I’m still recovering from a summer of Faerie Gatherings!
Faerie-space is where I’ve been able to allow my spiritual queerness to be fully present, affirmed and celebrated. Over the years I’ve really benefitted from the opportunity to be quiet in nature. Here I've revealed to others my most shameful aspects. And here I’ve found love and acceptance not in spite of my perceived shortcomings but because of them!
I decided therefore, to offer myself in service to this fabulous, anarchic gang of consciousness developers. So I put myself forward to facilitate three consecutive gatherings during July and August.
First of all was Faerie Sex Magick at Folleterre, the Euro-Faerie Sanctuary in France. Thirteen brave Faeries together with 3 facilitators and a cook came together for an week of intensive heart circles exploring our barriers to intimacy. Our objective: to reach a point where all of us could agree that we had developed a deep enough emotional understanding of each other to safely enter into an erotic space together. This was my sixth workshop and, as always, there was much to learn from this very unique form of emotional skinny dipping!
Exposed to an angry participant I was opened up to my extreme avoidance of unpredictable anger and violence. Though my father is dead and gone, the wounding he inflicted on me with his aggressive volatility, was still very much alive in me as a pattern of pretending I didn’t need anger as part of my emotional life. I realise now that depriving myself and others of this vibrant aspect of my self-expression gives an indistinct and unreal feel of ‘who I am’ making if difficult for others to fully engage emotionally with me. So now I’m tuning-in to, and expressing my anger as it arises. What a refreshing change!
My next two gatherings were the Global closely followed by the Afterglow Gathering.
The Global Gatherings are a controversial development for the Faeries in that rather than making a call to Sanctuary for established Faeries, there is an active intention to reach out to activists in those parts of the world where there is no Faerie culture, raising funds to assist with air travel and subsistence, and shifting the focus away from inner/interpersonal healing towards outer and inter-continental healing.
For whatever reason the LGBTI+ human rights position in UK is now very privileged compared with many countries across the globe.
And, sure, there’s hate crime in Brighton but it’s nothing compared with the hate cultures I’ve been hearing about from activists in Chechnya, Uganda, Pakistan, Benin, Singapore, and Beijing.
Prior to my encounter with the Faeries I was an assimilationist, desperate to prove to anyone that I was just quite ordinary apart from my sexuality. Now as a Faerie I know that I am quite extra-ordinary because of my sexuality.
I’m feeling my anger rising against queer hatred and I’m recognising it as a valuable element of my Faerie-Superpowers!
Watch out hate-crime-bitches. We're coming for you!!
