This year I managed to swing attending one day of the Glastonbury Goddess Conference, before I had to run off home. I wanted to give a blow by blow, for super curious peeps (as I’m nosy and read this kind of post when I can’t go to something), but also I learnt a bunch of really interesting stuff while I was there. So I popped in my lessons too. They were profound for me, let me know how they are for you.
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Da da da DAAA! It starts.
Opening Ceremony Experience
I went to the Opening Ceremony on the Tuesday night, and was blindfolded and lead into the hall, listening to haunting messages from the Crone telling us to feel deeply and own our shadow, with crow noises and all sorts. It was amazingly evocative and powerful. We were asked to open our eyes and met the eight aspects of the crone around a huge central cauldron, and each had a powerful message for us – the Crone of Transformation, The Crone who still feels Young inside, the Crone of Sex, the Crone of Tears, the Crone of Death. Really powerful.
We did some chanting and singing and spiral dance kind of things, which I am never very keen on because they seem a bit pointless to me. Then there was some poetry, followed by the Crones coming out dressed in lots of colours dancing onstage. And that was kind of the end.
I’m going to be honest here, as ever. I didn’t get the ritual at all – I felt like I had been encouraged to go to a deep place by all these crones talking about death and weeping and grief and transformation, and then it was suddenly glossed over by some people dancing and celebrating, and I didn’t understand the point of it at all – were we meant to connect and pray with the Crone? Were we meant to cry or were we meant to celebrate? I didn’t know. Lots of other people seemed mad happy and were hugging and stuff, but I left the hall feeling a little broken and confused and angry. I went to walk around the landscape venting my feelings to the Crone, got unbelievably tired halfway through and stomped home grumpily.
Lesson 1: Have a really, really clear intention for any ritual ever, especially a public one.
Performing in Ceremony at the Goddess Conference
Next morning my Spiral Group were performing in our opening ceremony. As it’s Lammas, we had to create an open public ceremony to honour Lammas and the season of the Harvest. We were up practising crazy bonkers early and trying to hide from the peeps filing in. In the ceremony, I was Mistress Glitonea, who is the Morgen of this season of the wheel in our tradition. (A Morgen is an elemental spirit of the landscape of Avalon, who embodies spirit of the land at their particular time of the year.) My job was to dance in to Eva Cassidy singing Fields of Gold and start the ritual off, and it was really lovely.
Lesson 2: People really like dancing in rituals. They went mad for the Crones dancing onstage to Mizmars the night before too.
Morning Talks
We had some beautiful talks in the morning – all about Crone-type women talking about their lives and experiences. One lady talking about her experiences being involved with the Goddess Conference for the last 20 years and what it was like at the start, followed by a really moving presentation by a lady who had photographed women attendees of the Conference of all aspects of womanhood – maiden, lover, mother and crone – which was so beautiful to see. I totally teared up at this one.
The songstress Julie Felix came onstage to sing, and she was amazing – so warm and friendly and brilliant, and her songs were fantastic. She’s a folk singer and a protest singer who is just amazing – I absolutely loved her to pieces. She told us a little about her life as a travelling protest singer and how she accidentally found Goddess along the way.
Lesson 3: Playing the guitar is so so cool, and when I grow up I want to be a guitar playin’, cowboy boot wearin’ songstress.
I loved the way that all the “Crones” who came onstage to share their wisdom were all, “Well, thanks for putting me on this stage Kathy, but honestly I don’t feel any different than I did 30 years ago and I don’t feel like I have this fount of wisdom to share or anything.” And then proceeded to share all this smart wise stuff. I thought it was absolutely lovely.
Lesson 3: Wisdom isn’t something you can force. It comes from your truth and your authenticity.
Starhawk O’ Clock
Starhawk was next. She did a little chat about… something. I can’t really remember what it was about. I was getting tired and sleepy and she wasn’t grabbing me or saying anything really memorable, except for when she was talking about choices of words for things and spoke about the true meaning of the government’s policies of Austerity in the UK, where they picked a noble-sounding word and used it to make the rich-poor divide greater. That got a big holler from the audience.
She kind of took a little dig at the previous night’s ceremony I think, saying that when we are dancing and chanting and singing songs and stuff, us lot in Avalon are not raising energy or anything because we are just dissipating it with all the whooping and hollering we do. I was like OMG YES STARHAWK.
So then Starhawk was going to lead a Spiral Dance, and I was all, really? I can’t handle any more freaking spiral dances or stupid audience-participation songs, I think I will go and have some cake instead. But I did end up staying and joining in, and the no-hollering, setting a clear intention, focused approach that Starhawk took was brilliant. It was powerful and full of purpose. I finally saw the point of all the chanting and spiral dance stuff.
(There we are Spiral Dancing with Starhawk. I’m the one in the bright pink skirt.)
Lesson 4 – The chants and the songs you use for audience participation in ritual need a purpose. Everything needs a purpose and a reason in ritual. With clear focus and intention, chants and songs become a powerful way to raise power and experience the sacred. Without it, they are just kind of self indulgent and pointless and are just kind of space fillers, unless the intention is just to sing and have a good time.
I don’t know, maybe I am so anti-unpurposeful-singing in ritual this year because I don’t like being told how to enjoy myself. Other people seem to dig it. Maybe I’m just a party pooper.
Afternoon Workshop
I did an afternoon workshop with Kelianna about Soul Singing. This is where you just sing out, without words, whatever your soul wants you to sing. It’s really powerful and feels all tingly when you do it, and everyone sounded really beautiful.
Singing is a bit of a funny one with me, because like Kelianna said, so many people are afraid that they can’t sing and are terrified of singing in front of others, and I am definitely one of them. The scariest performance work I do is a duo act consisting of me dressing up as a mermaid, playing ukulele and acting as backing singer for my mermaid partner, and it terrifies me. However, no-one has every run away screaming from the sound of my voice yet, and people tell me afterwards that I have a nice voice. Maybe I was told I was a bad singer when I was 8 or so because before then I used to win prizes and stickers in school choirs for singing.
Lesson 5: You can sing. Everyone who got up to sing, trained singers and untrained singers, all sounded amazing. All of them. So I promise you are no where near as bad as you think you are.
Grumpy and Knackard
I was so tired sitting on my chair in the singing class I felt like I was falling asleep again. I sat on the floor and instantly woke up a lot. Maybe I was really in need of a lot of grounding that week.
After class, I was grumpy and tired and fed up. By this point I had been in Glastonbury for 6 days. I just wanted to go home and watch TV and snuggle up with my boyfriend do something that had nothing to do with spirituality, like put a wash on or talk about hot vampires. I knew that if I went back to my B&B I would just fall right asleep and ruin my sleep pattern, so I went to the park, lay down on the grass like a lazy and called Superman and felt a lot better.
I’m not the only person who had this experience over the weekend – a chunk of us trainee priestesses had been utterly drained all weekend and had funny experiences of not getting to sleep, despite being exhausted. A few of us participating in the Crone Conference just felt generally angry. Not angry at the Conference or Glastonbury or anything, but you know that feeling when your annoyed button is stuck on and you are just ready to be angry at everything? We were putting it down to Crone Vibes.
Concert
In the evening was a Goddess concert featuring Wendy Rule, Kelliana and Anique Radient Heart. I was especially excited as I was to dance with Wendy Rule onstage to a dark goddessy song, a dream come true for me. Woohoo!
Anique was first. She is a singer and a priestess from Australia, and before the concert I could take or leave her work, as it has a kind of dated synthy keyboard feel that I’m not so keen on. But I fell in love with her lyrics and what she was singing about – she does some lovely songs about priestesses. Check her out on The Tube.
Wendy was second. I was to join her on her fourth song, Creator Destroyer, so I was watching from the audience. Holy crap her voice – it just goes straight through you, so haunting and deep and magical and powerful, I can’t even describe what it was like hearing it live. Super beautiful. I had all my stage makeup on and I was trying so hard to stop tearing up, because her voice was like she’d stuck her hand in your chest and was holding your heart, and I didn’t want rivers of black eye-shadow painted down my face.
Though, as someone pointed out after, would have probably have looked pretty good for the Crone.
I did my dance, partly veiled in black for drama – there is a video somewhere that I shall upload, and I got to go into the audience and interact with them a bit which is always fun.
After Wendy was Kellianna, who is mainly chants and folksy stuff, but I rocked up at the front with some of my new friends and the kids present to dance. There was an adorable little girl who kept putting a scarf on her head imitating what I was doing for my dance earlier, it was so sweet! And then Kellianna, Wendy and Anique rocked it out together to sing a couple of Wendy and Kelliana’s songs in three part harmony – it was really truly epic.
(You can catch Wendy on Youtube Here and check out Kellianna Here, in case you were curious and wanted a listen)
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So that was my day at the Conference! I kind of went through every feeling ever and ended up going to bed buzzing after the concert and feeling brilliant. I am definitely going back next year, and taking more photos when I do!
