Back in December when I found out which of my proposals were accepted, it didn’t sound so bad. I was involved in two offerings for Pantheacon (Pcon), and I also was accepted for two presentations at another conference that same weekend. It seemed entirely doable to present twice on Saturday at the other conference, perform in a ritual theater piece that night, and sit on a panel on Sunday morning. I’d have plenty of time for socializing and networking.

I was actually kind of relieved that the other proposal I’d submitted to Pcon wasn’t accepted. I had already told DK that I would only be in Oracles from the Living Tarot (OLT) if there was a last minute spot. However, heading into January my presentation was accepted. OK, five things. Still doable right?

Flash forward to three weeks before Pantheacon. My life is rehearsals 2x week for A Modern Dionysian Initiation (AMDI), ½ hour phone check ins with students from a class I teach, 30hr work weeks, materials prep, class meetings, planning sessions and craziness. I have actually never been so busy in my entire life. Add to that mix a last minute cast need for OLT because I’m a loving and devoted husband. Leading up to Pcon I was very stressed about how it was all going to work out.

Arriving at con: We’re about 20 hours late. There’s still a ton of prep work to do, and soon the room will be filled with maenads. Well two, but maenads take up a lot of space. DK leaves to take a walk around the con. I stay behind to practice my 9pm presentation and finish some last minute prep for the session. I’m super excited. It’s day 1. First official stop is the Pagan Alliance suite to socialize at Queer Cocktails. I have about 45 minutes. I meet some great people including Les and Sister Krissy Fiction. I also began handing out my own ribbons, “One Ribbon to Rule Them All.”

I head down to the rooms where I will present “Lifting the Veil: Exploring Our Own Gender Identity.” This originally was meant to be a co-presentation with a colleague Dr. Christine Brooks. We were to deliver the same presentation the following day at the other conference. However, Christine wasn’t able to come. I still wanted to present some of the material, but I decided to change it up a bit. I started by stating that the presentation was first and foremost to be about community binding. I wanted the people in the room, myself included, to be bound to one another as allies and friends throughout the rest of the conference. I was heartened when my community responded that they would like that as well. The very cute Brian called the directions for us, and we cast circle by introducing ourselves and everyone calling back with “Hi, ______.” We grasped each others hands until the circle was complete. Very lovely.

I then guided them through a series of exercises to help them see new aspects of how they perceive gender in themselves and others. This was fairly experimental on my behalf. I wasn’t sure if the work would happen the way I envisioned it. There is refinement to be made, but the intention and results did come through.

After that… well to the party rooms of course. I am a Dionysian after all. I had a lovely, if not early night interacting with all sorts of interesting people.

The next morning I’m up at 8amish so I can go sit in the lobby on a computer and finish typing up my handout for the presentation at the other conference later that day. After that, DK and I head over to Denny’s for breakfast. Why do I always get pancakes? I hate them; I do. But then there’s the butter and syrup. Anyway, I digress. Back to the room to make a prop for AMDI before showering and heading out to the other conference.

The Institute of Transpersonal Psychology (ITP)/Association of Transpersonal Psychology (ATP) Biennial Conference on Spirituality and Psychology was also happening the same weekend as Pantheacon. Pantheacon is my home and where my tribes gather. ITP/ATP is where I hope I can translate all this crazy gender spirituality sexuality stuff into a profession, or at least part of one.

I meet up with the aforementioned Christine Brooks, and we find out we have the main stage for our presentation. The powers that be decided that we would have the best video presence. Ok. It meant, however, that we couldn’t move around and pretty much had to stand side by side the whole time. It is a good thing we love each other. I’m not going to go into specifics about what was presented there, because I’m going to write up a separate post about my thoughts on gender and the work that I do around it. I also hope that I can link to the recorded version of it.
We did a great job and had lots of sharing and feedback from the audience. It was a challenge because we had originally designed the presentation for a regular room. It was less intimate on the main stage, and so some of the juicy sharing didn’t happen.

After that Christine led a round table discussion about the intersections of politics, community, media and pop culture. I was able to stay for about 15 minutes of that before I was off to put up my poster for the poster presentation. Oh I didn’t tell you I had to craft a 40” x 60” poster in the weeks leading up to Pcon as well? It is truly a lovely poster.

The poster session is really a cocktail party where the rest of the conference gets to schmooze while the 8 of us with posters are working. My poster was crafted out of my dissertation work, with the addition of some emerging concepts. That work will come in another post as well. The title of the poster is “Reunion: The Stories of Men Reconciling Their Spirituality and Homosexuality.”

The very first person who walks by stops and says, “This man and man together thing. I think it’s wrong.”

Alrighty then, let’s go. Actually, I think in the end much of the friction was a result of culturally bound ideas, both his and mine. After a long time he moved on, and I headed for the wine. Everyone else that came through was very excited that I had done the work and had really interesting things to share about their own experiences. Someone expressed interest in having me come and speak with their spiritual group. Umm, Yes! I even met a fellow pagan, who was not attending PCon because of this conference. We bonded over that and other like interests.

I arrived back at the hotel around 8pm, and as I enter the room, I remark, “For a gay man I certainly see more than my fair share of boobies.” For now the room really was full of maenads, and Dionysos, all getting ready for the 11pm A Modern Dionysian Initiation (AMDI). I’m not sweating this one. Easy costumes for me, minimal make up. I know the songs. I mostly know the lines, but I know the story cold.

Now for those of you who weren’t there, AMDI was our adaptation of the Rocky Horror Picture Show as told via the myths of Dionysos. A more detailed blog on AMDI is emerging. I have surprisingly a lot to unpack about that one. What needs to be said here about my involvement was that I completely lost the story and most of my lines the moment we started. I was very spaced out while I watched a vision that I’ve held for two years manifest with me in the midst of it. It was a very special experience. Coming out of that at 1ish I was so amped up that I buzzed around until very early in the morning.

And with that morning came another offering: Queer Rites: Making Meaning for and from Sexual/Gender Diversity. That was a fantastic panel. Hopefully soon we will have a link for that as well. On the Panel were joi wolfwomyn, T. Thorn Coyle, and P Sufenas Virius Lupus. It was facilitated by Dr. Sarah Astarte. Though we didn’t quite talk about what the title entails we did have a great dialogue with one another and with the participants in the audience.

After that was lunch and some walking around with DK. This was the only time I really had time to do this during the weekend. Then it was time to go back to the room to prep for my role in Oracles from the Living Tarot (OLT). I was the Hierophant this year. I told DK that if he got to the very end of the line with casting that I would step in for whatever was needed. So on the Monday before the con I’m writing a Hierophant monologue and preparing a performance. And Sunday I’m back in the room painting a sign and memorizing lines.

I will write about OLT here. OLT was my first introduction into doing ritual theater at Pantheacon. The year that I decided I needed to bring home a nice pagan boy was the first year I saw OLT. DK also directed that production, and he played the Fool and the Tower. And well, we just celebrated our 4th Anniversary. I have participated each year since as the Emperor, the Devil, the Wheel of Fortune, and now the Hierophant. OLT has provided me with an opportunity for becoming more comfortable delivering spiritual content to a number of people. The irony is that I don’t really work with tarot much myself. Living with a tarot master rubs off enough I guess!

This ritual was different for me though. I started to crash hard before the ritual even started. I ate. I had a vitamin c packet. I tried to pep up. We do an opening sometimes where we sound 3 ahs. The first ah is where you ask for what you need. I asked for energy and stamina to make it through, and I asked for the Hierophant to be called first. 1. I needed not to be stressed about whether I could perform or not, and I felt like I was going to collapse. 2. The Hierophant had a strong message to share:

Hierophant
Entrance Music: In the Year 2525 by Zager & Evans
(Enter carrying a sign that reads)

JUDGEMENT DAY!
May 21, 2001
October, Something, 2011
December 21, 2012
2525

Message:
“This isn’t about what we believe anymore it’s about them.”
Who are these them?
When we talk about our community, who do we mean?
The people in our organizations?
Our town? Our city? Our country?
Do we mean the people who think like us, or share similar values?
The people who are alike us physically or spiritually?
From where I stand, everyone is community.
My station, my service, is to help bind community together through shared experience, ritual and tradition.
Occasionally, and it is my most sacred duty, I help to bind community together as co-creators of a possible future.
And when it comes time to do that work, a call goes out to as many as may be impacted by the work. Because this is a working for the community, the community as a whole needs to be represented.
For how could I, or you, from our individual positions accurately know the needs of the larger community by only employing the knowledge of those who look like us, or are from the same city, or are a part of our inner circles?
Work done to build a better future for all must be done by all, in partnership and cooperation.
Perhaps if there is judgment day in our future it’s not about the end of the world, but the end of privileging kinds of people over others, and an embrace of the human community.
But, for that to happen,

(turns around, changes sign, and shows audience)

JUDGEMENT DAY!
May 21, 2001
October, Something, 2011
December 21, 2012
2525
NOW

we need not wait until the end of the world.

This message of binding community together was really my focus coming into Pcon this year. The Hierophant helped enable me to stand in that role, and will continue to do so for the next year. As we were on stage waiting for the audience to come in and be seated I continued to fade, then all of the sudden energy was surging in me. At first I thought I was having a heart attack because my heart felt like it was racing, and I was heating up. Craziness, right? It subsides a bit, and we do our opening and go off to where we wait for our cards to be called. Call #1, The Hierophant.

I wish I could say I rose to the occasion, but I didn’t. I started to forget my lines, and I wasn’t punching my points. I just didn’t have it in me. However I was very glad to have gone first and eventually everything returned to homeostasis.

Immediately after that I went outside with a few friends to enjoy the night, as I left them and was walking back to the room I encountered a series of interesting people. First was Les whom I met the first night at the Pagan Alliance party. I had actually encountered him a number of times since our first meeting, but always when I was off by myself somewhere. As I left him I immediately encountered The Rite of the Bear Mother ritualists as they made their way to their rite. I gave Lady Yeshe Rabbit a knowing nod, and she twinkled back.

I then made my way to the blessed fireplace outside of the restaurant in the main lobby. Already warming himself was a gentleman named Cedar. I had seen Cedar all con, often sitting by himself in out of the way places. I broke the ice with “Is it warm sitting here.” “Yes especially if you lean against the grate.” Which I promptly did.

Cedar had an interesting story to tell me. He told me a bit about professional poker. It seems that he was a semi professional poker player, and he was in San Jose for a local tournament or some such gathering. He did some research to see what else was going on and found Pantheacon. He considers himself pagan, came to check it out, and was having a great time.

Soon members of the Circle of Cerridwen moved past me. The last person in the group stopped and asked, “So Hayden are you going to the protest?” I had completely forgotten about it. I answered, “I’m tired. I’m cold. And I’ve been protesting all weekend.” And I meant it. Everything I brought forward this year was my activism and devotion to Dionysos.

Dionysos is an interesting deity. We know what he’s most famous for: wine, ecstasy, theater. He is an agricultural deity. Many of his rites were about breaking taboos and transgressing norms. He is very much a god of the people.

This is how I am in communion with Dionysos now, as a god of the people. He advocates on behalf of those who are marginalized by helping them release their troubles through various means, including but not limited to, nights of drunken revelry. However there are also deeper teachings here.

I have a two fold mission. 1. To empower queer (however you define it) people to free themselves internally (emotionally, intellectually, spiritually). 2. When empowered, to then work to free others and self if necessary in the world (physically, communally, expressively). The way that I’ve done that is through pushing my own limits with performing and being in front of people.

Performing forces me to interact with myself as another person. It helps me to see my habitual patterns as I am acting as a different person. That process, coupled with overcoming fears about performing, being part of some really really amazing work, being surrounded by an amazing group of co-conspirators who believe in me, and I them, has brought me to a place where I can present at two conferences and fully represent my queer and pagan self and communities. It continues to be a really special and powerful process. I try to foster that in others by helping them to manifest their dreams and ideas through Circle of Dionysos.

So when I say, “I’m doing it for Dionysos,” what I mean is that I’m doing it for the people, for my community. Working for the community is hard work. This Pantheacon was hard work. Hard sometimes crazy making work. I wouldn’t trade it for the world, but as they say…

Madness takes its toll.

Agave in the throws of Madness

We are dedicating this production to all Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer people who have been shunned, harassed, and sometimes killed. At times, our family members have denied our existence and our friends have cast us aside. We have sometimes been told not to be who we are. We have sometimes been denied employment, housing and medical care.

I play Agave in our production of The Bacchae. Agave is the daughter of the former King, Cadmus and the mother of Pentheus, the current King. Pentheus and Agave have denied the divinity of Dionysos. They have failed to properly honor Semele, the mother of Dionysos and sister of Agave, who died. Dionysos drives Agave mad. In her madness Agave kills her son because she thinks he is a lion. My character goes from lunacy to grief.

I am dedicating my performance to the LGBTQ Community. I dedicate it to you whose parents have not accepted you. I dedicate it to you who have lost friends because of your sexual orientation or gender identity. I dedicate it to you who have been killed and were anonymous because you lost your entire support system. I dedicate it to LGBTQ people who have given their lives to serve the community. I dedicate my performance to LGBTQ parents who have been denied access to their kids and to LGBTQ people who are not allowed to adopt because of who they are. This is for you.

I offer my body as a receptacle for those LGBTQ spirits who have been harmed or damaged. Please help me inspire and portray the truth. Please help us as we try to change hearts and minds and bring our world justice and equality.

Amethyst Moonwater

For Immediate Release                                                       November 3, 2009

Media Contact: Patricia Kevena Fili, 510-872-0568, pkf@circleofdionysos.org

The Circle of Dionysos proudly presents ritual theatre performances of The Bacchae: A Ritual of Coming Out on November 13 & 14, 2009, 8:00 p.m. at Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory at 1519 Mission Street in San Francisco. $20 donation is requested. No one turned away due to a lack of funds.

Euripides’ ‘The Bacchae’ is one of the best known Greek Tragedies. It is the story of a confrontation between Dionysos, The God of Ecstasy and the repressive and patriarchal ruling family of Thebes. We cannot help but notice that it holds important parallels to the trials members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community face today when coming out. It should be a celebratory experience. For far too many LGBT people who were raised in families and societies that told us this transformation is wrong, the process was equal parts pain and pleasure. We also cannot talk about coming out as a metaphorical death without acknowledging that too many in our community have been literally killed for trying to be who they are.

“I’m really excited by the way our production of The Bacchae manages to encapsulate both the tremendous rewards and the tremendous pain that our community has experienced coming out in a larger society that does not honor difference,” says Derik K. Cowan, Director of The Bacchae, “I hope that productions like this will help us ‘taste the sweet gift of the Gods that is freedom from those who have hurt us.’” As this rite reaches its climax, we will also honor those whose lives and deaths have affected our LGBT community.

The Circle of Dionysos is dedicated to the exploration and celebration of spiritual traditions that honor gender fluidity and sexual variance. We believe that universal diversity is purposeful, and that members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Community possess wisdom that is of vital importance to the community at large. Through public ritual performances, small study groups, and personal spiritual guidance, we seek to help both individuals and our community in discovering, developing, and expressing that wisdom.

###

Sunday brought the cast together for a marathon rehearsal day. (Thank you cast!)

We’re really getting this story told. It was powerful and moving.

At one point I was so moved that I couldn’t stop crying.

The God of Wine, Ecstasy and Theater. Comedy. Mad Women. Ritual. Murder.

How much more can you ask for in a show?!

You know you want to go! Two nights only!

The Bacchae: A Ritual of Coming Out
November 13th & 14th, 8:00PM

At:

Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory
1519 Mission St.
San Francisco, CA 94103

Tickets available now at:

The Scarlet Sage Herb Co.
1173 Valencia St
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 821-0997

AND

The Sacred Well
536 Grand Avenue
Oakland , CA 94610
510.444.WELL(9355)

Luna, Molly, Humming Bird, Manea, Andra Jean and DK all had a fabu time and distributed half of our flyers. We were on our game! We also got to meet up with some of our amazing peeps. Damn why didn’t I get a picture of us with Sister Mary Timothy or Lady Redbush or whoever she was. We also caught up with Mr. Ernesto and fellow Mama Calizo alums The New Eccentrics and Filthy Sex Toy.

The highlight was catching up with Sister Sara Femme. She and Molly had a tearful reunion. It was like watching live action Beaches.

Some Maenads, a Sister, her lover, and a Priest go into a bar.

The boys were pretty the girls were pretty everyone in between was pretty. Pretty Pretty Pretty. Just like mama likes it.

So it wouldn’t be fair right if y’all never got to see all the Maenads. I actually got to be in a picture too. I try not to get obsessed with image, but come on. I’m pretty!

Run Run Run without thinking drawn by the scent of blood

Where will we show up next? Maenad Vampires perhaps? Andra Jean le Hunger? The Hunger

Starting to get it. Starting to get crazy. Come, O ye Bacchae, come!

We’re pleased to announce that we have a venue for our production of The Bacchae: A Ritual of Coming Out.

We’re going to be at Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory. These are the fine folks that Andra Jean and DK were working their heels off for throughout August and into September. It’s a great venue for queer arts and perfectly in line with our mission and vision.

Get ready for the media blitz that will be publicity for The Bacchae: A Ritual of Coming Out.

The Bacchae: A Ritual of Coming Out

November 13-14, 2009
Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory
1519 Mission Street, San Francisco

November 13 & 14, 2009
8:00PM
Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory
1519 Mission Street, San Francisco

The Circle of Dionysos presented The Bacchae: A Ritual of Coming Out, adapted from Euripedes’ text for two nights on November 13 & 14, 2009 at Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory.  This Rite celebrated the convergence of Sovvan, Day of the Dead, National Coming Out Month, and Transgender Remembrance Day.  The following was the description we included in our press release:

The Bacchae is one of the best known Greek Tragedies, the story of confrontation between Dionysos, The God of Ecstasy and the repressive and patriarchal ruling family of Thebes.  We cannot help but notice that it holds important parallels to the trials members of the LGBT community face today when coming out.  Coming Out is the process of reconciling inner truths and ripping apart a public persona.  It is as an initiation into mystery rites, the beginning of a shamanic journey. It should be a joyous, celebratory experience, but for too many of us who were raised in families and societies that told us this transformation is wrong, the process was equal parts pain and pleasure.  Thus we see ourselves in Pentheus, a man who was raised to be King and defender of the status quo who suddenly finds himself facing a force that is stronger than he.  We also cannot talk about coming out as a metaphorical death without acknowledging that too many in our community have been literally killed for trying to be who they are.  As this rite reaches its climax we will also honor those whose lives and deaths have affected our community.

Dionysos seduces Pentheus

Pentheus dominates Dionysos, or does he?