Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Pagan
The Witches Next Door: When Worlds Collide – Coming Back From Pantheacon

The Witches Next Door: When Worlds Collide – Coming Back From Pantheacon

Last updated on: March 24, 2015 at 12:31 pm by The Witches Next Door

The Witches Next Door: When Worlds Collide – Coming Back From Pantheacon 2015-03-24T12:31:51+00:00 The Witches Next Door

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Have you ever come back from a vacation or a spiritual retreat and had the world just sort of slap you in the face? Reality can be harsh. We refer to this process as “re-entry”. It’s that adjustment period when we need to remember that there won’t be someone else preparing our meals or making our beds or reminding us where to be for our next amazing discussion. Laundry and grocery shopping and picking up the kids are actually extremely important tasks that need to be done and we have to do them, but it can be really hard to wrap our newly-blissed-out brains around these every day tasks.

Laundry? Really!? Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

Laundry? Really!?
Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

We’re returning from a terrific Pagan conference full of ideas and inspiration and we’re acutely aware that we have day jobs and obligations that are significantly less exciting but oh so very necessary. So on the ride home from PantheaCon we asked each other why we attend these events and what do we ultimately get out of going to them?

What is the value of attending a Pagan conference?

Gwion: PantheaCon is many different things to many different people. I like to describe it as a gathering hall for the diverse and varied Pagan traditions to come and celebrate each other. PantheaCon creates a place where magical and political and cultural ideas are shared and exchanged and expressed and expanded upon. I can throw off my serious ritual face and enjoy what it is to be a modern Pagan while tossing back my favourite adult libations of choice. It’s a place to put on my serious ritual face and dive head-first into the Mysteries and come back from the experience exhausted and transformed. In short, PantheaCon is a colourful, noisy, sublime four-day ritual and carnival of all things Pagan and I love it.

I’ve attended this conference for years but “my” PantheaCon this year was so rich, so abundant and so different than I would have imagined it to be. I found myself surrounded by peers and colleagues and by incredibly wise and earnest people that I just bumped into for the first and probably only time in an elevator. My sense of it all, and I’m really only just able to put this into words, is that our community of Pagans is not as provincial and remote from the over-culture, the dominant culture as “they” would have us believe. You see, I met pagans from every part of the United States. I met Pagans from outside the U.S. I talked with Pagans doing the very hard work of transforming the world one child, one protest, one legal argument, one planter box, one school board meeting, one Facebook post, one public ritual at a time. And that’s incredibly inspiring for me.

Phoenix: It’s really easy to get super insular in our home communities and that can also lead to getting stale. When you see the same folks at every ritual, when you know all the inner drama of your tradition, when the people you circle with are also your closest friends, it can sometimes feel like you are all alone on a little island with this little community. Although my local Pagan community is pretty large I can easily get sucked into the “onlyness” of my tradition. And although I love my tradition, I can sometimes get caught up in it and forget that there are so many other options out there.

This is the importance of a Pagan conference for me. It is a reminder that there is more to the Pagan world than my little corner of the table. There is so much more and so many more of “us”. That fact makes me really excited. The Pagan world is bigger than me and I am a part of this ever growing movement.

Plus, Pagan people are just so amazingly cool and fun to be around. At a conference I get to witness other Pagan folk interacting with hotel staff and restaurant staff who have no idea who we are or why we are all dressed so weird. I swear there are no other groups more polite than Pagan groups. My faith in humanity often falters, but being in Pagan space helps to shift that cloud of doubt and let some rays of hope shine through….maybe the human race isn’t doomed after all.

How does attending PantheaCon or any spiritual conference affect your daily life after the conference?

Phoenix: Like I said to Gwion when we started to talk about these ideas, this is a difficult question. I am really hard on myself, always pushing myself to do more, experience more, achieve more. Sometimes at these conferences I come home feeling beaten up. Why couldn’t I do more! Why haven’t I achieved more! What am I doing with my life? Why can’t I move into the Priestess House and serve my community or be the witch in the woods? But really this is just the fire of inspiration fueling me forward. I love my faith so much, I love working with the Goddesses of the world so much, I love sharing what I know. I come home from a conference with more knowledge of myself. I come home from conferences ready to make changes to the world because I know that there are other people out there who want it as much as I do. My daily life changes because I have better perception of who I am.

Gwion: I go to two or three main spiritual conferences a year, sometimes as a participant and other times as a teacher or presenter. I usually come back full of ideas and it takes me a while to sort out just what the most critical pieces are. How that shows up in my every day life is that I’m constantly churning through my own thoughts, re-examining how I interact with the world and imagining how I would/could approach things differently. I have to be careful to include my partner and my kids in these processes, otherwise I find myself pulling back and becoming distant or distracted. So that’s the trick – giving myself the space to dream and re-imagine while remembering to take the garbage cans out to the street on Thursday night!

a tire tread on a road

Source: pixgood.com.

So what’s our takeaway?

We both agree that the highs and lows that come from a conference or spiritual retreat do feed into our daily lives and at first it can be hard to make dinner, feed the dogs, or vacuum the house. What we recognize is that it is in the taking of these simple and small steps when we get home that continue to bring the magic into our daily lives. The “big” things can happen at a conference, but once we get home it’s about integrating those big feelings and making them a part of the day to day living. A conference, witch camp, or retreat is only a short period of time. The rest of the year we are dealing with the mundane aspects of life. Taking the energy from a conference and letting it infuse the rest of our lives is where the magical rubber meets the road.

“The Witches Next Door” is published on alternate Tuesdays. Subscribe via RSS or e-mail!

Columns

Community

Family & Household Practice

The Witches Next Door

Previous Post

February 23, 2015

Seeking the Grail: Why Begin the Quest?

Next Post

February 25, 2015 Alone In Her Presence: An Open Heart and a Naked Soul

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category A Lakeside Hearth Adventures in Wortcunning Alone In Her Presence Arts, Crafts & Cooking Birthing Hereditary Witchcraft Book of Blackbirds Book Reviews Born-Again Witch Cauldron, Sword, Spear, & Stone Cermony and Liturgy Columns Community Dandelion Seeds Dear Jasmine Druid Thoughts Editor's Picks Everyday Pagan Family & Household Practice Family Traditions Full Frontal Magic Gateway Goddess Guest Articles Happily Heathen Health and Wellness Hearth of Hellenism Heathen Woman Hills of the Horizon History Holidays Horse Goddesses Interfaith Interviews Irish-American Witchcraft Jewish Witch Lamp & Labyrinth Letters from Midgard Literature, Media, Film, Music Loop of Brighid Love, Sex & Relationships Magic or Magick Making Light Naturalistic Traditions Nature News Outside The Circle Pantheisticon Politics Prayers, Poems, Blessings & Stories Queer Femme Mystic Queer of Swords Recipes Ritual and Practice Science and Research Seekers and Guides Seeking the Grail Socially Responsible Magic Spear of Athena Star Made Witch Syncretic Electric Technology The Blooming Staff The Busy Witch The Cartomancer The Crow's Nest The Dance of Pagan Recovery The Hearth of Hellenism The Lady's Quill The Other Side of the Hedge The Path of She The Rantin' Raven The Witches Next Door The Zen Pagan Theology, Ethics, Philosophy Tree City Witch Urban Earthwitch Wayfaring Woman Witch on Fire Wyrd Words

Select a Month January 2026 March 2025 December 2024 June 2024 April 2024 March 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 August 2023 July 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Which prophet lamented over Israel's oppression of the poor?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Amos Hosea Obadiah Joel