I’m out here in the Rockies, at a small festival called Summerfest, in a national park just north of Yellowstone. The weather is chilly, even in the middle of August, but the scenery is spectacular and the Pagans are, not surprisingly, friendly.
We’re in a camp that is usually leased by a local Presbyterian congregation, one member of which no doubt annoyed the rest of her church by making a fuss over the Heathens using “their†campgrounds. It took a lawyer writing a letter to the Park Service, the church, and this woman to remind everyone that the Park isn’t allowed to discriminate against would-be renters based on their religion.
The woman had been promising to bring a large crowd of Christians to picket the entrance to the festival, but she only managed to attract six or seven people, one of whom was a reporter for the local newspaper. He later interviewed us, which gave us a chance to put out some accurate information about Neopaganism. He told us that the trouble-maker was probably not representative of local Montanans, most of whom have a live-and-let-live attitude.
Last night (Thursday), the festival held it’s opening circle, which was not what most festival-goers think of as such. First there was an hour-long ritual briefing earlier in the evening, then everyone was sent to their tents to nap. When the ceremony began at 11:00 pm, it was an intense, all-night ritual, focused around the alchemically transformative power of the sacred fire and the drums. It seems that many of the drum circles now being done in the western part of the USA are more structured than those in the east, and are designed to produce deep trances and psychologically important changes, rather than just the ecstatic joy I’m used to seeing in eastern Pagan festivals.
While the first hour was a familiar Wiccan style rite, the organizers (Mountain Moon Circle) had obviously spent a great deal of time and effort on costumes—including spectacular masks—and ceremonial props, including a five-person Chinese dragon! Then the drumming started out very low and slow while the participants moved slowly around the fire softly chanting “It starts, very quietly, it starts in the heart. It starts in the center, it starts from a spark…†This was one of a dozen fire chants I’ve never heard before that the organizers provided people with lyric sheets of in their registration packet.
For the Moon Mountain Circle, the fire dancing is specifically an alchemical ritual designed to help people burn away the dross of their spirits. Alas, I still have most of my dross, since my medications don’t let me stay up all night, but from the scarcity of people around at 11:00 the next morning, it appears that three-quarters of the attendees were dancing most or all of the night.
They intend to repeat this process for two more nights, so by the time folks go home most of them will have had as much spiritual transformation as they could handle, and maybe a bit more!