Faerie Gathering

http://sites.google.com/site/gaysocrates/mp3/Glastonbury%20Faeries%20July%202013%20PRUDE%20EDIT.mp3

What’s it like to be away with the Faeries?

Novice  Faerie, Wood Pigeon, returns to Brighton after a weekend Faerie Gathering camping in the middle of the Glastonbury countryside. He is a young man in his early thirties. He’s a little tired, but excited and also a bit emotional with that happy/sad feeling of someone recently parted from a found experience, which had long been sought. He agrees to talk about his experience with GS

GS: So how long have you been involved with the Faeries?

WP: About 4 days!

GS: How did you first hear about the Faeries and what was it that drew you towards the Faerie Movement?

WP: My boyfriend went away to the February 2013 Featherstone Castle gathering in Northumberland and came back as Faerie Magnoose. He was like a completely different person!  The way the experience shone through him and filled him with love, confidence, happiness and joy was incredible.  I had to go on the next faerie gathering and so organised to travel to Glastonbury Tor for the 2013 Summer Solstice weekend.

GS: Can you describe what took place?

When we arrived there was an opening circle and a practical circle where we were given a quick intro to the layout of the accommodation, camping areas, timings for food etc and then we all affirmed our names as a group in a triumphant chorus of faerie voices. 

We then tucked into a sumptuous feast prepared by Kitchen Mum Teal for everyone (about 50 of us), which was wholesome, vegetarian and very welcome.  As the dishes were being washed the banging of drums and lighting of a fire led us all around into another circle.- this time to open the four directions of Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water.  I guess this was a Pagan element to the gathering, which I really liked; deepening our connection to nature and to each other.  Some of the faeries danced round the fire, dressed in various costumes and drag, and others sat supping cider and chatting.  

The first night was a lovely long night of making new connections, hearing other people's stories, understanding their journeys, who they were and appreciating their unique faerie spirits.  One of the faeries performed a beautiful healing for me, which allowed something to move deep inside and present itself. It felt great to be able to drop life, let go, and immerse myself in a totally new and wonderful experience of human harmony. 

The next morning, as the day broke, I climbed up to the Tor to get some air and perspective on what was unfurling below me.  Walking alone to the top of this sacred, spiritual monument I already began to miss the energy of the gathering below.  Sat atop in the rain with dark clouds swirling I understand what I would learn this weekend was not a solo journey but one spent with this new family of queer spirited brothers and sisters. I descended and rejoined the group for breakfast.  Slightly fuzzy from the night before I was excited about what the rest of the weekend would hold. 

It turned out to be a roller-coaster of new experiences! We started off with a Faerie Heart Circle then there was a workshop called "How to bring your faerie life into your ordinary life" and that was followed in the afternoon by a kundalini yoga workshop.

The final evening workshop was essentially a tantric massage workshop, with faeries naked and massaging each other. There was an option for us all to be clothed but it seemed like an unnecessary obstacle to intimacy.   I felt totally relaxed, at home, safe and comfortable being unclothed within the group. The one thing that struck me, as the workshop was unfolding, was that it wasn't a carnal, sexual experience. It was tantric and I absolutely loved it! The session went on into personal exploration with different people, evolving into hugging and kissing, reassuring and cradling.  It was deeply moving, powerful, exciting, comforting, loving.  By then end of the night I was in a whole new space. A place I'd never been before.  Too often encounters with others are based on quick, furtive, sexual explosions that leave you with less than you came with.  This gave me more.  Filled me with warmth and energy and a longing for more.

GS: So do you think this gathering has changed you?

WP: It’s funny but I've always wanted to wear a ring and for years have never been able to do it.  I suppose I’d never felt that comfortable with the idea of it.  But now I have one!  And a necklace!  I spent £2.80 and put them on and felt this incredible lightness across my heart.  It almost sang out when I laid some bright orange beads across my chest.  As if to say YES!  Thank you!  I am free!  To be a faerie!  To love others without the burden of a life not of my making, or of my wishing. I felt so nervous leaving the shop, with a ring on.  RIDICULOUS!  It's just a butterfly ring, come on Wood Pigeon you can do it!  And do you know what? I now know I certainly can!

If you want to read the unedited version of Wood Pigeon’s Faerie adventures or to get to know more about Albion Faeries check out the webpage @

http://albionfaeries.wordpress.com/ or email Brightonfaerie@gmail.com to join the elist

Down with Pride! Up with Passion!

I feel Pride bursting my heart as I inhale
I feel shame twist my insides as I exhale 

If Gay Pride marches started as a defiant gesture towards our emotionally abusive nurturing networks, as a refusal to allow a minority socio-biologically determined feature to mark us out as pariahs, then maybe we need to explore the impact of historical societal unpleasantness on the stymieing of the spirit of joy and playfulness in our Faerie natures. 

For most of us we’ve had to brazen out the discomfort of a constant backdrop of presumed social approbation. My own response was to pull away from family and frien-emies . I had to numb my sensitivities; to seem like I didn’t give a shit. I anaesthetized my intuition and creative instincts. I stifled my feminine-sissy nature. She had already been battered and bruised over the years by the invalidation of others’ embarrassment, disapproval, and ridicule. 

Distancing myself also meant ripping myself away from the wonderfully assuring imagery, stories and understandings of a stabilising yet homophobic religious community, who had provided a basic framework around which my early spiritual growth had been flourishing. 

As I came out to a more accepting chosen family, I sensed that my male-loving masculine gender was nicely privileged. However my male-loving feminine nature was shunned. My first gay community, had not only unknowingly internalised its own homophobia but was also largely unaware of its patriarchally imposed misogyny. For lots of understandable reasons it was a spiritual wilderness too. 

As I identified a lack of spirit in my life I began to search for an accepting spiritual home. Wherever I seemed to look there would always seem to be a problem with queerness. I concluded ultimately that I would need to become the spiritual home I was searching for. I started to read daily from the book “The Essential Gay Mystics” by Andrew Harvey and slowly but gradually began the work (and play) of constructing a truly personal spiritual life where my soul would be free to dance, laugh and sing! 

In this new life I am encouraged to pursue my sexual desires and to satisfy my sexual appetites as a truly spiritual practice. My masculine-ness is honoured -as is my feminineness in a beautifully androgynous balance! By cultivating my spiritual/ sexual nature I am able to honour the 'wholeness of me' in the context of the cosmos. I can attune to the unassailable forces of inevitability. 

Rather than allowing ‘shame aversion’ to guide my actions I can now allow myself to be wholeheartedly ethically shameless following instead the discernment arising from a respect for my nature, the love of others and a joy for life. The Faeries like this! 

In Faerie community my wholeness is honoured and enjoyed. I am invited to explore my response to acceptance in social space. Do I choose to be selfish or am I generous and self-sacrificial? I learn that I am allowed to take the love I need and that I am happy to allow others to feed on the love I have to give. 

I have said goodbye to the Gay Pride/Shame binary. 
I’ve left it behind in exchange for Queer Sacred Passion. 
It’s a much more sustaining paradigm!

Wanted: Sexy, Virile Youth!

Senile, grey-haired, balding elder seeking relationship with sexy, virile youth.

Me: Arthritic, ageing and forgetful with varicose veins, piles and a hernia.

You: Confident, narcissus, articulate and intelligent with a mistrust of authority and a disdain for paternalistic platitudes. Your pulsating hormones drive you to copulate preferentially with young bodies and my old carcass will disgust you.

I have nothing to offer but myself as a living example of the magnificent tenacity of life. A gnarled old oak simply existing! I have no wisdom to offer other than: ‘indispensable wisdom is un-dispensible’.

You will generate your own wisdom by learning from your own experience and by developing a sense of discernment: the capacity to judge the consequences of your actions. For this there are no prophets, no seers, no gurus, no oracles to guide you.

You will do what you do to get what you want. You will do what you do to get what you need. You will do what you do to fit in, to gain approval, to soothe a sense of having been marginalised, isolated and invalidated. With discernment, however, you will sense the inevitable direction your path must follow in spite of these influences.

In the realm of queerdom, we are one, you and I. The hurt you push on me will cause you pain. Yet every one of your new learnings will spin a thread of the finest silk to cocoon all of our tribe. Together we will crysa-lyse the ugly frog-skin of conformity and cast it from our backs to reveal the satin smooth faerie-wings of our truest natures.

The Greek philosopher Socrates said “My friends, why do you care so much about laying up the greatest amount of money and honour and reputation and so little about wisdom, truth and the greatest improvement of the soul?” He said this not as a wise man to the youth of Athens. He did not consider himself wise. He was speaking to those Athenian elders who proclaimed themselves as wise. His gentle ridicule of the pompous was a great entertainment to the young men who gathered to watch old Socrates in action. He was ultimately accused of corrupting the youth of the State with his ideals, found guilty at trial and was sentenced to a forced suicide death by self administered hemlock poisoning.

So, as GaySocrates, I say to those elders in our gay community who put great store by material wealth, social standing and assimilation: Where is your wisdom? Find and feed your souls!

And to you my sweet, tender youth I say simply: Be who you are and become who you are meant to become!

And when I die, which I surely will, and most probably many years before you, I shall have the final words of Socrates inscribed on my headstone.

The hour of departure has arrived and we must go on our ways;

I to die and you to live.

Which is better?

God only knows!

gaysocrates@gmail.com

http://www.gaysocrates.blogspot.co.uk

Blossom, Pollen, Me, My Love and a Cat: A poem for Faerie Magnoose

I saw a cat the other day. He stalked across the street.

We stopped and caught each others stare. Oh what a splendid treat!

A creature strong and sleek he was. A pleasure to behold!

The look of youth around his eyes saw mine were getting old.

‘Come have a little stroke’, I said ‘and play with me awhile’

I muttered sweet enticing sounds to try to raise a smile.

But he was having none of it. His look turned glazed and grey.

His cupboard love awaited him. What need had he to play?

He turned away. I heaved a sigh; the moment held in mind.

My love at home awaited me to offer food and wine.

So why have I the time for love while lovers scurry on?

Why does the blossom in the trees love pollen in the sun?

The Good-Bad Faeries are in Brighton

When I was an infant my first experiences were very primitively categorised into “good” and “bad”.  When I was warm, dry, fragrant, comfortable, satiated and soothed life was good. When I was cold, wet smelly, uncomfortable, hungry and abandoned life was bad. The fact that mummy was the source of both of these states hadn’t occurred to me.

As I grew and developed I continued to build on this binary foundation and continued to categorise people and experiences into various shades of good and bad. This formed the basis of my basic ego based morality.

As time went by parents, teachers and priests contributed to my understanding of what was “good” and what was “bad”. My superego developed and helped me to understand that what was “good” for my ego didn’t necessarily make for a “good” experience for everyone.

So far so good! The trouble kicked off when I started to realise that a really important aspect of my nature was viewed by the moralists around me as being not just bad but totally fucking evil!

The only sane response to this creepy development was to critically appraise the moral framework, which had been painstakingly hardwired into my personality and carefully dismantle the faulty bits. Once I’d established that queer sexuality was OK after all I was left with an uncertainty about all this “good-bad” stuff.  Is there any sexually based behaviour that was unethical? Of course there was but how did I confidently discern? Maybe if it doesn’t hurt anyone ...but then how would I know what might hurt? Did moral frameworks evolve as ways of anticipating how best to avoid pain to others?

I imagine that in ancient times a tribe might have turned to its elders and ancestors as a source of ethical wisdom and that an elder would have based moral advice on memories and stories of how past behaviours had impacted on the tribe and its environment.

We live in fractured society. These simple ways have been lost to us and we have lost our trust in church, authority and science to answer our ethical dilemmas.

Faeries have started to find their moral compass in nature and in the company of like-natured beings. We meet-up and find ways to behave ethically towards each other and the worlds we live in. We try to move away from identifying ‘otherness’ in those who make us feel uncomfortable. We locate source energy in ourselves, our neighbours, and our surroundings. We support each other in developing spiritual practices, which will sustain us and help us grow into an understanding of the purpose of our unique queerness.

Anyone out there think they might be a faerie and would like to talk from the heart about the fire of spirit, how to feed and sustain it, how to grow in love for ourselves and each other? Anyone want to develop a loving, caring, intimate community of Faeries in Brighton?

Drop me an email gaysocrates@gmail.com and I’ll put you on the Brighton Faerie email group.

I look forward to meeting up!

A South Coast Faerie Hi[Story]

  Children! Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin…

Once upon a time many years ago in America, a little Faerie called Walter was born into a hostile world. It was a time of fools in old style hats and coats who half the time were soppy-stern, and half at one another's throats!

Walter was a nature-loving Faerie and his nature was to love. His world disapproved of his kind of love but to him it was quite natural.

He wrote poems about nature and was brave enough to write about the nature of his kind of love. No one had done this before.

He published his poems and his countrymen thought them crude and disgusting. 

However here in England one little Faerie, called Edward, [who had been born in Brighton then moved to Leeds], read the poems and they sang to his soul. He loved the poems so much he set sail to meet Walter to see and touch him in the flesh! He thought ‘if one Faerie can dare to put into words what it is like to love like a Faerie then so can I!’

Edward was very knowledgeable having studied at a very important university. He wrote a book about Faerie-love. He wanted to help people understand that to love like a Faerie was not something evil or corrupt but a very natural thing indeed. Faerie-lovers needed help to heal their broken wings and their woundedness from years of bullying and fear of imprisonment. 

At that time a very theatrical, flamboyant, Faerie called Oscar-who had also visited Walter- was discovered to have been indiscreetly loving like a Faerie and was sent to hard labour imprisonment which broke his soul.

By some miracle of Faerie-magic Edward was able to publish his book living [openlyish] with a number of Faerie-lovers in Leeds and managed to escape prosecution- just narrowly- by the authorities for what was seen by many at the time as an obscene publication.

A copy of his book found its way to a library back in America where a little Faerie called Harry [who had been born in Worthing] discovered it peeping out at him from a locked glass cabinet. As only a little Faerie could, he persuaded the lady librarian that she could lose her stern look by popping down the hair salon for a Marcel Wave perm whilst he looked after the library. As soon as she left he grabbed the secret key to the locked bookcase of forbidden books. She returned hours later to find little Harry engrossed in the book of Faerie-love. From this day forward Harry knew he was not the only Faerie and he determined to fight against the persecution of Faerie-lovers. He gathered a group of like-minded men. Some thought the best way to fight persecution would be to convince the law-makers that we were just like them only a bit different. Harry said ‘No! Faeries have a purpose! We are special! We need to cultivate our specialness and heal our woundedness in Sanctuary by exposing our vulnerabilities to each other in Heart Circle. In this way our kind of love can transform the world!’

Three years ago a little Faerie called Mushroom-who lives in Brighton- discovered and healed bruised and battered Faerie-wings through Heart Circle at Faerie Sanctuary feeling much gratitude to Harry, Edward Oscar and Walter.

Mushroom really does wish that there had been Faerie Hi[Stories] like this at nursery school. Who knows? 
Perhaps someday there will be!

Walt Whitman              1819-1892

Edward Carpenter        1844-1929

Oscar Wilde                  1854-1900

Harry Hay                     1912-2002

Faerie Mushroom         1960-

Blue Tit (An Elfchen-11 word poem)

 

Blue

Tit chirps

Faerie nature sliver

Listen! Look! Feel! Now!

Paradise

An Autumn Evening Walking Back from the Zoo

Twilight-Blush clouds
Ruby-orange
 
Autumn-Trees burn
Eerie-fireglow!

20-10-12

Featherstone 2013 Faerie Gathering

*The Featherstone 2013 Call*

Calling all faerie folk, all ye queer and gentle creatures, inverts, perverts, sodomites, Uranian lovers, Sapphists, finger artists, nancy boys, camp queens, dolly fruits, closet cases, switch hitters, stone butches, longtime companions, confirmed bachelors, strange sisters and loving comrades!

We invite you all to the 7th annual winter gathering of the Albion Faeries at Featherstone Castle in Northumberland.

Steal away from the humdrum world, from the hustle and bustle of the everyday. Leave behind the mundane and the conventional. Join with us in creating an enchanted domain of freedom and discovery.

Ignite your passions, delight your senses, take risks, learn and teach, appreciate and be appreciated, commune with nature, embrace whimsy, transform yourself, delve deep into the profound, dissolve in laughter...

We will share and listen at heart circles, cook and eat delicious meals together, dress up, dress down, frolic in the love temple, snuggle by the fire, drum, sing, dance and make merry.

We will gather from Friday, the 25th of January until Monday, the 4th of February, 2013. Arrive when you can, leave when you must.

This gathering is a co-creation of all who are there. Come with intention and help us manifest felicity, wonder, and joyful togetherness.

Please visit our website at www.albionfaeries.co.uk/featherstone2013 where you’ll find more info about the gathering and a link to our online registration form.

We also have a facebook page at www.facebook.com/EurofaeriesFeatherstone2013 which will have updates as the gathering approaches.

We welcome all adult faeries (16+), irrespective of gender or sexuality.