I spent this past weekend at the South East Women’s Herb Conference and had a wonderful time. This was the second annual conference and had StarHawk as the keynote speaker. I’d never seen her speak before. In fact, I stayed away from her books when I was a kid because I got tired of everyone ‘witchy’ changing their names to things like Raven Silvermoon and Phoenix wild Fire. I just wanted to understand what different religions meant and got turned off by anything that seemed fake. Anyway, I really enjoyed StarHawk’s speaches and ended up buying her most recent book, The Earth Path. She seems like an amazing woman who has been able to bring about change in fantastic ways through reconnecting with the earth.
During the rest of the weekend I took classes on stuff like “digestive health”, “Cordials and Elixirs”, “fermented foods”, helped out at my School’s booth, and went swiming in a lake! It was really amazing and what always makes it so great is the strong sense of community that these ceremonial conferences have and the sense of sisterhood that is there. I wish there were something like this for men so that they could beging to reconnect! With all the male screw ups in higher ranking places, I think they could greatly use a sense of brotherhood, connection, and community!
On a silly note, one of our chickens is an escape artist, and also very friendly and smart. Sweety is an Ameraucana. She’s a little small compared to the rest of the chickens, too. Anyway, the other day it was starting to rain and I heard this annoyed ‘bocking’ sound. I figured Sweety was out again, cause she does that when she has gotten out and wants back in her run. So, when I looked out the door to see where she was (she always hangs out by the chicken run fence), she was headed my way, toward the house, up the steps over the porch, and to the door. She saw toby standing at the door and turned around and led him back to her coop. She then stood there for him to pick her up and put her back in. She was basically saying “look, I’ve been out all day and now it is raining and getting dark. I’m ready to go to bed. Can you help me out here?” It was so cool to see her waddling up the steps to come and get us! 🙂
Wow, great stuff!
– I agree with you that much about the Wiccan movement seems fakey, particularly funky names like that. Upon closer examination, it seems to me to be an almost completely made-up religion rather than a continuous tradition. Wicca seems to be based on sketchy historical evidence and what its practitioners /wished/ it would be. But since it has coalesced around a set of consistent beliefs and communities of practitioners, it seems ultimately to be quite a valid expression of faith.
– Cordials! You must share your new knowledge with me. I’ve nurtured a little business idea around cordials and bitters for a few years now.
– Gotta love those chickens!
See y’all sometime soon, I hope!
I really liked the wiccan ideas, I just felt turned off by everyone changing their names. But, now I see it as a way people take on, or get back in touch with the earth a little more. There is definitely a long history of goddess religions. I think wicca was born from a desire to reconnect with the earth, the seasons and cycles, and many goddess religions were based on just that. Seems very close to druidry.
I checked out the list of speakers at the conference! What a wonderful mix. Lots of knowledge to share. I’ll have to try and remember it for next year (will you help me remember?)
My daughter says chickens are not the smartest on the planet, but I don’t always agree with my daughter! 🙂