convocation is my hogwarts pt. 3
Ted wanted to go to a ritual about judgment--THEME OF THE CON--that was supposed to be very hardcore, and run by three people who do emotionally intense rituals. Tonya didn't think she could handle it, as she's got a lot of anxiety problems. So we said we'd go with her to the drum circle, which we all wanted to do. We ended up meeting Tonya at the drum circle, but for some reason it started late, so we hung out with a lady I know from around who is kind of nuts and her friend who got started talking with Colleen about being a pharma tech. Colleen told me that he didn't know his stuff and from what he said, he sounded like an incredibly bad tech. She ended up running out for water, so he started talking to me and said that he wanted to tell me about his coven. This conversation started out being very nice and about how he integrated Jewish cultural practice with pagan wheel of the year stuff, which was cool, and then he threw in some Crowley and "chemognosis" and finally went, "Would you be willing to take 'shrooms? Do you have a credit card for this Burning Man thing we want to do?" and I'm like, "Um, K." Because it was starting to sound weird, but I'm not averse to weird stuff and NGL I've wanted to try shrooms.
Tonya was having a bad time, so we got her out of there. Crazy lady and shroom guy followed us and were like, "This is when you call in the elders!" Well, fuck 'em, Colleen was talking to Tonya and calming her down, and I was making sure she was away from noise and had water, and Crazylady and Shroomdude kept asking me questions about if I could do shit with energy and yammering about how dramatic and closed-minded the con was, and I'm thinking, you are the worst elders I have ever seen. Colleen was getting a really bad vibe from Shroomdude and was getting really unhappy, so we found Ted and made sure Tonya was OK, then went off and had a drink with Dan. Then my dad called at 11:30 at night, which made me feel a lot better.
We ended up meandering around not doing much for a while. Talked to Michelle Belanger about her cats and ran into a couple of friends, including Aurora and Kirsten. I had gotten used to people paying attention to me about my costume or the things I said in classes, so I was feeling sort of low and unappreciated because nobody was paying attention to me, but I got to have some good talks with people and I felt better. Then a lady came over asking if anyone had ginger ale for her sick friend; Colleen gave her some club soda, and I went back to my room and made her some tea. Then bed.
Colleen and I woke up early and went to a class about alternative energy techniques for special people. It started off with the presenters talking about how people with hearing or seeing issues, OCD, panic disorders, PTSD, ADD, etc. could be accommodated during circles. Then we got into talking about not being able to experience things the same way as other people, and there was a guy in the class who pointed out that he had figured out stuff about the ring that the psychic mom lady from before had given people to hold. The presenters said that a lot of people simply could not get the same kind of psychic experience as a lot of other people and that was OK, and they reminded us that logic and reason and observation could also be magic, and that they had done rituals involving math--you could translate a lot of spiritual terms into math. We had a really good little chat afterwards about that, and I'm hoping to pick her brain about math magic!
Then we went upstairs and there was conflict for reasons, but I'm trying not to get into that part because I want to remember the good things about Convo this way. It was upsetting, and I went downstairs to get away from people and ended up crying at people :(
Then I went to a Polytheism workshop after I calmed down. There were about four other people there, all of whom knew each other. I was the only one who wasn't long-time friends. But they were really nice, and we talked about the difference between hard and soft polytheism ("the gods are discrete entities with their own personalities" vs. "gods are just aspects of an archetype"). We talked about invocation again, and the presenter had her friend demonstrate the easiest way to call down a deity--you stand in an Isis stance, hands in a triangle over your head, while people chant the name of the thing you want to call down and you imagine the moon and/or that deity coming down over you. She said to not focus too much on putting energy into it, just do the visualization and see what happens.
I volunteered to go first and chose Bast, because I don't know too much about her other than that she's the cat goddess, so I figured it would be a good way to "test" the whole thing. I did the stance with my eyes closed and imagined a kitty in the moon coming down to me, and then it was like someone had turned off the lights entirely for a second. I started laughing uncontrollably, and then after I got a handle on it, shrieked, "It's so funny that you call us by a name! We don't have names! We come because we know you have food!"
Then I bounced around for a bit like a cat, and a guy asked me about his cat who had asthma and wasn't eating. I told him that if cats couldn't smell, they wouldn't eat, so he decided to give it more tuna. Then I decided to let Bast go--I said I had to take a nap. I was still jumpy, but it was interesting to see how other people invoked gods. Apparently you invoke Norse deities in a death metal growl, and Loki doesn't mind going into womens' bodies.
I ended up hanging out and getting stuff together until the closing ceremony, and then we went home. I crashed and talked to my cat. I feel as though I could understand him much better since I invoked Bast.