Why I FaerieHateRituals

by Endora

Let me describe the first faerie ritual I witnessed. I was sober, or maybe stoned a bit. As we approached the darkened backs of a circle of people whose faces were light by a fire, we heard the chanting – Isis, Astarte….. Then I see one faerie in a grand hat being lifted up above the heads of the rest and invoking in grand terms the Goddess of the evening –

“Madge, the Goddess of Dish – you’re soaking in her.”

A peel of laughter, then deeper laughter, and then wild chanting as the full moon rose above the line of pines in northern PA. Faeries were throwing their clothes in the fire, dancing, jumping, when from out of nowhere – certainly from out of sacred space- we hear a voice bellow ‘put your clothes on – you’re too fat to be naked!’ Buzzkilled, we turned to find our little circle dressed as we were in dribs and drabs, a hat here, some tulle and glitter there, surrounded by a bigger circle all holding red and yellow plastic beer cups, 16 oz., dressed as they were in jeans and plaids. Plaids! Can you imagine? Oh, and those baseball hats–not the brushed cotton gay ones that fit your head but those big bright plasticky cheap ones with iron-on logos for feed stores or fuel companies. On average, they seemed husky. There were suspenders. And a keg. They had found the buzz we just lost. But magick was afoot so without missing a beat, one faerie took the hand of one of the men and as one body, we each did the same and lured the bystanders into our circle where we snake danced our way over to a small lake to end the ritual, thank the directions, and purify.

Of course, all memory is fiction when you get right down to it, but that’s pretty close. I had come to the faeries for spirituality, ritual, gay paganism – that is what interested me. Here, happening upon this ritual in the full moon, the Goddess chants, the absurd drag, the naked bodies, and all of us soaking in Madge – I weep to remember it – I felt for sure I had found my spiritual home. Mirth and Reverence.

That was 1989. It was my assumption for quite a while that everyone else came to gatherings for the same thing, and so it came as a rude, if gradual, shock to learn over the years, that indeed many faeries detest ritual, bristle at anything that smacks of liturgy, and come to rituals either to have fun disrupting them or to suffer through them until the naked dancing and drumming happens. This dawning realization was punctuated in my mind when a few fae hijacked a heavy ritual by wrecking the spiral dance and chanting “Dear Friends, Queer Friends, Can you tell me why we’re waiting? You have given me a headache. We’ll persevere.” Witches would never do this, I thought; I hate faerie ritual. As I stood there, the long wedding gown that I was in now hopelessly entangled in the arms and legs of the human blob around me, it hit me that for many faeries, having been the ‘best little boys in the world,’ disrupting is the ritual. What is often overlooked is that for many others of us, these disruptions rob us of the spirituality and ritual we need from the Faeries. At a faerie ritual, there are significantly differing sets of needs and expectations, and the worn-out-clutch

(car, not purse) feel of many faerie rituals stems from our failure in many instances to directly and honestly face the wide range of needs we bring to rituals. Given the relative comfort and directness with which many faeries discuss and negotiate sexual needs, it would seem that discussing ritual would be easy, and yet… could it be that our spiritual needs, and dare I say it, religious needs, are for us a far more difficult terrain to traverse?

We begin with one clear challenge. Not all faeries are pagan and many faeries aren’t religious at all. Despite the veneer of spiritual practice among the faeries, there is a high incidence of severe religion allergies, so any discussion of rituals, and ritual forms in particular, can result in alarming reactions, like hives; I am quite convinced I saw one faerie go into anaphylactic shock when another in circle suggested there was a ‘right way’ to cast a circle.

Still, I’ve seen myself how some sorts of rituals are deeply respected and followed by faeries. If a faerie leads a yoga meditation. If a faerie leads a Buddhist meditation. If a faerie leads a specific Native American ritual form. If a faerie calls a heart circle. In fact, I’ve found that when I’ve named a ritual as specifically Wiccan and been clear about it, there is a much higher level of willingness to go with it, to see where it leads than if that is not made clear. Why then is it that stepping forward to lead big rituals in faerie space is much like volunteering to be the target in The Lottery? Perhaps it is because Radical Faerie ritual forms and ritual Queens are so often Wiccan. I suspect that the reaction is against Wiccan forms becoming a new orthodoxy, against the assumption that these forms are the forms. It also doesn’t help that often these rituals are the ‘big event’ for the weekend night of a gathering, so everyone comes and many are rowdy and horny. Some aren’t sober. Many want to drum, to dance around that fire if some queen would go ahead and light it already!

But what other forms for big earthworshipping rituals have we developed as faeries? If you ask people to step forward and plan a faerie ritual, what do they have to draw upon? What other clear models are there to serve as a starting point? Lacking familiar patterns, unsure of the landscape, many non-Wiccans simply won’t step forward to plan rituals because they don’t really know what “a faerie ritual” is and no one can tell them. When no one else will, Wiccans often step into the vacuum which only perpetuates the cycle, another spiral dance gone wrong. I would strongly encourage those faeries who are not comfortable with the frequency of Wiccan forms to develop and create their own models of rituals and bring them as ‘the big ritual’ so that we as a community of faeries can then experience them, broaden our collective concept of ritual forms, and thus take some of the pressure off of Wiccan forms. This would allow us as a movement to more clearly see how deeply and pervasively neopagan concepts and forms permeate our culture.

For other faeries, the impulse to disrupt seems much less philosophical. For some, unsure of how they are ‘supposed’ to act at a ritual, they look around for cues and take them from whoever seems to be ‘doing the faerie thing’ at the moment. If one faerie is standing reverently calling out to the Goddess and another faerie starts doing a funny can-can around him, which seems more ‘faerie?” So the can-can begins, as much from a desire to fit into faerie culture as from any particular resistance to what was happening. And remember, faeries in general do not introduce, or goddess forbid, initiate new attendees into our culture so folks are left to figure it out on their own. Having experienced as queers painful marginalization and rejection, we carry a powerful need to fit ‘in’, especially at something like a faerie gathering, and so can-canning with the other cool kids makes all the sense in the world, and will probably be a defining peak experiencing in their gathering. And a can-can of queens around a solemn ritual invocation can be powerful ritual theater, the sheer absurdity of this scene in the woods somehow making sense of a crazy world and filling us with a sense of delight and the ecstatic. I know I have been to many Reclaiming and Wiccan rituals where a can-can was just what was needed! But what of the faerie doing the invocation? Was that caring? Was that subject-subject consciousness? Were the ritual needs of that faerie and all the other faeries that were with him during the invocation met? How do humiliation and hurt impact our rituals and our sense of communal purpose? “Mirth and reverence” is one thing, but when the mirth comes from stomping all over another’s reverence, I hesitate to call that balance.

We want to feel edgy and innovative and iconoclastic, all things I deeply value and want as well. But I also know that in the rush to new things, it is easy to overlook the value of knowing a form, repeating it over years and years, so that the newness comes not in the form, but in the ever deepening places you can go within the form. Heart circle teaches us this, but we resist it at other rituals. American witches, while comfortable with the form of Wiccan ritual, also spend a great deal of energy thinking about how to innovate and break the mold of ritual. In fact, one scholar of contemporary Paganism, Helen Berger, has offered the idea that for pagans, the creative act of planning the ritual is as much a central religious act as the ritual itself. I fear that in this need for the new, the need to be entertained at ritual, we are enacting in sacred space the very consumerism we decry in the world at large.

And in my view, there is yet a deeper shadow playing out in those disruptions that are part and parcel of ‘faerie ritual.’ I have come to believe that we as faeries have a fear of form itself, that we resist the very notion that doing something the same way over and over as a regular practice might allow it to deepen and open. That takes trust in someone else’s experience. Plus we get bored at the repetition. We want to be entertained.

Or perhaps the need to disrupt rituals is rooted in the cultural notion that our only taboo is taking ourselves too seriously. It is one of the things I admire most about our culture, and to be honest, there is many a witch who could really use a dose of this faerie medicine. I know I’ve benefitted from the many doses, and overdoses I’ve gotten over the years. But I also believe that there is such a thing as not taking ourselves seriously enough. From time to time, we should be able to leave our skepticism and talent for irony and camp at the edge of the circle, and step into a space – just for a while – in which we agree to believe that the magick of the circle is real, matters, and is worth honoring by risking allowing it to be serious, or ceremonial, or heavy. Let’s see where we go if we don’t use humor as a shield or as a detour sign. After the ritual, there is plenty of time to dish and laugh about it, but by doing so during every ritual, we show our fear and reinforce a sneaking suspicion many of us have about rituals – that they are silly.

I have been a faerie triber for 20 years, and I’ve been a Reclaiming initiate and teacher for almost that long. I love both communities and long to bring them into a closer orbit. I can see how each one has gifts for the other. For me, it’s like having one boyfriend that meets your sexual needs and another that meets your emotional needs. Well, not exactly, but you get the drift. As an aficionado of both, I have often said that the difference between faerie and witch rituals is that faeries try to surf the energy and witches like to make the wave. The downside to “making the wave” can be a palpable sense of effort and heaviness, of everyone trying too hard, of not knowing what to do when it goes awry. The downside in “surfing” is that it’s hit or miss, and lots of people don’t catch the wave and are left paddling around far from shore, fighting the currents.

I remember one Beltane at my house where I invited the local Reclaiming witches and the Radical Faeries and about 40 folks showed up. A radical faerie witch was invoking the God into one of the witches, and to do so he had his forehead and knees on the earth and his butt up in the air. Unable to resist, I ran up and quickly humped that pretty invoking butt. I didn’t even think about it. Until I heard the gasp. Until I saw the looks of horror and downright offense. Witches and faeries are, indeed, very different communities.

I value that the faeries like to find the sacred in the profane and the profane in the sacred, to see the humor and the absurd in what we do. But I also believe that continued cross-fertilization between the two communities will strengthen both. The faeries have already had a profound influence on Reclaiming and Reclaiming on the faeries through shared origins, mentors, facilitators, beliefs. Let us figure out how best to continue, as Whitman might say, ‘interwetting each other.” Reclaiming can benefit from faerie humor, ability to create magickal spaces, masking though drag, and in general, a strong sense of skepticism and irony. The faeries would gain much from Reclaiming’s sense of purpose, their commitment to earth activism, and from working with a wider a community can best meet the variety of needs in ways that are respectful and faerie. range of allies. It is my sincere hope and intention that there be more gatherings called that bring together faeries and witches, that faeries consider going to Wiccan gatherings and the we invite witches to come to ours. I also hope that faeries will have circles to talk about ritual, what we each need and how we as surrounded by friends and family in San Francisco.

One more ritual memory, that of pairs of naked bodies standing in the moonlight, then one kneeling to kiss the feet, knees, sex, chest, and lips of their partner as he or she drew the moon down into themselves. Here and there is laughter, but there is an air of sacrament, there is an energy that shimmers with the holy vessels of the body and the moon. Despite the very structured, slowly paced ritual, there is no disruption, no need to turn it into something funny. We worship, without evasion, the immanent divine that is present in our partners. This Wiccan ritual took place both at Faerie Camp Destiny and at the Vermont Witchcamp. It shows, despite our differences, how much our two communities share in terms of our most cherished beliefs. Both communities hold that the earth is sacred, that our bodies are sacred, that our sex is sacred, that our circle is meaningful, and that we must act in the world for change. That is a powerful lot to share, and so as we go spiraling forward into an uncertain future, it is my desire, my spell that these two communities learn to honor each other as partners in that ritual, each supporting the other in drawing out what is divine within us and supporting the other as we move out into the world to work for change. So mote it be.

At last year’s Positive Living conference in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, Martin provided the annual treatment update. Martin only missed one meeting in the conference’s eleven-year history, having had a heart attack a week before the event. Positively Living is one of very few U.S. conferences remaining that are targeted specifically (and almost exclusively) to PLWHAs. A member of the audience was so inspired by Martin’s remarks concerning the role of activism in the history of HIV/AIDS that he approached Martin and conference organizer Butch McKay about creating a session on the subject for this year’s event.

As the gentleman and Martin began emailing back and forth, they copied Butch with the product of their efforts. For some reason the correspondence petered out in March of this year. Earlier this week, as a member of the conference planning committee, I volunteered to help format the rough document. This year’s Positive Living will feature a special tribute to Martin. I can’t think of a better way to honor his memory than to pass on this version of what Butch has deemed the “Delaney Declaration.”

The Delaney Declaration

By Martin Delaney (March 2008)

The entire human population benefited from the way AIDS first struck the gay community. Many people wanted to blame the spread of AIDS on gay people, but the facts are exactly the opposite. The epidemic would have been dramatically worse if it had struck any other group than gay people.

Most diseases uniformly strike an entire population, spreading lightly across all economic, geographic, racial, and gender groups. As a result, nothing really unifies the patient population other than the disease itself. As a consequence, people do not bond together or organize to fight the disease because they have nothing in common that connects them.

You can see this in virtually all other major diseases. There may be millions of people who have a disease but they fail to organize to fight it. They don’t demonstrate, they don’t group together to influence the Congress, they don’t develop media strategies. They just go on with their various local groups and families and fight the disease simply as individuals.

In great contrast, when AIDS hit the gay community with unparalleled specificity, it struck a group that already identified itself as a community across the entire nation. It struck a group of people who were already organized politically with skills to influence both local and national government; it struck a population that already knew it had to fight for its rights, even fight to survive. It knew how to use the media. It knew it had to take care of its own because no one else would. It knew it had to fight back or die.

We [the gay community] were in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and every other major country, yet linked together. Wherever, we were a part of a whole. We were in the scientific community; we were in the NIH (the United States’ medical research agency, the National Institutes of Health). We were in the drug companies and in Congress. Because of this unique situation, AIDS faced a far more formidable and organized enemy than had ever before been the case. Had AIDS simply hit across all the general segments of society, like other diseases, it would have encountered far less resistance. People getting the disease would have had nothing in common with each other, no underlying links or abilities, or any need to see itself as a fighting force. It would have been just another disease and it would have been treated like just another disease.

But we know it was not just another disease. It was far cleverer, more dangerous, and spread quietly because it acted slowly. It continued to spread for decades before society would even know it was there. In contrast when it struck the gay community, our underlying culture made it visible much more quickly. Within a few short years, we were able to see that it was sexually transmitted.

The normal rules for people with life threatening illnesses didn’t work very well. Usually such people are too sick to do anything about it. We saw our entire community under siege; we knew we had to change the rules or we would all be dead.

We hollered about it in the media, we went to the FDA (the United States’ Food and Drug Administration) and the NIH, we marched in Washington, got people on committees and proposed new ideas and new ways of thinking about science and the treatment of people with terrible diseases. WE changed the rules, first for ourselves but ultimately for everyone facing a life threatening disease. WE wouldn’t just listen to our doctor either. We recognized that they worked for us, that we were in charge of our lives and our bodies. We taught each other to demand that our doctors act as partners, not as dictators. We changed the doctor patient relationship. We realized that patient education was ultimately going to be done either by drug companies or by the patient community itself; we organized ourselves to teach ourselves.

We became a voice that could counter, when necessary, the messages of the drug companies, drug company advertising, and everything the companies did that affected us. As activists, we formed teams to speak up for our community regarding clinical trials.

The accomplishments of people living with AIDS:

1. Having an instrumental role in changing the rules for drug discovery, development and approval for life threatening illnesses

2. Greatly speeding up access to new drugs, both in and outside of clinical trials.

3. Changing the mindset of researchers about the wisdom of providing early access to experimental drugs.

4. Patient empowerment - helping people understand that they don’t have to be victims of a disease, but can instead be leaders in the fight against it.

5. Changing the patient mindset from hopelessness to hope; helping people see that there is always something you can do.

6. Demonstrating that you don’t have to be a scientist to influence science and have it serve people.

7. Discovering how to be taken seriously by scientists, academics and government bureaucrats, and how to influence them with without making them the enemy.

8. Learning how to organize to influence government policy.