Hate Crime in Brighton- Maybe we need to get out more?

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!!

Folleterre Faerie Gathering Call

Faerie sing, sing, sing!

Faerie soar like an eagle!

Faerie sing, sing, sing!

Faerie dance in the moonlight! 

Faerie, find a healing space 

To work your Faerie Art!

Caress, hold, nurture, and protect

Every Faerie heart!

The Faeries have come to town!

The Radical Faerie Community is growing in Brighton.

GS interviews Brighton Faerie Mushoom about the Faeries and how they are busying themselves changing the world!

When and how did you identify as a Radical Faerie?

My first Faerie gathering was at Featherstone Castle just 5 years ago. I was lucky to have made friends with a guy who had already been to a few Faerie gatherings. He reckoned that I’d love the Faeries.

He was right. For me, as a lifelong secretly self-identified freak, Featherstone Castle was a magical home-coming to my very own tribe of misfits and marginals. The love of all things natural, the embrace of chaos, the acceptance of all shapes and sizes, the seam of deep spirituality yet the absence of proselytizing and hierarchy made for a very welcoming and nurturing space. It was my first taste of Faerie Sanctuary where I could begin the process of establishing my divinely intended purpose. Since then I have been back to Featherstone every year and I’ve also made a habit of staying at the Folleterre Faerie Sanctuary in Eastern France for a week or two every year as well.

I have always been profoundly affected by each and every gathering I’ve attended, learning about my gender, my sexuality, my undernourished appetites, my woundings, my capacity to self-heal and my previously unseen personal obstacles to self-love, the love of others and ultimately the love of the universe. 

 What do the Radical Faeries mean to you?

To me the Radical Faeries are a deeply rooted international network of divinely inspired beings. As a development of human consciousness, the Faeries have a natural intrinsic intent to nurture the sacred within. The Faeries  do this by generating magical faerie-space, encouraging physical, emotional and spiritual authenticity in all who encounter it directly. Once manifested this authenticity changes the world irrevocably!

What do you understand by the terms ‘Gay’ and ‘Queer’? Which do you identify with, as a Faerie, and why?

Back in 2009 I was a successfully assimilated ‘out’ Gay Man. I was a homeowner in a longterm monogamous same-sex partnership with 2.4 cats! My whole life had been an exercise in demonstrating to the wider society that I deserved equal rights.  For my generation of assimilationists, the prize we ultimately won for the LGBT community was a range of human rights- rights to civil partnership, rights to be able to foster and adopt, rights to an equal age of consent, rights even to join the army if we’d wanted to. 

Trouble was, that once I’d been fully shoehorned into my assimilated box I really couldn’t breath. I felt ungrateful. It felt unsafe to be losing the gift of my outsider status. I didn’t really enjoy my begrudgingly accepted life-style. The Church, who had caused me to throw out the ‘baby’ of my spiritual identity with the corrupt ‘bathwater’ of organized religion continued to disapprove of my nature.

That’s when I met the Faeries. They gave me permission to find a source of spiritual growth in the full cultivation of my sexuality. They invited me to discover the divine purpose of my bi-gendered nature and to reject assimilation as a bad deal. I was afforded intimate exposure, in heart-circle space, to the divine feminine (both within myself and in others)  Happily I have traveled away from the restrictive box of ‘Gay Man’ and I have arrived at the much gentler and less divisive identity of Queer Spirit. This brings me great joy!

What do you think about the rituals in the Radical Faerie community? How do they affect you personally?

1 In my experience, the most profound and transformative ritual in the Radical Faerie Community is the ritual of the Heart Circle. Revealing my heart-felt self to non-judgmental, lovingly accepting Faeries has been both challenging and rewarding. Bearing witness to the revelation of heart-felt truths in a non-judgmental and lovingly accepting way has revealed some surprising shared experiences and also enabled the cultivation of that gift of experiencing the vicarious feel of another Faerie’s moccasins as they go on their own journey. The most potent experience I have had of the powerfully transformative and healing influence of the Heart Circle Ritual was the Folleterre 2013 Sex Magick workshop. 7 days of continuous heart circling with a closed group of Faeries with the intention to create sacred ritual space for the authentic expression of loving touch. I was so impressed by its impact both on myself and others that I’m planning to attend another in October.

2 I also see the ‘Know (or No) Talent Show’ as a wonderful exercise in almost unacknowledged Ritual Space capable of promoting profound personal transformation for those in both ‘performer’ and ‘witness’ roles. As a performer I offer my creative self in total vulnerability. In the role of witness I am able to appreciate, as a practice in unconditional love, the channeled beauty of creation. I’m amazed at the growth I feel from the acknowledgement of my offering. I am enchanted and delighted by the offerings of others.

3 The Faerie Gathering itself is an extended ritual space with its opening ritual invoking the magical healing energies which will nurture the cultivation of our authentic selves. And also its closing rituals helping us to acknowledge the power of the transformative energies we have manifested but also their potential limitations to influence beyond the immediate environment of Faerie Space. 

Do you see the Radical Faeries fulfilling a role in the greater human community? 

Yes! 

What do you think it is? 

The unfurling and fluttering of a single Faerie’s wings in Faerie Space is enough to create a revolutionary wind of change for the planet!

There are now regular Faerie drum circles at the Brighton Unitarian Church.

Request details by joining the Brighton Faerie email group: brightonfaerie@gmail.com

A Faerie Tale of SexMagick

Once upon a time and not so very long ago, three SexMagicians came to the Faerie-village of Folleterre from across the vast ocean.
 

They spoke of the beauty to be borne of a complete love for one another.

But we Faeries were wounded and afraid.
 

Our desire for physical passion had been wrenched away from our natural gifts with emotional intimacy from as far back as we could remember.
 

We said “Sure, as a gang of Faeries, we can have an orgy”.
 

We said “We know how to be caring and concerned for each other”.
 

“But”, we said, “ although we wish it were different, there’s no way we can do sex AND emotional intimacy at the same time”.
 

“Yes there is” the SexMagicians said.

“Trust us and together we will create the most beautiful and secure container which will bring to pass what, right now, seems like an impossibility”.

“It won’t be easy”, they said, “ but with patience, and bravery, and determination from everyone, it will happen”.
 

The prize seemed worth at least some effort. So we all agreed to try.
 

Chas-an elder and the wisest of the SexMagicians- led the way.

He told us “We will be sharing our deepest selves- from the heart- hour by hour by hour and day by day by day - until, one by one, we will finally all know that the container is secure”.
 

The second SexMagician-Sister Ethica Slut: a perpetually-indulgent-mother superior-kind-of-magician helped to keep us clean organised and focussed.
 

The third SexMagician-Rosie Delicious: a man-boy creator with a gentle sadness about his eyes told us what we needed to do next.
 

“Faggots” he said “are just bundles of weak and brittle twigs"

"On our own, we Faerie-faggots are weak and brittle, but bound together we are strong. Together we can burst forth with a flaming passionate love"

"All it takes is some patience to bring our weak and brittle twigs to the circle and hour by hour by hour and day by day by day we will weave those twigs into the most amazing, elaborate basket that any of us have ever seen"

"This will be the container which will allow us to love each other with both passion and intimacy” 
 

Then off we went, one by one, sharing the twisted brittle intimacies of our unique vulnerabilities, nervous at first but growing in confidence; encouraged by the gentle compassion of the SexMagicians. 
 

Hour by hour by hour and day by day by day we shared and we wove. We shared and we wove.
 

One faerie saw the beauty of the basket right at the start and said so!
 

Then another Faerie saw the beauty of the basket we were weaving and knew it was safe- she said so too! 
 

Finally, one by one, (hour by hour by hour, day by day by day), the basket was seen as beautiful, safe and secure by every Faerie in the circle.
 

And we all said so too!
 

Then-Bang!

SexMagick bursts into the village
 

A loud noise

A blinding light

The basket begins to shudder

And then it is alive!

Leaves sprout, flower buds blossom.

Birds sing at the spectacle.

Butterflies dance around disco petals.

Bees sense the sweetness of the air.
 

And we are in Eden
 

Thank-you for bringing SexMagic to Folleterre Chas, Ethica, Rosie
  
To open up to new vistas of conciousness go to

http://www.faeriesexmagick.org/

Joie de Folleterre

A fabulous Folleterre Word Collage from Faerie Laureate Qweaver

http://kevnjacksn.wordpress.com/tag/qweaver/

Joie de Folleterre

A time for joy.

Tears ripen.

Nothing in the trees’ gaze contradicts the flowers

that dare declare they love. All the colours of music,

all the music of the forest, bright with wonder’s blessing.

Think of it as a merry-go-round,

a subaqueous garden.

Bones blur, outlines loosen, a little like trees, indistinct

in summer’s haze, splinters smoothed away.

Hands unfold, steady on another’s touch.

Around the flames of laughter,

the glow of conversation,

kisses tickle, settle,

rest, depart, rainbow-winged.

Settle again and again.

There is something like music that eases each

separate note into one swelling melody.

Wildly beautiful shapes, colours, swirl

and swoon in this lava lamp.

Somewhere bees get busy with tomorrow’s fruiting.

As your fingers coax rope into baskets I drop

my doubts inside. Your offering eyes ignite

my soul that’s been singing

to itself these years, by the far lake.

Yes, eyes meet here, shadows

steepen their lustre

into jewel-light that

bursts beyond words.

Words are clumsy messengers. Here the language is pretty

wraps, wigs, dresses sexpressively excessive.

Fireworks fixed in half motion. Star-beams caught

between silk and skin,

skin and skin.

With the night they sprawl shifting abruptly to dodge

the fire’s frisky smoke.

The days would be roaring and hungry,

gone in a few gulps, just flakes

to record the feast.

A time for sadness.

Dreams ripen. You snuggle in my heart.

Can Drugs Help to Heal Your Spiritual Wounds?

There are ancient tribal traditions, which have used hallucinogenic drugs in spiritual ritual as a means of invoking the Wisdom of the Ages.

The tribal shaman- often a ‘two-spirit’ (LGBT person) would imbibe the liquor obtained from soaking certain macerated roots or seeds in spring water and then enter a trance state- walking between the worlds of the mundane and the divine! Stories told of these spiritual journeys would offer the tribe guidance in times of uncertainty. The shaman was venerated and respected for undertaking this dangerous ordeal.

There are cultures today in South America and East Africa, which use elaborately extracted plant alkaloids (psycho-active substances) to induce epiphany-like states during tribal rights of passage.

For example the roots of two Amazonian rain forest plants are used to make the drink used in the sacred Ayawaska ceremony of South America. Shamanic healers supervise an induced hallucinatory state, which may be accompanied by energy cleansing vomiting. Participants later report an intense and unique spiritual experience. There is the sense of communing with the divine with profound and life changing consequences. In recent years an industry of Ayawaska tourism has materialised for westerners looking for a fast track to spiritual enlightenment experience.

Another example is the use, by Western Central African peoples, of small fragments of the Iboga plant root bark in spiritual ceremonies, learned from pygmy forest dwellers, to promote radical spiritual growth, stabilise community structures and resolve pathological problems. There is now a growing awareness in the west of how the prolonged hallucinatory experiences which often evoke past events in a participants life may have the potential to cure the spiritual starvation state symptomatic of western drug dependency culture.

Mainstream gay culture seems to have got its knickers in a twist over sex and substances. Repetitive sexual arousal and psycho-actives swallowed like smarties have been sold as the birthright of the post-guilt era pervert. We have opened the flood gates and the result has been an outpouring of a hitherto deeply repressed need to express our queer natures. But without the framework of a guiding spiritual context we are left with a sad, bloated yet undernourished feeling.

Radical Faeries today are reclaiming their roles as tribal shamanic healers. They are experimenting with the use of plant based entheogens (substances capable of internally generating a sense of oneness with spirit) in the context of pagan ritual. Moving away from the exhaustingly repetitive and empty habits of sex and recreational drugs as a means of temporarily escaping the banality of everyday existence, they are finding ways in which Joy comes through the ritual practice of Sex, and the judicious use of, among other substances, Alcohol, Tobacco, Coffee, Tea, Mushrooms, Callamus Root and Morning Glory Seeds.

This is spirituality, Jim, but not as we have known it! You can become a part of this revolution. Check out the Euro Faeries and dare to attend a gathering at Featherstone Castle in Northumberland or Folleterre in Eastern France. I look forward to seeing you there!

Folleterre Faerie Fire Song

Chorus:
Sitting round the Faerie Fire
At Folletere- at Folleterre
Sitting round the Faerie Fire
On this Magic Land!
With the Singing , the Dancing, the Strumming, the Drumming
Dressing-up and Dressing-down
And Happy, Laugh-y Days

Sitting in the Shadows
Feeling Sad and Lonely
Aching from the Pains of a
Dark and Hurtful Past
With the Coldness of Hatred and Shame and Envy
Swirling all around us like a
Thick Black Haze

Chorus
Sitting round the Faerie Fire
At Folletere- at Folleterre
Sitting round the Faerie Fire
On this Magic Land!
With the Singing , the Dancing, the Strumming, the Drumming
Dressing-up and Dressing-down
And Happy, Laugh-y Days

Feel the Light and Warmth
From the Inside Growing
Glowing like the Fire with its
Dancing Healing Flames
It's the Source of Love and it's
Burning Brighter
Melting down the Icy Cold of
Dark Dark Days

Chorus
Sitting round the Faerie Fire
At Folletere- at Folleterre
Sitting round the Faerie Fire
On this Magic Land!
With the Singing , the Dancing, the Strumming, the Drumming
Dressing-up and Dressing-down
And Happy, Laugh-y Days

A Book that Changed My Life……

The Ethical Slut: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships and Other Adventures
Dossie Easton, Janet W. Hardy
Ten Speed Press, 2009 296 Pages

I've been practicing Ethical Sluttery for 18 months now and it's all been down to the September Edward Carpenter Community's Gay Men's Weeks

It all started in September 2009- “The Dance Between Power and Intimacy”-my first ECC experience and, there I was, all alone.

Back home I was in a long-term relationship. The erotic expression of our love for each other had stopped years before. We were maintaining a monogamous tradition fearing the potential destabilising consequences of messing with the arrangement. I had been interested in meditation as a homphobia-free means of satisfying my hunger for spiritual nourishment and, I suppose, at the time I was searching for a spiritual home.

The workshops during that week helped me to put my monogamous sexual barriers down. I explored how the experience of erotic sexual massage could combine with spiritual meditative practice and how loving intimacy was rapidly fostered between individuals who were prepared to engage in vulnerable-making self-exposure. I didn’t realise at the time that this would set a foundation for me to embark on a path of authentic personal growth and enable me to engage in loving encounters like never before. Wow!

When I returned from the week I was on fire! The stakes were high but I had to risk discussing with my partner making changes to the 12-year-old monogamous agreement we made when we’d first met. Being a naturally jealous bloke his reaction was to be cautiously OK about it. We agreed to me doing sexual things outside the relationship provided I would tell him what happened if he asked but not to tell him if he didn’t ask. I love him and I didn’t want to hurt him but I also sensed a chance to grow emotionally, spiritually and sexually. Here was a genie, which could not be popped back into its bottle.

A good friend made on this first Gay Men's Week introduced me to the Faeries and I went to three gatherings that year- Featherstone Castle, Folleterre and Wansee. As is often the case I came away from each of these gatherings with something important learned about myself. Featherstome held a mirror up to my life-long approval seeking programming. Folleterre helped me to reflect on how my father’s [patriarchy’s] disapproval of the feminine aspects of my nature set the scene for not only my internalised homophobia but also a kind of internalised misogyny of which I had been previously completely unaware. Wansee opened my eyes to how the way I presented myself to others was profoundly affected by fear of shame and social rejection.

So it was in the context of this roller coaster ride of personal growth and self-discovery that I was introduced to The Ethical Slut

I wasn’t sure if it was possible to be a Really Dirty Slut and to also be a Really Good Person at the same time. This book showed me how!

The authors reclaim the abusive term Slut in the same way that Queer has been reclaimed for marginal sexual orientation and gender identity and in the same way that Faerie is reclaimed to proudly assert our sissy natured-ness. ‘Sluts’ are those who dare to have sex more often, and in less conventional ways, than everyone else and, who refuse to be cowed into submitting to the social norms. ‘Ethical Sluts’ are those who do this openly, honestly, lovingly and caringly with the intention of harming no one.

I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who is stopping themselves from having, or openly admitting to having desired ethical sex out of fear that it would be immoral, socially disapproved of and because the consequences would mean guilt and social exclusion.

The authors convincingly argue that our society is geared towards regulating sexual relationships so they fit into monogamous, politically and economically acceptable hetero-imitative configurations, which provide ostensibly stable environments for habitat-living-style-consumerism and child rearing. They confront the idea that sexual relationships exist in a ‘starvation economy’-' i.e. that there aren’t enough sexual relationships to go around and so sexual relationships need to be jealously protected and safeguarded. They argue that there is an infinite potential for sexual relationships of all shapes and sizes and the key to accessing these in order to meet one’s many and varied sexual appetites is, firstly, honesty in communication with one’s partners and, secondly, negotiating clear unambiguous agreements which enable the involved partners to feel emotionally safe and secure.

Of course it isn’t all necessarily going to be a bed of roses and it would be surprising if jealousies didn’t arise in polyamorous arrangements. The authors present convincing arguments about how the working through of jealousies is a potentially very good thing both for the development of the affected individuals but also for the relevant relationships.

It could even be possible that ‘compersion’ –the emotion of joy at one’s partner’s happiness with another sexual partner might even prevail!

The interesting thing about becoming honestly polyamorous [as opposed to the conventional dishonest non-consensual non-monogamous pattern of polyamory-or ‘having an affair’- prevalent in western cultures] is that it allows you to enjoy a wide variety of sexual partners without having to lie or feel bad about it. And rather than distancing you from love and spirit it has the potential to deepen you spiritual growth too. If that isn’t enough to convince, you also get a chance to feel the full force of conventional societal disapproval and to work on your own issues of guilt shame and approval seeking!

Read the book and start to change the world!

The Faeries Taught Me How To Fly!

I was sitting by my fire last night watching the flames flickering around the burning logs remembering the tribal faerie camaraderie of a blazing Folleterre campfire from just a few days before.

Two years ago the Faeries were to me, a strange, esoteric bunch of folk on the margins, gathering together in weird and wonderful places and living basically without the necessities of standard creature comforts. I now see a Faerie Gathering as a rich source of spiritual nutrition and an opportunity for physical and psychological healing. The Faeries are my community group. Better than that-they are my family!

So how did I transition from Faerie-sceptic to Faerie-sister in a mere 24 months? I suppose any metamorphosis requires a pre-change period, a caterpillar phase. My caterpillar got tired of waiting for a spiritual home to present itself and decided that she would need to become the spiritual home she longed for. Reading books like ‘The Artist’s Way’ by Julia Cameron, 'The Power of Now' by Eckhart Tolle, and ‘Coming Out Spiritually’ by Christian de la Huerta helped to nourish and nurture my nascent yet deeply conflicted spiritual nature and my creative soul.

Then my personal life reached a crossroads. I was exhausting myself attempting to sustain my partner in a kind of co-dependent set-up. I felt damned if I did something about it and damned if I didn’t!

Enter Stage Right the Edward Carpenter Community. What a lovely bunch of guys. A virtual and episodically realised intentional set of communities. During the course of a September Gay Men’s Week at Laurieston Hall [a great rambling mansion in Dumfries] I was gently encouraged to put down my defences and to make myself sexually and emotionally vulnerable in the company of loving, caring strangers.

By sharing my deepest darkest dilemmas, I was coaxed into finding solutions and galvanized into overcoming my paralysis.

Friends made during that ECC week encouraged me to attend a Faerie Gathering. Featherstone 2010 introduced me to the magical world of Faeridom. Gifted Magical Boys, Shamans, Magicians Alchemists, Story Tellers, Androgynes, Dancers, Musicians and Poets drawn together to love, to laugh, to heal and to co-create. Through the patient love generated in Heart Circles there and at four subsequent gatherings and, through some deep authentic faerie friendships I’ve grown to understand some of the unhelpful, distorting drivers in my wounded self.

At the start of my second half-century I finally recognised how my child-like desire for, and righteously indignant sense of entitlement to, my fathers crippled love kept playing out as a recurring approval-seeking theme in most of my interpersonal transactions and how this interfered with my capacity for true love and deep intimacy.

Thankfully I can now let go of shame as a guiding influence in my decision-making. Instead I embrace ethical consensual non-monogamy as a way of enriching my loving relationships.

Faeries have emboldened me to experiment with tantric meditative sexual massage practice and thanks to Tantra for Gay Men, there is now a regular monthly meet-up here in Brighton.

I am now on a Buddhist-Tantric-Pagan Spiritual path, which affords me a sense of peace and tranquillity in the noise and the chaos of modern life

So thank-you ECC, thank-you Faeries, thank-you T4GM without your existence I would never have developed my Faerie Butterfly wings and learned how to fly!

Resources:

ECC

www.edwardcarpentercommunity.org.uk/

Albion Faeries

www.albionfaeries.co.uk/The Faeries.htm

Folleterre-Eurofaerie Sanctuary in the French Vosges Mountains

http://www.folleterre.org/home.htm

T4GM- Brighton Tantra Club

www.tantra4gaymen.co.uk/events-calendar

I’m not going to write about pride this year.
I’m sure we’ll all get through it in our own ways!
The day after pride I’ll be heading off to a faerie gathering to take in the sights, smells, sounds, flavours and sensations of the beautiful Folleterre Faerie Retreat in the Vosges Mountains of Eastern France
Faeries speak from the heart in Heart Circles passing a talisman, which gives the holder the fully concentrated attention of the group. This practice helps to develop a sense of authentic subject-subject relatedness to each other and to the world in general. Faeries will gently Hiss if they identify with, or wish to be supportive of, anything said or done in the Circle
This is what I will be saying.........

Faerie Sanctuary- A Poem for Fauny for Vision Circle

This place is my heaven

This place is my dream!

A gathering place for kindred spirits from high and low, from near and far.

A place where stimulating, interesting, fascinating, challenging relationships are safely cultivated…

The fruits to be harvested as a gift to the planet!

A place to relax and relate to each other’s deity within

To affirm each other’s inner beautiful uniqueness.

A place of joyful festivity and carnival!

An escape from the divisions created by inequalities of power and wealth.

Away from orientation and identity constrictions.

A place where children are welcomed to experience a world of trust between queer adult and child

A Wild Faerieworld where the adult inner child is free and full of play.

A chance to consolidate a sense of who we are and our purpose in life.

A place to experience deep family ties

Blood is thicker than water but Spirit is thicker than both!

A place instilling strength and bravery to become who we truly are from moment to moment.

A place where the exquisite sacredness of touch is experienced and explored without fear of censure.

This place is my heaven

This place is my dream!

Where the specialness we feel which is central to our lives is ‘quite normal’.

Where our stimulating, challenging energy is revolutionary, evolutionary and ‘perfectly natural’.

Where our magick is an exciting expression of our uniqueness.

Where we are privileged adventurers having fun by simply us being us!

Feeling fresh and clean in an oasis of Faerie Wisdom

Balancing the needs of our minds, bodies and souls.

Healing ourselves!

Our emotional sacredness a sacrament to heal the world.

This place is my heaven

This place is my dream!

Where we will stop feeling awkward about being noticed as different

Where we will feel empowered to push boundaries in ourselves and each other.

Where we will foster and nurture self discovery

Where we will challenge conventional restrictions.

This is a place where there is a frisson of danger

This is a womb of safety

A place for valuing and validating

A Balanced Natural Wise Accepting Space where Fabulousness oozes out of us effortlessly!

A place for Health and Happiness and Joyfulness!

A place to explore the wondrous miracles of our sexualities and identities.

A space to tune into the understandings and ethics of our ancestors.

A space to cultivate inner peace and equanimity.

A temple where Queer Spirit will thrive

Where self understanding

Where seeking, acknowledging, and owning the light and the shade in ourselves

Is about moving away from the mirage of a unity created by agreed divisiveness.

Each of us produces a silken thread of uniqueness

In this place we find the silken thread in our own lives

And together we weave a tapestry.

This is the story of our past

The story of our present

The story of our future.

This place is my heaven

This place is my dream!

Hail and Welcome!

The Spirit of The Faerie

The Intimacy of Being

Last year’s Gay Men's Week at Laurieston: ‘The dance between power and intimacy’, set me off on a 12 month roller coaster journey of self healing, spiritual integration and joyfulness which climaxed in this September’s week: ‘Pleasure, Love, Joy, Light- The intimacy of being’

I’d like to thank all members of the Edward Carpenter Community for supporting this magically facilitative network of loving men. Without it I could not have allowed myself to become the person I now am!

So, what happened? Last September I felt sad and friendless. Forty-nine years old and locked into an erotic-free yet physically, emotionally and romantically close relationship with my long-term partner who had been plagued with physical health problems for 6 of the 10 years we’d been together. Prior to my relationship with him I had enjoyed a reasonably vigorous sex life but when we fell in love we committed to a monogamous life together. So by the sixth year of attempting to be sexually faithful to a sex-less relationship, always hopeful that the illnesses would remit but perpetually disappointed by his consistently absent libido, something was going to snap. I didn’t want it to be our relationship. I didn’t want it to be my mental state. I didn’t want it to be my own physical health- though preoccupation with aches and pains were threatening to colonise my consciousness and make me old before my time.

Without fully understanding why, I found myself on last year’s Laurieston September week and it turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to me.

By sharing my predicament in Heart Circle and Base Groups in the context of a programme of events encouraging openness to self and others, exploring the link between sexual and spiritual, I was able to discover that truth to myself lay in openly acknowledging my sadness. What had previously seemed to be a safe, powerful position of holding onto a mental armoury designed to project that I was a happily assimilated monogamous gay man, could now be seen as an obvious unhappiness-making mirage. I learned that intimacy in relationships grew from both trusting others to accept me in my vulnerability and allowing others to trust me with their vulnerabilities too!

With that important lesson learned as a foundation, I was able to return to my previously forlorn existence with a new lease of life. Could my relationship withstand some consensual, ethical, non-monogamy? Of course it could-and what a relief for both of us that we could actually talk about it! How would I develop my newfound fascination with the development of spirituality via sexuality? Why had these vitally important aspects of my personhood been perceived as mutually exclusive?

Four months later I’m experiencing the nature-bound healing spiritual Magick of a Faerie gathering at Featherstone Castle. Four months later I’m in community with beautiful Eurofaeries at Folleterre Faerie Sanctuary. Three months later I’m in Berlin for another week of Faerie frolicking in the company of queer folk allowing ourselves to be our very own unique selves! Two weeks later and I’m back at Laurieston focusing on Pleasure, Love, Joy, Light. Within days our community develops a deep physical, emotional and sexual intimacy allowing us to re-awaken an awareness of ourselves as sexual and spiritual pioneers. Learning the answer to the questions ‘Who do I want to be? What am I waiting for? What do I want to let go of?’

What have I learned in all this? Being brave enough to truly be myself (and this is not an insignificant piece of work in progress) is immensely pleasurable, gets me in touch with Spirit, inevitably invites genuine intimacy and generates joy in bucket-loads!

Thank-you to the organisers Shokti, Kevin, Adrian and Peter!

I’m looking forward to next year!

Pleasure, Love, Joy, Light!