Three times my life has changed dramatically and unexpectedly directly or indirectly through association with Glastonbury.
The last was coming out as non binary at the faerie Beltane gathering two years ago and the resulting adventure in gender identity and self expression I have been on since.
Perhaps because of that I laid too much expectation on this imbolc gathering .
During our week together I sometimes felt there were two gatherings one more exciting and fun for the younger faeries and another duller one for the older ones, this of course is naturally present at any faerie event to some degree but i felt it more than usual this time, perhaps because there weren’t many people in the forties/fifties age group to bridge the gap or because I didn’t know any of the younger faeries very well .
The inclination is to accuse other people of ageism but this is an arrow which only points back to myself !
I am present to my own ageism and its really interesting to look at , particularly if I still want to enjoy my life fully and to not be excluding myself from activities or from people because they are older than me or even the same age, or for that matter automatically excluding people younger than myself because I already know they won’t be interested in me.
I feel young inside but it is amazing how there is a pressure from society to act old, I hear myself without thought saying things which label myself as old , its so tempting to ascribe anything that happens like forgetting someones name or losing something to being old.
Its also easy to forget I am older when talking to someone much younger until there is the rude awakening when they pull away to hang out with someone closer to their own age.
There are lots of things which are of course great about getting older, I am happier than ever, care much less what people think , am content being on my own, have a nice home, can travel when I like and dont have to work.
Although I didnt always enjoy this gathering it was lovely to be near Glastonbury again, to bathe in the waters of the white spring and climb the Tor most days and of course there were delightful faeries to hang out with and friendships have deepened and new ones formed.
I am back home in Devon feeling renewed and more open and self expressed and giving less of a @@@@ what anyone else thinks about it than ever, so maybe despite everything Glastonbury worked its faerie magic.
“I propose that we Gay Folk, whom Great Nature has been assembling as a Separate People in these last 100,000 years, must now prepare to emerge from the shadows of History because we are a species-variant with a particular characteristic adaptation-in-consciousness WHOSE TIME HAS COME!”Harry Hay
“The Radical Faeries emerged in tandem with a gay civil rights movement in the 1970s and tapped into a broader countercultural energy. Rather than relying on an apologetic posture or seeking ‘inclusion’ in mainstream social institutions and religious communities, Radical Faeries adopted a proactive and constructive approach to their queer sexualities and gender expressions. By turning to a variety of soures – such as the mythopoetic men’s movement, feminism, and pagan and neo-pagan Earth-based traditions- Radical Faeries sought not only to critique the patriarchal and hierarchical dynamics of the wider society, but also to embrace what they understood as the fundamental connection between spirituality and sexuality. This queerly creative mix of traditions and practices generated a host of ritualised forms of sexuality and relational bonds, including a number of distinct groupings within this loosely affiliated and now worldwide network.” Sadomasochism and Spirituality A Queerly Religious Challenge to the Gay Marriage Paradigm, by Patrick Califia in QUEER RELIGION Homosexuality in Modern Religious History Volume I 2011
“Why faerie? First, a definition: A faerie is a mythical creature who is changeable, can’t be pinned down, is unpredictable, thinks in an alien manner, and is more attuned to nature than we humans. A faerie is fey. Radical Faeries try to live some of these attributes: Worship nature and the Goddess, project androgyny, explore sensuality and sexuality. They are profoundly anti-authoritarian, often pacifist, following a philosophy of life in part 1960s counterculture (from which they arose). Promoting a playful, open, loving brotherhood, Faerie gatherings are magical events stressing open affections, communal meals, ceremonies and revels, often nude, sometimes in drag, in rural, outdoor settings.” STUART NORMAN, I AM THE LEATHERFAERIE SHAMANin Mark Thompson’s LEATHERFOLK Radical Sex, People, Politics and Practice 1992
“Faeries have been described variously as a neo-pagan spiritual group, a gay tribe, a new religious/social movement, a bunch of hippy-faggot-farmers, gender-fuck activists, queer community anarchists. The number of different definitions of faerie is synergistically greater than the number of queer men and women who self-identify as part of the movement.” Fey, W. (2000), ‘Radical Faeries’, in G. E. Haggerty (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Lesbian and Gay Histories and Cultures Volume II
Mitch Walker, one of the founding Faeries, in 1997 described Radical Fae 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.”
“Radical Faeries are elusive. Like our legendary namesakes the faeries of the British Isles, the fees of France, the sprites and wood spirits of the Mediterranean – we are experts at camouflage and visual trickery. Delighting in inhabiting the borderlands of the mainstream worldview, we are the teasing images flickering in society’s peripheral vision, which disappear (in a cloud of faerie dust to peals of bell-like laughter) when confronted with straight and four-square vision. We have to learn to look askance and use our peripheral vision to begin an investigation into the nature of the Radical Faeries…
“A description of identity based on definitions will never work for the Faeries. Rather, Faeries should be thought of as ‘becoming’, not ‘being’. Let me finish with a perceptive musing on gay identity by Michel Foucault. It could very well serve as a summation of the process of becoming a Radical Faerie:
“We must be aware of…the tendency to reduce being gay to the questions: ‘Who am I?” “What is the secret of my desire?’ Might it not be better if we asked ourselves what sort of relationships we can set up, invent, multiply or modify through our homosexuality? The problem is not trying to find out the truth of one’s sexuality within oneself, but rather, nowadays, trying to use our sexuality to achieve a variety of different types of relationships. And this is why homosexuality is probably not a form of desire, but something to be desired. We must therefore insist on becoming gay, rather than persisting in defining ourselves as such. (Foucault, 1984, p.385)…
“Faeries have been described variously as a neo-pagan spiritual group, a gay tribe, a new religious/social movement or development, a bunch of hippy-faggot-farmers and gender-fuck activists and queer community anarchists. Indeed, the number of definitions of Faerie is synergistically greater than the number of queer men and women who identify as part of the movement.” Bill Rogers, Becoming Radical Faerie: Queering the Spirit of the Circle. In ‘Popular Spiritualities’ 2006
“In conversation and in their writings, the Radical Faeries (who, while “refusing to be pinned down,” nonetheless tend to be spiritually and politically anarchistic and comunitarian) emphasize this bond with nature, often holding their gatherings in forests, deserts, and mountainous regions. My friend Hyperion describes a Faerie ritual that took place in the Arizona desert in 1979:
“It all began when one… faerie decided to go down to the arroyo and play in the mud. Soon others joined him…. All emerged from their raiment and started smearing mud on themselves and each other. Body merged with body until we were one mass. One faerie lying on the ground was decorated with leaves and flowers. Then he was lifted to the sky as if he were an emissary bringing earth and sky together.
“The Radical Faeries are among those gay seekers who have taken steps to realise the dream of HOME…. faerie communal households and farms…” Randy P Connor, Blossom of Bone 1993
“As a Fae man, I seek to live an Idea(l) of constant “Heart Space” – where there is full and mutual respect for Self and Others (indeed All Existence). My mystical journeyings (through High Camp ritual, exhuberant sex, playful nudity, song, dance, poetry, art, and many other magickal acts) have brought me visions of my connectedness to Nature, to the vast and complex web of All Existence, which in turn is the firm basis of my Fae Ethos.” My Journeys into Faerie and What I Found There by Connell O Donovan (historian, biographer, born 1961)
“STARTING IN THE LATE 1970s, alongside the enormous and continuing growth of women’s spirituality, there sprung up, in almost parallel fashion, a small spiritual movement among men. This movement was connected with the feminist critique of patriarchal notions of religion and authority, and with the attempt of both gay and straight men to create a new definition of maleness.
“One important impulse behind the notion of radical faeries was the idea that there had to be something beyond assimilation. Just as radical feminists wanted to go beyond women attaining equal rights in a man’s world, toward a notion that feminism implied a totally different reality, a different language, a different attitude toward power and authority, this group of gay men saw their own movement as implying a totally different view of the world, with different goals and different spiritual values than the “straight” world…
“In an article in RFD called “A Sprinkling of Radical Faerie Dust,” Don Kilhefner wrote that the dilemma facing gay men is “our assimilation into the mainstream versus our enspiritment as a people … “We are the equivalent of Shamans in modern culture,” said Peter Soderberg, during an interview at the 1985 Pagan Spirit Gathering. “Many gay men want to be middle-class Americans. They want to be respected as human beings and they want their sexuality to be ignored. But radical faeries are willing to live on the edge. We feel there is a power in our sexuality. You know there is a power there because our culture is so afraid of us. And there is a lot of queer energy in the men and women most cultures consider magical. It’s practically a requirement for certain kinds of medicine and magic.,,
“Many radical faeries were preoccupied with questions of process and form. Just as feminist women had been struggling with questions about authority, forms of leadership, decision making, language, and control, these gay men seemed to spend much of their time struggling with the same kinds of questions. “Process is content,” Peter told me. As a person who has always felt content was more important than form, I was dismayed. But in Peter’s view, society’s violence begins at the place where creativity and self-expression is controlled. “In our system of male dominance,” he told me, “there is an unexpressed contract that says: ‘It is safer to control energy than it is to experience energy.’ In our society men are the ‘control’ referents, and women the ‘experience’ referents.” On the most superficial level this would mean: “Women are feeling people. Women must be controlled.” But on a subtler level Peter believes that this system exists within every human being. We tend to control our experiences, instead of participating in them and acting from them.
“In contrast, faerie reality says, “It is more enjoyable to experience energy than to control energy,” that the need for violence will disappear as creativity and real self-expression increase. Faerie gatherings, at their best, would be places where experimentation with new social forms could take place. They would not be a place for set rituals or workshops given by “leaders.” One man wrote: “Spirituality has to be discovered . . . by each individual. Even the Native American cultures with a highly spiritual worldview did not ‘teach’ it. Instead, the young of the tribe, as part of their initiation, went on a vision quest to seek their own personal experience with the spirit realm…
“The Radical Faerie movement continues to grow, characterized by spontaneity and anti-authoritarianism. Michael Lloyd [a founding member of the Green Faerie Grove, a worship group for queer Pagan men in Columbus, Ohio] describes it as “having a pro-humanist, pro-environment, pro-sex vision of the world that contrasts sharply with the mainstream Western religious traditions.” He adds that while some groups include straight men and women, and even children, “gender bending is a hallmark of the radical faerie movement.”
“Michael Lloyd said he believes that queer spirituality brings a sense of mystery, of “otherness” to humankind. The old gods are far from dead, he says:
‘If you go to a gay club on a Saturday night, you will feel Dionysus throbbing in the sweaty, heated air around you on the dance floor. We know that the gods continue to live in us, because we feel them on a personal, visceral level even when we don’t understand the “why” of it. Ecstatic faiths almost never arise from the upper strata of society where all the marrow has been sucked out of life in the process of screwing over the little guy while morally posturing with the Joneses. Ecstatic faiths manifest themselves amongst the little guys who are getting crapped on. The speakers-in-tongues, the shakers, and the gay clubbers all give those in power today the heebie jeebies, just as the Galli and the Bacchantes gave the Roman establishment the willies at the turn of another millennium. We have more in common with a gibbering, shaking Pentacostal than we do with any moralizing, self-righteous Baptist with a broomstick firmly lodged in his posterior.’
“Lloyd says that queer spirituality brings to the greater Pagan movement a sensibility that speaks to the gut and provides a vision of a different way of doing things:
‘Shake it up and shake it out, be hermetic, be mercurial, react, reject, rebel, look outside the bone box, look up the Goddess’ skirt, be more than they’ll let you be, breathe the free air, fight the good fight, seize the day, brave the elements, bust a nut, and live! All magick is an act of rebellion against the status quo.’” MARGOT ADLER DRAWING DOWN THE MOON 1986
“Certain fundamental core expressions (of rad fae) – By Bill Rogers
The first is the concept of the Circle: faeries use a circular meeting as a way of interacting with each other…. these ritual events validate the subjective and intersubjective meanings held by members of a group, and as such reinforce the group’s solidarity.
Another core concept is that of Queer Community. In major cities, Circles of Faeries meet, usually monthly (at the full moon), either for Gatherettes or at specific ritual times that are structurally similar to the Wiccan coven. Faeries have ‘a paradoxically anarchist and communal utopian eschatology.’ (Coneell O’Donovan)
A third core component of the Faerie Handbag is the concept of Queer Spirit. Writers such as Hay… suggest that the concept of subject-SUBJECT consciousness is a fundamental defining principle of queer spirituality. It has its basis in the notion that gay people experience and relate to the world in a fundamentally unique way. Hay proposes that subject-SUBJECT consciousness is:
…inherent to all gay people, arising from the egalitarian bond of love and sex between two similars… (and) pervade(s) all the relationships of a gay person even the relationships with things not human, such as nature, craftsmanship, or ideals. “Humanity must expand its experience of thinking of another 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”.
The Radical Faerie experience of spirituality, then, is intimately tied up with this subject-SUBJECT perception of the world. We, as shamans, pagans, and practitioners of Wiccan and Goddess traditions hold a reverence for the earth as a fundamental principle. The earth is perceived as being a part of each and every one of us, and the divine essence that is expressed as the Mother, Gaia, or the Goddess. is imbued in every individual. Only through respect for, and healing of, the earth can a sustainable future be envisaged. This is very much a queer version of the concept of immanence as expressed by many Neo-Pagans (O’Donovan, 1999a. pp.69-70; Starhawk, 1987, pp. 16-17).
A final Faerie core concept is the practice of spontaneous ritual… spontaneity and creativity are central to many expressions of religious behaviour among Neo-Pagans. The Radical Faeries are no exception. Faeries do not need an excuse to drop everything and co-create a ritual for a particular purpose. Bill RogersBecoming Radical Faerie: Queering the Spirit of the Circle. In ‘Popular Spiritualities’ 2006
If you have read this far then you are about to be rewarded big time:
“Let me tell you a story:
About types of beings generically called Fairies, about their characteristic consciousness, their strange awareness, called faerie. 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.
Fairies see polarities dancing, changing everywhere, constantly. So they know that any pole frozen by itself blocks the flow, becomes a dead weight, an illusion hiding true understanding. So they come to realise that every ‘objective’ thing is but a shadow.
Knowing this, the Fairies can’t take themselves too seriously, either, seeing as they are also an illusion. This creates a marvellous lightness! Fairies are truly blessed, truly free modes of being, for they can laugh at themselves in their deepest places, can transcend their ignorance from moment to moment, gliding out of each limit and restriction even as it manifests, emerging from hir own form like a butterfly or a moth.
This wonderful paradoxical freedom from form, this lightness, enable Fairies to fly. It grants them much deep wisdom.
“Once someone came and told me this:
“There is an essence, essence of an eternal, hidden, dark, shining, eerie secret: the simultaneous and continuous creation and annihilation of Form, which is the heartbeat of material existence, which is that beingness, that essential is-ness of all that exists there – trees, people, planets, space, time, matter, energy – all is which is Changing, an infinite Pattern, a total-living weave of beams and streams, eddies, swirls, bursts and flows of is-into-not-is, and not-is-into-is, out of and into an unnameable nothingness-One; that all shapes, forms, are bendings and corners of this flowing-is, this power/nothing, the true behind the false behind the true behind the false in a living, pulsing spiral of All-That-Is.
“And those blessed with faerie can gaze into this essence as it were a crystal ball, and it opens their gaze through swirling shapes and colors deeper and deeper until it becomes unfoldingness itself, and they can see through the earth and out to the stars and beyond, and melt into their gaze and become the point in their Eye and flow into the Crystal itself, passing to its Center, and so become themselves There which then too is Here and All and anything, and thereby they are One from the inside with the bendings and corners of realities, and so they are not yet static things but riders of lightbeams, weightless dancers along the edge – indeed they are the Dancing itself, purposeful, masterless, nothing-points of will; they are the flow, the wind, There at the Source.”
“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.
“Almost all human cultures had myths and stories about faerie lands and astral (star-channelling) planes.
“We have been deceived! Caught in a mythological tyranny, in a web of falseself perversions, in a maze of deceptional violence, in a world of twisted words, cut off at the roots by shadows, trapped within spells of the word-masters. We have forgotten. We became thought-slaves.
“Visionary Love starts here, in the bowels of falseself bondage.. a book of uppity queer metathought-liberation, of sissy-frying world-slipping survival tactics, of epic reincarnational trueself recovery ploys, of strategic evolutional consciousness flowering fairy tale. We manifest a mutation in consciousness, for which we have been persecuted and exploited. It’s time to stop this stupidity. It’s time to enter our maturity. It’s time.
“Darkness grows in falseself lands. This is not a coincidence. Those of us who live there live in a time-bomb, in a monstrously climaxing karmic behemoth, live in a violent dinosaurian genetic fate. Tyrannosaur Rex is a thrashing in ecstatic S&M pain, is the ultra-victim in a self-induced snuff movie involving the entire Earth, enacting his last act and ringing down the curtain on World 4.
“Gay shamanism is work in such times, work in the mode of death, work with the dying, death of oneself. Delightful communal Self realisation is the instantly real resurrection. Sorcerous faggot fighter is a menace to society, is a dangerous flaming phoenix, a glowingly rounded rebirth function, an extra-ordinary healing tool, a Rainbow-bridging eros-tool. Gay realisation is sorely needed life-light now. Concentrated eros, focussed will, activated anger, celebrated magick, shared love, are tactics to guard and guide our questing, to trans-form vision, trans-port worlds trans-vest Self.
“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, wholenelss. Homosexual – gay – faggot- fairy – gone.
“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.”
Come transgender spirits, gender non conforming bodies, intersex inspirers, non-binary beings, a-gender wonders, queer women warriors, questioning cuties. It is our time to drop the masks we wear and blossom together.
When caught in the fray of society’s appropriation of our identities, we need to make space where we can feel free in the truth of our own skin, souls and honour the honesty of our hearts calling.
The Building and Location
YHA Minehead description: A country retreat in an attractive house high in Somerset’s Exmoor hills. Enchantingly situated in a woodland hideaway, the hostel offers magnificent grounds while being situated close to some of Somerset’s most beautiful coastline.
Not only is Minehead a picturesque seaside resort with a cracking sandy beach, it’s also the northern gateway to Exmoor National Park, the area’s largest town and the start point of the South West Coast Path – the nation’s longest long-distance walking trail.
ACCESSIBILITY : This location is not wheelchair accessible, there is specific information about how many stairs and where these are situated in the property on the Accessibility & Mobility page here, we welcome any access questions or enquiries at this email address: SummerTranscendence@AlbionFaeries.org.uk
We are investigating the property at the beginning of April to provide as much information as possible for people with mobility needs to navigate the space.
Accommodation is on the first floor up 14 carpeted stairs, in shared rooms, with a very limited number of smaller rooms for those who cannot sleep in larger, group shared spaces. There are also 2 sets of 4 steps into the front door and one set of two steps inside the reception area.
We do not have permission for camping/outdoor sleeping, so all attendees must sleep in the venue. We are currently asking about live-in vehicles and will update the notion website accordingly.
You can find extensive travel information for how to get to the gathering under ‘ Location & Travel’ on this page.
Co-creation
Co-creation is the heart of any gathering, with individual Faeries offering a wide variety of events from drum circles, talent shows, auctions and drag balls, to workshops, walks and heart circles. You can find out more about Faerie Events here. If you have an idea for an event you’d like to run, you can request any equipment or support in the booking form, or bring what you need with you.
Key teams of fae give service at the gathering to provide us with things like meals, decoration, access needs and welfare. Volunteering together is a great way to build friendships and to show your love and appreciation for the Faerie community. You can read more about volunteering teams here, and step up for these roles on the booking form.
Co-creation doesn’t always look like planning in advance. Maybe you’ll contribute in the moment. You might suddenly feel the kitchen calling your name in the middle of the gathering, you might feel a spontaneous urge to sing or clean a toilet, you might whip up a workshop on how to honour self-love and care (self love is sexy!). Whatever you contribute is welcome and wanted!
Compassion, Consent & Self-care
We strive as a radical community to be as inclusive as possible, to make adjustments, and to manifest the core principles of care for fellow fae, alongside care for ourselves. Gatherings are magical but they can also be a little overwhelming sometimes. We invite you to enter this space with compassion for the beautifully diverse needs of others, awareness of consent, and the preparation and tools to look after your own self-care if needed.
You can find out more about preparations to make and what to expect at the gathering here.
We also invite you to remember that the Radical Faeries is a non-hierarchical community where we all bear equal responsibility and share the workload between us. Please offer your love and support to those that give service to weave the magic of the gathering, and step up for roles where you are able.
SUBSTANCES + INTOXICATION : We are setting the intention for a space that invites us to explore togetherness and community, part of this includes limiting the use of mood-altering medicines like alcohol, drugs, loud amplified music, etc.
We understand the need for these medicines in intentional ritual and medicinal use; in these situations, we ask that you be critically aware of others around you due to the varying needs we all have in regards to medicinal use, sobriety and addiction. Find more information under the heading ‘Sobriety, Addiction & Mood-Altering Medicines’ here
Registration
Registration for Summer Transcendence 2024 opens at 7pm on 4th April for Faeries of Colour and 7pm on the 7th April for everybody.
When registration goes live, this link will go live and be shared in various Faery spaces of communication and websites.
We encourage faeries to register for the full 9 nights to make this gathering a cohesive, close-knit community container and a journey we all take together, rising up to Summer Solstice and resting together after. We also would love for faeries to stay til the end to close the container with as many of us as possible.
A link to the booking form will be shared via email and the Albion Faeries WhatsApp group. As this is the first gathering of it’s kind, we expect the spaces to fill up quickly. Booking is first-come-first served and there will likely be a waitlist, so please email us at the address below as soon as possible if you have a space but cannot make it, so that another Faerie can take your place.
We request Faeries do not turn up without a booking, as a mark of respect to those on the waiting list.
Diversity Over recent years, the Faeries have begun a radical journey from a primarily white, gay, male community, towards a community that is more inclusive of the diverse spectrum of ethnicity, gender and sexuality that makes up queerdom.
This gathering is making space for the minorities in our community and continuing the tradition of a gathering held at the French sanctuary ‘Folleterre’, called Radical Rest.
Radical Rest – A gathering made for the comfort of Trans, Intersex, Non-Binary and Questioning Faeries, and Queer Women, in faery space.
In keeping with the gathering theme, we encourage you to explore your awareness of the diversity at this gathering and how we might radically recognise, celebrate and support minorities within the Radical Faeries.
Payment
In order to breakeven, the cost of this gathering will be £26.50 per faerie, per night.
The breakeven cost will be £240 if all attendants pay this price and attend the whole gathering, we have included a table of guidance below to help you locate yourself in terms of our suggested contributions for this gathering.
Payment is requested by bank transfer at the point your booking is confirmed. If you would prefer to pay at a later date, or to pay in cash at the gathering, please drop us an email when you book, to let us know your preferred payment date.
For those financially able, please consider contributing more as this funds the gathering to be able to offer access to a wider demographic. You can read more about how the faeries create this financial accessibility through NOTAFLOF + ADAFAE below.
NOTAFLOF & ADAFAE No One Turned Away For Lack Of Funds! A radical principle of the Faeries is that individual financial circumstances should not be a barrier to being part of the community. This means if your financial circumstances mean that you cannot afford the full cost , we invite you to contribute as much as you can.
If you are able to contribute more than £26.50 per night, please do. The ‘Additional Donations And Finance Accepted Enthusiastically’ policy helps to support NOTAFLOF, and your beautiful generosity enables all of our community to come together at gatherings.
GAYABAGS The Faerie finance initiatives are stunning examples of the care, generosity and compassion we show for each other in Faeriespace. Please feel called to treat them with the utmost respect and take a moment to think about whether you are contributing as much as you can genuinely afford. Remember: Give As You’re Able, But Always Give Something.
We are exploring radical new ways of fundraising for this event!
NOTAFLOF, GAYABAGS and ADAFAE have been wonderful pillars of our radical approach to financial disparity within our community. We value these a lot, and hope that the following table can better help us locate ourselves in terms of our contributions for this gathering. We hope by introducing these guidelines – which we’ve adapted from other radical organisations – that we will be able to feel into our integrity around what we’re able to contribute. This is for your reference only and there will be no monitoring of where on the scale you choose to locate yourself. Above all, we hold NOTAFLOF dearly, and wish for this sacred, radical tenet of our community to remain abundant and shameless – we will never pressure those surviving at the margins to pay anything, and we hope that those thriving will help us create radical resource justice to keep us in alignment with this value.
| NOTAFLOF Contribution £120 (and below) |
+ Bursary places are available. If your personal or organisational economic situation doesn’t allow you to pay any contribution, please let us know on your registration form
+ I struggle to find stable employment due to discrimination: Are you an unpaid community organiser?
| Solidarity Contribution £120 to 240 |
+ I am comfortably able to meet all of my basic needs.I can afford public transport. + I am able to buy some new items.
| Comfortable Contribution £240 to 360 |
+ Do you have a safe and stable place to live, such as a rented flat or house? + I do not have to rely on temporary accommodation like hotels or hostels; I have a regular income of less than £25,000/year.
| Redistribution Contribution £360 to 480 (and above) |
+ Do you own your home or rent a higher-end property? + Do you have investments, retirement accounts, or inherited money? + Can you comfortably go on holiday? + Do you have access to family money and resources in times of need? + Do you receive a total income above the minimum living wage or work part-time by choice?
We are also holding a pre-gathering auction for faery made/donated items on our faeBay page to help fund the NOTAFLOF and GAYABAGS places. We are also holding a GoFundMe campaign for direct donations for those who feel called to support the cause financially.
Find the eBay store link HERE and support this gathering in exchange for beautiful handmade pieces, made and contributed by our beautiful community of faeries.
If you are financially privileged, you can also directly donate financially through our GoFundMe here.
A suggested packing list for this gathering can be found here
We always welcome more:
Clothes for the dress-up space! We have a long tradition of clothes swaps and sharing in the trans/GNC community and would love if everyone could bring clothes, make-up and accessories they would like to share, swap and gift to give access to that yummy clothing-based gender euphoria
Throws, rugs, lamps, electric candles and soft furnishings such as cushions to help manifest a soft playground
Things for the auction (such as clothes, crafts, plants, or services like massage or tarot)
Offerings for the gathering altar
Questions, Help & Email
We have created this information portalwhere you can find a wealth of additional information about accessibility, what to expect at the gathering, volunteer roles and more! The Albion Faeries Website is also a great source of information. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, feel free to drop us an email at SummerTranscendence@AlbionFaeries.org.uk and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.
This blog comes with a trigger warning as it deals with themes of childhood trauma.
I was recently Faced with a new age spiritual teaching that victims are choosing there reality and are projecting there lived experience of abuse. I am open minded, I think everyone is entitled to there beliefs and opinions and I have no control over it . The good news is that I am also entiltled to my own beliefs and opinions. My own world view is based on spirituality , science and reason. I beleive people who are victimised as adults are to some extent re enacting child hood trauma in adult relationships . I do not think its coming from a place of want or desire to be victimised. Its certainly no excuse to perpetrate abuse sadly its abusers they attract because they sense it will be easy to do so. I beleive it come from a place of not being aware this is happening due to such ways of relating to the world becoming normalised in childhood. Its a complex issue, but its often due to the boundary wound, if one grows up in a chaotic violent home and were never taught about boundarys ,as adults they will not be aware of them Hopefully one realises and works through the anger and rage this incurs. In some cases as children one may not have been empowered to have boundarys due to threat of violence or rejection. Sometimes children are guilted and shamed in to not having boundarys if they are expected to put caregivers needs before there own. As adults ones ability to set boundarys is impaired due to the feelings of fear and shame and guilt trying to set boundarys can trigger. I think people can not be blamed or held responsable for what they are not aware off but once one is becoming aware it is ones own responsibility to set boundarys. This is what I believe, and I beleive its up to decent peope to help victims realise this may be happening so they may empower them selfs
Last year during the heatwaves I was in Devon, I had performed as La Veneno with my tit’s out, at a Buddhist festival, singing about queerness and permaculture, for mostly heterosexual people. I come home to see plants few recognise as medicine, such as elderberries and blackberries wilted, leaves on trees that should be verdant green scorched by the sun’s heat, and while fires burnt people’s homes in other places, I see that the crisis is real and it was on my doorstep, in an admittedly subtle way compared to videos and stories I have seen, especially from the global south.
I had felt so proud of myself performing like that in a place like that, and it all came crashing down, to feeling like a total hypocrite singing about permaculture in a silicone breast plate, because it is made from the same fossil fuels that collectively we are over using and causing so much damage with, and because I ordered it on Amazon prime knowing the working conditions and pressure to pack things so I can get them within 24 hours can be a nightmare.
I felt like I had been mad to forget the severity of the situation, I felt like I was mad feeling grief that the medicine hardly anyone values anymore was dying, like I was mad for thinking there was a huge problem because people mostly seem to be carrying on as normal, and even people who care thought things would be ok when I didn’t, and I started thinking they would be again too, I read humanity is good at deluding itself. I found myself wanting to go out in the street and set fire to myself, to make a point and also so I wouldn’t have to live through the predicted food shortages,famines,floods, fires… that are happening for some people already and were here in less severe ways. Even having to work to get money eat seems wrong.
I read someone did actually set themselves on fire to try and do something about the crisis we are in, and also about a man who has been an activist for years trying to get on the list for assisted dying in Canada, should the situation worsen in the ways its predicted to. But also because the anxiety that is often pathologised, of being aware that we are on course for disaster and not changing enough, was becoming harder and harder to live with.I also read the UN last year even said the situation is like half of humanity being in a “collective suicide”.
I was also devastated by being alone again after being with an amazing team of people, some I met the year before & one was a close faerie friend, and I got on so well with the new people too, most of them were like faeries even though they were mostly hetero. We made art in nature and lived mostly outdoors for 2 weeks. Although most of the festival site was just a big grass monoculture field, the places I was in most of the time were covered by tree’s, were kind of marshy & wet and abundant with different green plants. I see nothing of the heat damage there which made it so much more shocking when I come home
I love the attention, and part of my intention with dressing as Veneno was fulfilling a desire, to temporarily become “a sculpted creature, a human Venus” and be worshiped like she was shown in the fictionalised tv show but also in clips of the real Veneno. There is a darker scene of this, where after not being allowed to continue being on tv and still being a sex worker in the park (which she also had to do to be able to transition and still work to live and pay for hormones, surgery etc.) where she is telling a man to worship her as he masturbates, calling her La Veneno and eventually cumming on her face. It is clear it doesn’t really fulfil her. It is strange because I am not sure my desire for attention as La Veneno is entirely healthy either, but it gives me and others so much joy too, and although I have thought about enacting a scene where I force people to worship me. It seems like there is a much more subtle recognition that I am channelling some kind of feminine goddess energy and there is some kind of reverence for that taking place at times
Most of what I buy I try to buy second hand, partly because of money, mostly because of all the guilt and angst and confusion that goes into trying to consume ethically, if there is such a thing at this point. My first Veneno outfit was nearly all new stuff, and I resisted getting the breast plate for 6 months. Someone said it was like I was expressing a part of my soul when they see me in it, and that wasn’t even in person. My most recent Veneno outfit where I look probably ten times more like her in outfit and hair and body, was mostly second hand, or stuff I bought for the first look, mostly made from a £2 dress I battled for weeks to relearn to sew myself, thinking of Cristina (La Veneno’s real name) sewing her own outfits to go and work in the park and fund her own transformation
I don’t watch a lot of tv anymore, I never talk much about tv or films I watch either, but Veneno was different, I’ve been on a mission for people to watch it with much heart-warming success, people being touched by seeing people like themselves shown which is rare, her story of being so traumatised by her upbringing, with a village amd especially mother who hated her and see her as a Maricon or faggot boy, to becoming “la bomba de españa” La Veneno, the powerful. Seductive Spanish bombshell, an overnight sensation for her beauty and outrageous demeanor, sharp tongue and frankness about being transgender…. discovered working in the very park, the transformation ground, where she had been able to rebirth herself in her own fantastical self image.
An embodiment of Lilith, Cristina was ultimately cast out just as cruelly, as many women are, put on a pedestal and then torn down for entertainment, an abusive boyfriend and a belief as a trans person she deserved no better didn’t help. Instead of being exiled to the desert and making demon babies, this Lilith was sent to a men’s prison. Where sex work seemed to have been mainly on her terms, surrounded by a fierce army of other trans women in the park, here she was completely used by men, emerging broken into the arms of her friend Paca La Pirana, who even played herself in the tv show.
After prison ,gaining weight and aging, she became a subject not of fascination but of ridicule, humiliated and branded a liar for mixing facts like having to do sex work to be able to transition with probable fantasies like there being a thousand whores in the park and biting off of her arch nemesis’s nipple. Called a broken toy and toxic to the lgbt community, a bad role model who never called herself one, she always said she never went looking for fame either, it came looking for her. After prison Cristina met the boy who would become Valeria Vegas & a great advocate for her, and meeting Cristina was also a catalyst for Valeria to start her own transition, seen for what she was by the “forbidden woman” who had been on the tv late at night.
Cristina understandably after going through so much had trauma, a self destructive streak, mental health issues, substance abuse issues, a toxic relationship with fame/tv shows, suicide attempts, but also a strong trans/queer chosen family, in spite of seemingly being totally estranged from her birth family after transitioning. It is shown that she never deserved the treatment she had, you see her as a beautiful innocent child, a brave human being just trying to be true to themselves, described as being full of light, and unloved by a mother who had a brother like her, who was probably treated even worse by his family decades before. Her story was written by Valeria in a book. Cristina made her comeback as “La Veneno” people in the lgbt community realised by being so visible she had taken bullets for them, like a shield, paved the way for them, whether she had intended to or not, she had certainly never claimed to be a role model but she did make it better for others and the tv show made about her life has that power too, especially where Valeria’s translation is portrayed, with the acceptance of her mother, she leads a more normal life where she has to remember her trans/queer family rather than depend on them for survival
Sadly she died from a head injury not long after the book was launched, but that led to people massively re-evaluating her and her becoming a legend, just typically not one that lived to see it. her family suddenly had an interest in her again, and they called him and brother and son, and her birth name, and only half her ashes were scattered in the Park where she wanted them, where she had once been a happy whore, with her trans family, her birth family tried to take them all back to Adra, at least that is how it went in the show.
Clearly this all means a lot to me and it’s really helped me accept myself and others more, and I love performing as Veneno, I am like her in many ways and proud to be so, but it also feels wrong buying the the things I have, and part of me just wants to go completely off grid, offline, just be in nature like indigenous people used to be and still are in some places.. Be like the two spirits from the past in native American cultures I have read about who were able to be a part of society in their trans and queerness. there is no time machine though, but maybe we can relearn old ways and new ways and combine them. I don’t believe we can have a big capitalist machine capable of getting breastplates to castles in 24 hours and a good, biodiverse, simple, humble, connected, sustainable, regenerative life on earth though, and carrying on like this is probably hastening our potential demise, which is also where I am happiest, outside, in the elements, actively being outside, sleeping outside, shitting outside, planting and cutting things, gardening, being part of it in a real physical way, rather than solely some more abstract sitting by a tree meditating spiritual way… but singing about stuff like this, reinterpreting the old ways, calling for a permaculture paradise, in plastic armour, in a silicone breast plate, is like being battle ready in a War, which maybe we are in
From the possible/imagined perspective of Collared Dove,
There i was, welcoming spring one morning, about to coo to my love when, all of a sudden a noise that sounded like ‘’YOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOO’’ emanated from the warm rectangle cave below.
I was struck dumb with awe and infatuation. What beauteous dove has come before us? Such a booming sensual call could only come from the strongest, healthiest, beige-est most collared of our species…
I flew down without a care onto the horizontal deadwood creations to try and get a glimpse…
Such a sight was presented to me that I should not wish upon the most lowly city pigeon…
Behind the solid water barriers I beheld a monstrous gathering of humans, of all shapes and sizes and smells. Dressed in the most ludicrous colours (if they were dressed at all). Bustling and jostling for the comfiest roosting spots…
One of their number, with a large white flapping appendage sprouting from their hands suddenly motioned, the solid waters were parted and their cry went up again, ‘’YOOOOOOOOOHHHOOOOOOOOOO’’
I was floored. Despite the grotesqueness of this human grouping, which usually spells trouble for all other species around, (which by all rights should have sent me flying away in fear!)
I saw in them a beauty, a connectedness, a boundless biophilic way of being that I have not heard of in their species anywhere other than in the oldest of dove tales…
I could not help but stare, beak open, feathers a-fluster… Could this be what we have been waiting for? The old tales talked of long ago times where humans were present, living intertwined with us birds, the plants, the sun and stars, talking with us…but I always thought this were as realistic as a mole up a tree…But here now, in-front of me, in their fiery nesting hole they were calling in a language of love, an inter-species call of togetherness, of welcoming to the new day and all the ancestors of every being…
I could do nothing but COOOO! I cooed and cooed until my friends came down and upon the humans next cry we joined in ‘‘YOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOO’’ and we rejoiced and cried with laughter, finally the humans are waking up, finally they are alive again, finally they are calling the Earth and we can understand again! We answer with Love: WELCOME HOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMEEEEEE!
Mackerel Sky xxx
P.s. This gathering was such a warm, loving and cosy space. The vulnerabilities and joys and playfulness that come when waking up from Winter darkness where held and loved. The feeling of joy is deep, can’t wait for the next one, love and miss you all.
This year’s Imbolc gathering was a literal rebirth for me. After my long journey with chronic pain and spine surgery, it was wonderful to be able to share energy, touch, mirth, music and magic. When we speak our truth and are heard, when we learn to balance individual and community needs, there’s no limit to what we can manifest. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Here are a few reflections I’d like to share, sparked by many conversations at the farm.
Growing pains are natural and welcome – they are our teachers.
Community is always work in progress and messy – and this is good.
Our spaces for growth are where we show up in community, seek to heal fractures experienced by the community and expand what we can be together. We can best serve our evolution by focusing energies on our gatherings, diversifying the types of gatherings, placing magic at the centre of gatherings and using gatherings to more fully engage faeries in wider community matters.
Social media is not faerie space!
Safety at gatherings allows healing and is challenging – it takes time, focus, learning/unlearning, sustained effort.
Taking responsibility for personal behaviour at gatherings is courageous. Enabling this, without punishment or fear of exclusion, and with genuine support for change, is radical. Take a breath with me. “There are no rules in faerie space” cannot mean one fae’s freedoms override the freedoms of others. If this is a difficult thought, that is good: it should be, for it is where “community” stops being a word and becomes a transformational power. Take another deeper breath and allow this reflection to settle. So we grow.
While many experience Faeriespace as a welcoming, healing space where personal growth is not only possible but inevitable, this is not the case for all. It has come to be described as a “safe space” and thought of as specifically inviting troubled and vulnerable people to come and experience healing. We heard at Featherstone in Autumn how, for faeries of colour, those with disabilities, and recovering addicts, and for others too, the Safe Space ethos fell short of expectations for various reasons.
What we are is a very open space, one that welcomes anyone who wants to be there, and never asks for credentials or explanations, no-one is even asked to state that they identify as a faerie (though we are asked to agree that we assume responsibility for our own safety and will exercise due care, and to state that we have read the call to the gathering). So, we welcome those who’ve heard that it’s a great party space and you can do anything you want and everyone’s cool with it, and we welcome those who’ve heard they will be completely accepted and nurtured and have a chance to heal. Both of those are sometimes true, but sometimes they don’t sit together too well.
Many of us as Queers carry a lot of Stuff/emotional baggage/psychic wounds/family trauma etc. etc., and we gather together as Faeries and ramp them up. Emotions run high, we talk about them and scream and cry about them, and show them to each other. It can be overwhelming. For someone who is very vulnerable and expecting healing, that’s actually a very stressful and challenging environment, not necessarily what they think of as a therapeutic one.
The Faeries are not a therapeutic community; Welfaeries are not necessarily in any way trained to deliver emotional first aid, and have no obligation to be available or to make themselves available, as we are all volunteers. That’s not to say that you won’t get help when you need it, I always do, but I know that I can’t always expect it right from the moment I need it, or that anyone has a responsibility to me to provide it.
It’s been said that there are no rules in Faeriespace, and while that might sound great to some, it means that if we object to behaviours that make us feel unsafe, and that we were told we wouldn’t see, then that objection can simply be dismissed. What we don’t have are sanctions, or any mechanism, other than Heart Circle, to deal with situations that some find unacceptable, and no-one can be made to engage with Heart Circle if they choose not to. We are not an organisation, that can provide formal training and check competence, and have defined rules and ways to deal with transgressions. Many might say that this is our strength, this is how we are Radical, and this is precisely what helps us learn and grow, as we deal with disagreements.
It’s clear, though, that this is not what people expect of a Safe Space. We can’t guarantee that no-one will say or do a thing that is deeply problematic for someone else – for example racist micro-aggressions that were recently experienced. We always now hold consent workshops and make it very clear that consent for physical contact must always be obtained, and this is a vital part of Faerie culture, but we can’t guarantee that it will always be respected. As well as clearer information about lack of accessibility at our venues, and whether to expect to see drugs and alcohol used openly, we need to be more clear that Faeriespace is challenging and is not suitable for everyone.
This isn’t to say we are not working hard on changing culture. From the last gathering there were offshoot groups on antiracism, and meetings on how to make the Albion faeries more inclusive to people with disabilities as we grow, there were also Heart Circles for people with neuro-diversities which were smaller, and people could share a common ground.
That said, the Radical Faeries is a counter-culture movement, and it requires participation from all to make change. We welcome talk that’s sometimes difficult and challenging, but enables us to grow more inclusively. We welcome feedback from our gathering and take it seriously. Anyone can be involved in organising a gathering, and be involved in organisation of the Faeries of Albion.
I propose a statement such as the following be posted on the Albion Faeries website, in each Gathering Call and in emails sent to those who book.
“Faeriespace is not a ‘Safe Space’. While we strive to make it as inclusive, tolerant, welcoming, healing and safe as possible, this is work in progress and we are yet to get it right. We may never get it right, because Faeries are people, we are growing as a tribe, and we welcome all who want to come. This includes people who you may find challenging and situations you may find difficult, and while we do our best to help anyone who needs it, we can’t take responsibility for anyone else. We welcome all energies working towards creating Safe Space, but we cannot guarantee it. Please consider very carefully whether coming to a gathering will be right for you.”
I welcome edits, revisions, other suggestions, and further discussion.
‘Fairy was championed among hippie gay men, a self-referential term like the more inclusive “flower child.” It contained a reference back to childhood fascinations with insight into hidden, magical realities which the regular people, the adults — the straight people — knew nothing of. After all, people couldn’t see fairies unless the fairies wanted to be seen. For many in the “first generation of gay men” — those who came out as they were entering young adulthood at the time of the rise of gay liberation in 1969 — the same generation that years later was struck hardest by AIDS, fairy was a reference to Peter Pan, the creation of the 19th Century homosexual English writer J. M. Barrie, revivified by Walt Disney in the 1950s as that obviously “cute young gay guy” with the pixie friend who saved middle-class children from normalcy with the “good news” that if you just believe (i.e., if you’re not fooled by the socially accepted conventions about how things should be) you can fly.
“Fairy” was a term of derision turned positive in the style of “Jew” for Hebrews and of “faggot” for homosexuals. Though, in fact, “”fairy” was never, like faggot, an angry term of derision with overtones of violence and hate; rather it conveyed — and conveys — a delightful suggestion that, just as we are, gay men are light-hearted, whimsical and non-serious, i.e. “flighty.” In the hard, deadly serious, macho competitive dog-eat-dog world of modern, urban heterosexual males, the news that it’s okay to be non-serious is the proverbial breath of fresh air. It’s why everybody loves an effeminate homosexual as comedian (Are You Being Served’s Mr. Humphries, for example). It is interesting to observe that the effeminate comedy figure is often the truth-teller, the jester who can say anything to the King, the one who can “tell it like it is.”
‘Toby Marotta argued in The Politics of Homosexuality that gay liberation was the flower of the counterculture, the perfect demonstration of the notion of revolution through consciousness-change. Clearly when homosexuals changed how they thought about themselves, spurred on and supported by the work of the early activists (Harry Hay, Donald Webster Cory, Frank Kameny, Dick Leitsch, Craig Rodwell, Randy Wicker, Arthur Evans, Arthur Bell, Jim Owles, Marty Robinson, Bruce Voeller, Mitch Walker — to mention only a few), instead of miserably suffering their homosexuality, hiding and trying to change, they came out to playÉ and they discovered there were more of them than they’d ever imagined. They weren’t alone. And the others they discovered were wonderful people: attractive, appealing, sensitive, considerate, plucky — sometimes, maybe, a little “fucked up in the head,” as it were — but overall great people to have as comrades-in-arms (the flesh-and-blood kind). And that discovery changed gay community and gay identity forever.‘
‘In early 1979, Harry Hay, his longtime companion John Burnside, Don Kilhefner and I issued a public Call for a Spiritual Conference of Radical Faeries that unexpectedly drew hundreds of gay seekers to a remote desert retreat over the Labor Day weekend. We had modestly expected 50-75 guys to respond for this meeting on Gay Spirit, but the way-overflow crowd was so enthusiastic and the resulting weekend so fabulous that we immediately resolved from then on to foster Radical Faerie gatherings and circles wherever possible. At our second national gathering in the Rockies the next summer, even more queer men responded, and the resulting week-long effort had an even more smashing impact building on the first. And thus a grassroots social movement was born, the Radical Faerie Movement. Since then, Faerie circles and gatherings have spontaneously sprouted all over, nationally and overseas, and have become an ongoing feature of gay community life for over fifteen years.
‘Not only is the Faerie movement a significant part of contemporary gay life, but it is a uniquely influential one. It is 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.
‘Over the years two strands of thought have developed about what the Faerie Movement was and should be — and some significant animosity between them. These strands can be identified by two charismatic characters in recent gay cultural history: Arthur Evans and Harry Hay.
‘Arthur Evans was a homosexual graduate student in philosophy at Columbia University who was politicized by the student uprisings that rocked Columbia during the spring of 1968. After the Stonewall Riots the next year he became involved with Manhattan’s fledgling Gay Liberation Front, and he helped establish the Gay Activist Alliance to supercede GLF. Then in the early 70s, Evans moved to San Francisco and, still the scholar, in 1973 began publishing articles on his own researched, philosophized and radicalized vision of gay history. In 1975 he and some friends formed a small pagan-inspired ritual group called “the Faery Circle” to act out the ecstatic pansexual revels he believed he had uncovered in the hidden past of Western Europe. In 1976 Evans gave a series of public lectures on his research, and in 1978 published his influential book Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture.
Arthur Evans
‘According to Evans, a pagan-influenced counterculture had long survived in Europe after the triumph of Christianity, featuring ecstatic sexual worship of nature, the Great Mother and a horned consort god typified by figures like Dionysos, Pan and Cernunnos, and a salient feature of this pagan counterculture was that its leaders were often women and gay men. It was this non-conforming counterculture that the Christian Church persecuted as “witches.” Famous from this argument is the notion that the epithet “faggot” derives from the use of homosexuals as tinder for the bonfires that burned witches and heretics.
‘Evans argued that by following this pagan-descended, goddess-centered, pansexual baccanalian spiritual tradition, gay people today could integrate a sense of gay pride, love of nature, and spiritual power into an ongoing experiential synthesis. This historical tradition, he said, was the basis of what has come to be called the Radical Faerie Movement.
Harry Hay
‘The other strain of thought can be identified with Harry Hay, co-founder of the Mattachine Society in 1951, and perhaps the pivotal figure in the creation of the modern gay movement. Hay was an idealist, non-conformist, and Marxist in the 1930s; he taught music history at the Southern California Labor School, and even as early as 1948 was trying to organize his homosexual friends into a political movement for social change. Important to Hay’s development is that his first homosexual experience had been with someone who had known a member of the short-lived Chicago-based Society for Human Rights in the 1920s that had been modeled on the earlier homosexual rights efforts in Germany by such men as Magnus Hirschfeld. Through that homosexual bonding, Hay was connected to a history, and a succession, of homosexual identification. Indeed, already by 1950 Harry Hay, building on earlier gay-centered thinkers, like Edward Carpenter and Karl Ulrichs, was defining gays as a separate people with our own characteristics and dimensions. And by 1970 he was articulating a magical “gay window” on reality entirely “other than” and alien to nongay thinking. In the early 70s he established a “circle of loving companions” to purposely live and explore these insights in gay consciousness. Hay’s fundamental concept is that what we today call a Gay People can be found in all times and places, such as the “third gender” people of tribal societies, or in European tradition, such as the original Mattachine brotherhood of free-thinking, liberated troubadours during the Middle Ages. These Mattachines were not simply homosexuals among groups of pagans. These were consciously homosexual people, and if they were attracted to paganism it is because, as homosexuals, they were opposed to the oppressiveness of mainstream culture, and were not “sexually liberated” because they were worshippers of Pan, but because they were queer (see Harry Hay, Radically Gay).
‘Harry Hay and Arthur Evans make for a fascinating contrast. Here were two gay men, each basically unknown to the other, promulgating similarly magical visions of gayness with parallel theories of sacred gay roles in past societies. Yet their visions went in diametrical directions. Arthur’s led to pansexual ecstatic revels infused by a man-and-woman-loving horned god and his mother, whereas Harry’s vision led to a reunion with one’s lost original Lover in concert with others through “subject-Subject consciousness” to thereby attain a homosexual cosmic wholeness that unlocks spiritual and creative treasures.‘
Mitch Walker
‘Harry, myself and the other founders — holding to the viewpoint of a Gay People — 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, not to the outlaw worshippers — of all sexes and orientations — of the “old religion” of medieval Europe. In our view, faeries are the supernatural denizens of a homosexual world both feared and revered by the ordinary folk. The original faeries were so-called not because they worshipped the Three Fates, as Evans says about the fey leaders of pagan traditions, but because to encounter them was always highly fateful. In my opinion, Arthur Evans’s pansexual Dionysian vision is not actually gay-centered. The Faerie movement is “Radical” not because it is anti-Establishment but because it makes a revolutionary shift to homodeity itself as source of spiritual truth, rather than to alien sources — whether the breeder God of Christians or the bisexual Bacchus of Arthur Evans. Evans is, not surprisingly, a constructionist on gay orientation, claiming that the “dichotomy of homosexual vs. heterosexual is itself a modern cultural construct and that it fails to apply to the pan-sexualism of many ancient societies.” In contrast, Harry Hay and I are essentialists who feel there is a unique Gay Spirit separate and different from other sexual truths, occurring in all times and places. When we called the Faerie gathering in 1979, we were aiming to reclaim and explore the magical homosexual universe known by queer wisepeople in all cultural traditions. The tradition of gay radical essentialism expressed in the 1979 Call marks a historic break with the earlier-70s efforts at repossession of stigmatized gay labels: the Sissies, Faggots, Faeries, etc. of that era. These earlier efforts sought to theoretically desegregate then-current movements such as the counterculture, feminism, and socialism to include homosexuality, in effect subsuming gayness toward other agendas. Such efforts reflect a political position that minimizes group differences. In contrast, the Radical Faerie movement successfully arose on the ashes of these earlier efforts precisely because of its source in a different, gay nationalist tradition.‘
ACCESSIBILITY : This location is not wheelchair accessible, there is specific information about how many stairs and where these are situated in the property on the 
Diversity Over recent years, the Faeries have begun a radical journey from a primarily white, gay, male community, towards a community that is more inclusive of the diverse spectrum of ethnicity, gender and sexuality that makes up queerdom.
