Faggot-Shaman-Faerie-Witch

by Leafshimmer

Faeries are called Fata in Italian and it is said that this is so because “to encounter Them is always Fateful.” Having recently turned Fifty and looking back over the patterns of my life, each of my encounters with the Fair Folk--whether in this world, the Other World, or Between the Worlds--has certainly been Fateful. And there has undoubtedly been a recurring, or “fateful” pattern, in the interaction between the Radical Faerie movements and the various forms of Pagan spirituality that have fermented in North American society since the late 1960s--and how these spiritualities have inspired members of the gay community.

Pagan spiritualities certainly play a potent role if we go back to the very beginnings of RFD. The kind of culture that both produced the zine and began to be documented within its pages was rooted in a reverence for the Earth and a conviction that our bodies are sacred—even that “all acts of love and pleasure” are a celebration of beauty and mystery (to paraphrase the Charge of the Goddess). If you read through the issues of RFD in the five years from the founding of the zine in 1974, through to the plans for the first official Radical Faerie Gathering in 1979, a number of themes repeatedly arise which show the potent role that pagan spirituality, Witchcraft, and what became to be known as “new age culture” played in the gradually fermenting crucible of what eventually took birth as the Radical Faerie community. A far from complete list of topics that recurred in the zine through these years includes such things as Tarot cards, astrology, herbalism, the “Wheel of the Year” (the eight Pagan Feasts that run from Yule or the Winter Solstice through to Beltane/May Day, ending with Samhain or Hallowe’en), Faery lore, spellcraft, Magick as cosmic or personal energy of ultimate transformative power and beauty, the honoring of Pan and other Horned have continued to persist and to manifest themselves throughout the many forms and manifestations of Faerie culture. A wise summing-up of the relationship between the Radical Faerie movement(s) and the revival of Pagan spiritualities was offered in a group statement from an Ozark circle, “Fairie Sanctuary,” in RFD 25 (Winter 1980): “The Fairie Consciousness and the Pagan Revival aren’t one–they help each other, even complement each other–but need to be separate for many of us.” (p. 31) This statement, and others of a similar kind published in RFD throughout the early to mid 1980s, did not keep Margot Adler from describing the Radical Faeries as a predominantly gay men’s form of Pagan tradition in her tremendously influential book, Drawing down the Moon (I believe the chapter on the Faeries first appeared in the 1989 revised edition).

Gods embodying erotically charged male spiritual power, nature-based ritual celebration, and an appreciation for ecstatic states as the ultimate purpose of human existence. Far from being the agenda of any one individual or group of Faerie “leaders,” these essential themes

The call for this Spring 2009 issue of RFD challenges us to think about the relationship between “Wicca” and the Radical Faeries. “Wicca” is a name for the predominant spiritual practice of the Reclaiming Collective. The chants and ritual forms associated with Wicca have become familiar to many Faeries through the Reclaiming Witch Camps held in various parts of N. America from the 1980s onwards. Originally, in Traditional Witchcraft, the phrase “the Wica” (with one c) signified the initiated Priesthood of the Old Religion (“Pagans” referred to non-initiated lovers of the Old Gods, and “Witches” to the initiates). In the late 1960s, “Wicca” was popularized as a “less flagrant” name for the Old Religion (as opposed to simply calling it Witchcraft), primarily in the books and magazine articles of Sybil Leek (author of Diary of a Witch and a frequent guest on the Merv Griffin Show on television), and the media appearances by Alex Sanders, London’s so-called “King of the Witches.” In the 1990s, “Wicca” became even more widespread as a form of Pagan practice officially recognized by legal courts and the US military (albeit grudgingly).

From my reading of these early years of RFD, my talks with older Faeries who have been around for a few decades, and my own personal experience of attending Gatherings and coordinating rituals, I would regard Wicca/Witchcraft as just one of many sacred streams that has fed the cauldron of our rich Faerie stew over the years. Witchcraft (as I prefer to call it) has provided a framework for certain aspects of our ever-evolving Faerie culture. Throughout the 1970s the words Faggot and Fairy were used interchangeably by people who were seeking a new form of masculinity, one that would embrace such things as nurturing, gentleness, loving, cooperation, homesteading, and Magick. Back then, we were men who had chosen to live by a new ethos, one based upon principles other than those of Violently Competitive Aggression–the dominant paradigm of Western mainstream society, in which raping and pillaging were the ultimate Male acts. I like to think of the Faerie circle as wreathed by a shining pearl necklace that sings the chant Faggot-Shaman-Faerie-Witch, a necklace that can be restrung with extra beads that might bear names such as Homesteader, Anarchist, Drag Diva, Community Activist, Fiercely Ruling Faerie Goddess, Sister of Perpetual Indulgence and beyond.

Witchy/Pagan vibes, practices, chants and gestures have been a recurrent flavor in the Faerie roulade, a sprightly (sometimes garish) thread in the Faerie Tapestry. Witchy/Pagan rituals are frequently interrogated by Faeries who find the “edge” of such practices constricting or confining. The same is true of our traditions of vegetarian meals (which point to the common origins we share with the eco-feminist movements), our love of gender-fuck drag, our cherishing of the Heart Circle, our often subversively playful way of working consensus.

As regards the relationship between the Reclaiming Collective, the Witch Camps, and Faeries, I would argue that some of the experiences brought by Faeries to the Camps from our own Gatherings helped influence or contribute to the culture of the Witch Camps, just as much as ritual practices, chants, or forms of Magick taught at the Camps began to appear in specifically Faerie spaces. The influence was not just one way, but radiated and rippled to-and-fro the way summer sunlight shimmers over a field of anemones in the hazy afternoons of Midsummer.

It is interesting to note that the first Spirituality issue of RFD was number 12, dated Summer 1977. Some of the article titles included “Healing with Herbs,” “Peyote Spirit,” “Invocation of the Horned One” by Arthur Evans (whose book Witchcraft and the Gay

Counterculture, following in 1978, came to serve as a prophetic text through the 1980s and beyond--a text which really pushed the Witch-Faggot-Shaman roles as a central trope for radical gay liberation), “Faggot, Shaman, Poet, Butterfly Dancer,” by Stephen Abbott, “We Circle Around” by Jada Joyous, and “Sharing the Mysteries” by Caradoc. (Exactly 35 years later, in the Summer of 2002, Caradoc became my own Teacher, or Tour-guide as he preferred to call it, in the Mysteries of the Feri Tradition.)

The range represented by this 1977 list is echoed and enlarged by a description of activities offered at the First Spiritual Gathering of Radical Faeries in 1979. According to Gathering attendee Fritz Frurip, these included “a native desert plant walk; fairy spirit visions; nutrition and your body; ritual dance; politics of gay enspiritment; gay publications; massage, a guided orgy; ... fairy sexuality; ritual makeup; healing/energy; autofellatio; ritual planning; Celtic and English country dances ...” and something pert and piquant called “silly sissies.” Elliptical as this list may be, it shows the openness, diversity, vitality and eagerness to celebrate that released so much energy in the Faeries from the beginning. And this tremendous release of energy continues to manifest at our Gatherings this year and, no doubt, will continue into future years. To me it is this joyous, playful openness, this capacity for growth, fluidity and adaptability, that has been the great source of strength in our Faerie Circles. Our Traditions have grown organically as our varying forms of community/ies have evolved, and our collective Faerie Fire has dazzled and danced with a bewitching array of colors, forms, and ever-shifting re-alignments. I have in my notes a quote from Trixie X nee Glamourama, from an old Faerie flyer, in which he says: “Fundamentally, Faeries are a group of people who have agreed to listen to each another.” Beyond that I am personally unwilling to define who we are. I see Witchcraft, homesteading, home-cooked vegetastic meals, love of the Earth, reverence for the stars, fierce ecstatic lust for Beauty, as shining threads in the endlessly re-weaving Faerie tapestry. Others bring their own voices, visions, verve and violet flame into the Circle. The more we embrace one another, the stronger we become. In closing I would like to remember three special Faeries. One was a personal friend (albeit briefly), and the other two I have known only through the pages of RFD.

Floating Eagle Feather was a poet, a storyteller, a mystic. I met him in Philadelphia in 1982 at the Ashram where I was living. Feather showed me a recent issue of RFD (later, I found other issues at Giovanni’s Room, the legendary gay bookstore off of South Street in downtown Philly), and took me to visit a couple of local Faeries. I’ve never forgotten how Feather and his Faerie friend starting doing contact improv on the floor and I nearly flipped my lid. Were they having sex, performing some weird kind of foreplay, or just regressing to childhood? It was something of a Primal Scene. I remember Feather’s flashing black eyes, his trickster’s way with words, his long beautiful hair, his

“crazy Zen” laughter. I remember his passion and courage and strength.

Don-Tevel Treelove was a Faerie based in Iowa City who was a part of the original RFD collective gathering around Stewart Scofield in 1974. Don-Tevel memorably contributed to RFD #3, the Spring Equinox 1975 issue. His journal/essay/ poetry “Spring, Spirit and Faggotry” moves me tremendously every time I look back on it. I cherish these simple, direct speakings of proud young flaming faggot spirit:

Nine of us sitting, equals. Feeding each other, comforting each other, rejoicing in the magic of faggotry.

Country spirit.

Country faggot.

Feeling the plants give energy to the conversation.

The turtle listening, wondering what would happen.

Faggot Magic.

Faggot Spirit.

Faggot Power.

In direct contact with the Energy of the Earth. ...

Our power, our spirit, We will renew the Earth, Witches and Faggots. (p. 44)

In a 1978 letter printed in the zine, Don-Tevel wrote of his realization that “homesteading is a space, not a place,” and of how riding through the changes of life kept bringing him back to his original sense of vision with ever more deeply etched clarity. Words of Faerie wisdom.

Dennis Melba’son is the third Ancestor I summon into the Circle of Fire and Memory. He was the Faerie who bestowed upon the Circle the Cernunnos Shawl. Now too fragile to be brought out for display or handling very often, for some time the Shawl has been regarded as the one Sacred Relic bequeathed from the “old days” of the early Gatherings to later generations. The Shawl–affectionately known to some Faeries as “the Cum-Rag of the Cernunnos”–had taken birth in a moment of vision given to Dennis on September 24, 1979. When he offered it to the Spiritual Conference for Radical Fairies in August, 1980 (when he was 48 years of age), he wrote: “Perhaps in some Goddess-guided way, the shawl will be the power object that heals all our spirits.” In writing about an ecstatic “pandaemonium” that evolved from a Goddess-themed fashion show on the final night of the Gathering, Dennis experienced a vividly physical epiphany of the Great God Pan:

Suddenly there appeared before me Cernunnos, who pulled me into Him. The cape enveloped His body and we kissed. Then He asked me to lift the shawl above our heads and walk with Him around the circle, drawing Fairies closer to the central pole, where we hung the shawl for all to see. The circle drew in tighter and tighter. The seven Names of the Goddess were being chanted louder and louder. Suddenly there leaped into the circle a young dancer, fully clothed. He began to undress. All around the circle--now quite tight, perhaps 2-3 Fairies deep--buttons began to be popped, shoes untied, pants unzipped. Clothes were thrown at the base of the pole, offerings to Cernunnos, as naked Fairies leaped into the inner circle and began to dance. The Chant of the Seven Names grew faster, more insistent. Cocks grew hard. Mouths and bodies enveloped them. Strong arms encircled my body. The dancer leapt up the pole. The chant changed: Pan, Cernunnos, the Horned One Comes ... PAN, CERNUNNOS, THE HORNED ONE COMES! The figure behind me pressed closer. I could feel His hard cock through the cape. He pulled me closer-pressing, caressing. The dancer came against the pole and was lowered gently into loving arms. I turned to see the face of my lover. No one was there.

I turned back into the inner circle. Naked Fairies were getting down on it all over. The outer circle began to chant: NO MORE GUILT. The bodies writhed in ritual Sex Majik that healed us all. The chants changed to groans and moans and sighs and whimpers and cries of ecstasy. The God descended. The Horned One came. (RFD issue 25, Winter 1980, pp. 14-15)

I call upon these Faerie ancestors not to prove a point, or to further an agenda, or to make some kind of statement; merely to illustrate the power, the beauty, the raging transformative flame that manifests when we keep opening up to the chimerical poetry of the Faerie spirit. I also regard each of these Faeries as exemplifying, in his words, life, and/or art, a truth that has kept hitting me in my ten-plus years of Circling and Gathering with the Fey Folk: what binds us together is not a creed, a conviction, a structure or a list of “unifying principles”--it is a vibrant, ineffable, mystical Current, much like the Magickal Currents of which magicians often speak; something that we can each know and manifest and work/play with in our own unique Fae ways, but retains an organic, pristine harmonic singularity that can never be described in words--only glimpsed here and there--in the heat and beauty of Faerie fires, in the shining eyes of the Faerie looking at you across the Circle, in the warmth of that hand holding yours as “wearing our long wing-feathers as we fly, we circle around, we circle around...”

We are Circles within Circles, and the Circle is open, never broken. So Mote It Be.

Blessings, Leafshimmer

Imbolc 2009