As you can see, I am in no hurry to post after Pantheacon. The act of digesting and assimilating the information feels worthwhile to me. Here are some additional highlights of the conference.

While Conjure isn’t my thing, I am deeply respectful of the practices, and respect Orion Foxwood’s work. Last year I attended a workshop on conjure by a practitioner who was, well, excessively ego-engaged, and it was a disappointment. This year’s session by Katrina Rasbold was excellent–absolutely packed with ideas, information, and very detailed comparative information about Brujeria, Curanderismo, Hoodoo, Voodoo, PowWow and Granny Magic. Rasbold is the author of The Crossroads of Conjure. She explained the ethics of personal accountability, and a peer relationship with trainees in Brujeria and Curanderismo which I found surprisingly egalitarian.

Another pleasure was the folk songs and chants workshop with RJ Stewart and Holly Tannen. I have never experienced Tannen’s work before, and liked the power and 60s cleanness of her voice. If you’ve attended workshops with RJ before, you’ll envision him sitting, focused, with his hand at his ear, and preparing to sing. He sang The Wife of Usher’s Well, and they each offered a version of Down in Yon Forest, which I know by a different name and a different version. Holly sang The Unquiet Grave, and we finished with some big, friendly rounds of old favorites.

On Sunday night I attended a ritual, The Song of the Stars: A Constellation of Unity with Shauna Aura Knight in one of the ballrooms. If I can sing and move, I am happiest in ritual, and this group of strangers connected well with each other, and moved the energy beautifully. Knight and her co-priest/esses managed the ritual pacing well, although the chants were a little complex to learn quickly. It reminded me very much of my old Reclaiming ritual days to be in a circle, chanting, and raising a rather good cone of power with a mid-sized group of witches.

The final workshop I had time to attend, on Monday morning, was entitled, Rewilding the Pagan Soul: Connecting to our Ancestors in Albion through Ecopsychology and Epigenetic Memories. Ryan Indigo and Megan Rose co-presented, and they were clearly on fire about their 2016 sacred site visits to a number of places in England and Wales. This is an experience I can identify with fully, so I was curious what they would bring to it. They were so enthusiastic, but were unable to get through all the material on the sites themselves before running out of time for the additional plans they had for the workshop. I am intrigued by the concepts of epigenetics, where traumas are encoded to some degree in our DNA, such as the Holocaust or the Potato Famine. My own experience is that pilgrimage can be immensely healing on a personal and psychological level when the site and the person are attuned to one another. I hope that if they work on their timing and reduce the number of topics, they might try this once more.

I wasn’t fired up by this year’s Pantheacon schedule in advance, but I am deeply grateful that I made the trip. It’s worth it to have conversations with friends I see nowhere else, and learning outside my own tradition and background with bright, committed presenters is worth it.

The flight home featured a brilliant Mt. Shasta flyover close to dusk. I’ll be back next year.

-Talasyn