Category Archives: Miscellaneous

Posts that aren’t elsewhere…

The Boundary Wound

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

Serve the suffering , Phoinex

The tension of ordering breast plates from Amazon to my faerie castle during a climate crisis

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 

By Unicorn

Imbolc 2023, Alternate Faerie Dimension, Paddington Farm, Glastonbury

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.

Qweaver Reflections on Imbolc gathering & Albion Faeries

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.

We plant our feet

Bring forth good soil

Smile and frown

As if promised more

By skies that stretch to nowhere

Make shivers of stars

Shared breath

Into this beauty.

With love Qx

A Safe Space?

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.

Love, Blossom xx

Radical Faerie Origins

in the words of those who were there!

From White Crane Journal #34, 1997 editor’s note:

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.

from Contradictory Views on Radical Faerie Thought, by Mitch Walker, 1997:

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.

When we once more meet together

The Ancestors Rejoice

in the Faeries as a tribe

of Radical Adventurers

moving beyond Pride

and into the Power found inside

through connecting to the elements

to the plants and trees

to rivers, lakes and seas,

through the sharing of the heart

and expression of our arts

through the merging of our genders,

marriage of the god and beast,

gathering in circles

and making a life a feast

of love, music, magic –

we are the children of the Goddess

and all mystics that went before.

When we gather, we learn to fly

and how to open doors

that re-unite the worlds

and reveal to us who we are:

the walk-between people

the liminal ones

genderless or genderbending –

diving deep before transcending –

sun-eyed and summoning the dawn.

2020-02 – Global Gathering 3 at Warmwaterberg Spa, South Africa – fireside dancing

When we once more meet together

our drums and hearts will beat as One

for people waking from the nightmare

we are a sign that the new world has ~ already ~ begun.

Younity

By Charles

Serendipity

‘In Vino Veritas’

Homage to Edward FitzGerald 1809 -1883

Smiling eyes – daring winks can lead to sharing drinks

Poetry’s Infinity of Ideas, wines bouquet of connection

Universality’s highways & byways linked by thinking

Now reaching out as they generate within… Glowing

Passports to Paradise ~ Celestial Arts of the Heart

Empty pages rages lie dying… live as night skies

awakening darkened eyes leave signature dew

drops twinkling on the morning hill, so

Time gently sips Eternity

until

Loving the movement

Living the Moment – You will

Faerie dreaming

by Earth Spirit and Shokti

Evening time by Earth Spirit

He who sees also hears

Bring onto me the babe in arms

Heal the wounds of the past

For they bring only sadness to thee

Five of one half a dozen of another

One wrong or two right

.

Hold in your heart the journey of life

Love the thunder and the cloud

They all bring a message

Open your heart sit and be still

Float with the thoughts

Centre your actions

.

The river flows deep, wide and inside

As you stand on the bank

In awe of it’s destruction and with the voice of alarm

Hold each others hands or face extinction

.

Have love in your heart always

It will bring satisfaction

Share if you can, don’t worry if you can’t

Others will carry the flag between them

Have faith and hope, never doubt your connection

Life holds fulfilment as well as disappointment.

Dreamtime 2020 by Shokti

The shift of gear and climate from Summer to Autumn was sudden this year. Mid-October and it’s looking like it might be a long winter ahead of pandemic regulations and a lot of solo time for many! The personal retreat energy that many of us felt in the Spring is on again!

We had planned to hold our regular October Samhain Gathering at Featherstone Castle this month, but alas, for the first time since we started meeting there in 2006, this year we will not gather anywhere at all. As we enter the time of inward focus during the Autumn and Winter seasons I would like to encourage every faerie to release any sadness that this situation is causing and turn our thoughts to the potential in this collective downtime, this Dreamtime.

Let’s Dream of future gatherings, heart circles, drum circles and more. In Dreamtime we can turn some of our mental energies to creative visualisation, to imagining future events and, crucially, the emotional energy of those occasions, that we wish to see manifest in the coming years. The magic works when we Dream from the place of abundance and joy, not of lack, and not only see the vision – feel it, hear it, smell it, internally touch it too.

The world is going through a massive transformation. Much pain is coming up for healing, many people are going through huge shifts. We are healers, and we are needed. Our circles will meet again. Let’s Dream them into being.

At our Samhain gatherings we honour the ancestors, celebrate the summer just passed and prepare ourselves for the inner healing journey of winter. We return home from the gathering with our hearts full, knowing we have the support of tribe behind us and the love of tribe within us. Even this year we can conjure this spirit, this connection, this comfort. We do not have to feel alone. The internet connects us, but so do the subtle vibrational fields of love, compassion, joy and magic. When we cannot assemble for collective ceremony, we can spot that the Goddess may be calling us to do personal ritual during the Samhain season, to expand our own magical practice and sense of connection to other worlds, and to all the beautiful places within ourselves,

Radical Faeries may not have held physical gatherings this year, but our cyberspace efforts have been groundbreaking. Through Heart Circles, No-Talent Shows, even online Gatherings, we have been communicating as a tribe at a global level. Our presence in the world as a community of creatives, healers, magicians and lovers has a real, positive impact on many lives and shines as an example of queer love-in-action to the rest of the world.

The dark half of the year is here, but when there is darkness outside it’s the time to turn up the light on the inside, and Dream.

Gong Bath reflections on climate change by Earth Spirit

We are all equal whatever you think

We are of one creation and one unity

The thirst that you feel is only a reflection

Of life held too tight and full of restrictions

You feel trapped and frustrated

But this is only the beginning

There will be much more in your inner being

In case you have fear, please believe in divine intervention

You are not alone in this situation

Because this is a global institution

.

Hold out your hands for the gifts that will come

Answers to questions and reasons for discussion

They are not blind, they just need you to see

Beyond today and this mission

.

Life will go on, whatever you think

This planet and world are not ready to sink

They have plans and contingencies inbuilt in their systems

The world is made of magic, this you must believe

It can hold and heal itself, beyond your imagination

Graveyard in lockdown

27th March 2020 Lock down conversations in a graveyard with the universe. By Grounded Spirit.

I look around at the hills and wonder what all those people are thinking in their homes right now. Some worry about finances, jobs, businesses, food, death others of sickness.

A true reflection about priorities and what actually matters now. Some need freedom, some security, others communication, connection or touch.

We come together this day to bring hope.

To tell you the stars still shine and the moon still rises and moves.

Humanity must listen to the song on the wind.

It is not an inconvenience it now blows, but a clear message.

Blow your doubts and memories out and away.

The time has come to go within

To see the truth of yourself

See what is within your heart

The heart that has been crying out to be heard

It’s message will be clear enough

Be still now my child, it is your time to awake

To open yourself to the other way of living

You have been living in fear, for too long

Now is the time to live in joy

Reclaim your history

Reclaim what has been taken and denied, from you for all these years

Listen to nature call

It calls you to take heed

To feed the soil

To protect the land

To clean the sea

To spread the message of love and light

Each child stands now naked before us

No longer able to hide behind money and greed

No longer in need of materialistic things

The bells have gone

The glitter dispensed of

You are empty of your dreams

This is the time of renewal

A time for peace

A time for love not war

Hear the birds

now how they sing

They sing of happiness and joy

The animals are not afraid

They don’t hide or leave

They trust, they know, they sense the change to come

Open your heart to what you already know

Feel the beat of the many hearts,

not just your own

You share with everyone

The same home

Breath the clean air

Drink the clean water

See the mountains alive with new vegetation

This is healing time

Meditation time

Slow time

Reset time

It is your time

All the sign posts have been blown away

The road is now clear

It won’t be the same

It can’t be the same

It shouldn’t be the same

Look in your hands

See what you hold most precious

It is not a figure on paper

or cash in your hand

It is love between people

It is safety together

It is holding and touching

Connecting and creating

Breath in the new life force

As you know you can

It is here to lift and sustain you

It is part of the plan

Replace that old fear and learning

With a fresh new approach

One less of surviving

Now set on living in hope

Sit and watch the wildlife

The flowers that grow

They all have a story

That you should know

They have been trying to tell you

For a very long time

But you were too busy

Rushing through life

We can help you

Like we used to do

When you used to sit close to the fire

And listened as we spoke

You heard the answers in the smoke

The visions came from the flames of the oak

Bond as you should

Care for your folks

Neighbours and others

Who may now feel broke

Lift up your heads

The healers within

Now is your time

To work with the ill

This is not about sickness or plague

This is about humanity and staying brave

Many will die

It is an awful truth

But think of the compassion

And message of hope

Dance if you want

It is OK to sing

Whatever sustains you

And awakens the new dream

Use your tears to water the plants

Let them grow from your sadness

So there is still hope

Search within yourself

Before others speak

Know your true destiny

Without their rope

Leave your coat on the hook

It is your time to sit and hear

You are loved very much

But you have lost your path

This is to remind you

What could come to pass

Now I will leave you with this flea in your ear

Remove the sadness and the fear

Sending hugs to all in need

But remember your destiny

The real one you need.

Love and blessings to all now

You are not forgotten

We do not know how

Sending love to your heart

And food to your bellies

Knowledge to your brain

And leaving you to discover.