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.

PantheaCon 2012 is quickly approaching and as usual the Circle of Dionysos has plenty on its plate to keep itself busy.  Here’s a listing of events we (or some of our members) are presenting as well as a few things we’re totally interested in attending:

Friday at 1:30PM Queer Pagan Panel: Exploring Unity in Diversity: We met Michelle Mueller at the First Annual Conference on Earth based, nature Centered, Polytheistic and Indigenous Faiths this past September, and this panel that she’s put together has some great names on it.  I mean seriously, Carol Queen is hitting PCon?  Hot!

Friday at 3:30 PM The Ekklesia Antinoou and Queer Youth Spirituality: Ekklesia Antinoou is pretty much the reconstructionist older sibling of The Circle of Dionysos–P. Sufenas Virius Lupus has taken part in all of our PCon events to date, and DK Cowan frequently helps out with Ekklesia’s PCon rituals.  It came to our collective attention last year that we’re pretty bad at making space for queer youth at PCon as many of our events involve alcohol, so we’re super excited that Ekklesia has decided to address this issue head on.

Friday at 8PM in the Pagan Alliance Suite:  Queer Cocktails: Circle of Dionysos Council Member DK Cowan will be deejaying this annual Meet and Greet for the Queer Community hosted by our fiscal sponsors The Pagan Alliance.  Come grab a drink or two and meet up with friends (old and new), or maybe even find a weekend romance!

Friday at 9PM Lifting the Veil: Exploring Our Own Gender Diversity: Circle of Dionysos Council Member Hayden Reynolds PhD will be presenting in this workshop on compassionate communication and exploration of the gender continuum.

Saturday at 11:00AM The Holy Queer: Shamans, Healers, Dancers, & Ritualists: Abel R Gomez is unknowingly a Circle of Dionysos’ Associate thanks to his participation in the Queer Deity invocation we did at the 2011 Spiral Dance.  He also invited us to do a workshop at the recent Queer Yo Mind conference at UCSF that he helped organize.  So excited to see what he brings here!

Saturday at 1:30PM Ritual Theater: What is it & How to Use It: Former Circle of Dionysos Council Member Robin la Sirena and Circle of Dionysos Council Member DK Cowan are co-facilitators of this interactive workshop exploring the intersection of ritual and theater and the power of enacted intention.

Saturday at 3:00 PM in the Pagan Alliance Suite:  Tea With the Queens,Long Island Edition: We co-hosted this last year as our followup party to Yes They Are!, and it was so successful that we’re bringing it back.  Get your party started early or just enjoy a  hot steaming cup of tea.  We’ll be sucking lemons, because, you know, we’ve got a big musical ritual coming up later that night…

Saturday at 9:00PM in the Pagan Alliance Suite: A Modern Dionysian Initiation Pre-Party: Snag your goodie bag early and get lubricated before attending the party ritual of the year, A Modern Dionysian Initiantion!  This is gonna be *so* *much* *fun*!

Saturday at 11:00PM A Modern Dionysian Initiation: We’re not doing Yes They Are! this year.  Instead, we decided to have a whole bunch of fun with this Astounding ritual.  Don’t judge a book by its cover, come and find out for yourself what’s so great about midnight ritual!

Sunday at 11:00 AM Queer Rites: Making Meaning for and from Sexual/Gender Diversity: Our Panel offering this year.  Facilitated by Circle of Dionysos Council Member Sarah Astarte PhD, join a lively discussion by Hayden Reynolds PhD, Joi Wolfwomyn, P. Sufenas Virius Lupus, and T Thorn Coyle on multigendered magic and pansexual rites.

Sunday at 7:00 PM Oracles from the Living Tarot 2012: DK Cowan directs again this year and the cast includes several Circle of Dionysos Associates and Initiates.  Find out what the Wheel has in store for you this year!

Sunday at 9:00 PM Queer Celtic Mythology: This was initially supposed to be an offering at the First Annual Conference on Earth based, nature Centered, Polytheistic and Indigenous Faiths, but the presenter had to pull out.  We’re excited to see this presentation at last!

We also want to give shout outs to a bunch of other presenters, even if we can’t attend their stuff:  Christopher Penczak, Hyperion, Rabbit, Thom Fowler, Devin Hunter, Macha NightMare, Mysterium OM, the Circle of Cerridwen, and several others I’m sure we’ve missed in skimming the schedule.   And a special shout out to the programming committee at PCon this year–you’ve outdone yourselves!  Folks, this is going to be an A-MAZ-Ing year!

Click on the link to listen to the talk Walking It Out: Gay Paganism’s Second Wave

(Please note that the recorder died for about 3 minutes in the middle of the presentation.)

L to R: DK Cowan (Circle of Dionysos), P Sufenas Virius Lupus (Ekklesia Antinuou), Hayden Reynolds (Circle of Dionysos), Storm Faerywolf (Brotherhood of the Satyr), Hyperion (The Unnamed Path). Photo Credit. Jamie B.

The Unnamed Path, The Amethyst Pentacle, Ekklesia Antinuou, The Circle of Dionysos: in the past several years a flurry of pagan groups and practices specifically geared to the LBGT community have emerged and caught the attention of the larger pagan community. Why is this happening? What are the similarities and differences between the various paths? What value does this work have for not only GLBTQ pagans, but also for the larger pagan community? Join Hyperion, Storm Faerywolf, DK Cowan, and P. Sufenas Virius Lupus for a round table discussion of these and other topics related to second wave gay paganism.

Yes They Are! Meeting and Greeting the Queerest of the Gods Playshop and Performance

San Francisco, Ca.  The Circle of Dionysos is proud to present the fourth production of their signature ritual performance piece Yes They Are! Meeting and Greeting the Queerest of the Gods, conceived of and coordinated by Derik K Cowan at Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory.

In current times, religion is generally seen to be at odds with sexuality and gender variance, and members of the LBGTIQQ community often become victims of spiritual violence.  Historically, however, this was not the case—those who were gender variant or homoerotically inclined held important and unique positions in the spiritual traditions of many cultures around the world.  Yes They Are! was created to reintroduce some of those ancient (and not so ancient) traditions into our culture and to provide a source of affirmation and blessing to those within the LBGTIQQ community.   To date the Circle of Dionysos has performed three productions of this ritual performance, each featuring a different cast of Deities culled from various cultural pantheons, and all of our performances have attracted both standing room only audiences and rave reviews.

In addition to the ritual performance, The Circle of Dionysos will also be offering an interactive “playshop” facilitated by members of our cast.  During this playshop attendees will be given the opportunity to experiment with some of our creative processes and perhaps develop their own rituals of affirmation.  This playshop is the seed a larger Yes They Are! project that we plan to eventually develop into a full weekend retreat, so this is a great chance to get a glimpse of where we are growing and add your own input to influence our evolution!

Yes They Are! Meeting and Greeting the Queerest of the Gods will be presented for one night only on July 3^rd.  The Playshop will begin at 7PM with the performance scheduled for 8:30PM.  Suggested Donation is $20, but no one will be turned away for lack of funds.  For more information, please contact The Circle of Dionysos at info@circleofdionysos.com.

When: Sunday, March 28, 2010 5PM

Where: Private Residence in Walnut Creek. Email for directions: info@circleofdionysos.org

According to various sources, the Latin term Hilaria refers to any general period of rejoicing and celebration. However, this time of year was also the period of the Roman festival Hilaria Matris Deum, a celebration dedicated to the goddess Cybele and her consort/child Attis. The first day of the celebration was held the day after the Spring Equinox, and Wikipedia lists the tentative schedule of events for this festival as follows:

“15 March. ‘The Reed Entered’. The reeds may refer to the river bank where Attis was exposed as a child and rescued by Cybele. A nine day period of abstinence from bread, pomegranates, quinces, pork, fish and probably wine began. Only milk was permitted as a drink.

22 March. ‘The Tree Entered’ (Arbor intrat). A pine tree from a wood sacred to Cybele is felled following the sacrifice of a ram at its roots. The tree was carried in procession through the city as if in a funeral to the Temple of Cybele on the Palatine Hill.

23 March. A day of mourning.

24 March. ‘The Day of Blood’ (Sanguis). Frenzied rites including scourging and whipping. Castration rituals would take place on this day. the tree is symbolicaly buried.

25 March. ‘The Day of Joy’ (Hilaria) celebrating the resurrection of Attis. This was the hilaria proper (as opposed to the mournful tone of the previous days).

26 March. A day of rest.

27 March. ‘The Washing’ (Lavatio). Added by Marcus Aurelius

28 March. Possible ceremony at the Vatican sanctuary.”

Now, I can’t imagine that *any* of that sounds like a familiar modern religious festival that may be starting on March 28th, can you?

According to Greek Myth, Cybele was the Goddess responsible for rescuing Dionysos as a youth when Hera discovered his presence and drove him mad.  Cybele then accepted Dionysos as an acolyte and taught him the rites of ecstasy that define much of his worship.  Some scholars (notably Arthur Evans) have suggested that Cybele and Semele were regional names for the same Deity; the myth of Cybele and Attis seems to be in many ways a funhouse mirror image of that of Dionysos and Semele in which the role of “sacrificed and resurrected deity” is reversed.

Our interest in the worship of Cybele extends beyond Hir mythic ties to Dionysos, however.  Cybele was also patron Deity to one the best known “gender/sexually variant” priesthoods in the ancient world–The Galli.  We will honor both Cybele and our spiritual ancestors in this rite, but also acknowledge the shared root of Hilaria and Hilarity, so bring a joke to share and be ready to explore some of spirituality’s burlesque elements!

Our Hilaria rite will be held at a private residence in Walnut Creek, so if you wish to attend this ritual please email an RSVP to info@circleofdionysos.org for the location of and directions to this ritual. We will also include a potluck meal as part of the evening’s festivities, so please bring food and drink to share.

Following this ritual, those who are interested in working further with us will be invited to join in a New Moon ritual study cycle starting with an exploration of the Queer Archetypes found in Christian de la Huerta’s book Coming Out Spiritually. The first meeting of this cycle will be held on Friday April 16th and will focus on the archetype of the Sacred Clown. Again, since these rituals/classes will be held at private residences, please RSVP to the address above for specifics about location and time.

The Circle of Dionysos is proud to present our first large public “flash mob” ritual for 2010 for our Beltane offering.

We intend to honor Dolores Park with this rite because it is one of the main outdoor areas utilized by the GLBTQ community in San Francisco for personal and communal gatherings.

The park is also facing a major renovation in 2011 that may shut the park down for more than a year. Because of this we want to consecrate this land to joy and play for the coming year. We also hope to influence the powers that be through our magic to not shut down the entire park at once for the renovations, but to work in sections and leave portions of the park available for use.

Above all else this is a ritual of PLAY. We face a lot of seriousness in our lives, individually and collectively. It is important to take moments to PLAY. We’re happy and overjoyed to be able to provide a place for you to play.

To that end know that game playing is a part of the rite. These games will span the gambit from physical to mental and at the end of the ritual someone will emerge as May King (any one of any or no gender can be May King)!

The ritual begins promptly at 1pm. We will gather in the lower portion of the park off of 18th Street. You will have no problem identifying us. We will be a collection of brightly dressed Fools and Queens. Please feel encouraged to come dressed in your most jovial and brightly colored costuming as well. Also feel free to bring picnic materials and make a day out of it. Many of us will be heading over to How Weird Street Faire following.

Happy Beltane Everyone, and do come PLAY and consecrate some land with us. It will be a blast!

What: Guerrilla Maypole – A Ritual of Play in Honor of Dolores Park
When: Sunday, May 9, 2010. 1pm
Where: Dolores Park, San Francisco

For More Information: info@circleofdionysos.org

Donations appreciated but not expected.

I believe that I would like to include all of those aspects in future posts, however I believe that the emphasis of this work is to be more true to the title of the blog: Wrestling With the Wig. I want to capture my struggle as a male identified priestess of goddesses. What does this mean? Who am I? Are there other’s like me?

So starting right there what does that mean? I was born biologically as what our culture identifies as male, and I identify as a man. I use the word priestess because I feel that it more accurately reflects the way that I work with goddesses. The models that I see for priests of goddesses have more of a consort kind of feel. The male priest dutifully worships goddesses as lover and/or as mother. My connection to goddesses feels more akin to being a receptacle for goddesses. This is why I feel more called to consider myself a priestess than a priest. Of course I am stripping away the bio gendered association of those words in my claiming.

So how did I get to this place, and where am I going?

I honestly believe that my journey started pre-birth. I don’t know if there is such a thing as reincarnation, but I have had a strong vision of what feels like a past life. I also have a strong sense of other past lives. In most of these past lives I have been biologically female. Even during my mother’s pregnancy she believed that I would be born a girl. This was in the days before figuring out the gender of a child pre-birth. She felt so sure that I would be born a girl that she only chose a “girl’s” name for me. The name she chose was her maiden name, Starr. Starr became my first drag name and my first magical working name.

I grew up queer in many ways. I knew at an early age that I preferred boys to girls in terms of attraction, and that I preferred girls to boys in terms of familiarity. I had virtually no interest in the things of men. When my parents would leave the house I would wrap my grandmother’s afghan around me, use a t-shirt to mimic long hair, slip into my mother’s high heels and parade around the house. Our hallway provided an excellent runway. The thing that is important to note here is that I never felt like I was supposed to be a girl. In fact my longest running fantasy about gender was that I wanted to be both. I wanted to be a man and to be a woman. I wanted to be able to switch at will.

Eventually I conformed to the male standard that was being portrayed by my community. I did this out of fear. I began to associate all this queerness with homosexuality and I knew that was wrong. It was a very clear message.

After I came out I thought that I had found freedom to express who I was, but I found that my dabbling in drag was still not supported by my community at large. I was told that I had to think about not freaking out other people if I allowed my nails to grow. I was even told within the drag community that I wasn’t pretty. At that point in my life I wasn’t strong enough emotionally and egoically to stand up for myself.

My gender queerness went underground for many, many years. Eventually I would discover the Two Spirits of the Indigenous Americans and other similar folk from traditions around the world. Finally I felt like I made sense in the world. I felt like there was a purpose for me. By this time I had also started to discover a spiritual path that really made sense for me which was neopaganism. The Divine or Spirit had revealed itself to me in so many different ways that there was no single religious tradition where I felt like I fit. It is only the loose umbrella that neopaganism is where I have found spiritual community. However with all this freedom my alternative gender expression was still repressed. I actually used to be afraid of the word transgender. I thought “God, I am already so different. Do I have to be that too?”

It is really over the last year that I have come to even more clarity about my gender and its expression. Again I identify as male. There is no feeling inside of me that I am in the wrong body or that I am really a woman. In this sense I am not transsexual, but I do feel gender queer.

I would say the first opening to expressing my gender variance began when I dedicated my dissertation research to Ardhanarishwara. Ardhanarishwara is a deity that is composed of Shiva and Shakti. Ardhanarishwara is the Divine Androgyne. I felt and still feel a strong kinship to that image.

Another opening came from the work my partner and I were doing to create a queer magical circle. My partner conceived of a ritual for a large pagan gathering where we would embody what we call the queerest of the gods. Because I was already working with Ardhanarishwara, I decided that would be the deity I embodied. That work really changed me. I was inspired to begin doing drag again coming out of that work. Part of the desire to do drag was because I wanted to do right by Shakti, the Goddess. I wanted to embody her beauty and strength to the best of my ability.

I also became inspired by an increasing connection with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. In them I saw a celebration of the Divine Feminine through the male vessel. I saw how drag could be done in a way that was androgynous and fiercely beautiful.

Those three inspirations really led to the creation of Andra Jean le Queen who is an avatar of Ardhanarishwara. As she grows into greater power I, Hayden, am also growing in my power. I am finding an expression of self that is deliberate, inspired and very powerful.

Just recently I received an affirmation of the work that I am doing. My partner and I once again attended PanthaCon, the large pagan gathering I alluded to earlier. On Friday night I decided to venture forth into the convention as Andra Jean. At one point I met a lovely man and we exchanged names. He asked if I knew what the word Andra meant in Basque. I didn’t. The name Andra Jean was conceived of as a play on the word androgyne. He proceeded to tell me that it means queen and added that the primary Basque goddess, Mari, is addressed as Andra Mari. That blew me away and affirmed this path for me, and now I want to share my story, my struggles and my wisdom with you.

I know that this blog will probably come across as self-indulgent for some. It is. Expressing myself externally is my primary form of processing my experience. However I hope, I sincerely hope, that my story and my sharing now and in the future will find those that need these words to help set them free to express their own truth. I can’t believe I’m the only one out there working with gender and spirituality in this way.

Until next time I continue to wrestle with the wig.

Much love,

Hayden/Andra Jean

It was that time of year again!  PantheaCon 2010 was held at the Doubletree in San Jose February 12-15th!  Pantheacon is one of if not the largest Pagan Convention in the United States–4 days packed full of rituals, workshops, lectures, concerts, parties, vendors, hospitality suites, and more!  Here’s a quick rundown of what The Circle of Dionysos did at this year’s PCon:

Our big event for PCon this year was the return of Yes They Are! Meeting and Greeting the Queerest of the Gods.  Our production in 2009 was a huge success with lots of people calling it their favorite event of  Con.  Not ones to rest on our laurels however, we brought in a whole new cadre of Deities with new messages for this year!  We were again standing room only, and even though we had to fight to be heard against  the rock concert playing next door, my sense was that our audience poured all of their power into hearing what we had to say.   Certainly as a performer I could see and hear the audience’s emotional investment in the tears on faces during certain scenes and the laughter during the more lighthearted moments.  I’m super proud of our cast and crew of ritualists for stepping up and I’m looking forward to next year and working with the new people who came to us after the ritual and expressed interest in bringing their Deities in!

Our fiscal sponsors The Pagan Alliance hosted a hospitality suite as usual this year, so we participated in their events as well.  We were official co-hosts for Pizzanalia!, the Saturday Evening pizza party from 5:30-7:00PM, and while we weren’t there in any official capacity, you can bet we were around for the Queer Meet and Greet Cocktail Party Friday Night from 8:00 to 9:00 PM.

Our entire board of directors and many other members of the Yes They Are! cast also performed in this year’s Oracles from the Living Tarot on Sunday Night at 7PM.  This made for an intense switchover between productions and led to some very creative connecting of the rituals (including The Fool from OLT being transformed onstage into Dionysos for YTA).  All and all a very magical night of ritual theater–so magical that it claimed my voice for the rest of the night and the next day!

We had an amazing time and are already planning for next year!

Whether you consider your craft to be artistic or magical, it seems as if someone is always telling you to Write Down Your Experiences.  Dream Journals, Rehearsal Journals, Books of Shadows, Books of Scripts—no matter what you call them or claim as their purpose they all amount to the same thing–extra time added to your daily practice spent writing down what you did.  If you’re like me, it’s also the hardest piece of that practice.  When I’m coming out of an amazing ritual/performance/rehearsal, I want to ride that experience’s afterglow.  The last thing I want to do is grab pen and paper!  The same is true when I wake up from an intense dream or have a spark of inspiration–I don’t want to stop and record it, I want to get right to processing.   We live in a short attention span world, and all this journaling is slowing me down.  Why the constant insistence that these books are important?

The first and most obvious answer is also the most cliche–we write things down so that we don’t forget them.  There is no worse experience than having a ritual in which we created this amazing hymn or a rehearsal in which we made a real breakthrough in terms of character or staging  and then not having the ability to recreate that hymn or that breakthrough because we’ve forgotten it and no one wrote it down.  Studies have shown us that writing things down actually has a twofold affect on memory–not only do the written records we’ve produced fill in the gaps in between what we remember, but writing also helps us to remember more in the first place.  Because writing is a physical process that uses 2 of our senses–vision and touch–it invokes our sense memory or physical memory as well as our rational or mental memory, and we are more likely to find a memory if it is stored in multiple parts of ourselves.

Writing is a bridging process between more than just our physical and mental memories.  The second reason that Magi, Mystics, and Artists are so keen on writing things down is that writing as a practice helps bridge between our creative/subconscious selves and our analytic/conscious selves.  Hayden mentioned this when he talked about dream journals–by writing our visions down we can start to track symbols and where/how they appear and thus begin to understand what those symbols mean to us.  Similarly, writing requires us to find a way to quantify and qualify our visceral experiences, to find a way of communicating them and that requires us to break down our right brain/left brain or conscious/subconscious barriers.  This is one reason why I personally find that a real “paper and pen” recording process works best for me in this sort of work–I can continue to communicate via doodles and diagrams when verbal communication methods fail to bridge that gap.  That’s not so easy to do on a word processor.

I’ve known the above reasons for the recording process of my practice for years, but just this past week I discovered a third reason that no one had really made explicit to me before.  I was going through some old papers when I came across a rehearsal journal from a previous show I worked on.  On the very first page I found this written as the initial concept for the performance:

In many of the old religions, GLBT persons held special roles as shaman/seers/etc because they were perceived as taking part of both male and female spirits.  In modern times, however, we are by and large a secular community, ostracized by the religious systems that have come into power in the past millennium, and frequently considered frivolous in our pursuits of pleasure.  But are these pleasures we pursue so frivolous or are they simply a modernization of the rites of old?  Sacred or Profane, who are we?

Sound familiar?  It’s awfully like the concept for Yes They Are! Meeting and Greeting the Queerest of the Gods, last year’s performances of which propelled the Circle of Dionysos into becoming what it is today.  But the concept above was written for a never performed dance piece I was developing back in 2003, before The San Francisco Gay Men’s Open Wiccan Coven, which was my first queer spiritual community, even existed.  The day I found this journal I was feeling depressed and questioning a lot of my decisions over the past year or so.  It was lovely to find such a clear message that yes, I am on the right path!

File this post under Spell Crafting 101–Banishing and Binding are generally the first things a magical practitioner learns how to do regardless of their path or preferred magical practice.  In fact, banishing and binding is so easily understood and readily practiced in our culture that even those who would claim that they absolutely reject any notions of magic routinely practice banishing and binding spells (New Year’s Resolutions are a prime example).  Because we’re still in the period of making resolutions and/or trying to find ways to make our resolutions stick, this is a great time to review the basics regarding banishing and binding.

First, and this is important in all spell casting, really think through what you are seeking to accomplish and what you are actually willing to do in order to accomplish that goal.  In my experience this is especially true when considering a banishing.  It is very easy in a fit of pique to say “Oh My Goddess, I’ve put on 20 lbs again!  That’s it!  I hereby banish junk food from my life!”  But do you really want to banish junk food from your life entirely?  Have you thought out what other areas in your life that such a banishment may affect?  What about those game nights with their requisite bags of chips, those birthday parties and other social gatherings with their cakes and cookies, the weekly office meeting with its trays of pastries?  Are you willing to give up your social life as well as your consumable delights in order to lose a few pounds?  Or do you need to refine your parameters to reflect what you are actually willing to do in order to reach your goal?

Perhaps banishing binge snacking or the eating of junk food in non-social gatherings combined with a binding to actively pursuing a more healthy diet and/or exercise regime would be the better choice of casting.  Successful spell casting relies upon the marriage of words and intent.  When the two do not match we will either circumvent and block the spell’s success through our unspoken desire for failure or we will allow the spell to succeed and become bitter and unhappy about the situations we created for ourselves.

The second important thing to remember about banishing and binding spells is that for these spells to be completely successful they must include both banishing and binding.  Too often in our spells or resolutions we try to focus on just one half of the equation even though we know intellectually that we have to have both.  We tend to be a bit better at remembering to include the binding after a banishing–it’s easy to remember that Nature abhors a vacuum and will fill any empty space that we create in our lives.  Anyone who has fought an addiction knows this firsthand–when I was quitting smoking, finding appropriate outlets for the hand to mouth/oral fixation that I had developed by smoking cigarettes for half of my life was a key element to my battle.  Fortunately that was understood by many of my friends and well wishers who offered substitutions ranging from the mundane (gum) to the erotic (use your own damn imagination) to the herbalist’s expert choice (licorice root, which I still use in almost every tea I make).

In my experience it’s much easier to forget to balance out our spells when we are focused on binding rather than banishing.  I believe this is because we live in a society that emphasizes accumulation.  We are taught at an early age that we should want and have every right to get the newest toys, the most toys, the best toys.  It isn’t until much later in life that we really start to learn that having means spending, that energy in a system is neither destroyed nor created.  So when we resolve to go to the gym every week or bind ourselves to a life of prosperity, we tend to forget that we need to let something go in order to bring the new in.  Where is the time to be spent at the gym going to come from?  What effort is required to gain and maintain prosperity?

Finally, remember to make your banishing and binding equivalent. Binding yourself to something that is unrelated or pales in comparison to what you are banishing still leaves a void which nature will fill for you with something you would likely not have chosen for yourself.  Similarly, when the focus is on the binding half of the equation, make sure that you are banishing something that is equivalent in type of energy and value.  For instance, in order to bind myself to a resolution to become a better read witch and get through some of those books that I’ve never opened, I have to banish my need to read Mercedes Lackey novels for the nth time as my way to relax before bed.  To make room in my life to write on a regular basis, I have to give up an hour of online gaming each day.

For all that I said at the beginning of this article that banishing and binding is spell crafting 101, it’s also one of the main tricks in any witch’s bag of spells and a major aid as we look to make both small and large changes in our lives.  What do you want to achieve and what will you give up to achieve it?