Hi ho, Hi ho to PaganCon I go!
So tomorrow I shall be rising early and with a short stop enroute to help a friend out transporting stock for their stall I shall be pootling off to PaganCon in Preston.
It’s not a big convention and in truth, I had last year decided that I would not be going again as they have stopped weekend camping and I nearly always end up being the designated driver, which in and of itself is fine until you have to try and load enebriated passengers into the car when your tired, knackered and hoping that there is half a chance you will get home before the offie shuts so you can buy a nice bottle of wine.
The biggest reason for going is twofold, several friends this year are either doing talks or running workshops and I figure you should support your friends in their endeavours and also because Maxine Sanders is speaking.
Now I am not a Wiccan, nor ever likely to be, but I do think it is important to go and listen to somebody who is effectively first generation of the modern witchcraft movement. It was the same reason I spent a weekend doing a Marian Green course. These guys are our elders and for most of us, there doing it with the coffee mug and the t-shirt whilst we were still charging around in the playground at school.
I shall report back after the event I am sure.
How was it, and what did you think of Maxine Sanders’s talk?
The Green Witch
July 21, 2008 at 1:43 pm
I actually enjoyed it an awful lot, Maxine Sanders spoke cogently and eloquently, admittedly a lot of it was about Alex, when I would rather have heard a bit more about her, but was very good none the less. She was also impeccably dressed and smelt “expensive” too. There were more than a few pagan women there who could have taken a leaf out of her book i.e. Being Witchy/Pagan/Heathen does not equal bad hair, bad clothes and bad BO thinly masked with patchouli!
I managed to wangle signed copy of Firechild, so I am intending to read that fairly shortly and possibly write a review of it, as I had heard mixed opinions; so I figured after hearing Maxine talk now would be a good time to look at it objectively.
All the talks I heard were excellent, particularly of note were Jon Coles talk on “Fatal Attraction” which was basically an investigation of love spells in antiquity and David Rietti’s talk on Domestic Magic, which was working with the Genius Locii of the home.
Well worth the long day in my opinion.
nicnevyn
July 21, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Sounds wonderful, and the speakers seem to have been of high quality. That seems to be a perennial stumpling-block at pagan gatherings. The speaker shave a lot to say that’s of interest, but just a really naff delivery which lets them down.
– lol about the patchouli! Why is BO a status symbol among some pagans and alternative types? I tried that crystal salt stick instead of regular antiperspirant and it only worked on ONE of my armpits (yeah, go figure..) so I gave it up.
I’d like to hear what you have to say about Firechild.
The Green Witch
July 21, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Ok, that should have been ’stumbling block’ and ’share’. Typing gone to pot again, I see!
The Green Witch
July 21, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Hey –
Sam from Pagan Pages(pagantoday.wordpress.com) here. I was wondering, since we have a pretty connected blogroll across pagan blogs in this corner of the web, if we should maybe start a wordpress site of our own and transfer the blogs over? That would give us our own little niche. We could even, I’m sure we could make the main page link to those pagan users who wanted to participate, but didn’t want to move their blogs from their current homes.
We could even come up with a cool name. WeBePagans.net; thePaganBlogs.com …
It’d be a group effort though, definitely. Let me know
Sam
falconrider
August 19, 2008 at 6:39 pm