PantheaCon – The Rite of Great Collaboration

Pantheacon had a tremendous intention this year and we think the spell worked really quite well. The intention was “Making Changes: Open mindedness, togetherness, tolerance, inclusion, benevolence”.

It’s the “togetherness” part that really struck us as we attended the various offerings and generally wandered the halls a bit, watching PantheaCon unfold.

Phoenix –  One of the coolest things about PantheaCon is the amount of collaboration that happens every year. During this one weekend, folks come together and offer rituals, lectures, workshops, and conversations creating a gathering of traditions and practitioners that is quite rare. It is because of these opportunities to meet one another, that our communities continue to grow, evolve, and change for the better. It is through these connections that we learn how to be in community with each other and learn the strengths in our similarities and in our differences.

Gwion – Right after one workshop on social justice a group of attendees stayed in the room. They were chatting with the presenters, but then formed two or three smaller groups and began feverishly swapping contact information. I caught snippets of their conversations and it was pretty clear that Person X had these particular skills and Person Y had connections with these resources and Person Z knew a place that could work for all of them to meet after PCon that was close to public transport. These groups were made up of twenty-somethings, forty-somethings and (I’m guessing), fifty-somethings. They were queer and not queer, they were of colour and not, they were activists and former or soon to be activists.

Most observers and writers tend to write about the “BIG CONTROVERSY”, and while it’s important that conversations happen about “BIG ISSUES”, it’s often under-reported or not reported at all that PCon can be a great place for like-minded folk to connect, collaborate, share best practices and move their collective work forward.

Phoenix – We can never know how collaboration will turn out. Will a co-created ritual fail miserably, leaving the participants confused and bored or will the combination fuel magic and spark something greater than the individual traditions could do alone? You really can’t know until you’re in the mix of it; when it’s too late.  I’ve been to rituals that really worked and rituals that really didn’t and I think that I’ve discovered something.

Just as people are individuals, traditions are individual as well and have their own areas of expertise and their own ritual blind spots.When we can pull together two systems that support the strengths of each community and offer a boost to the places of challenge or weakness, we get a recipe for one awesome ritual.

Gwion – Both Phoenix and I had the chance to meet with some of our fellow writers. We did talk shop, but we also discussed our own  journeys in the Craft. It felt as if we each took great interest in finding out about the person behind the blog title and bio. You know what we found? We have a lot in common, even if our blogs are wildly different in style and content. I got advice about writing and, more importantly I was able to ask for support from my peers, both as a blogger and on some personal stuff I felt I needed some counsel on. There are book ideas and workshops plans afoot, and folks are willing to step up and collaborate or offer themselves as sounding boards for projects I’m just starting to let percolate. Again, without PCon to bring us all together in one place, those conversations might have taken months online to come to fruition.

Phoenix –  Collaboration at PantheaCon goes well beyond the schedule of events that’s in the program. The connections made at this event can fuel a year’s worth of work. Book projects are started, future collaborations are set into motion, plans are made for rituals and classes down the road. These conversations happen in hospitality suites, at parties, and in the bar. Such a concentration of Pagans, Polytheists, Druids, Witches, artists, musicians, writers and performers makes for one creative space!

So while PCon is not perfect, it did achieve one of it’s goals perfectly well. It brought an often fractured and fractious community of seemingly disparate and paradoxically connected folk together for several days in a hotel, in San Jose. By and large the attendees did come and ritual together, ate together, commiserated about the elevators together and talked about what we might become, if we keep working together. And that is some pretty damned good magic if you ask us.

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