of consciousness’ venture. Together we’re working out who we are and where we came from and that IS (IMHO) what we’re here for! (Because that’s what we’re good at). —Mushroom, participant-facilitator, Brighton.

Harry taught us that, as ‘radical’ Faeries, it was incumbent on us to look deep within to find our own rituals, rather than seeking forms from without. These would include ceremonies from other cultures, supposedly sacred ancient rituals from other languages that we never could properly translate and truly understand, and anything coming out of hetero-normative practices that could never align with our values. Rather, in ritual space, we co-create rituals that align with the specific needs and desires of that circle in that place and time. Though every workshop uses the same process to move toward ritual space, each one is unique given who is in that circle in that time in their lives with these co-conspirators at this time in their lives. Even if the same group regathered the next year, the ritual space for them would be totally different = chaos magick at its best! —Rosie Delicious, participant-facilitator, New York.

Like Harry, or RadFae culture, this workshop is not above reproach. Some non-attendees however, have erroneously perceived the workshop as cockcentric, elitist, catharsis driven or money making. These critiques have been responded to many times by volunteer facilitators and participants over the years. The workshop is inarguably shaped and limited by the white-westernized privileges and politics of cis facilitators; we have seen our task as keepers of what has been an organically grown oral tradition, a mystery practice of faggot magic. We also strive to be responsive to the needs of evolving Faerie values. Issues of equity, inclusivity and cultural capacity strongly influence the workshop in ways similar to the Faerie sanctuaries that host sex magick workshops. The workshop continues to grow as participants from all over the world, including from regimes actively and covertly violent toward LGBTQIA people, find a space safe enough to begin exploring radical connection. As gatekeepers of this workshop it has been our intention in recent years to welcome a broader representation of participant-facilitators to better reflect an intersectional approach to this gently organized project. As such the very first all-gender Sex Magic workshop is scheduled to take place in England a month after the 30th anniversary gathering.

Prior to the first workshop, Harry must have intuitively known that sexual liberation must emerge from this embodied mutuality. Collectively, carefully we tenderize our heart’s scar tissue in order to find a key that viscerally unlock’s the door to the heart’s imagination. Faerie Sex Magick is a living communal process of what Harry called subject-Subject consciousness. After each workshop I have become more nuanced, confident and informed in my whole approach to intimacy. I can be clearer on how best to nourish and sustain my appetite for intimacy either alone (with myself!), when intuiting non-verbally with strangers or, in

What makes Faerie Sex Magick magical? For many Faeries seeking sexual freedom and gender liberation we choose to play in the field of magic as our healing path. For many this workshop is our devotional practice. As the faggot lover, within these spaces between the worlds, I willingly surrender to the Wounded Healer who in turn nurtures my desires back to life. For many us this workshop has been a lifeline through the plague years. RFD 180 Winter 2019 51

Each workshop is an experiment in paradox. While many an initiatory journey test us to bring dignity back to life’s inevitable lessons of pain and pleasure, this particular community-loving spell stretches the heart far enough for sorrow’s song to learn how to also dance with ecstatic joy. In sacred space we make love with what I imagine to be the twin companions of Eros, Compassion and Compersion. How do we enter this magical landscape, into the heart of Eros? Harry and John devised a subtle and elegant spell to focus our attention, a way to be in counsel together until each of us readily steps through our necessary resistances and doubts into a shared intimate adventure. As facilitators we keep the heart circle intact so we can actively explore this dynamic tension between safety and risk until our deepening into trust teleports us into ritual space. The effect is immediate, is as delicate as instinctual, as revolutionary as mysterious. While most workshops make it into ritual space there are no guarantees. Whatever the outcome magic happens.

This week of radical kindness and mutual care with our Fae kin invariably shifts one’s life story, unsettles normative sexual narratives and reinforces a passionate desire for authentic intimacy and belonging. As I write the stellar jays have come out of the forest for the winter and rummage for acorns under fallen oak leaves. They make me laugh and cause me to reflect on the many stories I’ve heard of Harry and John, proud of their plumage, flustering the flock of song sparrows and being a little bossy about it, those trixster-eyes daring me to be half as bold. Until the days get longer and the call to gathering season stirs the soul of these loins I will imagine us coming together again under Grandmother maple at Wolf Creek. Dreamlike memories stir of us mixing the seed of our desires with great gratitude into Harry’s ashes. It is by this magick we call you, the Circle of Loving Companions, home again. Please contact rbirch9@gmail.com if you would like to help organize the 30th anniversary gathering of Faerie Sex Magick.

Ritual In Performance by Crafty / Shelton

ave you ever made ritual theater with the Faeries? Blended theater with ritual to cast stories-as-spells intended to change the world? For the last few years I’ve given my early August’s to this such endeavor, working with the Destiny Faeries to put on their Lammas Plays. Two years ago I wrote it, one year ago I starred in it, and this year, I had the pleasure of stage managing and being the embodiment of death as a eight-foot bunny stalking a stage in tattered rags for three thours, shepherding the dead to their new life. But the process has been going on long before I became involved. Each August for nearly the past two decades, Radical Faeries from across the Northeast and beyond gather in the woods of Vermont to put on a piece of ritual theater—for one night only—as a way to mark the harvest. It’s our time to come together, reflect on what we have sown over the year, and reap the rewards as a community. The play is written in the months before the event, but everything else—the casting, the rehearsing, the making of the costumes, and the building of the set—that all happens in the week leading up to 52 RFD 180 Winter 2019

the show, in a mad dash toward communal artistic expression. Frenzy is part of the magic. The chaos energy, the swirl, the late-night costume making in damp tents—these are what make the play alive. It’s a collective fantasy of more than ten dozen Faeries leading up to the ritual act itself: The performance, a singular piece of ritual theater by queers, for queers, in a forest without reliable cell service. Last year, the play, a series of vignettes introduced by Oscar Wilde (played by me), was helmed by P and B, a fierce duo who wanted to explore legacies of loss through seven different texts, ranging from the Bible to Beauty and the Beast, as a lens for community building and working through personal narratives of trauma. From my perspective as narrator Wilde, I watched as different people in the community were brought to tears by the stories that unfolded in front of them. I watched friends move through the trauma of grieving lovers recently lost to suicide; I watched people decouple themselves from feeling shame around sex work; I saw people hold space inside

themselves to interrogate their darkest desires. Afterward, people changed their Faerie names— which, as radical acts of self-definition, are spells unto themselves—and new friendships unfolded. This is what ritual theater can do. Not all theater is like this, of course. But here, inside a play that was really a ritual, we collectively stepped into the possibility of performance and how a performance as a ritual can change you. Having been a part of this ritual several times before, I can say for myself it is the closest thing to transformational community magic I have ever experienced. When you label theater as ritual, it becomes so much more than just playing a character for people looking to be entertained, because everyone is in on the process. It’s theater with religious trappings, all of the performance and all of the belief bundled into one experience. The play becomes a container where people reflect on their journey to the Faerie gathering and during the week itself, all through the lens of the story. In a way, one could say the process every year feels like a therapeutic group hallucination. In my role, each day I felt as if I was being guided by the line-learning process to explore my own desire and to name what that desire was, what I wanted. Late-night primal dancing around the fire. Indulging senses, howling. Becoming larger than life, a Wildean guide to a realm of Radical Faerie stories. Ritual has the power to remake you when you give in, and this character would leave me changed. After a week of stewing in potential, when the performance finally started, it did so to a real clap of thunder and a deluge of rain as Cain, in mudstained coveralls, crawled through the grass, wailing. With opened skies and wind howling around us, Cain wept over the body of his brother and lover, just slain by a seven-headed God for the sin of his sexuality. As I stood there, watching, I could not help but reflect on the beauty of this moment. Some would call it pathetic fallacy, to think that the Earth was setting our stage for this scene of brotherly love and murder, dressing it in storms. But I have spent enough time around the magic of ritual performance to know that, inside sacred space, the Earth listens to us and responds. An hour after this scene, at the climax of the play, I stood on an outcropping of rocks pontificating on desire, delivering lines about sunset skies, rubbed with rouge like a lover’s cheek, to a world that matched what I was saying—for the storm had broken.

I was at that moment not the same person that I was at the start of the play. Baptized in rain, witness to trauma in the name of God, moved by the creative energy I saw pouring out of all the performers, all the costumes and sets, the weeklong collective investment in this story, I felt the words that I spoke through Wilde ring true as a spell: “I am your artist.” With our art and our imagination, we make more than just these plays. We make ourselves; we make the world. In a play codified as a ritual, we give ourselves permission to be transformed by the experience. We allow ourselves to keep parts of a journey and bring them more fully back to ourselves. I have worked in the arts for years but have always felt like a fraud, like I was somehow faking it. But inside this play, inside this role, I heard myself say those words with that childlike determination and belief I thought I had lost. I said it beyond doubt, or fear, but from a place of ownership. It has nothing to do with whether the performance was good or bad or believable or camp, but everything to do with the honesty I felt in myself. The ritual of this theater piece for me was the experience of playing the character I want to be: a shameless artist and flirt. To be witnessed by my community in that moment and to be trusted with the vision of P and B to tell their story: It was the most humbling gift of that summer, being allowed to imbibe magic through a ritual performance. Is it really fair to call this—performing a crazy play in the woods for a bunch of Faeries—radical? I can’t imagine another word for it. Showing up for community like this, building a piece of art, is hard work. Some might find it campy and indulgent and superfluous, but storytelling is deeply fundamental to the core of who we are as humans. We understand ourselves through narrative, so we need new stories if we are to be radical, to radically change anything. It’s clear the old narratives no longer serve us. Stories are the guidebooks to new worlds and to breaking down the status quo. Stories show the way, and group performance like this can show us collectively how we need to work together to make dreams of fantasy worlds a reality. To take some words off the page and build a new place amongst the forest is just a starting place. We can do anything we set our minds to. We can envision new worlds, and then go make them—that is not just a play, it’s an undeniably radical act. A version of this story was first published online in Slate Magazine. RFD 180 Winter 2019 53

Kali Dasi Written after a journey into Kali At a Black Leather Wings Samhain ritual Conducted by the inimitable Priestess Wolfie Black skin, Scarlet tongue, hard feet horny trample me, Beloved, Destroyer, my Mother. Your skin eats light, utterly round Your hips. I sink in Your breasts, infinite softness hanging beneath the skulls of men: Your arms trap me implacable. In the language of crows You open me up You tear me down. Tigress sweaty over me, Your fur scours. You turn me over, buffet me, spread my legs with Your great paws. Your claws, sheathing and unsheathing, knead my flesh, spilling little streams. Scarlet Your tongue, bright like persimmons You lick salt in my wounds. Your huge tongue in the language of frogs rough like starfish licks my cunt, sucks me dry: I am not ready. I try to offer myself but You allow no will, no reason: I am not ready. I am Yours because You take me.

54 RFD 180 Winter 2019

Tails of snakes enfold me, muscles wrap my limbs, crush my chest, I cannot breathe Your rattling in my ear is all the sound of the universe, deafening me. Where Your rocks meet Your waters in thunder Your cliffs are dangerous, my Lady Your tides turn stones back and forth, clicking. Shamanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s rattle, Diamond-Back, Demon Mother, Killing Moon, eclipse me in Your infinite darkness. With shining steel nails on fingers and toes You lift me, shake me, split my skin spill my life in sticky red streams and then You let go. I land empty dry and rattling: I have forgotten that I am. I must be Yours. â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Dossie Easton

Honoring the Vow to Prosymnos by Frater Guaiferius

n ancient times there was a mystery cult based on an episode from the life of Dionysus, the Greek god of ecstasy. A few details of the public rituals have been recovered, but the associated private devotions have always been discreetly veiled. The fragmentary texts hint at some kind of “obscenity”, which suggests we could be dealing with a solitary spiritual practice that continues largely unexplained to this day. In fact, some readers will already have tried it at home, without necessarily realising it’s so ancient that no one really knows how it began. What we do know is that the Greeks had a story about it; and we can speculate that the tale had an esoteric interpretation. The legend concerns a vow that was made in life but fulfilled across the boundary that separates life from death. The corresponding mysteries are not as extensively researched as their Eleusinian and Orphic counterparts, so they are even more difficult to reconstruct with any certainty. Consequently, the following account of the “Prosymian Mysteries”, as we might call them, can only be a very speculative elaboration of the snippets and scraps that have survived to the present. Dionysus is one of those few mythical figures (like Odysseus, Orpheus, Aeneas, and Dante) who found a way to visit Hades and then return to the world of the living. Their various motives for making the trip are mostly well known, but Dionysus is the exception. The few surviving accounts tell us he wanted to rescue his dead mother, Semele, who had conceived Dionysus by Zeus. The back-story, where the human Semele is burnt to a crisp by the god Zeus, involves a startling twist: Zeus manages to rescue Dionysus from her womb, then gestate the foetus in his own thigh. It’s worth mentioning also the godly need for fidelity to a vow. Zeus had promised to grant Semele any request, and she had rashly asked to see his

“Dionysus at Lake Lerna,” image by the author.

divine form. But there are older versions of this motif, in which Semele (or someone very much like her) is already immortal, and rules as Queen of the Underworld. The episode that concerns us here takes place at Lake Lerna, in the narrow strip of land between the Gulf of Argolis and the Lerna Range, in the Peloponnese. The springs that fed the lake, once famed as inexhaustible, no longer exist; but before they silted up, they provided an entrance to the underworld. This portal was reputed to be guarded by the many-headed serpent called the Hydra. The

limestone mountain range is today topped by a tiny church called Prophitis Ilias (“Prophet Elijah”); but in ancient times it was probably associated with Dionysus, who was also known as Oreiórkhas – “dancer of the mountains.” On the isthmus between the lake and the sea lived a mage called Prosymnos. His name suggests he was the prototype of the Imaginary Friend (or, if you prefer: spirit familiar; daemon; guardian angel); for symnos means “companion”, and pro-, in Greek as in English, can mean “instead of ”, or “as a substitute for”. Prosymnos, being a practitioner of the mysteries, knew how to access the entrance to Hades, located in the middle of Lake Lerna. One of RFD 180 Winter 2019 55

the skills of the mage is the ability to travel to the underworld at will, to search for souls that have gone missing from the world of humans. But Dionysus did not ask Prosymnos to perform this service for him. He wanted to learn how to do it himself.

The story goes like this. After being born from Zeus’s thigh, Dionysus was taken into hiding by his elder brother, Hermes, to save him from the wrath of Hera, Zeus’s wife. Hermes was already an initiate, and able to travel at will through the heavens, the mountain-tops, the land, the great and small waters, and the underworld. But when Dionysus was old enough for the rites of passage, Hermes, as his brother, was not permitted (according to tradition) to carry out the necessary training. It was clear to Hermes that Dionysus, who avoided hunting and rough games and liked to wear a heel-length chiton, was not destined to be initiated as a warrior. To be sure, with his pretty face, long curly hair and mysterious allure, he would have had no trouble finding an older lover who could put him through the rites: the abduction, the seduction, the training in living off the land and acting as servant to the lover’s male companions, and finally the feasting. But this was not to be. Dionysus was one of those individuals who are marked from birth for the other initiation, that of the mage. Of the two paths to male adulthood, the way of the mage was known to be by far the more difficult. To begin with, the process of finding an initiator was not at all straightforward. Mages tend, by nature, to be reclusive, and even those who lived in the cities didn’t advertise themselves. So the initiatic encoun56 RFD 180 Winter 2019

ter couldn’t be “arranged” or even planned. The usual procedure was that the novice would spend some time alone in the wilderness, fasting and praying to be shown the guide for those who have no guide. The message might come as a vision, or a voice, or a song; or it might just come as the kind of intuition that conveys certainty. Dionysus’s solitary quest took him to the Lerna Range, and there he had a dream of a fig tree. The next morning, he found his way down from the mountain to a hut he had spied, between Lake Lerna and the sea. As Dionysus got closer, he heard a strange melodic buzzing in the air, and when he reached the entrance to the garden, his eyes were drawn to a billowing iridescence that glittered in the morning light. As he waited discreetly by the fig-tree at the edge of the path, he was able to make out a figure kneeling at the center of the haze, and realised that it was singing in harmony with a cloud of honeybees, and occasionally laughing softly. The voice finished chanting, and the bees dispersed. Prosymnos was looking Dionysus straight in the eye. He stood up, beckoned Dionysus over, and kissed him on the forehead. Then he plucked some figs and offered them to his guest, as a sign that the fast was at an end. Shamanic training usually takes years. But in the case of Dionysus, with all the advantages he had as the offspring of a god, it went much faster. Sigils, visualisations, incantations, trances, astral travel, healing, astrology, herbal lore - these and many other shamanic skills he mastered with ease. Finally, the day came for his last preparatory exercise: Prosymnos guided him through the chants required to pacify the Hydra who guarded the portal in the middle of the lake. When the session was over, there was only final step to take before Dionysus could wear the headband of an initiate. He had to invite Prosymnos to make love to him. But Prosymnos, with the foresight of a mage, proposed that Dionysus put off fulfilling this last initiatic requirement until his mission to rescue Semele was accomplished. Dionysus vowed to return for that purpose. In due course, Dionysus succeeded in rescuing

Detail from a contemporary private altar dedicated to Prosymnos, image by author.

his mother, took her up into the sky, and changed her into the constellation Corona Australis (“The Southern Crown”). When that was done, he returned to Lerna to complete his initiation, and to honor his vow to Prosymnos. But the hermit’s hut had collapsed, and there was no sign of life, only the sound of the wind in the ruins. Dionysus scouted around for clues, and came across a grave overlooking the lake. There was a faded grave marker, inscribed with an ouroboros sigil and the words ἀθάνατοι θνητοί, θνητοὶ ἀθάντατοι, ζῶντες τὸν ἐκείνων θάνατον, τὸν δὲ ἐκείνων βίον τεθνεῶτες (“Mortals are immortals and immortals are mortals, the one living the others’ death and dying the others’ life”). Dionysus leaned against the fig tree and wept. And when he had finished weeping, he cut a branch from the tree and whittled it into a phallic agalma (the representation of an immortal), then proceeded to paint it. He made a small cut in his forearm, squeezed out some blood, mixed it with red ochre, and applied it to the head. When that coat had dried, he used a combination of sap and powdered kaolin to draw a white eye on the tip. Then he stuck the agalma into the soil of the grave, fixed it solid

with small rocks around the base, and proceeded to anoint it with goat butter, to which had been added a small quantity of honey, wine and ground herbs. He chanted as he squatted over it and eased it into his anal canal. It was the same song Prosymnos had been chanting to the bees: odós áno káto mía kaí oytí (“The way up and the way down is one and the same”). For the first time, his training as a mage coalesced into an overflowing revelation, and his body lived the mysteries. At the conclusion of the rite, he ejaculated onto the grave. This is why Dionysus is often shown wearing the headband of an initiate. In honor of his fidelity to his promise, the event was once celebrated in festivals in many parts of Greece, in particular the Peloponnese and Athens. These incorporated processions where participants would carry fig wood phalloi, and the braver youths would compete in a kind of rodeo of phallus-riding. In today’s world, such public celebrations of the God of Indestructible Life are no longer possible. But private devotions to his Imaginary Friend continue unabated; and one of the compensations of our own day is that we have access to more user-friendly materials than fig wood.

“Faery land and body art 2,” collaborative workshop work, model: Kisses / Catherine Deneuve

RFD 180 Winter 2019 57

The Kisses of Ares by Wes Hartley

any generations ago the olden day lawgiver Lycurgus said two things about us Spartans that are still repeated after all these years. It is certain that a Spartan male who survives past the age of his majority must be loved by one of the gods and An elderly Spartan is a contradiction in terms. All cliches are true. There is an exception to every rule. At present here in Sparta there are two exceptions. The foremost is our great king Agesilus now in his eighty-second year. He is obviously protected by a god. The other is my battered self, Strymon son of Cephalus the hoplite. I’ve outlived all my contemporaries but my king and scattered the ashes of all my relatives. I have no descendants. If I manage to extend my span of days to another summer like this one I’ll be in my ninth decade. Next week I’ll be eighty-nine. I’m a superannuated contradiction in terms. I was born during the eighteenth year of the celebrated reign of Archidamus king of us Spartans. In Athens Pericles son of Xanthippus was chief archon and Artaxerxes son of Xerxes was king in Persia. I was nineteen years old when Athens proclaimed the Megarian Decree and shattered the Thirty Years Peace. During the ten year war between Athens and Sparta I fought in so many battles I lost count. I was never very good at numbers. When I was twenty I caught the plague when I was following Archidamus into Attica. My lover Thrassylus nursed me back to health. When Thrassylus caught the plague I took care of him until he recovered. During these seventy years campaigning for Sparta on the threshing floor of Ares I’ve tramped across all the known world and received countless wounds. I don’t know how many. I’m missing part of one ear, two fingers, and a chunk of my left buttock the size of a crabapple. My most decorative battle scar is the crossways slash above my eyebrow that cuts across my left cheekbone. It was awarded to me by a perfumed Persian outside the walls of Babylon. That was when we Spartans were in the employ of Cyrus the younger brother of the Persian king in the company of the ten thousand Greek mercenaries led by Xenophon the Athenian. We oldtimer hardcore veterans can rattle on non-stop about our battle scars. Here in Sparta we veteran campaigners call our honorable war wounds the kisses of Ares. Every decade or so a rookie Achilles comes along 58 RFD 180 Winter 2019

who enjoys listening to my marital rantings and wants me to show him my battle scars. Nowadays it’s Isidas son of the late general Phoebidas. It was doughty Phoebidas who seized the citadel at Thebes twenty years ago during the women’s festival. His son beautiful Isidas The Wonderkid is going to have to cut a lot of throats to outshine the military splendor of his glorious parent. I think he just might do it. Isidas son of Phoebidas is sixteen years old. In all my eighty-nine years I’ve never seen a youth as handsome and noble and proud as Isidas. His family lineage reaches back to Hercules Guardian of Sparta. He’s so tall that he towers above all the other striplings in the boy’s gymnasium. He’s a full head taller than I am. When Isidas is decked out in the bronze armor of his late sire the general he looks like the war god Ares himself. He has the same ruddy red curls that Ares has. He’s a redhead like Menelaus was as Homer informs us. On the wrestling floor he’s so rock-solid that none of his age mates can topple him. All the young men in the herds of the protiranes and iranes are smitten by the masculine beauty of popular Isidas. Every one of them would be honored to be his boyfriend and lover. Noble Isidas is gentle with his would-be suitors. He tells them his feelings incline toward a certain other. This sounds strange to the hopeful young men since Isidas has given no indication who that lucky person might be. Most days when I trundle my hacked up old carcass to the baths, Isidas The Redhead is there also, strutting his stuff and preening his dazzling red feathers. Sometimes he comes to the veteran’s barracks and accompanies me to the abluting place. My young bath partner is very intrigued by the battlefield momentoes commemorated all over my venerable hide. Alongside me in the cold bath he likes to trace his finger over one of the pale signatures left by some long-dead contestant. I’m obliged to narrate the history of each inscription. He’s asked me about certain ones of my more prominent blazons several times now. My interrogator wants to hear all the details. His eagerness and curiosity are very endearing to an old campaigner like Strymon the hoplite. One morning recently my bold companion-on-thebath wheedled me into holding still while he counted and tallied up all my honorable war wounds. According to his reckoning, my battered hulk is speckled with

eighty-eight citations, a blaze for every year but one of my eighty-nine. My chronicler tells me he’s determined to badger me until I tell him the particulars of every one of my battle scars. It’s true that there are no defensive ramparts protecting Sparta. Our deme has always depended on the skill and tenacity of its home guard fighters to answer any attack on our borders. Nowadays it’s the Thebans and their leader Epaminondas who would like to impose one thing or another. I usually don’t know what things exactly since I mostly steer clear of politics. The talk these days is about the new alliance of five demes against the hegemony of Thebes and the fact that both Sparta and the Arcadians are allies in the fivefold coalition. The Thebans consider this alliance and the political manoeuverings that accompany it to be a marital affront and a provocation. Militant Epaminondas is determined to bring us unruly Peloponnesians back under Theban jurisdiction. He intends to break up the Arcadian confederation and appoint military governors to rule under his aegis. Epaminondas has marched his troops across to Tegea and is idling his army there until he can determine where the combined forces of the alliance are intending to meet him to settle the issue. Our venerable King Agesilaus led us Spartans north toward Mantinia in Arcadia where the allied armies are mustering. At Pellene a Cretan runner bringing news from Tegea overtook our expedition. He informed Agesilaus that Epaminondas had concluded that the combined forces waiting for him at Mantinia were too strong to match his own. When the Theban general learned that we Spartans were en route to Mantinia and had left behind us only a few home guard battalions made up of oldsters and stripling youths to defend the city, he decided to march on Sparta at double time and despoil it like a viper does when he finds an unattended nest of fledgling birds. We jogged back to Sparta at Marathon speed. We arrived just ahead of the Theban vanguard. All our cavalry and mercenaries were absent in another part of Arcadia along with three full battalions of hoplites. We had no time to prepare elaborate defenses because the Thebans had already crossed the river Eurotas. Theban forerunners in the van arrived at the outskirts on the north side of the city where the quarters of our military officers are situated on high ground. There they encountered the king’s son Archidamus with his hundred young partisans and the fracas in the narrow streets was furious. Our old king and his troop of guardsmen joined the defenders with yours truly Strymon in the midst of the hoplite veterans alongside the king. During the

skirmishing I received a slight wound on my forearm. As we were contending mightily, an astonishing spectacle dazzled our eyes and rallied our spirits. Glorious Isidas fresh from the bathhouse his naked body glistening with oil forced his way into the crush of combatants brandishing his father’s spear and sword in either hand. He threw himself at the ranks of the enemy and struck down and laid low all who opposed him. He raged like mighty Ares himself, and we who saw him in action both enemy and fellow soldiers were awestruck by his godlike appearance and audacity. Fighting naked, no armor or helmet to protect him, he received not a single scratch on his vulnerable body. Everyone is certain that one of the Olympians most likely Ares God of War was safe-guarding hotheaded Isidas son of Phoebidas. After the Thebans were routed and pushed beyond the boundary posts of Laconia, Archidamus the king’s son erected a trophy alongside the officer’s quarters where the fighting had been heaviest, and the king and the euphors crowned impetuous Isidas with a wreath of gold for his Spartan valor. Later, the euphors voted to fine Isidas one thousand drachmas for his foolhardy rashness fighting naked without helmet, shield, or armor. The same euphors had prosecuted Isidas’ father Phoebidas twenty years ago when he captured the Theban citadel during the Feast of Demeter without shedding a single drop of blood. Phoebidas was fined one hundred thousand drachmas and censured by the euphors for his indiscretion, for conducting a campaign on a religious holy day and for seizing the Cadmea at Thebes without orders from headquarters. Our grateful king paid the fines of both father and son. Agesilaus promised celebrated Isidas that should there be anything he desires that is in keeping with the longstanding traditions of us Spartans he need only mention it and the king would grant his request. Isidas had two requests. He asked to be permitted to fight alongside the adult men in the forefront of the vanguard and to be allowed to quit the boy’s barracks and move into private quarters where he and his new lover could sleep together and engage in masculine pursuits. Our generous king awarded Isidas both honors. Now at night when my enthusiastic bunkmate is sprawled naked beside me, his fragrant red curls spilled across my chest and his impetuous erection thrust hard against my thigh, my solicitous boon companion lightly traces his forefinger over one or another of my eighty-nine battle scars and kisses my snowy white whiskers and coos like a turtledove.

*Documentary sources for The Kisses of Ares: Xenephon Hellenica VII/5 Plutarch Lives/Agesilus Aelian Various History VI/3 Justin History VI.

RFD 180 Winter 2019 59

Don Shewey on “The Paradox of Porn” by Franklin Abbott

Don Shewey knows a lot about porn, gay porn to be more specific. His book on the subject is both sympathetic and critical. Shewey is a writer, therapist and self-described “pleasure activist” who lives in New York City. His work as a coach in sex and intimacy with gay men along with his own life experience make him an astute observer of the pros and cons of porn in the lives of gay men. He talks about generational differences, about the solace of porn and it’s dangers. Shewey writes with admirable candor and reading the book is like having a conversation with a wise and witty friend. In addition to his three books about theater he has written for the New York Times, the Village Voice, Rolling Stone and Esquire. We welcome him to the pages of the equally estimable RFD. What drew you to the subject of the paradox of porn? I’ve always been a sexually active and sexpositive guy. As a journalist, therapist, and alert consumer of culture, I couldn’t help noticing that almost all discourse in the mainstream media about pornography came down hard with negative judgment, equating pornography with sexual violence, addiction, exploitation, and pathological avoidance of intimacy. And yet we are surrounded by pornography, increasingly more so with the advent of the internet and smartphones. I observed in myself and others the tendency to nod our heads at this negative commentary…and then in private carry on beating off to whatever porn turns us on. I got very curious about this public/ private discrepancy. Of course, since the majority of people are heterosexual, most porn portrays hetero sex, which definitely engages in some unsavory and problematic depictions of women. And the issue of 60 RFD 180 Winter 2019

trafficking and the exploitation of economically disadvantaged women in very real. But as a gay guy, I’m not at all interested in hetero porn, and it seemed to me that sex between men in porn was much more egalitarian and didn’t throw up the same red flags. Still, we don’t talk very much about these issues of representation and sexual pleasure, which made it very interesting subject matter for me as a writer. Can you talk a little about the history of porn in the gay men’s community? I use “porn” to refer to the widest possible range of erotic imagery, from old-school skin magazines to commercially produced full-length videos, from Tumblr blogs to pic-sharing on hook-up apps, from ancient Greek pottery to whatever got invented just last week. Every gay man has his own individual quirky tastes in images and technology, and you can tell which platform works for you because it gets you turned on and craving sex. (I devote a whole chapter in the book to detailing that progression through various technological revolutions.) For gay men (and that shadow realm of men-who-have-sexwith-men), pornography has played a special role in demonstrating open and unashamed desire, sexuality, nudity, affection, and body awareness in times and places where we literally had no public models of such things. For many gay men, myself included, the tiniest glimpses of homoerotic imagery or same-sex pleasure provided important doses of validation and affirmation early in our self-awareness as sexual beings, even or especially years before we ever acted on our sexual desires. Certainly during the AIDS epidemic, viewing and masturbating to pornography allowed gay men

to observe and celebrate sexuality without exposing ourselves to health risks. How has the Internet changed the relationship between gay men and porn? Like you, I’m old enough to remember a time when getting your hands on porn was incredibly difficult and required a lot of furtive slinking around to newsstands, bookstores, and dirty-movie theaters in major cities to find anything at all. Home video started a major shift; you could order stuff through the mail to come to your home. But the internet exponentially increased access to porn of all varieties, which was a boon especially to young guys, closeted guys, and guys living in rural situations. At some point, I noticed that for a lot of gay guys sex and pornography started to merge. “Sex” didn’t necessarily mean something you did with another person but branched out to include absorption in looking at porn online, sometimes to the exclusion of actual encounters with other people. Internet porn has facilitated the emergence of a whole tribe of gay men who have robust solo sex lives separate from or replacing sex with other people—for better and for worse. Porn is not the best sex education and yet many guys subconsciously have looked to porn for instruction and develop a kind of crazy sense of what’s expected of them on a date. And for all the exciting stuff you can see in porn, it leaves out some of the most delicious and satisfying aspects of sex—love, tenderness, intimacy, affection, mutual care—because those activities aren’t as photogenic as hardcore fucking and sucking. One of the saddest sentences a client ever said to me was “I watched twenty gang-bangs online before I ever kissed a boy.” Is there a difference between pornography and erotica? I tend to think of the distinction between erotica and pornography as slightly squeamish or prudish— erotica is the good stuff that I like, pornography is the sleazy stuff that you like. But I get that there is a difference between erotic art, which depicts a wide spectrum of sensual imagery, and pornography, whose only intention is to get you aroused and get you off. I know guys who prefer sexy stories (the epitome of “erotica”?) to pictures or videos. Using your imagination can sometimes be more arousing/exciting than viewing explicit porn. For some people, the best aspects of sex have to do with anticipation, flirtation, the chase, seduction, and those are hallmarks of erotica, whether written stories

or soft-core photos of partially dressed rather than naked men. Personally, I’m a blunt Taurus—I like it all out there, direct and to the point. Taste in erotic imagery is so, so individual. Porn at its best? Porn at its worst? The best-case scenario is when your interaction with porn liberates imagination, affirms desire, makes you laugh, makes you cum, expands your awareness of the many possibilities of sexual pleasure, increases understanding and compassion for other people’s experience, builds confidence, and makes you feel good about yourself. And then there are the shadow aspects of porn. The internet and smart phones make it super-easy to get entranced by looking at porn for hours, interfering with healthy life functions. Guys who have spent more time looking at porn than having encounters with real people run the risk of developing very distorted ideas about what constitutes normal sexual activity and normal bodies, creating pressure on themselves and their partners to Perform Like a Porn Star. And that pressure can lead people to avoid real-life encounters, fearing judgment or rejection. What is our future with porn? How will it change us? How will we change it? The future of porn obviously means moving away from the old-fashioned notions of commercially produced porn videos/magazines/etc. Most of the imagery most of us look at these days shows up in the realm of “social media” and is some version of homemade. We all walk around with high-quality cameras in our pockets, making it easy and fun to make our own erotic/pornographic pictures and videos and share them instantly. Fun as it is to look at and/or make homemade porn, I notice that I’m increasingly unhappy to see how taking videos or pictures has become a routine part of having sex. It’s like the sex isn’t real unless you’ve captured it on your camera, and people pay more attention to their devices than to their flesh-and-blood partners. This is a big issue everywhere in contemporary life, how addicted we’ve become to our devices. I include myself in that. They’re so seductive and useful and alluring, and it becomes harder and harder to tolerate a quiet moment without checking, clicking, swiping. There’s no going backwards, really, so I see the challenge going forward as one of finding a balance between smartphone technology and being actually present to each other, in person, in the moment.

RFD 180 Winter 2019 61

Back Issue Sale!

20% off for Five or More

www.rfdmag.org

Gathering of the Circle of Loving Companions on the the 30th anniversary of Faerie Sex Magick at Wolf Creek, Oregon July 4-11th, 2020

For more information, to help organize and to register, contact robin hood at rbirch9@gmail.com

Announcing a New Book about Radical Faeries:

ZUHÖREN - LISTEN

WITHOUT PREJUDICE, LISTEN TO THE EARTH A Radical Faerie Heart Circle Observing the World and its problems with the eyes of a Radical Faerie. Celebrating 40 years of Radical Faerie Gatherings Mata Hari wrote a new book – the sequel to "Rise Like A Faerie" - the first work ever written outside the USA about Radical Faeries - with many personal contributions from over 25 Faeries worldwide and interviews with Harry Hay's companions. With reports from gatherings and sanctuaries in Austria, Australia, Bali, Belgium, Berlin, Breitenbush, China, France, Guatemala, Hungary, Israel, New Zealand, Netherlands, Wolfcreek, Portland, Transylvania, UK, Vienna and Zuni. “Your book is an important historical and personal witness. I wish you all best with its publication. And keep on writing“! Mark Thompson Availabe from www.radicalfaeries.at or email to: faerietreffen@hotmail.com * Softcover $ 28

RFD 180 Winter 2019 63

Announcing a New Book from White Crane Books:

The Evans Symposium The long awaited sequel to Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture.

In 1975 Arthur Evans presented a series of lectures based on his research into LGBT history and cultural roots in European societies of the medieval era. The ground-breaking work was subsequently collected into the 1978 publication of his book Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture.Working with Arthur at the end of his life, White Crane Books convinced Evans to gather the remaining materials—that had been edited from the original book or simply hadn’t made the cut—into a sequel of sorts to that book. Arthur did so and called it Moon Lady Rising. We present the entirety of Arthur Evans work for his symposium material here. “White Crane Books, once again, reminds us of the important works of our time by renewing the essential writing of our elders. Arthur Evans’ original work in Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture is a seminal piece of lost LGBT history; and the added, new material of Moon Lady Rising stakes a further claim to our shared, birthright history. We will not be erased.” —Mark Thompson, author, activist, Radical Faerie “No book was of greater importance than Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture as the modern gay liberation movement was forging our identity as a people.” —Robert Croonquist, activist, first generation Radical Faerie and Founder of Youth Arts New York/Hibakusha Stories, a member organization of ICAN (the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons), 2017 Nobel Peace Laureate. 64 RFD 180 Winter 2019

Available at www.whitecraneinstitute.org/books Hardcover $29.95 • Cloth cover $19.95 Or mail a check payable to “White Crane Institute” to: Bo Young White Crane Institute 22 County Route 27 Granville, NY 12832

Issue 182 / Summer 2020

LEGENDARY CHILDREN Submission Deadline: April 21, 2020 www.rfdmag.org/upload

Holler if you identify as QTIPOC. What’s that? You say you’ve never heard the term. No prob. QTIPOC is shorthand for qweer/trans/intersex people of color. And we want to hear from you. For too long, qweer culture has pushed the lives and stories of people of color to the sidelines. These days we may be more familiar with the work and voices of famous folk—think of Marsha P. Johnson and George Takei, Bayard Rustin and Sylvia Rivera, Chrystos and Audre Lorde—but what does it take to live now as an everyday QTIPOC? How does the world embrace you? How does it restrict you? Our diverse viewpoints flavor our interactions, from the interpersonal to the intra-communal. When the QTIPOC realm intersects with the Faerie realm, what happens? How has this intersection changed you? How has this intersection changed Fae space? We’re looking for essays and free verse, artwork and autofiction, choreopoems* and pix: You choose the format you feel will best communicate your own QTIPOC experience. Think of the QTIPOC generation who are just discovering themselves: What would you like to pass on to them? And the young QTIPOC out there: What info would you like your elders and teachers to keep in mind? What will it take to bring all of us— whether we identify as dyke, homo, Two-Spirit, polyam, pansexual, asexual or bi—to a place of Radical inclusion? Maybe you have a piece of answer. Maybe you’d be willing to share. So here’s the call, QTIPOC. Now’s the time for all the legendary children to bring that summer heat. Tell RFD what you think, show us how you live, reveal how you feel. We want to see you shine. *“Choreopoems” comes from the playwright Ntozake Shange, in reference to her play “For Colored Girls who have Considered Suicide.”

Photo: Josie Faser

a reader created gay quarterly celebrating queer diversity

66 RFD 180 Winter 2019

RFD 180 Winter 2019

Articles inside

Don Shewey on “The Paradox of Porn” Franklin Abbott

The Kisses of Ares Wes Hartley

Honoring the Vow to Prosymnos Frater Guaiferius

Ritual Queen Shokti

Ritual In Performance Crafty / Shelton

Interview with Keith / Cuz’n robin hood

Ritual, A Life’s Journey West

The Importance of the Trickster Trixie

New York City Radical Faeries Yule Donald Gallagher

The Winter Dreamers Are Singing Donald L. Engstrom-Reese

Ritual: Walking Between Worlds Sâde Gryffin

Invocation/Out-Vocation Andrew Ramer

Hot Seat: It’s Like Heart Circle, But Also a Gangbang May

Calling the Queer Corners Oshee Eagleheart

Michael W. Hathaway

Bad Ritual Guide Bad Dog

What We Faeries Learned About Ritual From The Dance For All People: ‘Structure Is Not a Dirty Word Any More’ Kwai Lam

Be Travels On, A celebration of Life and Death Mountaine