The Phoenix Arises
(2005–2009)
Where there is power, there will be betrayal,
I wish I could tell you it wasn’t so.
But if we stand our ground,
If we don’t run away,
Our hearts will open again,
We are warriors
Bathed in the blood of desire and love.
—from “stand in your own light” by liza gabriel
NARRATOR: The Ravenheart Family business was hurt really badly by the economic downturn that followed 9/11. After that, Wolf and Wynter both had to stop working for Mythic Images full time. Wynter got a job in San Francisco and eventually moved in with Morgan, her lover there. Morning Glory learned to use the software that Wolf had designed and took over as business manager.
MG: Of course the other full-time occupation that was consuming my attention at this same time was taking care of my mother, whose deteriorating health made constant demands on my time and attention well beyond the simple basic things like cooking, cleaning, and doing her laundry.
This was one of the hardest times of my life. I was losing two of the people whose daily presence had made my life sweet and juicy, and though we still cared about each other, it was not the same and it never would be again. I was carrying a lot of grief about that as well as grappling with the increasingly debilitating effects of menopause. But I found the most wonderful thing when I started reading to Polly in the evenings.
It started out as a bit of an experiment to calm her down and help her to sleep better without all the drugs that messed up her memory and blood pressure. She never really read much herself except for the Bible or maybe some fundamentalist religious tracts, but she did love to hear stories, so I got the notion that she might enjoy hearing stories read to her from some of the fantasy books that had been so meaningful in my life. It was a way of sharing a part of my spirit with her without it being about religion. So I decided to read her The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien.
She absolutely loved The Hobbit and we actually went through the book fairly quickly, even just reading a chapter or so every few days. So when it was over, she was so eager for more that I decided to take a leap into a pretty ambitious possibility and read her the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy and show her the movies too.
Oberon also really got into the spirit of the thing. He would bring all his little Lord of the Rings model toys and action figures that he collected over to her house and set up little dioramas and scenes for the characters and events that would be in that night’s chapter. Lots of people were amazed that she had made such a turnaround in her health after leaving Ukiah and moving to Shady Grove. They would say things like “Polly, we are surprised you are looking so well; we thought you were about ready to die.”
Polly would just tell them proudly, in her thick Southern accent, “Well, I cain’t die till I find out what happens to Frodo!”
OZ: In March of 2005, one of the caretakers at Annwfn showed up and asked me, “How would you like to have your Church back?” In updating the insurance for our upcoming Beltane, he had discovered that despite the perfidious Ohio board of directors supposedly discorporating the Church of All Worlds the previous year, they had failed to notify the IRS, and had overlooked the fact that our California incorporation was still extant. All we needed to do was file a change of address for our primary office from Toledo to Cotati, and we were back in business!
At our first Church of All Worlds board meeting on Annwfn at Beltane, May 1, I was reinstalled as Primate and President of the BoD, with High Priestess Morning Glory as Vice President.
The Ohio BoD had pretty much burned the whole Church down to the ground. When we contacted the surviving members of that board, they wouldn’t even send us the records of their tenure, memberships, bookkeeping, or anything else. They claimed that all the files had been destroyed in a flood. Over the next few years we would begin re-conceptualizing and rebuilding our beloved Church from the ground up—a wonderful opportunity, actually, as it allowed us to learn from our successes and failures, and to incorporate those lessons into what we came to call “The Third Phoenix Resurrection of the Church of All Worlds” (the two previous ones being in Ukiah in the mid-’80s, and St. Louis in the late ’60s). As we started rebuilding the CAW, many old and new Waterkin started showing up to become involved.
NARRATOR: In 2005 the community at Shady Grove was broken up. What basically happened was a “poly” divorce—Liza met someone new and fell in love, and the two of them decided they did not want to live there. They eventually evicted the other residents of Shady Grove and sold the property. As with most divorces, it was difficult for all involved.
One of Oberon’s favorite sayings is from Spider-Man comics (as written by Stan Lee), and it goes like this: “With great power comes great responsibility.” I think that could apply to this situation and what led up to it. Polyamory gives people great power. Anyone who decides to live a polyamorous lifestyle has opportunities that were unimaginable just a generation ago. They have the power to love more. And much discussion, communication, and hard work has gone into creating a system that is ethical and, yes, responsible for all concerned. But most of this is still relatively new. Just how much responsibility, and what kind of responsibility, is required in a situation where multiple partners decide to live together, and then break up, is something that the polyamorous community will have to consider as it continues to grow and evolve.
OZ: Right after returning from a trip in July, I was slated to appear on a major TV show in Australia called The Sunday Program. A camera and sound crew were being dispatched to our home to tape me responding to the host, who would be phoning in his side of the interview. We walked in the door at 1:30 and were met by Wolf, who said, “I have bad news. We’ve all been evicted.”
No sooner had he spoken these words than the TV crew arrived—two hours earlier than they’d said they’d be here. There was simply no time at all for me to process the news of the eviction, and I was in a state of shock as I attempted to give a coherent interview.
It was 5:30 before they finally cleared out, and we all collapsed together in the kitchen. Liza had gone away incommunicado for the next two months with her new fiancé, and then had someone come in and tape sixty-day eviction notices to all our doorknobs.
LIZA: Sending out those notices was a hard decision. The kind you go over and over in your mind to see if there could have been a better way. I don’t think there could have been, unless it was not getting involved with Oberon and Morning Glory in the first place.
Sitting in meetings with Oberon and Morning Glory for a decade, I had learned that action was the only language they fully honored, so I spoke as clearly as I could in a language they could not ignore.
Each notice included a general letter to the community and a personal letter to the individual offering to pay moving expenses (which I did) and generally trying to explain myself. Each letter said I was open to suggestions about how to proceed, that I was available by email for any kind of dialogue but not in person.
None of the negotiations I was open to ever took place because within a few days of receiving my notices, rather than respond to me, Oberon wrote a letter to everyone I knew and everyone he knew dramatically discrediting me by giving an alarming version of my actions out of their full context.
So I, Oberon’s magickal partner and devoted friend, became his enemy. It was amazing. I had seen them both forgive people for much more damaging things. But not me. I love these people. They don’t have the power to erase that. It brought to mind a chant I had written for a workshop on the shadow Oberon and I had led together:
I salute you, beloved enemy
Full of darkness death and mystery
Spread your dark wings inside of me
Touch me with your wisdom and beauty
MG: Polly had loved and trusted Liza like a daughter and had been promised that she would be able to spend the last years of her life in peace. Still and all, if Liza hadn’t let her move into Shady Grove in the first place she would never have had these last few wonderful years to share with us. So perhaps the karma balances out in some painful way. Unfortunately, OZ was too busy writing the next book he was under contract for to be much help with finding a place, and so I tackled that by going online and checking the papers and finally joining a rental search program.
OZ: I had a really tight deadline schedule for the next book I was writing, Companion for the Apprentice Wizard. I couldn’t possibly handle a housing search, financing, moving, and so on in the next two months and still finish the book on time. And we had a business to run, which involved working every day filling orders, shipping, invoicing, etc.
While Wolf and his girlfriend Kat were out house-hunting, Morning Glory, Julie, and I held a New Moon Circle to envision our future. We laid out a huge sheet of blank paper and drew on it everything we wanted in a new home, which would include Polly, our business, a place to swim, facilities for animals, and possibly more. As we had done so many times before, we would all move forward, shifting probabilities to create a new reality and a new life out of the ashes.
After a month of intense house-hunting and even more intense Magick, MG finally found what would be the absolutely perfect new home with plenty of room for Morning Glory and me, our business, and Polly. The major drawback was that there would be no room for Wolf, Kat, Linda, or Julie, but they were all pretty much in the process of finding other places on their own. It was really sad to have to break up the Family, as we had enjoyed living together so much. It felt like the end of an era for certain.
We packed up everything and finally made the move on the first of October, 2005.
MG: Wolf and Kat moved into their own place nearby, and we continued to get together and enjoy each other’s company; we all considered each other to be part of our extended Family as we do Morgan and Wynter and Julie and Aidan. The people may change roles in our relationships, but whenever possible we try not to burn our bridges so that the Love can still remain.
Our new house is on a dead-end street, and I would take Polly out and push her down the street in her wheelchair to see the horses and sheep that were there. I kept trying to keep her interest in the world alive but it felt like something had broken inside her. She was in constant chronic pain, and that was taking its toll.
OZ: Thanksgiving that year was graciously picked up by Morning Glory’s daughter Gail, and her husband Joe. At dinner, Gail and Joe made a wonderful announcement: Gail was pregnant! Polly was happy over the prospect of finally becoming a great-grandmother, but at the same time she quietly bemoaned the thought of having to stay alive another eight months to see the newest member of her beloved family. By this time she had pretty much concluded that she was done with this life, and all she wanted now was for Jesus to come and take her home to Heaven.
NARRATOR: Polly’s condition worsened, and she had to be moved into a hospital.
MG: On February 11, 2006, Gail and I were both going to sit with her together when I got the call from the nurse that Polly had stopped breathing. So we raced over, and Gail and I went into her room to find that her spirit was still there. We could sense it like an enormous sparkling feeling of release fluttering around above her old shell of a body and laughing and laughing: “I’m free, I’m free! I can fly, I can fly!” It was so amazing to share this overwhelming sense of joy at her release that we couldn’t really be sad; we could only laugh with her. We were laughing and crying at the same time. Then we covered her body with all the flowers that had filled her room and kissed her goodbye. Gail gathered up her stuff and went back to the house while I waited for the mortician.
After he left with Polly’s body, I walked slowly to my car and turned for a moment, looking back towards the room where she had been—and I saw a large cloud hanging in the air directly over the rest home in the shape of an angel. Polly loved angels and she loved clouds. She had an angel collection and a comforter with clouds on it; I had even written her a poem called “My Mother’s Wings.” I just stared at this huge angelic apparition and my jaw dropped. I sucked in my breath, and all of a sudden the sun, which was setting, came out of a cloud bank and lit up the angel cloud with brilliant red and gold colors like a stained-glass window. At that very instant I heard my mother’s voice say, “Anytime you need to talk to me or show me anything, you just call out my name and tell it to me; I will hear you just fine because I’m everywhere now.”
I was so much in awe that I couldn’t even cry. I just said, “Wow, Polly! What a way to go!”
OZ: A living vessel of unconditional Love who lived her faith with every breath she took, she graced the life of everyone she met. Polly loved everybody, and everybody loved her. As many of Polly’s Hippie and Pagan friends showed up for her funeral as did the Christians.
One by one, Christians and Pagans got up and took turns telling anecdotes of their experiences with Polly. Polly’s favorite hymns were sung, concluding with Artemisia, our Bard, singing an exquisite rendition of Annie Lennox’s “Into the West,” from the final credits of Return of the King, which Polly had specifically requested after seeing the movie. It was a beautiful and moving service for Christians and Pagans alike
NARRATOR: Oberon and Morning Glory started having health issues of their own. When her back didn’t recover for months after a fall the day before her mother’s funeral, Morning Glory saw a neurosurgeon who immediately checked her into the hospital for the biopsy. The next day, she got the bad news: it was cancer.
MG: The next morning right after the biopsy, my doctor woke me up to tell me that the biopsy had come back positive for multiple myeloma, that it was incurable but it was treatable. He told me that it looked like this cancer had been growing in me for about four or five years, which was why my bones kept breaking—in other words, while I was under all the stress with the business, menopause, taking care of Polly, the breakup of our Family, and our eviction. I have never experienced such a heartbreaking moment as when I had to tell OZ and Gail that I had an incurable cancer. But the nurses in the hospital and even a representative from the insurance company were the kindest people I have met in many a day.
My doctor did some more surgery on me. This time he fixed my broken vertebra with a kyphoplasty, which is a fancy way of putting you back together with a surgical version of Bondo. After that, they released me and I was ecstatically happy to be back home in my wonderful new place with the people I love. The next day I woke up to the sound of beautiful female voices singing May Carols, and it was Artemisia’s women’s chorus rehearsing on the porch outside my bedroom. The sunshine streamed in and the smell of all the hanging wisteria blossoms filled my heart with sheer gratitude for being alive. From now on, I have become aware that every day I live is a gift to be cherished for as long as possible.
OZ: Fortunately, a center for treatment of multiple myeloma—and one of the foremost doctors, Dr. Marek Bozdech—is right here in Santa Rosa, only five miles from our home. The oncologist in San Francisco told MG that if she’d come in with this condition ten years ago, they’d have given her only a couple years to live. But while multiple myeloma is still presently incurable, he said that current treatments can now keep her going for another fifteen years—by which time, hopefully, better treatments or even a cure will be available.
I am so glad that now we had medical insurance; it was one of the things that Liza had insisted on for which we owe her thanks, and so Morning Glory was able to begin treatment immediately.
The most amazing thing was the overwhelming community response to the news of MG’s cancer. Our friends at WitchSchool.com put up a special website for her healing. Cards, letters, and emails started pouring in from dozens, then hundreds, of supporters—sending love, prayers, magick, and all kinds of healing energy. Monthly “Rolling Thunder” rituals were created on the full moons, with people joining in around the world. It was deeply moving, and really helped Morning Glory get back on her feet. Her doctors were very impressed by the degree of her steady progress towards remission, which currently has stabilized at 98 percent.
MG: Gail’s daughter was born by caesarian at 8:55 p.m. on Friday evening, July 28, 2006; Joe was able to be with her the entire time, even in the operating room. Times have sure changed since Gary and I opted for a home birth because they wouldn’t let fathers into the delivery room. She named the baby Alessandra Salvador. Alessa was absolutely the most perfect, adorable baby that ever there was, except for her mother. She was born with a full head of lush black hair, just like both her parents. Joe finally brought Alessa in for us to coo and gush over, and as we all sat there together, I saw Polly with my peripheral vision sitting in the corner with a big smile on her face reaching out her arms to hold her great-granddaughter—four generations of women now.
NARRATOR: After moving out of Shady Grove, confronted with Polly’s death and Morning Glory’s medical problems, it wasn’t until 2007 that Oberon was finally able to construct display cases and unpack Morning Glory’s Goddess collection.
MG: All through the darkest time in my life—the death of my mother and my bout with cancer—I had been without my Goddess collection. I was overjoyed to be able to have all their familiar images to consult with and share my inner thoughts. It may sound odd because of course the statues of Goddesses are just statues; but at the same time since I know all their stories the figurines become object links connecting me to the energetic forces that are the true forms of the deities. Before too long the Goddesses began whispering to me about reaching out again and teaching other people about them—finding new Priestesses to hear their tales and touch their power.
NARRATOR: Oberon had been rebuilding his relationship with his father over the past several years, due in part to Liza’s encouragement. As they came to relate on better terms to one another, Charlie had even helped Oberon make a connection to a factory in Taiwan in the mid-’90s where they could produce some of Mythic Image’s statuary, which they used until 1998. He was particularly proud of his son’s Millennial Gaia.
LIZA: I pointed out to Oberon that his relationship with his father was an important thing on many levels. I also set an example with my own family. I helped him to understand that it was worthy of his time and attention to cultivate a relationship with his father, and that it didn’t have to be about his father agreeing with him, or thinking that he was a good guy. And he developed a better relationship with his father. He went to visit his father regularly, and his father eventually came to visit us. I couldn’t help but feel somewhat that his father was a difficult man, it’s fair to say. But we did our best to be welcoming and hospitable to him.
OZ: I think we’d both gotten mellower over the years, and it was nice to feel a deepening of our filial connection, which was for so long rendered well-nigh impossible by the extreme antithesis of our respective lifestyles, religions, politics, and philosophies. It had been a real challenge, for me at least, to find some common ground we could both stand on! But I held to the conviction that we both really did love each other, despite our considerable differences and disagreements.
During a visit in 2008, my father informed me that he had put me back in his will. That was nice—I hadn’t known that I’d been disinherited for all those years! He also told me that one of the reasons why I’d never been included in any family events and adventures—such as reunions, weddings, funerals, holidays, vacations, etc.—was because I was “too interesting.” He told me that whenever I show up, I’m always the center of attention, and everyone else is just eclipsed. I guess there is something to think about always having to be the center of attention; I didn’t really realize that was how it might seem to others.
MG: I found out that I had also inadvertently caused a large part of the estrangement. I had first met Charles at our wedding, but I didn’t meet his second wife, Helen Marie, until almost seven years later, and I’m afraid that I was still in a somewhat confrontational adolescent headspace. Unthinkingly, I made a really nasty remark about the newly elected president, Ronald Reagan. I said, “Maybe we’ll be lucky, and he’ll die in office.” I was quoting my father, who used to say stuff like that all the time. And though they were too polite to show it, they were both completely horrified, because Reagan was actually a personal friend of theirs. In fact, Charlie had worked on Reagan’s campaign in one of the early, and very important, state primaries for the election.
For years we had no idea that this was an issue, and I had completely forgotten the event; it had come from such a non-conscious part of me anyway. But as years went by I stopped attending any family gatherings where Charlie and Helen Marie would be, because I sensed they didn’t like me and I didn’t want to inflict my presence on them. I still urged OZ to attend, however, because I have always felt it was crucially important to stay connected to your biological family if at all possible, regardless of your differences.
OZ came back from one of these visits with his dad after Helen Marie had passed on, and Charlie had confided this story to Oberon. OZ was really taken aback! That they had taken this insult in such a deeply personal way that I had delivered flippantly and then carried it around like a festering wound all these years was an intolerable burden. When he told me about this, I spent a lot of time in grief about the damage that an unthinking attitude can do to people’s lives and about how you can’t fix something until you know about it. But I was determined to do the right thing. I put myself in their place and imagined how I would have felt if a stranger that I had just met had made a heartlessly cruel comment about one of my close friends. I certainly would not have wanted to spend time hanging around with them.
So I sat down and spent a couple of days writing a lengthy and heartfelt apology to Charlie for the stupid thing I said so many years ago. I have certainly grown as a human being since then, but even at the time, if I had known the hurt I had caused I would gladly have apologized. The ability to be honest about who you are and to understand and acknowledge your flaws is the only way you can ever get beyond them.
Charlie read my apology and graciously accepted it, and we both ended up in tears over the tragic misunderstanding that had blighted our lives for so long. I was only sorry that Helen Marie was no longer around to be part of the experience.
OZ: Actually my dad was sort of amazed that Morning Glory could just come right out with an apology like that, as it is apparently not the sort of thing that happens very often in his circle of friends. But as far as I was concerned, he was always the one who taught me that it takes a big person to admit when they are wrong. So I guess he understands Morning Glory a lot better now and why I continue to love her and support her even when she is wrong—because she does the same thing for me, and we both have learned to make a practice of admitting to each other whenever it becomes apparent that we were wrong about something. It has certainly been a feature in transforming our relationship and reducing the number of bitter fights that used to be one of its worst characteristics and the one that lost us so many good friends.
NARRATOR: After that visit to his dad, Oberon went in for a routine physical and was urged to have his first colonoscopy. Unfortunately, they discovered he had a large tumor in his descending colon and immediately scheduled him for surgery.
OZ: On August 29, 2008, I underwent the surgery. I stayed in the hospital for a week, suffering the worst pain I’d ever experienced. The only thing that kept me going was the knowledge that actual pain cannot be remembered later. And so it was. Morning Glory came in every evening to massage my back and read me Charles de Lint stories.
And now I, too—just like Morning Glory the previous year—began to receive a vast outpouring of love, prayers, and healing magick from all over the world. I felt buoyed up and supported like never before.
NARRATOR: The doctors discovered that one of the lymph glands was also cancerous, so Oberon had to go through six months of chemotherapy.
MG: We have a lot of friends who’ve had cancer and gone through chemo, so it was helpful to be able to consult with them about what to expect. My birthday sister Jessica went through the whole breast cancer routine and lost her hair to chemo, so she was able to give OZ some good suggestions about things. And our dear friend Gary Ball, who was our partner in the Between the Worlds venture back in Ukiah, had the same kind of cancer as OZ, so he was able to be a great support person. It really does help when someone else has walked before you on the road you have to travel. And now that we ourselves have walked that road, we can be guides to others.
OZ: I am hardly alone. It seems that every month I hear of someone I know having cancer. One of these was Lance Christie. When I learned this, I told him, “Don’t you think this is carrying this water-brother thing a bit too far?”
LANCE CHRISTIE: In September of 2008 I was diagnosed as having pancreatic cancer and quickly arranged to have a Whipple procedure done.
After undertaking a course of chemotherapy, tests in April showed me to be free of cancer. If cancer does recur, I have several agents identified that can stop tumor progression, turning cancer into a manageable chronic condition with which one can live with no particular inconvenience until one dies at a ripe old age from something else.
NARRATOR: In spite of all their personal setbacks and heartbreaks, OZ, CAW, and even Green Egg continued on.
OZ: At Ostara 2007, Green Egg, which had ceased publication in 2000, rose again from the ashes as a downloadable e-zine with a spectacular Phoenix on the cover, painted by Ian Daniels, who had done the cover and chapter illustrations for my Wizard’s Bestiary. This third incarnation began with volume 39, issue #137. Our old friends Tom Donohue and Ariel Monserrat were now at the helm, and doing a beautiful job! I am listed on the masthead as “Founder,” and I am very proud to see it back again. With a new motto of “Legends never die,” it can be found online at www.GreenEggzine.com.
After our respective cancer treatments, in 2009 we were back at PantheaCon, pulling out all the stops. We had just received the first prototype of a thirty-inch-tall Garden Goddess of my Millennial Gaia statue, and we set Her up in front of our Mythic Images booth. Everyone loved Her, and it was a real delight to see small children come up and hug Her—even give Her a kiss. Our biggest offering that year was a spectacular “Phoenix Rising” ritual. It would dramatize the resurrection of the Church of All Worlds, the healing of MG and me personally, and the new sense of hope engendered by Obama’s election, in these darkest of times. We spent months writing and rehearsing the script, casting all the parts, and making props, masks, and costumes.
At PantheaCon, on Valentine’s Day, the room was packed, and the ritual was a tremendous success. It began in near-darkness, with fog machines filling the center of the circle with mist. Participants became passengers on a “ship of fools,” guided by a navigator and arriving at a forgotten island, where the last Priestess tended the hearth in the temple of Gaia. But the sacred fires had gone out, and all that remained was a large mound of ashes. Helios, the Sun God, crossed from east to west, bringing a bit of illumination, as Gaia entered, reciting Algernon Swinburne’s evocative poem “Hertha.” The Priestess told her sad tale, of how all her hopes, dreams, and work had turned to ashes, and invited the “passengers” to identify with their own lives, tossing their ashes onto the heap, and fanning the coals. As they caught fire, a Phoenix emerged from under the gray, ashen blanket and rose to full height, wings outstretched. I was that Phoenix; and this is what the Phoenix said:
I arise. I arise from the ashes, reborn yet again. I am the Phoenix, ever-dying, ever-resurrecting. I am the hope in every heart, never dying, however wounded. I am the dream in every head, never forgotten, however diminished its grandeur in coming true. I am the light in every eye, still burning, however dimmed by remaining open through the darkest times. I am you.
I am born of the dance of the Earth and the Sun—as are all of you. You are my people, and I am your avatar. We are one.
We are Pagans and magickal folk—bound to the endless cycles of the Spiral Dance, from the vast wheeling galaxies to the double helix within your every cell. We know that there are cycles of destruction and creation, times of despair and times of hope, darkness and returning light, death and rebirth—all reflected in the Mystery of the Phoenix. We know that what goes around comes around, and Darkness must always yield to Light.
Black holes turn inside out to become brilliant quasars, filling the universe with energy. The bitterest winter rolls around to balmy spring, when Life springs forth anew. Out of every Dark Age is born a glorious Renaissance, in which all good things flower and flourish. Death eternally comes ’round to rebirth. And the deepest, darkest, longest night inexorably yields to the blazing sun of a New Dawn.
We have lived through rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. And we have lived amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. Our spirit remains strong, and cannot be broken. We will not turn back; nor will we falter.
There may come a day, billions of years hence, when Light fails, Entropy triumphs, and Darkness falls forever over all the worlds. But this is not that day! For this day, dedicated for millennia to Love, heralds a New Dawn, and a new Rebirth. On this day, we choose hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord. We choose rebirth!
In the glory of the rising Phoenix, Hope shall be rekindled in every heart; forgotten Dreams shall be reawakened in every mind; and the light of Love shall burn in every eye. This is the way of things, and it shall not be denied! Thus shall it be in our personal lives, in our Religion, in our Nation, and on our Planet. And thus the long tragedy of human history brings us inevitably towards the Awakening of Gaea!
They thought us dead, along with our hopes and dreams for a better world. But they were wrong. We live! We Are Alive!
MG: I made up my mind that the summer of 2009 was going to be the turnaround point for me with my life’s Work in the field of Goddess history. I sat down and wrote up a series of outlines for Goddess Retreat weekends and chose dates and then got OZ to create flyers for me to advertise them. I started with a little lecture for Sonoma County Pagan Network to show what I know and generate some local interest.
OZ: In June, I flew out to St. Louis for the Illinois Grey School Conclave, held about sixty-five miles from St. Louis in Illinois, and it was every bit as wonderful as the previous two I’d attended. When it ended we broke camp and drove back to St. Louis in time to set up our Grey School/Mythic Images booth for the two-day Pagan Picnic. When Morning Glory and I left St. Louis for the West Coast in June of 1976, there were maybe a couple dozen Pagans in the area—nearly all of them members of our own Church of All Worlds. So I was completely blown away to discover that this event—then in its seventeenth year—was attended by around five thousand people! Paganism has certainly come a long way in the past thirty-plus years, and this was a dramatic example.
MG: While OZ was gone we had a wonderful time at my first Goddess Retreat. This one was dedicated to Our Lady of Love and Pleasure; and even though it was a small, first-time affair, it was terrific. We were able to spend lots of time getting to know the Goddesses I passed around. That evening we swam in the pool and had a ritual bath in the hot tub, learning ritual songs and chants. Then I led a meditation to take people to meet the Goddess who had chosen them.
The next day we made Goddess talismans in the form of beautiful beaded necklaces, sitting out in the sunlight on the Fairy Porch next to my bedroom. We wove a wreath of jasmine for the large concrete Aphrodite statue in our garden, then had a little procession to crown Her wearing our talismans. I did an invocation from Sappho, and we sang Her some of the chants we learned that day. We processed on into the temple room, where the altar was filled with all the images of Goddesses of Love and Beauty from my collection: a plethora of pulchritude! Then we did some trance work and held a Council of Goddesses where each Goddess got to speak Her truth through the woman She chose.
It was simple but profoundly moving; we all learned a great deal in the process. I especially felt like I had taken the first step on the road to reclaiming my life’s Work; and by learning from this event what worked and didn’t work, I will be able to continue to build this experience, fine-tuning it until it is the ideal teaching technique for me to share my knowledge with the community in a setting that is accessible for me to use and enjoyable for anyone to experience.
I feel like I am really beginning to come out of the cocoon that I have been withdrawn into for the last few years. I recognize that I needed that time and space for healing, and that from time to time I will still have to go gently and listen to my body. I pushed it too hard for too many years, and it finally broke down and forced me to pay attention. I will not make that mistake again. I am working on trying to reinvent myself once more. I’ve been a child, a maiden, a mother, and a sex-crazed lover; now I am ready to embrace the Crone. I’m no longer sad about it; instead I feel a real sense of renewal. Whether it is the change in the political climate or the change in my inner self, either way it feels like the sun just came out after a long, cold winter.
OZ: The Pagan Picnic closed on Sunday afternoon, and as soon as we got everything broken down and packed up, we drove down to my old teacher Deborah Bourbon’s store, Pathways, where I was scheduled to talk and sign books. Debbie (then Deborah Letter) had opened her first store, The Cauldron, way back in 1968, and when she offered classes in 1970, I was among her first students. When we arrived, there was a big cake with “Welcome Back, Oberon!” written on it.
After a lovely time at Pathways, we decided to go to the famous St. Louis Gateway Arch. None of us had been up in it, though I’d watched it being completed when I first moved to St. Louis in 1965. I was still in full Wizardly regalia, so we anticipated a bit of “freaking the Mundanes.” But everyone was delighted with us, and many tourists had to have their photos taken with the real Wizards! Even the security guards and the clerks in the gift store were friendly—they all seemed to know about the Pagan Picnic, and were tickled that we’d come all dressed up. There was not even the slightest hint of negativity—what a difference from thirty-three years ago!
I feel that this return visit to St. Louis brought me full circle, and it is an appropriate place to conclude this narrative of The Story So Far.
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
—from “little gidding” by t. s. eliot, 1942