Over on Raise the Horns, Jason Mankey has a post titled Pagan Festivals and the .25%. His main point is that while big Pagan festivals get a lot of publicity and it seems like everybody who’s anybody is there, in reality only a tiny percentage of all Pagans actually attend them and they aren’t particularly important in the grand scheme of things. He’s right (Jason is rarely wrong) but it doesn’t matter. I’m not going to Pantheacon this year and I wish I was.
For those of you don’t know, Pantheacon is the largest indoor Pagan gathering in the world. It’s held every February in San Jose, California and features participants and presenters from pretty much every corner of the Big Tent of Paganism. Attendance is somewhere around 2500.
From the time I first heard about Pantheacon I wanted to go. Even though it’s a convention and not a spiritual retreat or religious conclave, it sounded like a place where all the cool kids went. I wanted to go too! I had good reasons for not going, but in the end it was my choice to not go – and I knew it.
Last year I finally gave in and went and I had a great time. I met some friends I had only known on-line. I attended some interesting workshops and panels, some rituals and concerts. I wasn’t expecting much of a spiritual experience, but the Temple of the Morrigan was filled with the power and sovereignty of the Great Queen.
Yet even as I was enjoying myself last year, I knew Pantheacon couldn’t be an every year thing for me. Jason estimates the cost of something like this is about $600 for a single traveler (Cathy has no interest in Pagan festivals) – now throw a not-cheap airline ticket on top of that and you come up with a rather expensive weekend. I could do it, but then I’d have to skip something else.
Regardless, the bottom line is that I’m not going to Pantheacon this year, and neither are 99.75% of other Pagans. And that’s OK – here’s why.
The real work of Paganism is being done at the local level. It should go without saying, but sometimes we still need to say it. Paganism isn’t about authors and vendors, speakers and musicians. It’s about covens, groves, CUUPS groups, and solitary practitioners doing the work of being Pagans. It’s about chanting under the full moon. It’s about making offerings to the Gods. It’s about picking up trash on the side of the road. It’s not about buying statues of deities – it’s about using statues of deities as focal points for meditation and worship of Them. Festivals are nice things to have, but they aren’t the core of modern Paganism.
Pagan ideas are being debated on-line. One of my main reasons for attending Pagan gatherings is the opportunity to discuss religious ideas and concepts – those conversations we can’t have with most of our friends and neighbors because the concepts of many Gods or of magic or of the sacredness of Nature are foreign to them. There’s nothing like sitting down over a cup of tea or a tankard of mead and discussing the finer points of Pagan beliefs and practices.
But as much as I like the live discussions, these important conversations are happening every day, right here on the Pagan internet: on Patheos Pagan, on Pagan Square, on The Wild Hunt, on Polytheist.com, on individual blogs and on every social media platform known to humanity. I like to compare the Pagan internet to the Christian Council of Nicaea. Debates are happening and decisions are being made by those who show up.
Yes, Pantheacon will throw some especially knowledgeable, especially experienced Pagans together and generate some useful conversations. Last year’s panel on sacrifice certainly did. But we’ll hear about it on social media within minutes after it concludes (and sometimes while it’s happening), and the conversation will continue right here for weeks or even months. All you need to participate is an internet connection.
There are many good regional and local festivals. Pagan festivals and retreats aren’t necessary, but they are nice and I do recommend them. But you don’t have to go flying off to San Jose to find one. Jason listed some of the larger regional conferences in his post. There are other, smaller gatherings, such as the ADF Texas Imbolc Retreat I attended last weekend. It may take some looking to find one, and the ones near you may not be your preferred flavor of Paganism, but there are opportunities for most of us.
Don’t overlook Pagan Pride Days. There’s one in most large and medium sized cities – the official Pagan Pride website lists over a hundred events in the United States alone. They only last a day and most don’t have as much formal programming as a weekend festival, but they’re a great opportunity to connect with other Pagans… including some who are promoting festivals of their own.
Ultimately, it comes down to you. Conventions, festivals, and retreats are great for showing you what’s possible. Go to a workshop, listen to a teacher, have tea with someone you met in the hallway and walk away with new ideas about how to live and practice your Paganism.
Then the convention is over, you go home, and it’s just you and the Gods, ancestors, and Nature spirits. You still have to sit in meditation. You still have to say the prayers. You still have to pour the offerings. You still have to do all the things you do that make Paganism or your variant of it a meaningful part of your life. Day in and day out – this is where we all learn and grow, or not. Festivals can be a great experience and a good inspiration, but they’re no substitute for doing the work.
So I hope Pantheacon is a rousing success. I’ll be following along on Facebook and Twitter and watching for blog posts next week. I hope to see some of my long-distance friends at the other gatherings I’ll be attending later this year. And I’m hoping to go back to Pantheacon in 2016.
But this year I don’t have Pantheacon envy.
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