{"id":1150,"date":"2009-05-06T22:15:00","date_gmt":"2009-05-06T22:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1150"},"modified":"2009-05-06T22:15:00","modified_gmt":"2009-05-06T22:15:00","slug":"back-from-the-florida-pagan-gathering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1150","title":{"rendered":"Back from the Florida Pagan Gathering"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have not tried to sleep over all-night drumming since I was a little kid, when my district-ranger father would let the Indians from the Pine Ridge Reservation<\/a> put up a temporary dance arbor each year on Forest Service land by our house, across from the Indian Health Service<\/a> hospital in Rapid City<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That was Plains-style drumming–Boom Boom Boom<\/span>–mixed with the jingle of ankle bells, and this was polyrhythmic drumming, but the principle was the same: treat it as white noise and go to sleep.<\/p>\n

A few margaritas from the pirates’ camp helped the process along. Pirates in Florida are iconic.<\/p>\n

I am back from the Florida Pagan Gathering<\/a>, whose organizers inexplicably decided that my research pre-occupations (What is “nature religion”? Why did<\/span> people claim that witches used flying ointments?) were worth flying me halfway across the country at Beltane so that I could talk about them to the dozen or so people (out of 700) who wanted to hear about them. Thanks, everyone!<\/p>\n

FPG is a big, well-organized event held at a 4H camp<\/a> owned by the University of Florida. It has room to grow there, and the organizers want to grow it.<\/p>\n

A comment that Margot Adler made in one of her talks has stuck with me. At one time (pre-1980) covens and other Pagan groups were mostly separate. Then came the era of national festivals–I remember one of our coveners coming back from one of the first Pan-Pagan festivals in 1980 or ’81, walking two inches off the ground and full of new chants and songs to teach the rest of us.<\/p>\n

That era established a sort of common ritual and musical culture, she noted, whereas now we are into the era of semi-professional and professional entertainment, and the brief common culture is diminishing. On the other hand, hearing Spiral Rhythm<\/a> do the calypso version of “Eko Eko Azarak<\/a>” was sort of a kick.<\/p>\n

I have been working alone in my little house in the woods all winter, and FPG was “bright lights, big city” to this guy. It has been ages since I attended a big festival and got that “temporary autonomous zone<\/a>” rush.<\/p>\n

UPDATE:<\/span> Coincidentally (there are no coincidences) Cat Chapin-Bishop is blogging on the phenomenon of Pagan celebrity.<\/a> Two of us who were at FPG have already chimed in in the comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have not tried to sleep over all-night drumming since I was a little kid, when my district-ranger father would let the Indians from the Pine Ridge Reservation put up a temporary dance arbor each year on Forest Service land by our house, across from the Indian Health Service hospital in Rapid City. That was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[10,5],"class_list":["post-1150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-american-religion","tag-paganism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-iy","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":669,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=669","url_meta":{"origin":1150,"position":0},"title":"Pagan Studies at AAR 2006","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 29, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"These papers are scheduled for presentation at the Pagan Studies session during next November's annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion: \"The Pagan Explosion,\" James Lewis \"The Fourfold Goddess and the Undying God: Anatomies of Minnesotan Bootstrap Witchcraft Traditions,\" Murph Pizza \"Children of Converts: Generational Retention in the Neo-Pagan\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1290,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1290","url_meta":{"origin":1150,"position":1},"title":"A Pagan Festival Just up the Road","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 22, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Earlier this month, I was reading the Ca\u00f1on City Daily Record\u2014a humdrum piece about a city council meeting in the nearby town of Florence\u2014when this jumped out at me:\"We are welcoming to a great variety of spiritual seekers who would classify themselves in many ways, including alternative spirituality, metaphysical, holistic\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1100,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1100","url_meta":{"origin":1150,"position":2},"title":"Yule and its Songs","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 19, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"The Northern Hemisphere winter solstice occurs at 12:04 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time on December 21. That's 5:04 a.m. here in Colorado, perfect for the people drumming up the Sun at Red Rocks Amphitheatre. (I won't be there--too far away.) Remember to visit Archaeoastronomy.com for all your calendrical ritual-timing needs.You can\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"music\"","block_context":{"text":"music","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=music"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1275,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1275","url_meta":{"origin":1150,"position":3},"title":"DUTS: Everyone Is Doing It","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 25, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"A blog of a nearby nature center just reported on how they drummed down (!) the Sun this year. Nothing Pagan there, no, sir. (No snickering, please.) Their timing was a little strange, but their hearts were in the right place.Here is last year's Denver-area drumming (YouTube video.) As mentioned,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Yule\"","block_context":{"text":"Yule","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=yule"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":713,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=713","url_meta":{"origin":1150,"position":4},"title":"Drum circles in northern Colorado","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 2, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"The Longmont Times-Call goes to some drum circles.Drumming circles allow drummers of all levels to participate, and individuals walk away feeling enlightened, energized, empowered, cleansed and blessed.\u201cWe\u2019re just as passionate about our religion as anybody,\u201d said Bob Anzlovar, who holds a monthly drumming circle, magical in nature, that draws upward\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7836,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7836","url_meta":{"origin":1150,"position":5},"title":"Grappling with Workshops and Festival Culture","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 20, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Earlier this week I sent in my workshop descriptions to the Heartland Pagan Festival, whose organizers kindly invited me to present. Now I get to be anxious for two months \u2014 can I do it? My experiences with turning my own writing into festival material has been, let's say, sort\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"heartland","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/heartland-126x150.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1150\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}