Soccer Fan at a Football Game: UPG in the Broader Community

When Unverified Personal Gnosis (UPG) is a part of your spiritual life, you can feel like a soccer fan at a football game. When interacting with the broader pagan community, it can seem like you are speaking a different language. Many of us have intimate relationship to deity, speaking with and hearing from them possibly on a daily basis. In this class, we will talk about ways to translate between this most intimate (and often unverifiable) spirituality and the world at large.

Disability in Pagan Practice & Communities

Neo-Paganism is often described as an earth-centric religion: our holidays may be bound up in the wheel of the year, we tend to be body positive, and many of us tried to live “natural” lives. As a result of our faith and practices, modern Pagan traditions and communities are often far less accessible for people with disabilities then many mainstream faiths. This workshop looks at, and offers strategies for addressing, the challenges to access that many people with physical and/or mental health challenges encounter in attempting to engage with Pagan spirituality/practice, and with the broader Pagan community.

Walking Down Someone Else’s Road: Working out side of your pantheon and confort zone

Some of us work within a specific pantheon and some of us don’t. Either way, there’s a really good chance that at some point we’re going to be in a situation where the gods and traditions we need to be working with are not our own. Perhaps a deity you have no familiarity with wants you to do something for them, maybe a big something. Or a client or friend who’s background and gods are alien to you needs some kind of assistance or counseling that only you can provide. It’s also possible that you don’t have a pantheon, or your god wants you to work outside of their historic background and lore. What do you do? How do you adapt your ways, and when do you dig in your heels? How do you talk to other people about what your, and maybe their gods want you to do. In this class we’ll talk about our experiences and discuss strategies for managing and thriving in these situations.

Making the Modern Sacred

When we talk about the sacred what comes to mind is often not your car, cell phone, electric range or living room furniture. But in our everyday lives we spend more time with these items than anything else. In our continuing quest to bring meaning and spirituality into greater harmony with our

reality, we will begin to re-frame how we think about and interact with the substance of our lives and bring sacredness into places usually considered mundane or profane.

When your spiritual life sounds like a fantasy novel

Even within the pagan community, it can be hard to be taken seriously as a magic(k) worker or someone who interacts directly with the gods, spirits and dead. This is much harder if your spirituality looks lifted from the pages of a fantasy novel. Take it from Wintersong, a magician and shaman who from the outside looks like his (and his Clan’s) Work is modeled on a Lackey novel (but isn’t). Let’s get together and talk about how to know when you ARE being overly influenced by fiction, how to convince yourself and others when you aren’t, and when maybe it’s ok to lift a little from a favorite book or two.