Category Archives: Events

Events

The Drum Circle Comes Home!

The Radical Faerie Queer Spirit Drum Circle has been meeting at south London’s Wheatsheaf Community Hall to celebrate full moons since 2012, and returns to the Hall for the Beltane Full Moon on May 14th 2022 after two years during which the venue was used as a coronavirus testing centre.

Often drawing 70+ people prior to the pandemic, the Drum Circle is where magically-minded queers of London meet for an evening of ritual, music, dance and socialising. We get in touch with, express, release the rising emotions at full moon – which at Beltane invites us to playfully and joyfully unite the physical body (Taurus Sun) with the deep passion and erotic power of the emotion and spirit within us (Scorpio Moon).

We will dedicate this Beltane Full Moon Circle to the liberation (physical and spiritual) of LGBTQ+ people the world over: to send the energy of solidarity to queers fighting for their right to exist and to fuel the emancipation of our queer spirit, which opens hearts, minds and gates of consciousness, connects worlds, helps souls pass through the veils, and channels creativity, healing and grace into the world.

Full moon Beltane peak of spring – a time to energise our lives, our projects, our relationships, through connecting the body and spirit. As at Samhain, the veils are thin – nature spirits want to dance with us and assist in weaving back together the many levels of reality. We do this weaving through music and dance, rhythm and movement, connecting, releasing, dropping the mind, getting out of the head and deeply into the body, the heart and emotions, until the spirit is moving our bodies on the dancefloor or our hands on the drum. Every taste of ecstasy is an opportunity for healing.

In order to prepare a space to open up our energy fields we attune to the elements and to the unconditionally loving source of consciousness, reclaiming and renewing for today the ancient link between queer people and the Goddess plus certain male and trans deities.

Invoking ancient queer deities of Europe:

PAN and DIONYSUS, good time deities who revelled in music, wine, sex and ecstatic connections.

ARTEMIS/DIANA, moon goddess with her virgin priestesses and eunuch priests, worshipped in London at site of St Pauls.

CYBELE, the ancient Goddess from Anatolia became the Great Mother of the Roman Empire, served by her queer and outrageous Gallae priests (who self-castrated in honour of ATTIS, the resurrected lover of the Goddess) for thousands of years until the rise of Christianity, ,

APHRODITE URANIA, considered the patron Goddess of same sex love in ancient Greece

GANYMEDE, who became the cup-bearer/lover of Zeus, king of the Gods, then became Aquarius in the zodiac. In Greece love between older and younger men was praised for its spiritual potential, as the centuries passed and life became less inspired by noble philosophy Ganymede evolved into catamite, meaning a boy used for sex, in Roman and medieval times.

Which divine beings would you invite to the party???

Around the world gender fluidity and homosexuality have always been associated with magic, priestcraft, shamanism, divination, ritual – especially with ecstatic ritual that lifts the human mind into states of union and elation. This is the part of our history that the modern Gay Liberation movement has yet to embrace and explore – through this journey of discovery we remember who we are.

At the Faerie Drum Circle the warriors, scouts, shamans and flute players gather. WHEATSHEAF HALL, WHEATSHEAF LANE off SOUTH LAMBETH ROAD, LONDON SW8 2UP. 7 – 11PM 14 MAY 2022

Events, Recollections, Reflection

Memories from the Post-Lockdown-Bandstand-Drum-Circle

Sunday 5th July 2020

By Sexual

The Faeries came to play by the river. The people came out to enjoy the open space, walking, riding and picnicking. 

Warm illegal hugs exchanged on arrival at the bandstand full of drums, percussion and drag!

An invocation and welcome to the directions, animal spirits and wonderful qualities of human nature – once we had not quite all agreed in which direction lay North!

Busy mind, furtive eyes and a cautious beat as we find ourselves in the unfamiliar surroundings.

The wind shakes the trees and bristles the leaves adding another soundscape.

A long section of sheer golden fabric is held aloft over the gathered tribe and ripples and dances and touches the faerie folk drawn into its aesthetic call like moths to a flame. 

Joyous smiles emerge and bubbles appear. More dresses and colour, more fabric and twirling bodies. The drumming finding its voice.

We are witnessed. 

By the old man sitting with palms up to the sky experiencing the chi. 

By the curious joggers bending their necks as they pass to take in this scene.

By the van of police patrolling the riverside. Who stop to consider and observe. 

The drums continue without missing a beat, communicating a message of vitality and strength. Dare you interrupt this expression of family, of presence and bold determination to express freely in a not quite one metre plus way? A beaming smile from the circle announces our loving intent and allows them to move on.

The children hear the music and dance with smiles as they pass with their parents. We model the beauty of free expression and play as they model the delight of unencumbered youth. 

(A memory of childlike play with a balloon amongst the sleepy shoppers in a street in Cologne. Dancing with street musicians, being met by children as they see the balloon their parents choose not to see. Eager to pat it back up into the sky.)

Swallows from Africa catch the London insects and fly over the bandstand that emits the call from its current band.

Young African Londoners congregate nearby on the railings, drawn by music.

Others stop to take pictures and to soak in the scene.

More material, more dresses and headwear. Pipes are played,  tambourines and a cowbell build the momentum. More dancing, more twirling, some sage knitting the spaces between the flowing  bodies. Hands hitting the skins of the drums, eyes closed and feeling the mounting excitement in the air. Shrill ululation, howls and screams, release, bind, honour, acknowledge and affirm our gifts, our rage, our passion and love and need to gather. To hear the call, make the call and dare to embrace the moment. Shake it, stroke it, breath it and allow it to find its form. 

Lovers of beauty, creativity and life. Filled, topped up and nourished. 

Ready to return to the other world of stories, concerns, plans and  judgements. Of roles and obligations, expectations and responsibilities.

Returning with seeds of possibility, knowing and courageous determination to enter and embrace the ever unfolding, expanding and unknowable complexity  of this paradoxical flight into the cosmos and beyond.

Boundless gratitude, love, peace, health and abundance!

Events

A NIGHT WITH THE ANCESTORS

The Albion Faerie Queer Spirit Drum Circle met for a post-Samhain full moon celebration of our friends the dead and all our spirit connections on Friday 15 November 2019 at the Wheatsheaf Hall in Vauxhall, London. The drumming was hot, the dancing ecstatic and the ritual energies powerful. Dozens of queer spirits combining their emotional-spiritual fields through dance and prayer connected us to the many levels of existence, enabling us to release old emotional loads and feeding us with positively charged energy.

A beautiful altar provided a focal point in the centre of the circle, this video gives a tour of it, with a great soundtrack of the quality drumming that was going on….

Making ceremony at the full moon and seasonal festivals helps to align us energetically with the natural rhythms of nature. Connecting through the rhythm of the drum, as a group we raise energy that can help us loosen blocked emotions, clear mental frequencies, and liberate the spirit. This can rebalance the inner world, it’s good for our mental health. We also come to catch up with friends and make new ones, which serves the same purpose!

We meet again for the next Full Moon in Harleyford Community Garden in Vauxhall on December 12th from 6 to 9pm

and for a WInter Solstice ceremony at the Wheatsheaf Hall on Saturday December 21st from 7 to 11pm .

For email announcements of Albion Faerie events sign up for the mailing list on the homepage of this website.

Events, History

Equinox Full Moon Queer Spirit Celebration

Wheatsheaf Hall, Wheatsheaf Lane, London SW8 2UP
Friday September 13th 2019, 7 – 11pm

The London Radical Faerie Drum Circle was at first known as the Queer Spirit Circle, offered from 2005 as a space for spiritually inclined LGBTQ+ people to find each other.  The Circle manifested in a former Victorian maternity hospital in Stockwell, which was then squatted by an artist’s collective, who held it as a creative community hub (now the space has been converted by Lambeth Council into luxury flats).

After the hospital the circle found a home in a private rooftop apartment in Old Street for some years, during which a core group of people nurtured its development, before arriving at its current venue, the atmospheric Wheatsheaf Hall in Vauxhall, on the 21st December 2012 with an ‘End of the World Party’ to celebrate the Mayan Calendar. We created a portal into a new paradigm, viewing this date as a significant marker on the way into the Age of Aquarius, and stepped or danced our way through it. The Circle was by this time becoming known as the Faerie Drum Circle, meeting mostly at full moons to raise energy, release emotion and build magical connections.

Since 2012 the Radical Faeries of Albion have attracted increasing numbers to our gatherings and circles. A rising tide of queer spirituality, free of religious bonds, reaching for the shamanic truth at the core of queer nature, has also given birth to three Queer Spirit Festivals –

500 pioneer queers came to Whittlebury Park in Northamptonshire at the Aquarius Full Moon this August to celebrate, explore, play, expand and rise in love. A vast range of spiritual flavours was on offer – from early morning yoga to late night trance from our awesome DJs, via shamanic journeys, holy chants, medicine wheels, creative pursuits, drumming, healing workshops, activism, inspired performances, sacred sexuality…..

Every part of the LGBTQ+ rainbow was present in good numbers. Radical Faeries have the history of being birthed by gay men, but Queer Spirit Festival has from the start been created by, and intended for, every section of our queer multiverse. This brings challenges, which we gladly rise to, creating a powerful culture of respect, consent, curiosity and openness that enables the love to flow freely around the field. Queer Spirit revels in the beauty that is diversity, and the unity that arises from honouring everyone’s uniqueness, from all being free to be ourselves, and to express our inner truths and our core loving nature.

The Faerie Trance Dance was my personal highlight of the festival this summer. 15 years of dedication to the Drum Circle was rewarded grandly as I merged into the powerful rhythms and ecstatic dancing with a hundred or more beautiful, wild, witchy, shamanic, magical, radical queers, who just seemed to slip through the gates instantly, becoming their spirit animals, once the beats began. The festival draws together various strands of queer shamanism, tantra and other forms of spirituality – in the trance dance all these energies became one melting pot of high vibrational spirit. The power of the dance was magnified by having the opportunity to collaborate with DK Green, whom I invited to cast the circle – he taking the ceremonial gatekeeper role that has historically been held by trans people in cultures across the world – and Andy Fowler, a teacher of world percussion who had been inspiring dozens of queers to discover the healing and uplifting power of the drum throughout the festival.

The London Drum Circle starts its Autumn run at the Full Moon in Pisces on Friday 13th September. Pisces is the mystic – its transcendent perspective is gained through compassion for all beings. As more of us recognise that all beings are one being, are us in other forms, deserving of love and kindness, and seek the company of others who also live in or aspire to that lighter vibration, we ask all who come to ensure the drum circle is a welcoming space of coming home. The Radical Faerie term recognising the unity of life is subject:SUBJECT consciousness – a term that honours that I am another YOU and YOU are another ME, a life-altering perspective change once embraced.

We will gather at the September Full Moon

    • to give thanks for our summer journeys as we approach the Equinox turning point into the Autumn
    • to celebrate the amazing manifestation of love and magic at Queer Spirit Festival
    • and to invoke blessings for the first ever LONDON TRANS PRIDE MARCH, which is happening in central London the next day.

 

Trans Pride March link: https://www.facebook.com/events/1187419778106248/

Drum Circle links:

There are lots of drums and percussion to play with, the drum circle is a free flow space in which you are welcome to drum, dance and socialise as you wish. We arrive from 7pm to set up, and it is recommended to arrive by 8pm for the circle casting. You are welcome to bring any instruments along, plus snacks/drinks to share, and if possible £5 donation towards costs. (The Hall Hire charges have gone up recently.) As with all faerie events, payment is not insisted on – NOTAFLOF applies: No-One Turned Away For Lack Of Funds.

Read more: https://albionfaeries.org.uk/healing-power-of-the-drum/

AUTUMN DRUM CIRCLE DATES:

Friday September 13th  Equinox Full Moon

Saturday October 12th  Aries Full Moon

Friday November 15th  Samhain Full Moon Ancestor Celebration

Thursday December 12th Gemini Full Moon

Saturday December 21st  Winter Solstice

 

Blog by Shokti