{"id":7836,"date":"2016-03-20T14:38:38","date_gmt":"2016-03-20T20:38:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7836"},"modified":"2016-03-20T16:47:39","modified_gmt":"2016-03-20T22:47:39","slug":"grappling-with-workshops-and-festival-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7836","title":{"rendered":"Grappling with Workshops and Festival Culture"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"heartland\"<\/a>

Heartland’s sponsor<\/p><\/div>\n

Earlier this week I sent in my workshop descriptions to the Heartland Pagan Festival<\/a>, whose organizers kindly invited me to present.<\/p>\n

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 of mixed. My last piece was a general entry on contemporary Paganism for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion<\/em> \u2014 definitely not <\/em>festival-workshop material.<\/p>\n

They ask me my needs: day or night, chairs or outdoors, and all I can think of is to ask for a whiteboard, because if I can’t write at least a few things, I will feel crippled. That is what twenty years in a university classroom does to you \u2014 my thoughts go automatically to syllabi and reading lists \u2014 probably not what the festival crowd is looking for.<\/p>\n

\"Florida

Florida Pagan Gathering<\/p><\/div>\n

My last big festival was the Florida Pagan Gathering<\/a> in 2009, I think, while the last smaller one I attended was Beltania<\/a> here in Colorado three years ago, which used to be about twenty minutes’ drive from home, before organizers moved it to a more populous area<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Pagan festivals have changed, to be sure<\/strong><\/em>. The first gatherings I attended in the late 1970s were more like “cons”: they were held in hotels and they had a high ratio of lectures, talks, and panels to ritual. Music, when it happened, was someone with a guitar in their hotel room, or whatever band was playing in the bar.<\/p>\n

And I do remember people writing equations on blackboards: there were a few engineer-witches who argued that magic occurred on the electromagnetic spectrum, like radio. (Discuss in the comments if you like.)<\/p>\n

Llewellyn’s Gnosticons<\/a> in Minneapolis, perhaps the biggest of the era, included all kinds of occultists, witches, astrologers, etc. in order to fill the bill.<\/p>\n

Then camping festivals began. <\/strong><\/em>Various groups had had their own campouts for years, but I think the Pagan Spirit Gathering of 1980 was the first one to be nationally advertised as open to all compatible attendees.<\/p>\n

The tradition established by the multi-day open-air Protestant Christian “camp meetings” of the early 19th century <\/a>(including trance, ecstasy, and sexual excitement) was now re-established by the Pagans!<\/p>\n

In the pre-Web 1980s and early 1990s, festivals spread Pagan music and ritual practices more and more, along with workshop topics. But then another change occurred: a move towards more professionalization. No more Morning Glory Zell<\/a> with her guitar doing Gwydion Pendderwen’s<\/a> latest song \u2014 now you get Wendy Rule<\/a> or Sharon Knight and Pandemonaeon<\/a>.((I’m a big fan.))<\/p>\n

When I attended FPG, I was surprised that many campers not only put a lot of work in creating and decorating their camps, but then they just stayed there, skipping not just workshops but the Big Ritual and concerts. (At some point of size, do you lose the communal feeling?)<\/p>\n

Which brings me back to the idea of workshops.<\/em><\/strong> At a music-focused gathering like Beltania<\/a>, workshops are something less than an afterthought. The grounds are pretty dead (except for the Maypole erection) during the way, coming alive only in the evening when the headline performances start \u2014 or at least that was my experience.<\/p>\n

That’s a lot to compete with when your focus is academic, as mine is. I admire Ronald Hutton’s ability to work a Pagan crowd, staying true to his profession of historian while still giving a Pagan-positive message. Maybe that works better in Britain when you can be talking about ancient Pagans, such as Lindow Man<\/a> \u2014 he is definitely in the “murder victim” rather than the “human sacrifice” camp<\/a>, but he can argue his case without making you feel bad that you took The Life and Death of a Druid Prince: The Story of an Archaeological Sensation <\/em><\/a>as holy writ the first time you\u00a0 read it.<\/p>\n

So come the end of May, I might be asking as I have in other situations, “What would Ronald do?” (WWRD).<\/p>\n

In a larger context, I wonder about workshops at festivals in general<\/strong><\/em> \u2014 not that I don’t appreciate the organizers giving the opportunity to try some material on a live audience \u2014 if anyone comes \u2014 if they are not busy sleeping off the previous night’s festivities.<\/p>\n

But “cons” can have more of an intellectual focus than camping festivals do, don’t you think?<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, I have started notes on two presentations with the working titles of “Nature Religion: You’re Doing it Wrong” and “Did Witches Ever Fly?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 of mixed. My last piece […]<\/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":[1],"tags":[10,127],"class_list":["post-7836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-american-religion","tag-festivals"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-22o","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2634,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2634","url_meta":{"origin":7836,"position":0},"title":"After the Beltane Festival","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 9, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Kinesthetic religion: my left arm was a little sore on Sunday from helping to carry the Maypole in procession\u2014a pine trunk the size of a smallish telephone pole, ridden by a zaftig May Queen. And yes, we heard every ribald variation on \"riding the pole\" shouted from the onlookers. It\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Beltane\"","block_context":{"text":"Beltane","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=beltane"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2623,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2623","url_meta":{"origin":7836,"position":1},"title":"Why Did I Agree to Do this Workshop?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 6, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I have spent much of today being nervous about the weather (warm, dry, windy) while yet working on a workshop presentation on nature religion. Nature is making me nervous. Ironic, eh? Even though M. and I have been back in our house for a week, we are still jumpy. After\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Beltane\"","block_context":{"text":"Beltane","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=beltane"},"img":{"alt_text":"Fire and law enforcement people gather as the Sand Guch Fire spreads.","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/fire-web-300x200.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8593,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8593","url_meta":{"origin":7836,"position":2},"title":"Heartland Festival Presentations, Take 2","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 24, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Once again, I am packed, ready, and excited to be going to the Heartland Pagan Festival.\u00a0 With any luck, that will be me stepping off the Southwest Chief in Lawrence, Kansas, on Friday morning. (Usually I snooze through Lawrence when traveling east and wake up for the long stop in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"festivals\"","block_context":{"text":"festivals","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=festivals"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=soutrocknatub-20&l=am2&o=1&a=0759102023","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6687,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6687","url_meta":{"origin":7836,"position":3},"title":"Blogging Break Over, Book Stuff Ahead","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 6, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"I have taken a brief and unwanted break from blogging, but I hope that it is over. First the MacBook Pro that I use for writing and blogging developed a weird, possibly demonic (or daemonic) directory corruption that flummoxed even the specialists up at Voelker Research. About the same time,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Australia\"","block_context":{"text":"Australia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=australia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":447,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=447","url_meta":{"origin":7836,"position":4},"title":"Here's that meme againA New\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 29, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's that meme againA New York Times story on the Rites of Spring Pagan festival (login required) quotes two contemporary scholars of Paganism, Helen Berger and Sabina Magliocco on, among other things, the numbers of American Pagans.Ms. Magliocco favors the higher number [700,000] based on data like surveys, sales of\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 1 comment","block_context":{"text":"With 1 comment","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=447#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":505,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=505","url_meta":{"origin":7836,"position":5},"title":"We'll drive cattle through your\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 7, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"We'll drive cattle through your festivalAccording to the Colorado Springs Gazette, a planned Pagan event in the little High Plains town of Ramah had produced all sorts of bigotry.Last month, the Secret Garden Coven decided to hold a fall festival as a fundraiser for St. Jude\u2019s Children\u2019s Research Hospital. Organizer\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7836","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=7836"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7836\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7854,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7836\/revisions\/7854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}