Category Archives: Gathering

Albion gathering history

At a political demo in London this summer I met a Radical Faerie from Atlanta, the city faerie clan in Georgia that currently has a reputation for being the most active and fertile group in the USA.  He told me that he had heard that the Albion Faeries are ‘very spiritual’.  By this I don’t think he meant that we go to church on time, or that we all line up dutifully for morning practice, nor even that we are super nice to each other (and compared to some of what I have seen in American sanctuaries, we actually are).  He may have been referring to the way we meet regularly to honour the moon cycles, and also to the way our gatherings are built to consciously get the most out of the energies of the seasonal festivals of the wheel of the year.  As I feel very fortunate to have discovered very early into my personal spiritual journey, our ultimate task while alive is to follow our spirit, not our given/chosen spiritual path.  Fortunate also to have discovered how the cycles of the Sun and Moon, and the rhythms of Nature, give us all we need to liberate the spirit, to heal and awaken the soul, if we become conscious of them.  Gatherings are a very effective way of discovering the gifts and subtleties of a season’s energy.

The Albion clan of the global Radical Faerie tribe are about to hold our 21st gathering since we first assembled at Featherstone Castle in Northumberland a decade ago at Imbolc 2006.

faegathEight times we gathered at the enchanted Featherstone, our Faerie Hogwarts, during the cold Winter months…. Twice over Christmas and SIX times at Imbolc.  These were thermal fashion, finding-divinity-through-the-duvet gatherings, with lots of cosiness around fires, intimate, slow heart circles held at sunset in the blue room (which most people attended) and freezing ballroom discos – divas dancing around the tall radiator heaters not their handbags.

The Imbolc gatherings were slow paced, cosy and for the most part mellow.  There was a lot of deep sharing and healing going on, also of course an element of high spirited partying, which for some occasionally seemed to become more central to the experience than the healing journey.  Whether related to that or not, we experienced a lot of physical sickness at the last few castle winter gatherings.  I suggest that if we do not attend effectively to the soul healing that spirit calls us together to address, it is easy for sickness to manifest in our bodies.

I also feel that the deep healing work that many of us did engage in for ourselves… and for the collective… during those deep and magical winter retreats (there was one stunning year that it snowed deeply before we arrived and didn’t melt until we left… we were outside doing naked photo shoots in glistening sunshine, we also built a snowhenge) was now done.  Spirit was pushing us out of our winter dream time space to explore new territories.  The conditions at Featherstone in February were proving too tough, but the wish to continue meeting to savour the sparkling energies of Imbolc, and each other as a respite from the dark winter period, was strong – so gatherings shifted to Paddington Farm in Glastonbury, where space is limited and we have to be cosy with each other.

Sometimes it is so exciting to escape the winter blues and arrive in faerie land it can be tempting to forget that the spirit at this time of year is asking us to light a small inner fire, not a conflagration… is inviting us to look within and heal, preparing ourselves for the busier time of year ahead.  Imbolc has an exciting energy of potential and promise, but it’s still winter.  The Featherstone winter gatherings gave us attendees a powerful experience of deep stillness – because the land holding us was itself so cold and still, while in Glastonbury the earth energy is much lighter and livelier.  It does not offer us the kind of deep winter spirit experience that many of us got to know in the Northumberland wilderness.

Imbolc is a time to come together for warmth and reassurance in the dark months of the year – the faeries of Albion have explored this season’s energy more than most other clans around the world.  Imbolc is also a much celebrated faerie festival in southern United States – an annual Brigit Ball is held in New Orleans, in a very different climate to our northern retreat.  So maybe that’s where the spirit of the British maiden goddess emigrated to after her people forgot about her here, somewhere much warmer!

In 2014 we gathered for the first Albion Spring Gathering, held over the Equinox shift from winter Pisces water to spring Aries fire energy, discovering powerful magic through consciously making that shift within ourselves in sync with the planet.  We returned to Featherstone for this and subsequent Spring gatherings, taking huge delight in the warmer temperatures both outside and within the castle, in the longer hours of daylight, the lambs in the fields and the bright Spring sunshine.

2014 was the year of our second Summer Solstice Gathering at Paddington Farm under the Tor, but the first year the magic really took off there for us.  Powerful workshops releasing shame from our lives prepared the ground for a ritual rise into blissful communion around our hot and sizzling Solstice fire in the woods.  Many a faerie’s deep rooted dreams of passion and play in nature were fulfilled that night, and our merry mystical dance with the woodland spirits has continued at the Solstice gatherings since. 2014 Solstice brought a glorious sunrise witnessed by many Fae up on the top of Glastonbury Tor.  We arrived there at dawn, a very merry band of kissing, cuddling queers livening up the atmosphere amongst the local hippies and characters of Avalon.

2015 the Albion Faeries filled in the last remaining gap in the seasonal calendar with our first Autumn gathering, Featherstone providing the most perfect setting for 9 days of Samhain sorcery and spooky delight.  Within a decade we have held gatherings in each of the four seasons of the year, this seeming to me like a very significant statement from our collective to the cosmos that we are not messing around, the Albion Faeries are a spiritual tribe and we mean business.

An issue that comes up for us, it seems every few years, is around substance use and abuse.  The issue seems to arise when we have become accustomed to a venue and start to take the magic for granted.  Or maybe we just get lazy about doing the work that opens the gates to it?

When we cosmic queers gather together and open the gates to the heart and spirit we are inviting the potent powers of the universe to come be part of the journey with us.  Those powers answer the call gladly when they feel the sincerity behind it, and they bring the possibility of profound awakening and transformation to our conclaves.  Having invited super powered cosmic guests to the feast it is silly to ignore them, and seek illusory transcendence through quick fixes.  Sometimes of course suitably blessed and prepared sacraments are part of the exploration of our faerie nature that we undertake.  As we are in community space and not a gay holiday camp it would seem vital. and natural that those using substances as part of their experience would aim to do so consciously, with awareness given to how their choices impact on others.

Our self-defined and self-declared community has grown rapidly in a decade. Is this the moment for us to take a collective breath and consider how, where, when and why… we do what we do.  Our last two gatherings at Paddington have led to some disturbance and, it seems, division, amongst us.  By contrast the last two Featherstone outings have been extremely well blessed on all counts.  It is noticeable to me that while the castle gatherings have had several faeries stepping forward to be part of the organising team, there has been a shortage of new energy in the Glastonbury team.  There even seems to be some element of ‘consumer’ culture seeping into Paddington.  I also think we have been sticking to a tried and tested formula in our gathering spaces and not really adapting fully yet to the differing energies of each season.  What works for a cosy Winter or lazy Lammas retreat may not be the best formula for the highly individuated energies of the Summer Solstice.  These high energy gatherings, which have become very large very quickly, could perhaps be held more ‘lightly’, with less expectation of a tightly bonded faerie unit than at other times of the year. They could be more like a faerie ‘festival’ than a conventional gathering.  It simply does not seem practical to expect large numbers of fae to achieve the type of bonding and intensity that we know so well when our numbers are so large and the space we are occupying is also used by other people, when we are so close to the attractions of Avalon and when the Sun energy is at its peak.  But a less formal faerie festival that embraces these factors as gifts might manifest a lovely energy.

2017 looks like being a different kind of year for the Albion Faeries.

Featherstone Castle has been booked for a Global Gathering in August, to which we will invite a number of activist queers from countries in Africa/Middle East/South America/Eastern Europe/Asia to come tell their stories and have an experience of the kind of compassionate community the Faeries create.  This gathering is being run in collaboration with the organisers of the first Global Gathering in California held two years ago. With a limit on the number of places the organising team is asking only faeries who feel passionate about the global rights of lgbtq people, and who wish to input into the creation of a global queer shamanic conscious community, to come along.

The castle has not been booked for a Spring gathering next year, Team Butterfly figuring that after 3 successful Spring events there a fallow year was appropriate.  Dates have been booked for October.

Imbolc at Paddington Farm is booked for us but as yet I believe there is no organising team for a Summer Solstice gathering.  I think we could consider also taking a year off from the Solstice gathering, giving time to reconsider how we gather in that space should we wish to continue using it.

This potentially would leave a huge gap between our Imbolc gathering and the August Global, and both of these two have restrictions on the numbers that can attend.  Could this space be an opportunity for new initiatives to manifest?  To perhaps try out smaller gatherings in new locations, perhaps built around themes that some people wish to explore?  I would also like to encourage as many Albion Fae as possible get off our little island and go experience the spirit at American and Euro Faerie sanctuaries, to make connections with other parts of the tribe and learn from how they do things.

The Albion Faeries are part of a global network of queer healers and agents of change and transformation.  There is surely something significant about the Radical Faerie spirit finding a home in the pagan homeland Albion, reaching here via the United States and European gatherings and sanctuaries.  We are exploring the crucial link between our sexuality, nature and consciousness, we are birthing the Age of Aquarius. We are also a crucial beacon for lost, confused and abused queers who are not finding their place in the soulless modern world, nor in the shallow end of gay life.  We offer a plunge into the radical depths of being, and a lot of fun while plunging.  It is well worth us taking stock of what we have achieved and plotting a way forward with consciousness, compassion and care. The Albion Faeries are a ‘very spiritual’ clan of queer magicians, a fact that needs to be properly honoured and understood as we enter our second decade of community building.

-Shokti

Some Observations on the Albion Faeries at the end of Summer 2016

This has been a busy and dramatic year so far for the Fae in Albion, even from my partial and occasional viewing but I have had a number of conversations over the months and yesterday even they crystallized for me in a long conversation with Shokti.  From this conversation several thoughts have emerged about where we are and some of the issues facing us as we move into the future.  I shall attempt here to summarise my current thinking, with the always present caveat that I may change my mind and adjust my opinions as new information and circumstances arise (or when the wind changes, I am a Queen and therefore will, because I can X)!

Is this a time for a taking stock of where the Albion Faeries are?  After the strife and challenges and achievements of this year some thought about how we move forward, in inclusivity, in safety, in numbers and activities could be of assistance to us.

In that last few years the number of events and gatherings held under the Faerie name here in Albion has multiplied and the numbers of Fae with them, thus it is increasingly difficult for all of us to know everyone, there are new faeries, faeries who have never been to the events we(I!?) have, old faeries who haven’t been for several years.  This is Wonderful!  And challenging!  Informal gossip networks that sufficed for information exchange and organising are creaking trying to include everyone, core values and practices can be diluted/lost in all the wonderful new opportunities and experiences offered by so many new Fae.  I do think however that some consciousness needs to be brought to this process, an awareness and thoughtfulness.  For instance, it is several years since I have been greeted on first arrival in a Faerie space with the words “welcome home” which was my first magical experience at my first Faerie gathering, I miss it; and I wonder how many have never had that experience?  Maybe I’m being old fogeyish, maybe not, but this and other practices might be usefully thought about before being abandoned all together – or after consideration revived?

As part of the growth in numbers and events the Faerie purse has grown to!  When I joined a set of accounts was circulating showing a balance of about £2,000 (I don’t remember the exact figure), comfortable but not earth shattering for a group of our then size and nature.  Most gatherings since then have (wonderfully) turned a profit and as far as I am aware the purse now stands at something over £10,000.  This is great, but now presents us with the challenge of what might/do we want to start doing with this.  How much do we need to keep in hand as a ‘rainy day fund’ against a financially disastrous gathering or event, what is over, what could we do with the surplus(es?).  Do we want to seriously start saving for The Land?  We are now at the stage where that looks like a possible target, not this year perhaps or next, but in a few years time perhaps.  Do we want to set up a system to support sending some fae to short Mountain or other US sanctuaries to learn and deepen our connection with our sister/cousins in America, bringing that new skills and knowledges home with them?  The very beautiful suggestion earlier from Shokti about funding some LGBTQI refugees to attend Queer Spirit started an excellent debate – I think the solution reached was perfect – but it leaves the question open about outreach to those who may have no way of making even travel costs, and may face cultural barriers to even finding out we exist.  Next year there is the World Gathering in August, an enormous opportunity, and challenge, happening here in Albion.  Will we provide seed money to this?  Will that be a loan or a grant, or dependant on how that gathering does financially?  I note here as well that the Faerie spirit has this year moved Arian Bloodwood to start offering workshops on ‘changing your relationship to money’ inspired by the Faerie Hammer.  They are amazing and well worth attending if you can, and if you can’t get to London trying to persuade Arian to come to you! (He doesn’t know I’m saying this, but will no doubt find out J…).

Finally, there is the matter of Faerie magic/heart space/spirit.  This is not an accidental or happenstance aspect of the Faeries.  It is a core part of what makes us faeries and not just another holiday camp for vaguely like minded alternative hippy types into booze, parties and sex. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just not ALL we’re about and recently I think that our growth and changes have made that more difficult to create and maintain, again my thinking is that this needs a deliberateness and attention that it has maybe not always been receiving.  We have relied on “co-creation” to make sacred heart space happen.  I would offer that we need to be much more deliberate and considered around this to make our future developments easier to manage well.

-Minerva

 

It’s time to renew our love.

I don’t know what to say about my experiences at the solstice. And I don’t know how to voice them.

I don’t want to use language that triggers. I’m lost by language that talks of “men” and “women”. I don’t see “men” and “women”, I see individual souls, layered, complex, experience-specific. That is my truth. I accept others see differently. I seek to connect with people in faerie space from my essential soul to theirs.

I seek to connect with all in some “authentic” way and being an empath I was awash with emotions at the gathering, some as high as the sky, some as deep, as dissident as the ocean.

I went into this gathering wounded. Alongside Orlando’s hate attack came a hate outbreak in our online community and it enfeebled me.

I think it placed fear in our hearts, fear which grew as the gathering unfolded.

I believe that fear creates fear. It sensitizes, focuses, triggers fear. Fear seeds itself.

I have not heard much talk of fear at our gatherings before. I ask was it there and not spoken or was it not there?

Was it our fear or the inrush from Orlando at the solstice?

There was grace and kindness, laughter and caring. There were wonderful workshops. There was delicious food. I felt that flowering of heart that faerie gatherings nurture. Our first heart circle, starting late at night, was profound. Death was a significant theme and the celebration of life.

Faerie space is precious to all who experience it. It embraces light and shadow. We feel shifts in our emotional frequency there. Could it be that a protective urge is emerging for some? A desire to define that preciousness, to keep it safe? How can we do that when we all have light and shadow in us. Would some of us seek to repress the shadow?

After four days the group had grown large. Finding volunteers for things was noticeably a strain. I did not sense that we were operating or connected as a single group. That was surprising. It felt unusual to me. The energy felt scattered, volatile.

Nothing formal was done for the group and nothing formal was done to orient newcomers. Our organisers continued to be very low on energy. I was curious to hear some newcomers say they’d been told faerie gatherings were sex parties. I sensed the possibility of mixed messages.

More time passed and my awareness of fear and fragmentation increased. I pushed both aside, rejoiced as the farm was glittered in preparation for the procession and Well rituals.

I left on Sunday at lunchtime. Many beautiful farewells filled my heart and eyes. I pushed away an increasing dis-ease in the energy field. I did not have any resources to offer and a long drive home.

I don’t know really what happened after I left. Many voices speaking different truths. Many silent. Many emotions. Faeries offering insights, ways to learn and heal. Faeries heavy with questions.
“We will not heal the world’s fear by giving it place in our hearts”. My heart spoke these words. They felt too raw to share on Facebook. Facebook has felt a complicated, raw place, sometimes enlivened with laughter and kindness.

Someone said the enemy of fear is love. I have been seeking to love more and fear less, although it would be a lie to say I don’t fear the energy of fear, for it is very potent.

Now is our time to renew love, starting with ourselves.

Oh how easy and trite that line sounds. And I’ve never in my life been more serious.

Love brings us together, guides us to appreciation of our differences, treasures what we hold in common and makes our particular joy manifest.

This poem came to me shortly after I got home from Glastonbury. Reading it now I hear the Mother’s voice speaking to us so clearly…

Solstice 2016
The rain met you
frothed the sky
in bloody rivers
So many
And they did nothing
but show their faces
to the rage

Fretful sun
kept its distance

Like empty hammocks
you hang about crisscrossed
Weigh the countless years
left to live
Attempt amends
with fires and food and drums
but this time cannot raise
the price of redemption

Till you take your own brittle skylark
wings and shatter them
Thick juices
stain the soil
Then the sun re-opens
a path to your faces
Then the sun reclaims its place
and purply spreads
around enfolding
each as a mother’s
song enfolds a child
until it settles again

With love, Qweaver

Does the world change when you close your eyes?

Dear great spirit – I offer gratitude for your guidance and total removal of nice predictable patterns!

Just as I was feeling comfortable in having read and followed the “solstice script” around my thoughts, feelings and emotions, this year you, of course, re-wrote it.

I was expecting a slight hiccup at the start before moving in to warm, joyous connection, sensuality and rising energies, culminating in cosmic-orgasmic eruptions around the fire.

I got tumultuous fits of cynicism to get past, coldness to learn to love, connections that felt confusing to me with energy flows that seemed random and awkward at times.

What I wanted, what I sought to create, what I felt must happen – it was as elusive as ice upon a fire.

Yet I feel I am learning – something around “choice”; that sometimes there is no point getting stressed out or worked up around having to decide this or that. More and more it seems that for me at least, choice is actually a misrepresented thing; a presumptive thought that “ME” can decide to do or not do, to go or not go, to act or not act. The reality is that I am in service to spirit and the “choices” are already there.  Thinking I can say yes or no makes no sense much like deciding to choose not to see the heard of elephants that is stampeding towards you; pretending that the great hole you have just fallen in to isn’t there; kidding yourself that you are stone dry when you take a shower…

Now back away from nature and from faerie energy, I notice myself falling back in to that crater of my habits, of my addictions, of my lack of being able to feel the loving connection of all and everything.

BUT

Sitting here, as I look back, great Spirit is slowly letting me re-read my solstice script. It’s beginning to seem that those 10 days under the energy of the Torr were the abridged summation of my life.

I have “wants”; I have “desires”; I have need to “control”; I have lack of self-belief; I have cynicism; I find it hard to trust others…

I cling to the idea that I have to make choices and the fate and flow of the universe hangs from every one of those decisions ….

I dragged myself in to the gathering at the start and I ran away from it at the end and I see it is so easy for me to let the cold and wet grow in my sole and let the love, the dancing, the sharing, the connection, the vulnerability, the holding – the faerie spirit – fade and die.

I can “choose” to let that happen but of course it won’t actually since deep down the good is still there, waiting to resurface at the next gathering – so my choice is just a closing of my eyes, a denying of what is there.

Keeping your eyes open when you feel tired is hard; Seeing what you don’t want to see is painful.

Perhaps the solution is to embrace spending time with Captain Caffeine, with Molly Mandy and with others?

But the message seems clear – those elephants will keep on coming even if my eyes are closed!

Snail – June 2016

Does the world change...
Click to view…

Angels surround me – by Unicorn

The Angels surround me
In you
In me
All around us
Benevolent spirits
We channel them
Are them

Came from them and will go back to them

We came here to meet again
In this special place
Sacred
To celebrate life
Ourselves
Sexuality

Heal each other with our stories from our hearts

Allowing our beautiful souls to shine through our past traumas

As they are erased
We are reborn
Like the earth is reborn each spring
Getting back into tune with nature
Such a beautiful thing

A fandango of faeries – by Blue.

By night, by day, fifty shades of gay
The beige, the pink, the queer, the fae
A fandango of faeries with lavendar farts
Medicine to heal and mend broken hearts

Improvised singing, heartbeats and drums
Heart circles, meditation, yoga, numb bums
Tinsel curtains and fires, rivers, rocks and trees
Banquets and sunrise, hot baths, dirty knees.

Ten days an oasis, a whisper, a cuddle
Warm by the fire, from the outside we huddle
Battling demons, clutching mugs of steaming tea
Evolve, Emerge, with wings we’re set free.

Featherstone – by Shokti

Honouring sexuality as a sacred force of nature.

Revealing love as divine presence, infinite, abundant and meant for everyone.

Uniting the worlds of spirit and matter, expressed in art, in dance, in rhythm, in drag, expressed in ecstatic flow and in majestic stillness.

Featherstone.

Fires on the water. Deep peace and deep release.

Flames igniting in hearts. Butterfly wings outstretched.

The Gathering Call – by Shokti

A new season begins
a new circle forms
a tribal confluence
of butterfly souls

Fragile and fresh
at winter’s end
transitioning into the light of March
into Spring air, Aries fire
lifting us out of the inner realms
sharing our dreams and desires
we rediscover our Selves

The land gradually warming
cold castle stone slowly heats in the sun 
Love in us awakening
Spring’s call to grow, to know, to fun

The faerie within calls us back to nature
to play, to laugh and dance
to birth the shamanic tribe of lovers
born to serve the divine romance

Transformers, Heart Warriors, Shamans and Scouts
the Healing Tribe is Coming Out
Faeries, Fools, Mollies and Mavericks
shaking off the darkness that makes people sick
Lightbearers, Explorers, Conduits of Spirit
renewing our contract with Life, Love and Magic
finding our Butterfly Wings

Writings from Featherstone 2016 by Sal.

We breathe colour here,
while the world turns
and waits and burns,
sprites collect in circles.

Howling at the clouds,
we sit with the quiet trees,
the roots around our feet,
kissing palms to a full moon.

In the mushroom patch,
we open the space to begin,
with a drum beat growling
while faeries fuck in flames.

Let our invisible fire cross
every fold of a map
let the grey sky crack
as we twirl in beautiful mess.

Touch us love us here,
while the world turns
and waits and burns,
tell how you found us.

Tell how you found the faeries.