Category Archives: History

Featherstone, Gathering, History, Personal Stories, Recollections

A Samhain Tale from the Faerie Castle

scribed after the Samhain 2023 gathering by NoName:

In Featherstone Castle, when winter’s near,

Samhain celebration, faeries gather here.

Mermaid drums, ancestors appear,

Dancing ’round the fire, their presence so dear.

NoName too, with his drumming might,

In the gunroom naked, save a coat of white.

His rhythms echo through the starry night,

A peculiar sprite, oh, what a sight!

Greenheart, the wizard, dances with grace,

Ancient tattoos adorn their face.

Like flames in the wind or sun’s embrace,

Their every move, a spell in place.

Zebedee by the fire, so stoic and tall,

If he leaves the hearth, the castle may fall.

His duty heavy, yet he answers the call,

Guarding the flame, warming us all.

Soul sings, her voice like a dove,

Healing the mind, body, with love.

Her songs, a soothing balm from above,

Restoring harmony, fitting like a glove.

Eden’s aura fills the room,

Under their influence, love does bloom.

Naked bodies in embrace, dispelling gloom,

In front of the fire, passion does consume.

Acorn leaps with youthful zest,

The strength of a thousand faeries in his chest.

From castle’s top to its humble nest,

His art is known as the very best.

Mackerel Sky, keeper of plant lore,

Their wisdom, all faeries adore.

From castle gardens to forest floor,

Their green thumb touch is hard to ignore.

Then there’s Magpie, flying high,

A jewel collector in the sky.

Her graceful flight, a lullaby,

Reminding us of beauty nearby.

In Chachi‘s pot, a magic brew,

Sacramental drops, a hallucinogenic stew.

Faeries sip, their minds anew,

Experiencing realms they never knew.

Astro arrives, sequins in hand,

Adorning each faerie, oh so grand!

Under the moonlight, they make their stand,

A dazzling sight, just as planned.

In Featherstone Castle, under the moon’s beam,

Faeries celebrate, as if in a dream.

Their tale of Samhain, a recurring theme,

A night of magic, to the extreme.

A moment in the gunroom:

Once upon a frosty winter’s eve, in the realm of the radical faeries, a grand castle stood resolute amidst the mountains and rolling hills. Featherstone Castle was no ordinary fortress but a gathering place for faeries far and wide, who came together to celebrate the mystical Samhain festival.

Nestled amid ancient trees and an icy river, Featherstone Castle braced itself for the annual Samhain celebration. A gathering of faeries from far and wide, it was a time of revelry, of music and dance, of love and healing.

Mermaid, known far and wide as the greatest drummer of all lands, possessed a magical talent. When they played, the ancestors were summoned, their spectral forms swaying before the fire, entranced by the enchanting melody, of unparalleled musical prowess. When Mermaid played the drums, it was as though the heavens themselves had ordained the melody. Each beat seemed to summon the ancestors, their spectral forms pirouetting in a mesmerising dance before the blazing hearth. Mermaid’s drumming was a sacred rite, a symphony that connected the worlds of the living and the departed.

Among the many faeries, there lived a peculiar sprite named NoName. An oddball, he was renowned for his love of drumming in time and out and his penchant for baring his skin to the chill, save for a long, plush fur coat that swathed him from neck to ankle. The gun room was his chosen haunt, where he’d pound on his drums until the wee hours of the dawn, the rhythmic beats reverberating throughout the castle’s stone corridors and into the starlit night.

Greenheart was a wizard of dance, their movements as mesmerising as flames dancing in the wind, as serene as sunlight reflecting off a quiet river. Each twirl, each leap was a spell cast, entrancing all who watched. They held the beauty of ancient lines tattooed to their body and face art in its greatest manifestation, a vision to behold.

Zebedee, the stoic guardian of the fire, was ever present by the hearth. Legend whispered that if Zebedee were to abandon his post, Featherstone Castle would crumble. Such was the gravity of his duty, yet he carried it with unwavering resolve. In his hands, he held the flame that lit up the castle, its warm glow welcoming all who sought refuge within its walls.

As the night deepened and the revelry reached a peak, NoName joined Mermaid’s divine rhythms with their own unique beats. Greenheart danced to the music, casting spells that illuminated the naked bodies of faeries in an ethereal light. Zebedee watched over the fire, its crackling flames a comforting lullaby to those who had danced until their feet could carry them no longer.

Soul, the faerie healer, was blessed with a voice that could cure any ailment. Her songs were medicine, soothing the minds and bodies of her fellow faeries and restoring harmony within the castle walls.

Eden, the embodiment of love, filled the gun room with an aura of affection. Under Eden’s influence, faeries would find themselves in intimate embrace, their naked bodies radiating warmth and love. All were called to join the passion of the naked faerie in front of the fire with love for all.

Then there was Acorn, a young faerie bursting with energy. He had the strength of a thousand faeries and the agility of twenty goblins. With a single leap, he could clear the castle’s highest point, his youthful exuberance a source of joy to all. Their art was known in many lands as the greatest of all art.

The faeries of Featherstone Castle were a diverse and talented group, each bringing their own unique gifts to the community. Together, they created a harmonious atmosphere that was unlike any other place in the realm.

As the Samhain festival approached, preparations were made throughout the castle. The kitchens bustled with activity as cakes and pies were made for a feast of delights.

Mackerel Sky, the keeper of plant wisdom, held knowledge of all living things within this realm and beyond. Their understanding of nature was unparalleled, their wisdom sought by all faeries. From the gardens of Featherstone Castle to the far reaches of the enchanted forests, Mackerel Sky’s green thumb could be seen in every living thing.

Despite their differences and quirks, each faerie had a special place in Featherstone Castle. As they celebrated Samhain together, they were reminded of the importance of community and unity. Together, they created magic unlike that seen before.

And finally, there was Magpie, the only faerie granted the gift of flight. She was a collector of jewels, each piece a treasure fit for a king. Wise and mysterious, she moved silently, her flight as graceful as a dance in the moonlight. Her presence was a reminder that even in the darkest of times, there is still beauty and magic to be found.

As the Samhain celebration commenced, Featherstone Castle came alive with laughter and song, love and dance. Each faerie played their part, their unique talents contributing to the magic of the night. From NoName’s drumming to Mermaid’s ancestral call, from Greenheart’s enchanting dances to Zebedee’s eternal vigil, from Soul’s healing songs to Eden’s aura of love, from Acron’s leaps of joy to Mackerel Sky’s wisdom, and from Magpie’s dazzling flight, the castle was filled with wonder and joy. As the moon reached its pinnacle, Mermaid took over the drums. The tempo shifted, the beats becoming deeper, more resonant. The fire flickered, and the ancestors emerged, their ethereal forms waltzing before the glowing embers. The faeries watched, spellbound, their hearts swelling with reverence and love for the spectral dancers. Bridging the gap between the faeries and their ancestors.

In the kitchen, Chachi was mixing a pot of sacramental brew, carefully adding drops of magic to create the perfect hallucinogenic brew. The faeries eagerly awaited their turn to sip from the cauldron and experience a different kind of magic that would open their minds and souls to new realms of existence.

Astro from the river faeries, maker of songs and keeper of sequins, arrived with gifts of shimmering fabrics and sparkling jewels. They adorned each fairer in dazzling garments, transforming into ethereal beings that shone brightly under the moonlight.

As the night went on, the faeries danced and sang, their bodies moving in perfect harmony with the rhythms of nature. The castle was alive with magic as they celebrated the cycle of life and death.

As the night progressed, the faeries danced until their feet were sore and their heart’s content. They drank from the cauldron, indulging in Chachi’s concoction and exploring new levels of consciousness and being.

As the night wore on, the faeries danced wildly around the fire, lost in a trance induced by Chachi’s concoction of spells and sacrament.

Their story became a cherished folklore, a tale recounted at every Samhain gathering, a tribute to that magical night in the faerie castle, a testament to the magic of unity, love, and celebration in the faerie realm.

Blossom, the collector of coins and maker of music, buzzed around, keeping the spirits high with their lively tunes. And in the midst of it all, Zebedee stood, his eternal vigil never wavering, his flame ever burning, reminding the faeries that no matter how wild and joyous the celebration may be, there must always be someone to keep watch over the fire.

As the night drew to a close and the last notes of music faded away, the faeries gathered together in a circle. Holding hands, they thanked their ancestors for their eternal guidance and protection. As they looked up at the moon shining bright above them, they knew that no matter what challenges may come their way, they always had each other and the magic of Samhain to guide them through, year after year.

For in Featherstone Castle, the faeries had created a place where magic never died, and love and unity were always celebrated. And as they drifted off to sleep, with smiles on their faces and hearts full of joy, they looked forward to another year of enchantment and wonder in their beloved home. No matter how far apart they may journey throughout the realm, they will always return to Featherstone Castle, their true home and sanctuary. And as long as they had each other, they knew that the magic would never end. So, let us raise our glasses to the faeries of Featherstone Castle, for they are a reminder that no matter how small or different we may seem, there is always a place where we belong and are loved beyond measure.

Ancestors, History, Philosophy, Subject Subject

subject:SUBJECT

“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 Hay posited that by empathizing with all people, relating to each other as equal-to-equal, society would change drastically and social injustices would be eradicated. He saw gay people as born with this natural ‘subject:SUBJECT’ consciousness in place.

In 1976, in a ‘position paper’ called “Gay Liberation: Chapter Two,” which he regarded as his most important piece of writing and as a central catalyst of the Radical Faerie movement, Harry Hay “used personal experiences to illustrate his points, and halfway through, recalled his peers in high school manipulating their opposite-sex dates like objects in order to “score.” This he contrasted to his secret fantasy of finding a lover who was “a wondrous being with whom I would always share as I shared with myself, not subject to object, but subject to subject.” As he wrote this, he realized he had made a breakthrough. “I was just beside myself with excitement,” he recalled.

This from ‘The Trouble with Harry Hay’, by Stuart Timmons (1990):

““Chapter Two” presents a new theory about gay people and politics. As background, Hay traced the development of models of modern thought, from the Cartesian-Newtonian model of a limited universe that man could control, to the Twentieth century view, which, though modified, still survives in most social sciences and refuses to allow for the existence of gay people.

“Add or subtract, Go or NO-GO, (if you’re not a man you’re a substitute woman—what else is there?)” was Hay’s characterization of the dominant mode of thinking, which he called binary, or subject-object, thinking. But the style Hay promoted, which he called analog thinking, factors in relativity and other expansive dimensions of comprehending the universe. He proposed that it had an attendant “subject-subject relationship” that was similarly more dimensional. He also posited that this was inherent to all gay people, arising from the egalitarian bond of love and sex between two similars, but it went on to pervade all the relationships of a gay person—even relationships with things not human, such as nature, craftsmanship or ideals.

From Chapter 2: “The way out of our comprehensional stalemate, the quagmire which the Binary inheritances of our brain-training and our cultural superstructure have hurled us would appear to be to find ways to activate the seven-eighths of our minds which up to now have not been made responsive to consciousness. Humanity must expand its experience from persons (subjects) thinking objectively thinking competitively in a nutshell, thinking opportunistically and nearly always in terms of self-advantage-to thinking subject-to-SUBJECT, equal to equal, sharer to sharer, to thinking in terms of loving-sharing. Humanity must expand its experience to thinking of another, that other, not as object-to be used, to be manipulated, to be mastered, to be consumed-but as subject, as another like him/her self, another self to be respected, to be appreciated, to be cherished.”

Timmons: “With Einstein’s famous warning in mind, that “the unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save for our modes of thinking, and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophes,” Hay then called for mass change in thinking. He proposed that the qualities of noncompetitiveness and creativity, characteristics often observed in gay people, made gays naturally suited to guide this change in thinking:

Chapter 2: “Natural selection, early on in human evolution, set into the evolving whirl a small percentage of beings that appeared to counterbalance a number of prevalent characteristics of the emerging human conformity. Humanity, thus, would be wise to finally give consideration to these deviants in their ranks … to begin to grant the GAYS the peace and growing space they will need to display and to further develop in communicable words and in models of activity, the “gift”—the singular mutation we GAYS have been carrying so unfalteringly and preserving so passionately, even over the not infrequent centuries of despair and persecution since the Great Mother Nature breathed the first incandescent spark into our primevals.”

Timmons: “To Harry, this “Gay gift” was a difference in consciousness that could introduce new ideas necessary for human survival…

“Harry’s ideas caught the imagination of many who found in the concept of subject-Subject consciousness a deeply felt yet unspoken truth. The argument that there existed a gay reservoir of untapped potential was refreshing to those for whom ghetto liberation had grown hollow. Continuing his tendency to take up the baton of such thinkers as Walt Whitman and Edward Carpenter, Harry posed that homosexuals carried an intermediary consciousness and that, once this was made clear, a new era would begin.”

Edward Carpenter had written, in ‘Intermediate types among primitive folks’ (1913) that the genderfluidity of homosexual, the “…interaction in fact between the masculine and the feminine, this mutual illumination of logic and meditation, may not only raise and increase the power of each of these faculties, but it may give the mind a new quality, and a new power of perception corresponding to the blending of subject and object in consciousness. It may possibly lead to the development of that third order of perception which has been called the cosmic consciousness and which may also be termed divination.” 

In the global Radical Faerie Community, which came into being after a ‘Spiritual Conference’ in an Arizona desert, August 31-September 1, 1979, Hay’s philosophy of subject:SUBJECT consciousness is explored and expanded. At gatherings and in permanent sanctuaries, Radical Faeries meet to commune with nature and each other, build community through heart circle, get creative and “shake off the filthy green frog-skin of hetero-imitation,” as Hay put it, and become more conscious… From the start, Harry recalled, the Faeries experienced a “collective gear-shift of consciousness which galvanized us as a group. That consensus of shared consciousness subject-to-Subject was the doorway we went through, and once through it, you knew you had changed irrevocably.”

Will Roscoe, another of the original Rad Fae, wrote in his book ‘Radically Gay’ that Harry was “long intrigued with he considers to be the untapped potentials of Gay sexual responsiveness. Why is sex so important for Gay men? For Hay, the answer relates to a “vision I’ve held since I was a boy: that the overwhelming urge to sexuality I’ve felt since perhaps the age of eight or nine (and which I had always recognized was far more powerful in me than in Hetero boys my age) had been always urging me that we are supposed to discover something about our sexuality collectively-some-thing it is supposed to accomplish when we invoke it as one voice collectively”. One thing sexuality does for us, Hay believes, is heal. Beginning in 1991, he has held yearly “sex magic” workshops to explore these potentials with other Gay men committed subject-SUBJECT relating.” The Sex Magic workshops still take place, two decades after Hay’s passing.

Following the first ever Radical Faerie meeting in 1979 Harry Hay wrote an article called ‘This New Planet of Faerie Vision…subject-SUBJECT consciousness’ in which he said:

“We must not suppose that we share subject-SUBJECT vision only in the spheres of Love and personal relations. Actually, almost at once, we also begin to become aware that we have been accumulating bits and pieces of subject-SUBJECT perceptions and insights all our lives – talking to trees and birds and rocks and Teddy Bears and remembering what all we had shared by putting it down in poetry, storing it all up for that wonderful day when we finally would flash on to what it all meant. The personal collecting and storing up of these secret treasures, these beautiful beckoning not-as-yet comprehensible secret sacra, is part of the hidden misery-cum-exaltation of growing up Gay. For the world we inherit, the total Hetero-Male-oriented-and-dominated world of Tradition and of daily environment, the summum bonum of our history, our philosophy, our psychology, our culture, and very languages of communication – all are totally subject – OBJECT in concept, in definition, in evolution, in self-serving orientation. Men and Women are – sexually, emotionally, and spiritually – objects to one another.

“Under the “fair-play-without-which-there-ain’t-no-game” rules of Hetero-Male aggressive territoriality, even the Hetero-Males- precisely because they conceive of themselves as in lifelong com- petition each with the others-engage themselves endlessly in tug-of-war games of Domination and Submission…

“To all of this we fairies should be, essentially, alien. Because those others with whom we seek to link, to engage, to slip into, to merge with are others like me, are SUBJECTS… like ME! I say “we fairies should be alien” to as many aspects of our Hetero-Male- dominated surroundings as we can be sensitive to, because we also know, all too glumly, just how easily and how often we fall prey to self-invited oppressions. How often do we allow ourselves, through fuzzy thinking, to accept or to identify with Hetero- originating definitions or misinterpretations of ourselves? The Hetero-male, incapable of conceiving that there could possibly be a window on the world other than his own, is equally incapable of perceiving that we Gay People might not fit in either of his Man/ Woman categories, that we might turn out to belong to quite other classifications. He might not be able to handle perceiving that the notion of all persons being only varying combinations of male and female is simply a Hetero-male-derived notion suitable only to Heteros and holding nothing of validity insofar as Gay people are concerned...

“Let us enter this brave new world of subject SUBJECT consciousness, this new planet of Fairy-vision…

“Of course, we haven’t as yet spoken because we haven’t as yet learned how to communicate subject-SUBJECT realities. Subject-SUBJECT is a multidimensional consciousness which may never be readily conveyable in the Hetero-male-evolved two-dimensional, or Binary, language to which we are presently confined. And we need more than mere words and phrases. We need what Scientists invent out of whole cloth when they attempt to describe and communicate new concepts. We need working models, a whole new mathematics, perhaps a new poetry-allegories-metaphors -a music-a new way of dancing. We must re-examine every system of thought heretofore developed, every Hetero-male-evolved subject-OBJECT philosophy, science, religion, mythology, political system, language-divesting them every one of their binary subject-OBJECT base and re-inserting a subject-SUBJECT relation. 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!

“To even begin to prepare ourselves for a fuller participation in our Gay subject-SUBJECT inheritance, we must, both daily and hourly, practice throwing off all those Hetero-imitating habits, compulsions, and ways of misperceiving which we constantly breathe in from our environmental surround. For this practice we need the constant company of our Fairy Families. We need the spiritual and emotional support of that non-verbal empathy which Sociologists assure us comprises almost seven-eighths of communication in any culture, that empathy we now refer to as Body Language. We need the marvelous input of each other’s minute-by- minute new discoveries, as each of us begins to explore this vast new universe, this subject-SUBJECT frontier of human consciousness. As ours are the first deliberate feet upon this pristine shore, there are no guide-posts as yet erected, nor maps to be found in bottles, nor even the prospectuses of ancient visionary seers…

“In the meantime, Fairies everywhere must begin to stand tall and beautiful in the sun. Fairies must begin to throw off the filthy green frog-skin of Hetero-imitation and discover the lovely Gay- Conscious not-MAN (anandros, as the discerning early Greeks called us) shining underneath. Fairies must begin creating their new world through fashioning for themselves supportive Families of Conscious Choice within which they can explore, in the loving security of shared consensus, the endless depths and diversities of the newly revealed subject-SUBJECT inheritances of the Gay Vision!”

post by Shokti.

Let us gather therefore- in secure and consecrated places. To re-invoke from ancient ashes our Fairy Circle… To dance…

To meditate-not in the singular isolation of Hetero subject- OBJECT praxis, but rather in Fairy Circles reaching out to one another in subject-SUBJECT evocation.

To find new ways to cherish one another…

To invent new rhyme and reason and ritual replacing those obliterated in the long nightmare of our Oppression and so, in fact, re-invent ourselves.

To break through to ever more spiritually encompassing and Temotionally resurrective Gay Families and Fairy Family Collectives, who by the very mutuality of their subject- SUBJECT sharing are strengthened to reach out contributively to the Hetero community around them.

And so finally- To penetrate ever more comprehensively the essential nature of covenants needed to lay the groundwork of a new worldwide subject-SUBJECT Consciousness SHARABLE BY ALL!

Harry Hay 1980

History, Inclusivity, Philosophy, Subject Subject

A new stage in the meaning of Gay Liberation.

“Fairies everywhere must begin to stand tall and beautiful in the sun. Fairies must begin to throw off the filthy green frog-skin of Hetero-imitation and discover the lovely Gay-Conscious notMAN shining underneath. Fairies must begin creating their new world…” Harry Hay

The organisers of the first Radical Faerie Gathering: Harry Hay – Mitch Walker – Don Kilhefner – put out a call in 1979 for a ‘spiritual conference‘ to explore ‘new dimensions of gayness’, and expected around 50-75 people to turn up – but over 200 men attended, at a remote desert sanctuary in Arizona. The next year even more came.

Harry Hay called to the early Rad Fae in the following decade to embrace their commonality with ‘third-gender’ people in traditional cultures around the world: he regarded gay men as a modern manifestation, along with trans people and lesbians, of third-nature people who embody both male and female traits, found in all cultures throughout time. Describing the spiritual behaviours of the third-gender people in the Native American tribes, the Hausa of West Africa and the Hawaiian mahu, Hay wrote in 1994: “We Third-gender men of Indo-European stock have similar talents to share.”

“I am proposing that we take a hand-up example from our potential allies in the Third and Fourth Worlds, whose cultures may well be overtaking, and even out-numbering, our Hetero Western so-called Free World sensibilities in the not-too-far distant first decades of the 21st century. I propose that we Gay Men of all colours prepare to present ourselves as the gentle non-competitive Third Gender men of the Western World with whole wardrobes and garages crammed with cultural and spiritual contributions to share.

“… time for us Gays to reclaim our Third Gender responsibilities…

“It is time for us Third Gender folk… to rejoice in the gifts we bring!”

Harry’s vision was about rooting this spiritual power in political reality. History’s shamans are today’s caregivers, healers and political leaders: “To facilitate governing by the process of mutually respectful sharing consensus, Radical Faeries and if they were of a mind, all Gay Brothers and Sisters, exercising their innate inclinations to process in subject-SUBJECT consciousness might make a major contribution to Society by helping to create the most politically healthy of all possible communities.” From Radically Gay, edited by Will Roscoe (1996)

The common root of the persecution and suppression of same sex love and gender-fluidity is the high regard given to, and sacred roles taken by people who were born that way in pagan religions across the planet, during the whole of human history, and into modern times. In the pagan worldview, and lived experience, ‘god’ was not a threatening, separate, figure in the sky, but a living, loving presence in nature, within the body and very strongly contacted through erotic, sexual expression. In order to impose the idea of an invisible Father God in the sky over that of God as feminine, manifest and sexual, the women, feminine men and ‘non-binary’ inbetweeners who were so often her worshippers and priests, had judgement, blame and shame poured onto them, sermons preached against and laws decreed against them.

The reason for legal decrees may not have been entirely theologically motivated. Accusing an enemy of illicit sexuality became a very useful weapon in the hands of autocratic rulers from Justinian to Henry VIII to Hitler. Plato had seen this coming, a millennium earlier, astutely observing that: “Male-male love is regarded as shameful by barbarians and by those who live under despotic governments just as philosophy is regarded as shameful by them, because it is apparently not in the interest of such rulers to have great ideas engendered in their subjects, or powerful friendships or passionate love-all of which male-male love is particularly apt to produce.”

In 533 CE the first law that decreed death by burning for anal sex between men was enacted by Emperor Justinian in the Eastern Roman Empire in Byzantium (just after the Western Empire had collapsed). Exactly 1000 years later Henry VIII brought in the death penalty in England with the 1533 Buggery Act. It took a millennium for this evil to spread across and cover the continent of Europe. In the next centuries England and other European nations went on to spread this prejudice to the rest of the world. Wherever Europeans went they found third-gendered people, generally accepted and playing valued roles in their societies, and often honoured for their sacred man-woman nature and their priestly skills.

Victorian explorer Richard Burton reported that homosexual and cross-dressing practices had “been adopted by the priestly castes from Mesopotamia to Peru.”

In the previous century Jesuit missionary Joseph Francois Lafitau (1711-17) wrote in Customs of the American Savages, Compared with the Customs of Ancient Times, in a chapter called “Men Who Dress as Women”:

“They believe they are honored by debasing themselves to all of women’s occupations; they never marry, they participate in all religious ceremonies, and this profession of an extraordinary life causes them to be regarded as people of a higher order, and above the common man. Would these not be the same peoples as the Asiatic adorers of Cybele, or the Orientals of whom Julius Fermicus speaks, who consecrated priests dressed as women to the Goddess of Phrygia or to Venus Urania, who had an effeminate appearance, painted their faces, and hid their true sex under garments borrowed from the sex whom they wished to counterfeit?”

Lafitau also recorded the presence of gay couples, calling them, “special friendships,” among the Natives of America:

“the Athenrosera, or special friendships among young men, which are instituted in almost the same manner from one end of America to the other, are one of the most interesting sides of their customs, since they entail a most curious chapter of Antiquity, and serve to reveal to us what was practiced in that regard, particularly in the Republic of the Cretans and in that of the Spartans.”

Don Pedro Fages, a commander of the 1769-70 Spanish exploration of what is now California, wrote: “I have submitted substantial evidence that those Indian men who, both here and farther inland, are observed in the dress, clothing and character of women – there being two or three such in each village – pass as sodomites by profession (it being confirmed that all these Indians are much addicted to this abominable vice) and permit the heathen to practice the execrable, unnatural abuse of their bodies. They are called joyas (jewels), and are held in great esteem.”

But the word that stuck for the sacred shamans of the Native Americans was of Persian origin and used across Europe for a gay bottom – berdache. The word has implications of a sex slave, a catamite/kept-boy, but when used without judgement might also mean a special lover boy. This remained the general term until the late 1980s, since when ‘Two-Spirit’ has become the self-chosen term by a reviving community of shaman spirits, designed to bring reference to the many names once used in the tribes, which have in common the notion of male and female present in one body, bringing a connection to the invisible, spirit world.

This reclamation of Two-Spirit nature is the model that queer people across the whole world need as we seek and discover our own roots in pre-monothestic cultures everywhere, including old Europe.

Yet this process has in fact already begun – over 40 years ago in the Arizona desert. Since then Faeries have spread their wings and found each other around the world, established permanent sanctuaries on three continents, and held gatherings on four. There are city houses, art shows, drum circles, cabaret nights, faerie banks, potlucks and parties too, and in both Israel and the UK the Faeries have pooled their talents to create festival events to bring together more people from the whole LGBTQ+ community to expand the conversation and exploration of our essential, spiritual, nature and its intrinsic, somehow magical, interweaving with our sexuality.

Mitch Walker in 1997 described Radical Faeries as “the first indigenous spiritual tradition created and sustained by the gay male community in modern times. By “indigenous” I mean gay-centered and gay-engendered, in contrast to the various gay synagogues, churches, covens etc. In the latter groups, gayness is incidental or additional to the tradition espoused, while in the former it is central and causal. Radical Faeries celebrate and explore the Gay Spirit, which is itself the source of spiritual existence, wisdom and initiation. Because of its indigenous, gay-centered nature, the Radical Faerie movement pioneers a new seriousness about gayness, its depth and potential, thereby heralding a new stage in the meaning of Gay Liberation.”

“Harry, myself and the other founders … only came to use the word “faerie” as a title for a “movement” late in our thought process (this was a collective effort) and then as a reference to the “other” world of the Little People in Celtic lore,. In our view, faeries are the supernatural denizens of a homosexual world both feared and revered by the ordinary folk.”

A more literal, historiographical view within the Faeries, developed through the explorations of Arthur Evans in a magically focussed, San Franciscan, Fairy Circle (and encapsulated in his phenomenonal 1978 book ‘Witchcraft and the Gay Counter-Culture’), also associated the name with the survival, largely in secret, of ancient pagan worship of the Great Mother Goddess and the Horned God Pan in medieval Christian Europe.

In his book Visionary Love, published 1980, Mitch Walker shared the inspired understanding that these ‘gay men’ were getting of their true, deeper nature:

“Faerie is a see-ing through polarity. In straight consciousness Bi-Polar Thought is king: male and female are opposites, win-or-lose is the game, reality and dream are separate, immutable and contradictory. But there are Fairies, who look on in gentle mocking laughter at such childishness, for they know that everyone is now ‘female’, now ‘male’, that no one ever wins when anybody loses, that reality and dream flip into each other at the flick of a glittering wand…”

“Many Fairies are agents of planet Earth. Their faerie-being gives them telepathic union with nature’s heart, such that they flow with her completely, loving her as they do themselves. In return she gives them her wisdom, her being-ness of and deeply loving respect for the joyful fulfilment of each living creature. Thereby these Fairies become living repositories of all nature, they become planet Earth itself.

“In this way Fairies can become other planets as well, other times as well…”

These words of Harry Hay, quoted in Walker’s book, bring this spiritual vision into practical, active love:

“Fairies must begin creating their new world through fashioning for themselves supportive Families of Conscious Choice, co-joined in the vision of LOVE (which is the granting to any and all others that total space wherein each may grow and soar to his own freely-selected full potential). Let us gather to find new ways to cherish one another, to reach towards spiritually-sustaining and emotionally-supportive Gay Family Collectives, within which we can explore, in the loving security of shared consensus, the bottomless depths and diversities of the newly-revealed subject-SUBJECT inheritances of the Gay Vision.”

This is what Faeries have been doing quietly on the sidelines of gay life for decades, generally ignored by gay media or dismissed as laughable hippies. For a time Rad Fae became associated in some minds with cis gay men – which for those of us living through the portal of infinite magical faerie fluidity was really weird – but as a result the doors to the community are now much more visibly open to people of any gender label.

Communities go through stages and cycles, and as a community that sets out to start from heart-centred connection and communication, the Faeries have to walk an edge between the practical needs of an ever-expanding, ever-renewing tribe of people, (many of whom completely virgin to heart shares and magical rites)… and the aim of creating from heart and spirit connection, where we help each other release toxic habits learned in the outside world and release the loving nature of our core, holy, inner child out of its patriarchal, rational cage.

Faeries come together to explore and embody the philosophy which Harry Hay called subject:SUBJECT consciousness – and which is the doorway to the place in the mind that knows the world around it as a manifestation of the same conscious, loving essence that we perceive ourselves to be. Using tools such as the Heart Circle, Faeries address and heal personal and collective wounds, build empathy and compassion – as bonds deepen we stop seeing the differences between us and move through the portal of cosmic consciousness where we get to become know, feel and see the same nature, the divine nature dancing in, through and with and as all of us.

A faerie gathering can become a flow of nature if the heart is able to lead the way. A group comes together for a certain number of days to create a container in which it is safe to be open up, be vulnerable, be expressive, erotic, playful, and even occasionally OTT – you will still be loved, you will not be shamed. My experience over two decades has shown that a big heart share of, ideally, all attendees at the start of a gathering, half way through and at the close, empowers all to commit to, feel part of the space and part of holding the space for each other. More intimate heart circles on other days makes room for those who seek them and time for those who wish to pursue other activities.

I think practicality circles eg morning meetings to ‘organise’ the day ahead should be a rarity as they all too easily create a complicated web of mental energy in the group as issues get raised from the mind instead of shared through the heart. Practical circle is good at the start of the gathering, useful when there’s a big weekend ahead to rally the faeries present to be alert and prepared for what’s coming up, perhaps a surge of weekend visitors, hungry for faerie love and seeking pleasures! Good too when there’s a need to prepare the gathering closure, or if an issue has arisen via heart circle that the gathering would benefit from discussing, but otherwise, head-centred conversations can soon disperse all the good energy people may have garnered and experienced during the magic of the just finished faerie night! Toxic behaviours such as name calling and public blaming likely soon result. In a spiritually conscious community mornings are great times for meditations and heart circles. If the head still has issues after making prayer together, hearing the words and feeling the feelings coming from the rest of your tribe, that’s the time to share them. Maybe to a friend over lunch.

Sometimes people come away from Faerie space reeling from the truly transformational magic they have just experienced. The debate then arises, should we more explicit in our calls about the intensities and shifts in one’s reality that are likely to be experienced at a gathering? Would anyone believe us if we did put it that way? Should Faerie be about going into the mysterious underworld with the magical spirits of nature, to discover things as yet unknown, meeting beings so strange and new…

Perhaps every Call to a Faerie gathering should contain these words from the 1970s, written by Mitch Walker as a ‘content warning’ to the unwary wanderer into the underworld:

“To be taken by loving Fairies is truly Self-transporting, truly not describable, true Self return, dis-adoptioning, un-orphanising, and real-istically dis-covering, non/sensically re-membering aerotically re-entering faerie family homes. Peace, equanimity, wholeness. Homosexual – gay – faggot – fairy – gone.”

And perhaps this from Visionary Love could be the call for just about every gathering everywhere!

Build loving rings of Spirit, astral fairy *(sister)*brothers. Reclaim our heritage! Reunite our Selves.

Circles of light!

Centers of fire!

Spiralling wind!

Rainbow egg!

Let us create, conspire, organise and plot, spread, evolve, manifest our fates. Let us sing our songs, dance the Dance. Let us be/come Fairies!

Heretofore hidden Rainbow Lovers reach out to their seedling *(sister)*brothers and caress them into maturity, into their ageless soulful Rings. Self uncovers itSelf.

Gay spirit is profoundest love and knowing. A magnificent liberation is possible now for those who remember their true nature as reality-channeling as faerie Selves.

Think of Fairy as a symbol, representing or triggering experience of joyful freedom from the myth of One Highest, liberation of be-ings and conscious forms from the bondage of oneself, opening up to the kosmopolitan nature of Self-universe, to the multivarious unitary truth of the matter.

Mitch Walker, Visionary Love. 1980

And then nobody can say we didn’t warn them!

*(sister) added by shokti.

read more:

Radical Faerie Origins

Visionary Love – rainbow messenger

History, Philosophy

An Ancient Reference to Gays as Faerie Spirits

An Ancient Reference to Gays as Faerie Spirits

There is an ancient religious text from Persia that directly associates men who love men with the magical underworld of demons and faery spirits – the Vendidad of the Zoroastrian faith. Written around the same time as the 5th book of the Jewish Torah, Deuteronomy, which forbids Israelites from cross-dressing, becoming temple sex-workers, or bringing the earnings of female or male sex-workers (the males were known as ‘dogs’) into Jewish temples, the Vendidad basically calls men who sleep with men ‘faeries’.

In Deuteronomy the Hebrews were attempting to clearly define themselves as different to the many other tribes around. The prohibition in Leviticus against men sleeping with men uses the word word ‘toevah’, which has been translated into English as ‘abomination’ but etymologically is related to foreign ritual practices, and very possibly related to the Persian term used in the Vendidad. In the Zoroastrian text men who have sex with men are named ‘daevas’, translated as demons and related to the ‘deva’ spirits of the Indian sub-continent. Devas however are simply magical beings in India, not associated specifically with evil, whereas the Persians over time came to regard them as supernatural entities to be avoided. The oldest Zoroastrian text, the Gathas, calls the daevas ‘gods that are to be rejected’. In the Avesta, they are divinities that promote chaos and disorder, and in later tradition they become personifications of every evil possible.

The Vendidad is an early Zoroastrian text, dating back to around 800 BCE, that records conversations between the prophet and God, Ahura Mazda. One goes….

“Ahura Mazda answered: ‘The man that lies with mankind as man lies with womankind, or as woman lies with mankind, is the man that is a Daeva; this one is the man that is a worshipper of the Daevas, that is a male paramour of the Daevas, that is a female paramour of the Daevas, that is a wife to the Daeva; this is the man that is as bad as a Daeva, that is in his whole being a Daeva; this is the man that is a Daeva before he dies, and becomes one of the unseen Daevas after death: so is he, whether he has lain with mankind as mankind, or as womankind.”

— Avesta, Vendidad, Fargard 8. Funerals and purification, unlawful sex, Section V (32) Unlawful lusts.

From nearly 3000 years ago we have this religious text directly associating gay sex with the underworld of magical spirit beings. At this period, and for another millennium until the rise of Christianity, across southern Europe and the Middle East gender fluidity and homosexual acts were strongly associated with worship of the Goddess. She was known in many forms and by many names, all served by women and gay/transgender priest/esses, and that service could include sexual acts that brought connection to the deity. In fact round the whole world gay/queer beings once served in sacred roles, as shamans, medicine men, priests and sacred sex workers… our power was taken away, as was that of women, by men seeking to dominate and rule over others, to conquer territory and accumulate wealth. This process has now reached its apogee, the world is on the brink of global disaster unless humanity changes the way it lives.

To achieve this women and queers need to be brought to the table as equals to men, and all forms of love respected and honoured.

To achieve this we all need to seek deep within ourselves to find our reconnection to the planet, to the spirit and go beyond ego to our true divine selves.

To achieve this the Gatekeepers are needed.

The journey of Gay Liberation, the gradual emergence and acceptance of LGBTQ+ people around the world, is still in its early stages. Queer people have more to discover about who we are….

SOBONFU SOME, priestess of the Dagara Tribe of western Africa – a tribe that remembers the magical role of what we call queers – said in her book ‘Spirit of Intimacy’:

“The words gay and lesbian do not exist in the village, but there is the word gatekeeper. Gatekeepers are people who live a life at the edge between the worlds – the world of the village and the world of spirit…

“Gatekeepers in the village are able to do their job simply because of strong spiritual connection, and also their ability to direct their sexual energy not to other people but to spirit.

“There are many gates that link a village to other worlds. The only people who have access to all these gates are the gatekeepers. I should mention here that there are two different kinds of gatekeeper.

“The first group has the ability to guard a limited number of gates to the other world, specifically,those that correspond to the Dagara cosmology – water, earth, fire, minerals, and nature – because they vibrate the energies of those gates.

“The second group of gatekeepers… has the responsibility of overseeing all the gates. They are in contact not only with the elemental gates but also with many others. They have one foot in all the other worlds and other foot here. This is why the vibration of their body is totally different from others. They also have access to other-dimensional entities such as Kontombile, small beings who are very magical and knowledgeable. They are known as leprechauns in the Irish tradition.

“Gatekeepers hold keys to other dimensions. They maintain a certain alignment between the spirit world and the world of the village. Without them, the gates to the other world would be shut.

“On the other side of these gates lies the spirit world or other dimensions. Gatekeepers are in constant communication with beings who live there, who have the ability to teach us how to deal with ritual. And gatekeepers have the capacity to take other people to those places.

“Gays and lesbians in the West are often very spiritual, but they have been taken away from their connection with spirit. My feeling is that without that outlet or that role in the culture, they have to find other ways of defining themselves.”

FROM TWO FLUTES PLAYING, channelled by Andrew Ramer:

“It is time for the gay community to heal itself. It is time for the gay community to assume the place in the human community that it was created for. It is time to come together in loving communities, for gay men to explore their inner femaleness so that they can help men and women communicate. It is time for gay men to own their capacity for youthfulness and their ability to be wise elders, so that they can once again sit with a child and be an adult who remembers being a child, so that they can talk to parents who thought they needed to forget their inner child in order to have children of their own. And it is time for gay people to start using, for planetary transformation, the global network that already exists, spreading information, love, advice, support, money, food, clothing.

“The gay community can heal. It will not heal from focussing on combatting disease alone. A healing must include a spiritual element. And this is what has often been withheld from gay people. The religious communities of this planet have for the most part excluded, or at best ignored, their gay members. But religions is not necessarily spirituality. And it is through a spiritual connection, not a religious one, that the human community of this planet will find its healing.

“What is spiritual, what is sacred, is being redefined. It is being redefined in a fluid way. Gay people, by their very nature, exist in a state of internal fluidity that will make us vital in this time of planetary challenge. As we enter the Age called Aquarius it is useful to remember that the constellation Aquarius represents the youth Ganymede, who Zeus took up to Mount Olympus to be cupbearer to the gods, and his own lover. Gay people have a share in this coming transformation. To the ancient Epyptians, the water carrier was the source of the Nile, pictured as a man with breasts. When Jesus was preparing for the Last Supper, it is recorded in Luke that he sent his disciples into the city to meet a man carrying a jar of water, in a culture where only women were supposed to carry water.”

“To be gay is something that begins within ourselves. In begins in our hearts, in that place that is never separate from the living heart of Infinite Oneness. To be gay is something that begins with ourselves, that finds itself mirrored back, echoed back to us by the tribe of men who love men. This tribe, our people , is a scouting tribe, a Walks-Between people, bridge-making people, walking between men and women, between night and day, between matter and spirit, between the living and the dead.”

“When purposeful, spiritual connection is forgotten, the depth of sexual connection often takes it place. Sex points one in the right direction, deep into the self, into the mystery. But sex alone is not the answer to the gay dilemma of the present, the sense of meaninglessness. A sense of spiritual participation in the community of the planet is the answer. For no one else will tell us our purpose. Its discovery must come from ourselves.”

Since 1979 gay men, and nowadays an increasingly queer medley of magical folk, have been meeting in Radical Faerie gatherings and sanctuaries, seeking to create community from the heart, in harmony with nature, and to reclaim and explore our innate spiritual magic. The term Faerie was chosen as a reference to our connection to nature and spirit, as well as being a positive reclamation of the term ‘fairy’, so often used as an abusive insult in western cultures – and therefore implying a folk memory in Europe too between gay men and nature’s magic. Radical refers to getting to the roots of who we are:

HARRY HAY 1912-2002, gay rights activist and Radical Faerie Duchess:

“We have been a SEPARATE PEOPLE…. Drifting together in a parallel existence, not always conscious of each other.. yet recognising one another by eyelock when we did meet… here and there as outcasts… Spirit people… in service to the Great Mother.. Shamans.. mimes and rhapsodes, poets and playwrights, healers and nurturers… VISIONARIES… REBELS”

“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.”

:)
Gathering, History, Inclusivity

Radical Faerie Gatherings: The Cultivation of Queerness

by Gay Socrates

Radical Faeries have been gathering together and creating transient pop-up queer community for more than 40 years-ever since the very first call to gather in early September 1979. 

These pre-Covid19 Gatherings (which until recently had become a regular global phenomenon) would often be held on the occasion of pagan earth-appreciating festivals as a way of tuning into natural seasonal rhythms. Some Faeries might say that the fundamental purpose of these gatherings was to enable an energy (which could be named as ‘The Queer’) to heal itself from the destructive attacks of those who felt threatened by it and who, for many and varied reasons, would wish to establish themselves as ‘Non-Queer’

By creating community-encouraging-of-Queerness, Faeries have been able to develop their consciousness around power dynamics and the mechanisms of persecution, seeing their positioning and roles in the complex intersectionality of oppression as it manifests in the various -isms (sexism/misogyny, racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism). And to also appreciate the potential world-healing value of this natural-Faerie-propensity to engage in this particular kind of work!

I’ve been attending gatherings for over 10 years now, and during this time I’ve been able to acknowledge the homophobic inflicted pain and suffering I’ve had to endure as a same-sex-loving Human Being. However I also see that this horribleness of experience is just a ‘drop in the ocean’ of what it might have been had I not been identifiable as a member of the most privileged classes (i.e. white, educated, middle class, cis-seeming-male, and able-bodied/ able-minded).

This realisation hasn’t made my own pain and suffering any less and it hasn’t meant I’ve been able to avoid a whole lot of work to understand its far reaching effects on my personality (particularly the extent to which I’m hampered in my ability to engage in intimacy with others).

But I’m now tuned into the way homophobia is just one facet of the many-faced invisible oppressive forces constantly directed towards women, towards the undereducated, towards the non-white, towards the colonised, towards the differently abled and towards my dear queer trans siblings.

It’s interesting to see how, within our various Faerie communities, once the intention of creating a queer-nurturing environment and ethos is set, the forces which seem to oppose this intention begin to assemble. The microcosm begins to manifest elements of those oppressive forces from the macrocosm. Shock! Horror! A group of predominantly able-middle-class-cis-white-gay-men unintentionally/unthinkingly behave in ways which are uncomfortable for women, non-white, poor, disabled, trans etc. folk!

Thankfully Faerie Gatherings are becoming increasingly more inclusive and this has meant more work to do in understanding our relative privileges and the ways in which these might be contributing to the ongoing oppression of others, or alternatively, how they might be engaged with constructively to raise awareness and to work towards the redressing of unfairnesses and inequities.

Featherstone, Gathering, History, Paddington Farm, Reflection

aLBIONFAERIES tHE SECOND WAVE 2012-2020

by Shokti

At the Winter Solstice 2012, one month short of seven years since our first gathering at Featherstone Castle, the Albion Faeries threw an ….

END OF THE WORLD PARTY in London to mark the ending of the Mayan Calendar. We drummed, danced, enjoyed poetry and an erotic fire show, then we made a ritualistic dance that led to us all stepping through a large, wooden picture frame to symbolise our entry into a new era.

pics by Michael Peacock

For eight years that frame portal sat in the garden at Chateau Shokti, exposed to the elements, until early Summer of this very transformational year, 2020, when it broke apart into several pieces. To me it seems to be saying that after 8 years the portal we opened is now fully operational, no longer needs any physical symbol – WE ARE THE PORTAL – and when we gather we open the magical doors to multi-dimensional connections through our very nature.

The years 2012-20 seem to be the ‘second chapter’ of our AlbionFae Community, for after the first six years of steadily building our energy with heart and drum circles and one, then two, gatherings per year, suddenly after 2012 an acceleration in our spirit energies set in and there was no looking back.

We started meeting twice a year at Paddington Farm in Glastonbury for Imbolc and Summer Solstice or Beltane gatherings – to discover that in Avalon the locals recognise and respect us a magical tribe, not simply a queer group. During the solstice gathering in 2016 we manifested as queer magicians on Glastonbury High Street and at Chalice Well making commemorative ritual for the dead of the Orlando killings.

There have been smaller themed events such as the Magic Gathering and Coming Home retreats, our relationship with Featherstone has continued with Spring and Samhain celebrations, plus we hosted Radical Faeries from around the world at the second ever ‘Global Gathering’ in August 2017, in preparation for which a group of around a dozen faeries even went along for a week to give our beloved enchanted castle playground a fresh lick of paint.

Three other Rad Fae tribes joined us Albions at the Featherstone Global Gathering – the Euro, American and Canaan Faeries, plus we welcomed queers from Singapore, Russia, South America and Africa, though British immigration did not permit many of those we wished to invite from African countries to enter the country. This led to a decision to manifest the third Global Gathering on that continent, so that more Africans could come along, a project that some Albion Fae got very involved in, and which a dozen of us attended when it happened in February 2020, just before the Pandemic crisis hit the planet.

2013 brought an influx of new people and energy into our Albion tribe, and so did 2016 after the first ever Queer Spirit Festival – over 5 days at the August Full Moon in the Wiltshire countryside 400 queers from a wide variety of spiritual backgrounds came along to play – the event was packed with magical rituals, performance, djs, workshops, healing spaces and a ground-breaking sacred sexuality temple – and full credit must be given to the Albion Faeries, whose collective, joyful, free-spirited, open-hearted light were a living and truly shining example of queer spirited community in action. So many faeries gave their time and energy to help make the festival into something spectacular, and did so again for the second outing of Queer Spirit in 2017 and the third in 2019, when numbers rose to 500, this time held at Whittlebury Hall in Northamptonshire.

pic by Kwai Lam

As well as larger events, local clans of the Albions have been developing during the decade. Alongside the London and Brighton crews, there is now an active NORTH WEST FAERIE GROUP and a SUFFOLK CLAN with its own special meeting place, Limelight.

In London the Faerie Drum Circle, that began as Queer Spirit Circle in 2005, has grown in numbers and pulsating, ecstatic vibrations since the 2012 End of the World Party. When I first dreamed the circle into being I hoped it would become a uniquely magical addition to the London gay scene. I imagined gays in bars whispering about the queer full moon drumming ritual, the place where healing and connection could be found, where magic was afoot – a non-commercial, community space where you are greeted with smiles and get to experience one of humanity’s oldest rituals – drumming and dancing into heightened states of awareness and connection, where the issues of the mind are transcended and seen from another perspective, giving emotions a chance to flow and release, until a state of ecstasy is touched – bringing us to places of healing, growth and inspiration.

London Drum Circle

Drumming is one of humanity’s ancient, core ritual healing practices. Among the oldest cave paintings on the planet there are images of groups of people dancing in circles, some with erections, some with animal masks. The drum has been used to open up access to the inner worlds in cultures across the planet since ancient prehistoric times – the tribal drumming of the Native American and African tribes terrified the Europeans, for they had long ago lost touch with that element of their own cultures during the 1000 years it had taken to impose Christianity on the many peoples of Europe. One of the most popular deities invoked in those ancient European dance ceremonies was the queer god Dionysus, who opened to door to pathways of collective spiritual liberation, to the mysteries of sexuality, gender fluidity, intoxication and ecstasy. Also popular was Cybele the ancient Great Mother, whose lover Attis had died while self-castrating and been reborn as her daughter, and whose genderqueer priestesses the Gallae led the often wild and frenzied rituals and spread her worship to the far borders of the Roman Empire. There is a gravesite of a Galli priest at Hadrian’s Wall, close to Featherstone.

Featherstone

From our history to our future: Chapter 2 of our Albion Faerie story has seen the community expand creatively, welcome many people into the energy we are exploring and has put us on the map of LGBTQ life, albeit still on an outer fringe! But what’s next?

Astrologers are predicting that the second half of 2020 will be an ongoing, dramatic time of change, eg the presence of Mars in its home sign Aries from June until December and the arrival of both Saturn and Jupiter in Aquarius at the Winter Solstice. The events of this year are expanding and accelerating the awakening process on the planet. I personally experienced a first rapid acceleration in my own mind and spirit over a period of 6 months in 1995, that’s when I became aware of the ‘bigger picture’, and had a sense at the time that this kind of transformation would be coming to many more people in due course. My aim became to find my tribe and create sanctuary, and 25 years later here we are.

In the UK we do not have a permanent land sanctuary yet but we do have a bright and expanding sanctuary of heart and spirit connections that we can each feed and strengthen in our own ways and draw support from when needed. Where we go from here is for us to collectively dream and manifest.

Harry Hay

We are a cosmic tribe whose very nature connects the earth and the spirit worlds. Harry Hay said, –

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.

Our symbol for the Coming Home retreats is the 7 pointed Faery Star. As we enter the 2020s and the 3rd chapter of our Albionfaerie adventure, I would like to share an idea on the seven gateways through which we Rad Fae channel the energies of spirit into the world – I see us as gatekeepers to the

elements

animal spirits

nature spirits

angels

ancestors

the Horned God and the

Great Mother Goddess

Samhain ceremony at Oscar Wilde Temple

The role of queer sexuality in the ancient pagan religions of Europe has yet to be clearly seen and reclaimed – for more understanding of what it means to be a gatekeeper we can look to other cultures that have retained some connection to this, such as the Two-Spirits of the Native Americans, the Hijra in India, or the Dagara in Africa. This from Dagara teacher Sobonfu Some’s book ‘The Spirit of Intimacy’,-

Gatekeepers hold keys to other dimensions. They maintain a certain alignment between the spirit world and the world of the village. Without them, the gates to the other world would be shut.

On the other side of these gates lies the spirit world or other dimensions. Gatekeepers are in constant communication with beings who live there, who have the ability to teach us how to deal with ritual. And gatekeepers have the capacity to take other people to those places.

… a person doesn’t become a gatekeeper out of a desire for power or even because of sexual orientation. No. Gatekeeping is part of one’s life purpose, announced before birth and developed through rigorous initiatory training to ensure that its power is not misused. A gatekeeper is responsible for a whole village, a whole tribe. Gatekeeping is not a game.

Most people in the West define themselves and others by sexual orientation. This way of looking at gatekeepers will kill the spirit of the gatekeeper. Gatekeepers in the village are able to do their job simply because of strong spiritual connection, and also their ability to direct their sexual energy not to other people but to spirit…

The life of gay people in the West is in many ways a reaction to pressure from a society that rejects them. This is partly because a culture that has forgotten so much about itself will displace certain groups of people, such as the gay community, from their true roles.

In the village they are not seen as the other. They are not forced to create a separate community in order to survive. People do not put a negative label on them, they are regarded no differently than any other child of the village. They are born gatekeepers, with specific purposes, and are encouraged to fulfil the role they’re born to in the interests of the community.

Sobonfu Some

In us the dance of sexuality and spirit

In us the play of gender fluidity, glamour, glitter and grit

In us the game of earth air fire water

In us the dance of spirit in humanity

COMING HOME.

Whats going on - dinner table
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

 

Gathering, History, Reflection

ALBION FAERIE YEAR 2018

Photo of the fireplace in Blue Room at Featherstone, by Sparkly Tom

The Albion Fae have had a bumper year…

The first Albion Faerie Gathering took place at Featherstone Castle at Imbolc 2006. We held one gathering there per year for 6 years, putting down the roots of community at these Winter hideaways in Northumberland. From 2012 the pace quickened – we started to gather at Paddington Farm in Glastonbury, to meet at Featherstone in the warmer climes of Spring and Autumn – and in Summer finally in 2017 when faeries from around the world came to our hearth for an inspirational Global Gathering. Connections formed at that time have continued to develop, with much cross fertilisation going on between the various Faerie communities of planet earth. One product of this creativity is our very own social media website – Faenet.org, the work for which has been mainly undertaken by Canaan and Albion faeries.

From one gathering per year for 6 years, in 2018 we are holding 6 gatherings in one year:

IMBOLC at Paddington, with our annual pilgrimage to the White Spring and Brigit Mound. Faerienizers were Blossom, Running Water, Bridge, Earth Song, Touch Me and Starbuck. 30 faeries attended.

MAGIC GATHERING in Gloucestershire, the second appearance of this focussed space for an intimate group facilitated by Earth Song and Qweaver

OSTARA at Featherstone, 80+ faeries welcoming the new season, our 5th Spring visit to Northumberland, the faerienizer team this year facilitated by Wolverine, with Zebedee, Touch Me, Hagbard, Samicee and more on the crew.

BELTANE Spring Love Awakening Gathering – A new gathering in May in Glastonbury coordinated by Bridge with a core team of Big Sister, Paradox, Running Water, Swallow & Taboo. The gathering of around 60 fae fused core faerie themes of love, heart sharing, sensuality, sexuality, practices, celebration, community, compassion, personal growth and most importantly co-creation. The intention was to create a journey and a container where our hearts could open more, where we could make Love, both within ourselves and for each other.

COMING HOME Healing Retreat at Unstone Grange, Derbyshire – another new gathering, with an experimental structure intended to enable us to go deeper in our paths as healers of self, other and the planetary soul. Included silent mornings and exploration of emotion and expression through our moon element energies. Initiated by Shokti who brought together a team of new faerinizers – Blaze, Unicorn, Lionboy, Paradox, Samicee and Sexual. 40 faeries attended.

and still to come..

SAMHAIN at Featherstone. This gathering was fully booked within two weeks of registrations open and currently has a waiting list in operation. Taz is heading up a team which includes Running Water, Samicee, Surprise and others

As well as gatherings this has been an expansive year for other faerie get-togethers, with 70+ people at each London Drum Circle. Lots of new people are constantly drawn to this space where we feed our souls through a full moon musical and frequently ecstatic work out. Faeries have also been meeting over in the east of the city, at the Faerie Sky Garden in Plaistow, scene of an amazing pre-Pride evening of fire and ritual that drew in dozens of fae-curious queers. London Faeries also meet for heart circles, held an Ewok Woman gathering, and faeries came from far afield to be part of the Music Gatherette, which focused on ways to foster confidence and encourage spontaneous music-making and singing at gatherings . This year has seen a developing strand of WeMoon circles, an intentional space initiated by Samicee Mother of Unicorns to act as doorway for Trans, Intersex and faeries of other marginalised orientations into faerie ways. Also, a group is now holding monthly open meetings to plan for permanent residential community space in London. (https://albionfaeries.org.uk/the-emerald-village-london-faerie-housing-community/ )

The Brighton clan held space for Faeries and friends away from the intensities of the town on Pride Day in August, and earlier in the year welcomed San Francisco Faerie Joey Cain in town for the festival screening of ‘Hope Along the Wind’, a documentary about the life of Harry Hay. There have been faerie meets in the West Country, the Nottingham clan held heart space in the Nine Ladies Stone Circle, and there was an impromptu alternative-imbolc weekend on the South Downs. Coming up in September is the first North West Heart Circle in Liverpool.

A year ago at the Great Circle/FaeGM we established a new administrative structure for the tribe. Out went the roles imposed on us by bank formalities (president/secretary/chair), to be replaced by three admin circles – Communications, Finance and Gatherings/Events. Together the faeries volunteering their energy to be part of these circles form a collective Stewards Circle. All circle meetings are advertised and anyone can attend. The Stewards Circle is meeting for a Tribal Moot on Saturday 29 September to review progress of the new structure.

The Global Gathering in 2017, hosted by the Albionfae at Featherstone Castle, opened up new connections for us with other communities around the world, which some of us have had the chance to deepen during the past year. There has been a rush of Albion Fae spending time at the French sanctuary, Folleterre, and a lot of cross fertilisation with the Canaan Faeries, plus many visitors passing our way from other communities, such as Fairyland in Australia and the North American sanctuaries. Tennessee Willy of the Short Mountain tribe has just spent a few months with us and reports how awestruck he is at the vitality in our collective spirit, to observe how open and keen we in the Albion Fae are to build deep and real connections with each other. Wherever we gather, the love truly flows.

But of course as a rapidly growing community we have growing pains. One of the many ways for us to positively evolve is when someone shines the spotlight on what they perceive as a difficult issue going on amongst us and we learn, over time, how to effectively respond compassionately to that issue. There is always the risk that such issues can quickly take centre stage and obscure the sight of the amazing, positive and beautiful things we are achieving – such as a healthy balance between celebration and self-exploration, and the real and lasting loving friendships that are being formed. But we are learning and evolving and increasing in awareness that we operate at different speeds, have different ways of communicating and do so with different priorities. Our tribal energy is ‘vital’: people’s lives are changing for the better because of us, we are becoming known as a healing force within the wider LGBTQ+ cosmos, creators of sanctuary, wherein heart connections and authentic communication lead the way. Our community is in its 13th magical year and its light is strong. bright and changing the world’s understanding of queer consciousness, magic and community.

*******

As we enter the Autumn season, the time of the Ancestors approaches.

As young a community as we are, we already have our own personal ancestors in spirit

Fairy Nuff, Barbarella, Beloved, El-Leo, Jon BlipClone, Woodchild and others who have briefly engaged with us on their journey

We are not in this journey alone

Another analogy to describe us is to see the Albion Faeries as a growing branch in the forest of Human Consciousness Development which traces its roots back to ancient times and through the more recent works of Walt Whitman, Edward Carpenter, Harry Hay, John Burnside, Starhawk, Mitch Walker, Don Kilhefner and the developing boughs and branches of the Faerie Sanctuaries throughout the world.

The branch which is Albion grew from the Eurofaerie tree but also from Queer Pagan Camp, Edward Carpenter Community and most recently has found some rich nutrients from the amazingly rich melange that is Queer Spirit Festival.

We are a still new branch but we already have our own loved ones who left, perhaps prematurely…

We can reach out with love to those in spirit

and receive their love right back into our hearts and our circles,

following this guidance that Edward Carpenter left to be read at his funeral:

“Do not think too much of the dead husk of your friend, or mourn too much over it, but send your thoughts out towards the real soul or self which has escaped — to reach it. For so, surely you will cast a light of gladness upon his onward journey, and contribute your part towards the building of that kingdom of love which links our earth to heaven.”

Autumn is a rich time of natural magic, let’s spread our faerie love and blessings wherever we tread this season…..

This blog post was written by the Albion Stewards

 

Brotherhood, History

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.

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harry_hayquote

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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

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Brotherhood, History, Philosophy, Poetry & Prose

There are many ways to be a Radical Faerie

Some come for the SPIRIT

some come for the DRAG

some love to create FEASTS

all come for COMMUNITY

and to experience DIVERSITY

leading to UNITY

found in the HEART

LOVE is the FAERIE ART

No matter your body shape, size, design

The call to be a faerie is found inside

No matter your colour, gender or creed

A radical passion is all that you need.

There are many motivations behind people’s involvement in Radical Faerie space. Heart centred communication as a way of creating community is definitely a major one. As is the chance to honour nature and the spiritual side of life in ways of our own choosing and devising. Faeries are creating a queer mystical subculture, where we can drop the human façade and be the magical divine child at play in the universe, where we can recognise that all life is one (the faerie mantra is ‘subject-SUBJECT consciousness’), and discover the role that queer beings are called to play in that sacred unity.

For some faeries this journey is directly about exploring the inheritance we receive from the shamanic peoples of planet earth, which tribes were often served by gender-bending, cross-dressing, shape-shifting queer souls in spiritual roles. It is about reclaiming the link between homo-eroticism, gender variance and the sacred – an intimate link that once was in play around the whole world, from ancient Greek and Roman cults that worshipped deities such as Aphrodite, Artemis, Dionysus, Pan, Antinous… to Celtic pagan sorcery, native American two-spirit shamans, African magicians and Sufi poets. Monasteries in Christian and Buddhist cultures long served as sanctuaries for same sex loving individuals.

Radical Faerie spaces enable queers to deepen our experience of life – of love, sex and community. Bonds are strengthened through gatherings and ecstatic rituals that lead us into communion with nature and spirit. In community we care for each other, form bonds of love and compassion that are extended to all who come along – we are exploring the next territories of queer life, taking our gay liberation all the way from the sexual through the social and political into the spiritual realms, attempting to build a world where LOVE is the starting point.

The doors to Albion Faerie gatherings are open to all who feel called to be there. The first Radical Faeries were gay men but they soon discovered that Faerie space involves the transcendence of labels, of limited notions of gender and Self, that society.. and the mainstream lgbt+ community.. often impose on us. In Faerie space we can drop outdated limiting notions of who we are, and open mind and heart to a magical reality that humans have long lost touch with. Inside every human there exists an indigenous soul that remembers its innate connection to all of life. It is magical and eternal, it is the Faerie child inside.

Out of the mists of our long oppression

We bring love for ourselves and each other

And love for the gifts we bear

So heavy and so painful the fashioning of them,

So long the road given us to travel them. A separate people,

We bring a gift to celebrate each other,

‘Tis a gift to be gay!

Feel the pride of it!

(Radical Faerie founding spirit, Harry Hay)