Global gathering 2017

August 8-17th, 2017 – Saw the second Global Radical Faerie Gathering which took place at Featherstone Castle.

 120 faeries from more than 20 countries gathered to build and strengthen our global network. Albion, Euro, American and Canaan tribes were all well represented, and were joined by faerie pioneers from around the world, including delegates from China, Nigeria, Russia, Benin, Cameroon and Singapore.

In August 2017, thirty-eight years after its founding [of Rad Fae community], a sold-out, international Radical Faerie gathering was held in Great Britain with the stated goal of creating a global Radical Faerie community. Its aim is to have “queer people step up and claim our freedom and security and human rights, our meaningful and valuable place in society,” echoing the Gay Essentialist intent that originally motivated Hay and Kilhefner to call the Radical Faeries into being.   Don Kilhefner  https://www.laprogressive.com/gay-identity/

Here are words from some of those that attended:

Thanks to the Albion Faeries for hosting the Global Gathering and welcoming us into your world and culture. It was magical to make connections with people from around the world and hear their stories and political and cultural challenges and difficulties. It is an honour to be part of this ongoing multicultural dialogue. Bobby

As the sun sets on the first day back in muggle non faerie space, I think of the first thing said to me upon arrival at Featherstone, “Welcome home”. It took me aback a little, but within several hours I understood why we’d called it such. I have never felt so apart of a family, a tribe, a community as I have this week so thank you all for being apart of this experience. This is the start of a beautiful journey that I look forward to sharing with each and everyone of you.   Red

Really missing my time in the castle with all you beautiful faeries. Words can’t really describe how beautiful it was too be welcomed and witnessed with such lovingly open arms (and other body parts). Spirit gifted me a song at the gathering. A song that she’s only shared with me once before. A gift that resonates with me right now as powerful as the gift of getting to witness all you lovely beings. Thank you, yes you, for welcoming me into the sacred space that is the gathering we created and the cauldron we continue to stir our love and support in to.   Dirty D Extraordinaire

Exceptional and unique. Every individual, every shared moment, every bonded cluster… so many profound experiences shared at the Castle. Deep affection, pure love. I know no one who’s heart was not touched by the pink pulsing energy of all of us beautiful souls together. Waving the Faerie flag, knickers, dresses in the air.    Blue

Thank you all for your magic and presence. As I placed the final stones in this ‘circle’, I thought of us all, different shapes and sizes and colours, not made to fit any one way, but coming together harmoniously to make a thing of beauty. Sorry to the farmer that asked me to put them all back; it was too rainy on the last day to do so… Much love for all the comfort, challenges, support, and familiarity with you all. Many thanks to John for sharing his giant home with us, and to the land for holding us in it’s beautiful way.

‘Faerie Castle’
Castle strong,
You hold us tight!
Castle wise,
You know our might!
Castle old,
You’ve seen us grow!
Castle stay,
We’ve far to go!
Every moment in you
Is a moment of Truth!
Every movement in you
Is a dance of youth!
Every secret we’ve shared
Is a promise we’ve made!
Every touch, kiss and cuddle,
An emotional parade!
We’re bonded in story!
We’re bonded in song!
Sing out, sing proud,
Sing loud, hard, and long!
The castle is in us;
The castle is our hearts!
We build it together;
We make up its parts!
We hold one another
By our warm fire light!
We walk our own halls,
By day and by night!
We share what is in us;
We are sheltered in our love!
We keep coming together,
And see our castle
Rising
Above!                ~Earthflame

What a brilliant and amazing Gathering. Back in my own home again, tired and immensely happy, and proud of everyone at Global for what we created and achieved there and what will come of it in the years and decades ahead.

Thank you for receiving what I gave
Thank you for giving what I received
Thank you for the hugs and the compliments
Thank you for the laughter, the dancing and the drumming
Thank you for noticing when I was sad
Thank you for comforting me in my sadness
Thank you for the community and connection
Thank you for your love
Thank you for being who you are    Taz Spirit Warrior

When I first came out in the late 60s, I had no word for what I was. After Stonewall, many of us homosexuals flocked to the great urban settings and found anonymity and freedom to be more open as to who we were. I found my first tribe there and it was a time to explore, to come out, to figure out what it meant to be gay in the neighbourhoods we lived in, the workplace, the street, the underground, the world. I can still remember the unfamiliar heady feeling of freedom from just being gay. The community hadn’t evolved enuf yet to begin identifying into further distinctions (other than what what I would call the Top 5: Western, Leather, Military, Preppy, Drag.) For me, it was the onset of the AIDS epidemic that began to help me discern that we were a . . . “people” . . . and that we were about something. We know now that some of the support models for People with AIDS that were created in the early 80s have become the norm, as well as how medications are accessed, etc. At some point I began to consider and appreciate the power of what it means to be an ‘outsider’ in the larger mainstream world which increasingly included other homosexuals. My sense is that the outsiders/outlaws/edgewalkers need to be able to see each other and bind together (ala the castle) and, if the larger mainstream has enough insight, they should finds ways to appreciate and support (or at least live and let live) the outsider/other as well. The truth is that there are no insiders without the outsiders; their survival is directly linked to ours.   Ed Wolf

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Drawn as a response to the Global Gathering, this began as a visual representation of our spiral dance at the closing circle. Our collective creation, initiated by W’Fang, was a beautiful highlight of my magical faerie experience.  Moss  {PICTURE}

Restored. Connected. Overflowing… Such a fat and gorgeous week with you all and such an important personal milestone and mirror for me in community. Global tribe alive. See you all in a discrete corner of the world somewhere soon.    Octopus

I’ve been reflecting on why I feel so exhausted AND ecstatic after our gathering. Late last night I realised, the gathering was and is a personal and collective re-birth. A calling forth of ecstasy in a manner traditionally reserved for mystics who experienced the divine as lover. And so it is, when we meet one another from soul-love, we meet the divine. What a gift, and what a challenge when we can’t meet others in this way! I think this challenge is exhausting me – and I don’t think I’m alone in this experience….

“Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away”
For what is here now, but the pieces of a shattered vessel
Too burdened to carry further, released, fragrant again
Eager with spring’s sharp waters
Abounding with winter’s fertile song
Let us a sing a new song, and be glad   Qweaver, 28aug17

Positivity and energy abound. I truly, really have a Faemily who help me understand, be and flourish. I see in my mind”s eye and hear again the conversations, experiment, intimacy, challenge at The Global Gathering. Revelation, envy, laughter, fun. Powering through discomfort, a new confidence is developing in me. When there are cloudy days in the future, I will think about the GG, odd days when there were heavy clouds in the sky but know that the sun is hidden behind them and it will make an appearance when it is and I am ready.   Blue

Hi, some have asked for the words to the song we sang at closing…
“With each change we make
let it begin
With each step we take
let it begin
With each chain we break
let it begin
Every time we awake
let it begin”
Thanks to WFang for the memory, song and leading.  Kwai

My usual way of processing after a gathering includes making a play-list of tunes that resonate personally during and since.
I have made this one collaborative so that others with easy access to Spotify can add in too.
There are stories behind my choices, but I name no names !
https://open.spotify.com/user/miqhey/playlist/0saGn3BVJ8TdsVVndKnaTj   Miqxture

…had coffee with friends this morning and they asked me what did i enjoy most?
Impossible question… the answer took ten minutes and included morning coffee, sunshine in the car park, organised chaos and spontaneous choral works in the kitchen, the warm cosy chat friendly fires and the walks in the country with only the sheep and cows bearing witness to the explosions of colour and fashion, drums, laughter and late nights.
i talked about washing up pots and pans for 100 people, while singing and laughing like a small furry animal from snow white… flitting around the kitchen performing magic and feeding the faeries.
i talked about the workshops and the conversations, the leaning and the teaching and i talked about the strangers – who were just friends we hadn’t met yet.        Pink Dalek

Thank you to everyone for an amazing gathering. It renewed my faith in the radical faeries and in myself.   Astro

I ride the waves
Floating towards my home shore
Waves of calm
Waves roughly shaking me
Waves of love
Waves of tears
Waves of song
Waves of laughter
Waves of memories
Waves from the distance
Like Omar Sharif appearing in the desert mirage
You wave to me and I long for you
I ride the waves
Knowing you are always around
Riding your own waves
But always there for me
I’ll soon reach the soft sands of home
And sleep upon the sunny shore
The waves softly caressing the beach
Comforting me as I settle   Moss

It was my first time in a Castle! I felt so much welcomed these ten days … I made a new family I got so much love without any Greed or benefit just unconditional love ❤️ just got back in London seeing the concrete world through the coach window… Featherstone Castle and the tribe I feel like it was a dream.  Dark Angel

Thank you global faemily, and especially Albion faeries, for this healing empowering experience. We go forth with great visions into the future! Blessed be!   EZ

At the global faerie gathering it was delightful and refreshing to observe how the Euro, American and Israeli brothers happily refer to each other as She. I think the machismo of Anglo Saxon Britannia has affected Gay culture and produced a situation where many gay men have masked their femininity and so are perceived and perceive themselves as different to trans and non-binary folk. But living as a Radical Faerie I am living my whole Self, the She, He and also That.

By That I mean the divine spark of consciousness. The thing we all have in common. The awareness of I AM. In Faerie space we can explore who we are, female and male.. and also That something non-binary, mysterious and holy. That. My faerie mind describes That as the presence of Nature… a serene, wise yet wild, raw, vulnerable and utter powerful. From Nature we come to Nature we return. In Nature we heal and become Whole. Our whole holy Nature.

From all over the world we Faeries gathered at Featherstone.  Each tribe unique, each faerie unique, together we found our shared spirit in the meeting of passionate hearts, of lovers of life and liberation. Our nature affirmed, our global community strengthened, it happened at Featherstone.   Shokti

There is no beginning
There is no end
There is only the infinite passion of life. — Fellini

Autumn Prayer

We are the faerie spirit
that’s always lived within humanity
raw awareness in tune with nature’s dance
that sacrificed that divinity
that also lost its sanity
that became mortal, physical, solid
forgot how to shapeshift, astral travel
how to turn within to take flight
we became flesh, we learnt to die
we learnt about suffering, we learnt how to lie
but now humanity’s reached its tipping point
and amidst its madness a new age being born
remembering eternity, remembering you are me
remembering the elements, the mother, the spirit
surrendering to That and becoming This
Faerie Spirit born to flow free
born to liberate humanity
from polarities and dualities
Great Faerie Spirit-in-Action
flow through this tribe
liberate our minds from deathtraps
empower our hearts with courage
may we be who we, see who we, become who we are
may we reunite the earth and the heavenly stars
bring the power of rainbows into human eyes
as we reveal the faerie ‘neath the human disguise
we may appear at L as G, as B as T
but our queer spirit is part of eternity, is remembering infinity

Hanging with Harry Hay

Harry Hay (1912-2002) Here are some quotations and photos to assist communion with the spirit of Harry, gay activist and founder of the 1950s Mattachine Society and one of the three founding motherfathers of the Radical Faeries…. Harry was born in Worthing, UK, and lived his life in the USA.

harry8

Give yourself permission to enjoy being gay. You do have to give yourself permission. You have been told you may not. Give yourself permission to be free.

Throw off the ugly green frogskin of hetero-imitation to find the shining Faerie prince beneath

harry1

When we begin to love and respect Great Mother Nature’s gift to us of gayness, we’ll discover that the bondage of our childhood and adolescence in the trials and tribulations of neitherness was actually an apprenticeship for teaching her children new cutting edges of consciousness and social change. In stunning paradox, our neitherness is our talisman, our fairie wand, our gift we bring to the hetero world to….transform their pain into healings; …transform their tears to laughter: …transform their hand-me-downs to visions of loveliness.

harry-hay

harry_hayquote

harry13

Our beautiful lovely sexuality is the gateway to spirit. Under all organised religions of the past, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, there has been a separation of carnality, or shall we say of flesh or earth or sex, and spirituality. As far as I am concerned they are all the same thing, and what we need to do as faeries is to tie it all back together again.

harry4

The term ‘spiritual’ represents the accumulation of all experiential consciousness from the division of the first cells in the primeval slime, down through all evolution, to your latest insights of subject-subject consciousness just a minute ago. What else can we call this overwhelmingly magnificent inheritance—other than spiritual?

harry9

I was an older brother. So I had to do a lot of things first. My father was a self-made man, and he would beat me senseless. But he was a Scotsman, and stubborn. I’m his son, and I’m stubborn, too. I go on being stubborn.

harry10

We know how to live through their eyes. We can always play their games, but are we denying ourselves by doing this? If you’re going to carry the skin of conformity over you, you are going to suppress the beautiful prince or princess within you.

harry12

Confronted with the loving-sharing Consensus of subject-SUBJECT relationships all Authoritarianism must vanish. The Fairy Family Circle, co-joined in the shared vision of non-possessive love – which is the granting to any other and all others that total space wherein each may grow and soar to his own freely-selected, full potential – reaching out to one another subject-to-SUBJECT, becomes for the first time in history the true working model of a Sharing Consensus!

Subject–SUBJECT consciousness, a concept proposed by Harry Hay, believed by Hay to be gay people’s unique perspective on the world. Hay saw heterosexual society existing in a subject–object dynamic; where men, who had the culturally acceptable power, saw only themselves as subject and therefore higher than women, who were treated as objects and property. Hay extrapolated this interpersonal-sexual dynamic (male-power:female-subordinate) into a broader social context, believing that the subject-object relationship was the driving force behind most all of societies ills. Objectificiation served as a barrier, emotionally separating an individual (subject) from another individual by dehumanizing them, making them object.

When Hay looked at same-sex relationships, however, he saw a different dynamic at work. He believed that homosexual relationships were based on mutual respect and empathy for the other: a longing for a companion who was as equally valuable as the self. Hay termed this interpersonal—sexual dynamic “subject—SUBJECT” (which Hay capitalized for emphasis in all of his writings). He believed that this subject–SUBJECT way of viewing the world was gay people’s most valuable contribution to the greater society. By empathizing with all people, relating to each other as equal-to-equal, society would change drastically and social injustices would be eradicated.    Wikipedia

harry11