My wedding to M. was conducted by the HP and HPS of our coven at a Forest Service group campground near Colorado Springs. The campground reservation cost $10 or $15 back then, and the wedding finished with a potluck feast. I think we paid for some cheese and champagne. My sister baked a cake. Invitations were photocopied.<\/p>\n
M. worked then as a state parole department investigator. The agents from her office brought us some gift or other\u2014and also presented her with a homemade necklace of chicken bones. Cop humor.<\/p>\n
My mother, who had been invited (I couldn\u2019t keep her away) brought a bunch of her relatives, who had not been invited. One Southern Baptist cousin pronounced the ceremony \u201can abomination.\u201d (He manages to be friendly enough, however, on the rare occasions that we see him.)<\/p>\n
The attendants passed a tray of (hippie whole-wheat) moon cakes for the guests. Everyone took one except my mother. \u201cCome on, Mother,\u201d my sister said, \u201cWhen in Rome . . . \u201c<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d Mother said, stiffening her Anglican spine, \u201cI\u2019m not Dru-ish.\u201d I guess being outdoors in a grove of pines made her think of Druids.<\/p>\n
We had not bothered to explain that this was a Wiccan wedding, wrists tied, blood drops in the chalice, the whole bit. We figured we would just go ahead and do it. <\/p>\n
For M.\u2019s Irish-American stepmother, there was no problem: We just said it was \u201cCeltic,\u201d and she was happy. And her father was satisfied simply to see that the wedding license was genuine.<\/p>\n
M.\u2019s brother-in-law played his guitar, and her younger brother shot a video. Her family, although nominally Catholic, was never terribly judgmental\u2014except for one odd thing that M. learned only earlier this month.<\/p>\n
For thirty years, her sister-in-law has been thinking that Witchcraft involves sacrificing small animals, yet she knows that M. is all for protecting animals. So she has lived with this contradiction for decades. On M.\u2019s recent visit to their home, she said that she had seen some ferrets in our house at the time of the wedding, and she had always assumed that they were the intended sacrificial victims.<\/p>\n
But we never had ferrets! We never had any<\/em> caged animals, just cats (then) and dogs (now). <\/p>\n Memory is a very strange thing. Hopefully all has been made clear now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My wedding to M. was conducted by the HP and HPS of our coven at a Forest Service group campground near Colorado Springs. The campground reservation cost $10 or $15 back then, and the wedding finished with a potluck feast. I think we paid for some cheese and champagne. My sister baked a cake. Invitations […]<\/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":[6],"class_list":["post-897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-wicca"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-et","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1228,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1228","url_meta":{"origin":897,"position":0},"title":"Colorado Pagans To Lose Festival Site","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 18, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"A television news report says that the private Wellington Lake campground, site of Dragonfest and several other Colorado Pagan festivals, is closing for the winter and possibly permanently.The campground was operated by a concessionaire, Castle Mountain Recreation. The lake itself is part of the Denver suburb of Thornton's water system.The\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":480,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=480","url_meta":{"origin":897,"position":1},"title":"Banned at Borders?I was trying\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 5, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Banned at Borders?I was trying to track down a report that The Love Spell: An Erotic Memoir of Spiritual Awakening, by high-profile Wiccan lawyer and priestess Phyllis Curott, had been yanked from bookstores after pressure from social-conservative Christians such as these.I cannot find anything so far to substantiate that rumor.What\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2673,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2673","url_meta":{"origin":897,"position":2},"title":"Caroline Tully Interviews Ronald Hutton","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 20, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Australian blogger and graduate student Caroline Tully interviews Ronald Hutton on her blog, Necropolis Now. One excerpt: In that case what is your relationship with Paganism? It has been long and close. As I mentioned in my book Witches, Druids and King Arthur, I was in fact brought up Pagan,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1175,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1175","url_meta":{"origin":897,"position":3},"title":"Photos from the Edges of the Festival","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 14, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"M. and I have returned from the smallest of the three Colorado Pagan camp-out festivals held at Wellington Lake, a large private campground. Wellington Lake is dominated by a large rock formation called (imaginatively) The Castle.The photo above, however, is the west (back) side, which most festival attendees never see.\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":505,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=505","url_meta":{"origin":897,"position":4},"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":[]},{"id":108,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=108","url_meta":{"origin":897,"position":5},"title":"Some Hae Meat","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 3, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"On Saturday the 24th of January, a colleague invited me and the notorious M.C. to the \"Burns Nicht Supper,\" an annual event in many locations around the world, celebrating the birthday of the Scottish poet Robert Burns. Go here for a typical evening's program, Alberta version.\"You'll see,\" she said. \"The\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":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897","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=897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}