Pantheacon is an annual convention of Pagans (et al) held over the Presidents’ Day weekend at the Airport Doubletree in San Jose, CA. Friday noon through Monday noon of workshops, panels, rituals, and discussions, usually at least 6 choices per time slot, 9am to midnight (or later).
Before the workshops started, I had a lovely time people watching and meeting new people along what I always think of as the gauntlet between convention check in and the hotel front desk. Discussions included intellectual property, healing, fabric arts, and my awesome Dr Scholls. I also stopped in at my Pcon home-away-from-home, the Pagan Scholars’ Den to distribute Elderberry lozenges. Natara says no plague!
Friday 1:30pm: I attended The Fivefold Goddess with Lasara Firefox Allen. The premise is that the threefold Goddess model is fairly exclusionary, because it’s based on biology and is externally defined. Lasara proposes a new, self-defined, non-linear model with five aspects. It was very powerful information that I resonated with strongly. I also admired her ability to hold her space and focus the class. She also did an interesting introduction exercise at the beginning, where we talked to the people right next to us (ie: small groups) and told them our name, one thing we wanted them to know about us, and what we hoped to get out of the workshop.
She has a book coming out (and a seven-month online class on the material) called Jailbreaking the Goddess. I’ve preordered it.
After the workshop, I got myself settled into the room and got some supper, promptly losing my amazing Miriam Dema constellation wrap (spoiler alert: I got it back later). I managed to get myself ready for my Becoming the Goddess Empowerment Workshop and down to the Riesling Room in time to set up my books and stuff.
7:00pm: Becoming the Goddess (my workshop). We had a good crowd, about 15 people, and the material was well received. I feel pretty good about how it flowed. Some Burning Man friends dropped in, as did a friend from the Conference on Current Pagan Studies.
I was going to attend the Pagan Pastoral Care workshop afterwards, but my body had other ideas. Apparently, standing for 90 minutes was moving a whole bunch of energy around for people takes its toll.
Retrieved my wrap from Lost & Found, toodled back to the room, changed into comfier duds, and was going to just chill, but ended up going up to the Pagan Scholars’ Suite for some low-key socializing until I was falling asleep on the couch.