What a change! It went from complete quiet to people all over, from thinking my own thought to listening to everyone else's (something I usually enjoy.) It was quite a shock. I had been looking forward to the arrival of the other festival participants but when they arrived it felt like an intrusion at first.
In the evening on Friday, Ken Heronheart led the opening ritual. The quarters were called by passing a wand hand-to-hand while chanting the element over and over - earth, earth, earth, earth… He spoke of the tribe gathering together. Each of us came up to take up a water filled cup and we spoke about what we brought to the tribe then poured the water into a central wooden cauldron. After that one person would dip from the co-mingled waters and pour it for the person to their left saying, "Water shared is life shared. May you never thirst." This continued around the circle while we sang a song that Liza Gabriel wrote, "Drink Deep, Drink Deep, from the waters of life. Water shared is life shared."
It was a lovely ritual that helped to set the mood of community for the weekend. After the ritual we sat around the fire at our campsite and shared some of ourselves with each other. This gave me time to transition into people mode for the festival.
Today I went to the I Ching 101 workshop by Delta Listening Wolf. She showed us how to use the stalk method of doing a reading. It was interesting to find out that it was perfect random number generator for numbers between 1 and 64. We also discovered that the coin method doesn't allow the proper proportion of lines and so doesn't really replicate the I Ching. Delta introduced us to the 16 system which does keep the proportion of stable and moving lines as in the original but is still a simplified method of determining the individual lines in the hexagrams. The 16 system was devised by Larry Schoenholtz and uses a set of 16 marbles, stone, or beads, all the same size, shape, and weight but in 4 colors. 7 of one color is used for the stable yin lines, 5 for the stable yang lines, 3 for the moving yang lines, and only one for the moving yin lines which are the least common lines to throw. One stone is pulled out for each line starting with the bottom or first line. After being recorded it is replaced in the bag to maintain the correct odds. A stone is drawn for each line. I really liked this method as it is simple and quick. A pouch with the stones can be taken anywhere quite easily and doesn't require as much workspace as using the stalks. She recommended the following books:
There was an open Scion council lunch meeting. We had a nest check in and heard from Acorn ProtoNest, Dragon Family Nest, StarSpring Nest, Our Lady of the Lakes Nest, and Water Weavers, Magick Dreamers ProtoNest. It was good to hear what was happening and catch up with each other. Freedom Fest is where new officers are nominated and elected. Our council is so small that it is a very easy process. Mary was acclaimed as President or chair-critter with Magenta as Vice-President, or vice chair-critter (maybe that should be chair-critter in charge of vice:) And we decided to have a rotating secretary as no one really wanted to do it and several of our members will be leaving the area in the next 9 months or so. We also set a year's worth of council meetings, always a difficult task given how busy everyone is. Then we discussed one of the 5 values our council has agreed on, respect for diversity.
Delta gave us something to thing about when she quoted Robert Frost (via Terence McKenna), "The secret to a happy life is learning to appreciate people you don't approve of." And perhaps that is the first step towards respect for diversity, to recognize that there are good qualities about those one disapproves of and to be able to appreciate them for it.
There was a Pagan Parenting workshop that I missed facilitated by Sherry and one on Vertical Altars by Mary that I also missed. The Vertical Altars workshop was about creating an altar out of images on a Bulletin Board that could be hung up in a cubical at work or anywhere there was space. By choosing images that are personally meaningful but not necessarily blatant it is possible to have it at work without coming to any one's notice.
In the evening was a Symposium in honor of the Aquarian Deities, the Deities for the new Age. This was also a kind of wedding reception for the Deities that were being Married in the main ritual on Sunday night. Symposium is a word that used to mean "drinking together." So Jack provided wine in a huge iron cauldron then added spring water. The Greeks used to water their wine, which makes sense if one is drinking it like we drink water or soda today. We toasted the Gods. We toasted those who had contributed to the Festival. We toasted those who had contributed to CAW. We toasted friends and we toasted the Earth. We toasted and toasted. For the more philosophical section we spoke together of signs of adulthood, such as living on one's own or taking responsibility for oneself but we couldn't really reach consensus on it. It was a good discussion though.
Copyright © 2000 Kyril Oakwind