Well, this post is extraordinarily late, I hear you say, for
an event that took place in mid-May – however I’ve spent the summer juggling a
full time job, a long distance relationship and writing a novel, so bear with
me folks. This weekend workshop was too fabulous to neglect writing about
altogether, so better late than never. The trip also included meeting lots of
new people, attending the brilliant Glastonbury moot at the Mitre Inn, tea and
chats with our friends at the Buddleia Bar, an evening music event by local
group StarSong, a Reclaiming UK meeting and a cosy late night ritual on top of
the Tor. The workshop was advertised on Starhawk’s website like so:
It began with an exceptionally crappy year, whereby when I
finally had enough money to book a place at the workshop only to discover
they’d only just sold out of places, I was mortified yet not terribly
surprised. I decided to go to Glastonbury that week anyway on an enormous job
hunt (which unfortunately was unsuccessful, but I eventually found work
elsewhere for the summer.) With a heavy heart I traipsed up to the Goddess
temple to ask Kathy Jones if there was the slightest possibility that there
would be a spare ticket going despite having sold out weeks before, and she
told me she’d let me know. I realised I may as well make a little holiday out
of my job search trip, thinking I’d get nothing more out of it, and my friend
Emily came to stay for a couple of days. Just as I was heading to the hostel
with her after picking her up from the bus stop, Kathy came bouncing down the
street towards me to tell me there was one weekend ticket left (which had ME
bouncing about for a good few hours.) I took Emily round the shops and showed
her a picture of Starhawk in a book, to which she smiled and nodded with mild
interest. In the evening we were heading up the Tor, and while my mind was a
million miles away, she said to me, “Isn’t that that woman out of the book?”
pointing up ahead to where Starhawk was climbing the Tor towards us and I
thought I might just lose my footing and go tumbling all the way down. She took
to pinging the bobble on my coat which yeah, would be amusing after an
exhausting European tour. She proceeded to do yoga in the rain on top of the
Tor while I bounced up and down all night like a mad puppy.
I took notes throughout the weekend and I’ve put together a
summary of them along with my own personal reflections both on what was
presented and work I’ve done from Starhawk’s books and Reclaiming material in
the past.
She began the workshop with exercises I recognised from The
Earth Path, anchored/grounded walking, a way to keep calm in times of stress
and panic and a way she trains protestors not to be knocked down, spiritually
or physically. It involves grounding and being rooted and moving around and
being aware of your surroundings at the same time, which seems paradoxical but
it really works. We then cast a circle with a visualisation of our favourite
colour – everyone in the circle had their own favourite colour so they were
woven together in a tapestry of 60 odd ribbons. We then created allies to an
Element that we feel drawn to – I picked Earth allies of strength, patience,
and the life force of trees.
Any magickal work begins with a vision or an intention, and
we connected to Deep Self through Talking Self and Younger Self (terms used in
Reclaiming for different levels of the psyche – Talking Self never shuts up and
doesn’t really pay attention to what’s going on around you, and Deep Self is a
lot like your subconscious – pretty much the opposite); Younger Self
understands things the way a child does, through symbolism of candles, colours
and shapes. We were asked to create a symbol that embodies a clear image of
what we wanted to achieve (rather than focussing on what we don’t want) –
standing FOR something positive rather than AGAINST something negative. Even if
you don’t succeed you’ve built something that’s one step closer to success.
We were asked to envision a future based upon the following
points:
·
Where does the energy come from? (spiritual and
material)
·
How do you teach the young?
·
How do you care for the old/ sick/ disabled?
·
Where do you collect your water?
·
How do you make your livelihood?
·
What does the place look like?
·
Are there any new technologies?
We were then asked, what is sacred to you? I remember
reading this first in the Spiral Dance aged 17 and wasn’t sure what to say.
Aged 20 going on 21, I had to say:
·
Sustainability
·
LGBT rights
·
Teaching
·
Communication
Aha! My life has direction and I didn’t even realise it. We
were asked, how do you take the first steps towards this future? For me, it
would be teaching in Spain and working with Spanish Reclaimers in the coming
year. What would it be for you?
Starhawk then touched on contemporary social and
environmental issues, which last May was the Occupy Movement and anti- Monsanto
marches, and Fracking was just seeping into public consciousness. She talked
about techniques for direct action, protests and teaching, getting people to
notice things on Facebook, and generally making some noise! We need to be
healed, as much if not more so than the Earth – She will survive and regenerate
and life will spring forth, but we may not! She then explained what she’d seen
of the behaviour of people when faced directly with these challenges:
1.
In the wake of Monsanto, people may hide away
during this new transition period to build sustainable eco-communities, and to
make the change grow in small pockets of land.
2.
But it’s also important to interfere with the
destruction – standing up and stopping it, to be a force against it.
She highlighted that both of these reactions are important
in tandem. She went on to explain that in times of chaos, many people turn to
right-wing structures, rigid, destructive, seemingly ‘structured’, ‘organised’,
and overall, secure – but people need alternatives. When systems people depend upon
collapse, opportunities arise to start creating the new.
The Occupy movement,
she pointed out, to my surprise, was made up mostly of people not previously
involved in activism. Perhaps that shouldn’t come as such a surprise to someone
launched into an interest in political activism through one conference (see
previous post on relations between LGBT and Pagan communities.)
So she asked us next:
·
How do we use what we have to tap into creating
what we could have?
·
How do we deal with systems of power that seem
so much bigger than we are?
To this she came up with an amazing set of ideas, and as
ever with Starhawk, always one or two you’d never have thought of.
1.
Their power is partly in our consent – we
tacitly lend our consent to support systems we may or may not agree with, but
what pillars exist to support this? It requires public ignorance. How do we
change this?
2.
Lobby politicians, write to MPs.
3.
Mobilise peoples’ non-compliance – make a pledge
of resistance.
4.
Campaign, investigate, research, educate, hold
public meetings, liase with the media, form affinity groups, take part in or
run non-violence trainings, use alternative forms of pest control (like the NO
spray pledge).
Big corporations want three
things; money, power, and to look good. The politicians who pass the laws also
care about looking good. The easiest way to make them look bad is to undermine
their power! This can be done by forming a group discussion – make everyone
feel welcome, make everyone’s contribution valuable, despite disabilities,
children in tow, etc. The more people involved, the more widespread a movement
you can organise. To achieve success, push corporations and politicians into
negotiation. Upcoming at the time, on the 25th May, was the
International Day against Monsanto, with marches and meetings all over the
world, giving people an ample opportunity to put this into practice. As a final
question for the day, Starhawk put to us:
1.
How do you put your opponent in a dilemma? How
to make the inherent violence visible and shift public opinion? These were the
solutions and observations the group came up with:
·
Seed shares/ seed bank
·
Create a framework for social change
·
Use organic seed/plant stockists
·
Hybrid seeds contain natural genes whereas GM
seeds are completely outside nature – open pollinated seeds will breed true.
·
Overuse of pesticides leads to the farmers
needing to use more and more as the pests build resistance
·
Redistribution of land
In the second day of the workshop, entitled ‘Power, magick
and co-creation’, there was a shift in emphasis from what was happening to
short-term and long-term plans of what we can do about it. We began with a game
of power dynamics, acting as robots and controllers. The robots had no control
and the controllers had complete responsibility to keep the robots running and
functioning efficiently (walking around and not breaking anything/themselves.)
The number of robots and controllers changed throughout the game, and
afterwards some interesting observations were made:
·
Everyone else is playing along, they can’t break
down the system.
·
You think the people controlling you are in
control – but they’re not!
·
Multinational corporations are scared of us
getting out of control – what if we don’t buy their products?
·
The choices get fewer and fewer until it leads
to a breakdown of society, descending into chaos – there is potential for
rebellion.
·
The more we attempt to control, the more energy
it takes and the harder it becomes – the challenges come from the ‘need’ to
control, so be more vulnerable and you will have more energy.
It was a brilliant group we had that weekend, with more
people on the second day than the first, from a variety of different Pagan and
non-Pagan, activist and non-activist backgrounds, and I was grateful for their
many and new insights. We invoked the elements in the circle by dividing into
groups of elements, with the following representations:
·
Air – unusual sounds and noises
·
Fire – Rhythms, drums, clapping
·
Water – Song and music
·
Earth – Silence and gestures
We were left to come up with a way to present these motions
as part of a small ritual piece, but were not given much time to do it given
the large size of each group. We were asked afterwards to report back on how we
decided what to do. I was in the musical water group and we decided, very quickly
and seemingly on consensus, to sing ‘The River is Flowing’, a popular and
appropriate Pagan tune. However, due to the lack of time, we’d just broken into
song, a song that everyone seems to love – but not everyone had input. There
was a blind woman in our group who was not told which way everyone was facing
and any actions we had spontaneously put into our performance, we didn’t decide
whether everyone was actually happy with that song, and we didn’t decide on
which version of the lyrics to use.
In Starhawk’s wonderful way, a game and a performance turned
neatly into a discussion about consensus within groups. The wonderful thing
about Reclaiming is the way in which everyone is made to feel included, and
actively so, in a way that I rarely if ever see in other Pagan traditions.
Starhawk will deliberately address any and every type of minority or anyone
‘different’ who might be present at a workshop or reading her book or accessing
her material and work in some way or other. It took longer to explain diagrams
to the blind woman, when there were so many people in the group and time was so
constrained, but she did it – a complete understanding in the group could not
have been reached without it.
Consensus means you have your say, it doesn’t mean you have
your way! It’s reserved for crucial or important decisions as they take a lot
of time and energy. Starhawk then referenced Thomas Seeley’s work on studying
honeybee democracy, and how a swarm of bees make decisions. Scouts are sent out
to find a new place to live, and when they return, their different dances mean
different things – when enough scouts do the same dance they reach a consensus.
If they can’t decide on a place to live, they could break into two, lose the
Queen and the whole hive will die. Bees are pack insects as humans are pack
animals – if the group splits, it can fall apart permanently.
Next Starhawk presented an image from her new book, ‘The
Empowerment Manual’, called the ‘Talisman of Healthy Community’ (pictured.)
She explains it with the following points:
·
In a healthy group you have a balance of elements
·
There are different levels of social power even
if everyone has the same level of formal power
·
Groups in a decentralised fashion evolve like
butterflies ; egg – caterpillar – butterfly
·
Question ‘unearned’ power – listen to people with
good ideas regardless of education/background, or you would lose that person’s
perspective.
In LGBT circles we often talk about ‘privilege’ or ‘unearned
power’ within groups and communities, so power dynamics in groups was
something I was quite familiar with and
something I recognise as being important to pay attention to while working with
a group. In a meeting or longer group session, there needs to be an opportunity
for people to say something they might not have felt comfortable saying earlier;
there needs to be an open and understanding space for someone to be able to
take the risk to bring this up. When someone actually did this in the workshop,
we observed the way we laughed at the serious point that was made, using humour
to face pain or danger. Clear communication helps build trust – there needs to
be a way to hold people accountable.
We were encouraged to think of occasions when social or
formal power was abused in groups we have worked with, or when the group
dynamics have been unbalanced or the group fell apart entirely. This caused the
tension in the room to rise quite considerably as people remembered in anger
the way their efforts had been poured down the drain in fragmented and non-cohesive
groups. I gave two examples:
1.
In a Pagan group I worked with, two women with
formal power in the group took advantage of anyyone and everyone, and
eventually also gained so much social power that no one challenged their
bullying and unjustified banishing of various group members.
In a volunteer work group I was part of in
Spain, there was enormous pressure on everyone to interact constantly, which as
an introvert I found very claustrophobic. The project language was English, and
it was very intimidating for those who didn’t know anyone or didn’t speak much
English.
The final part of the workshop
focussed on different types of groups and networks. First were the hierarchy trees, a great way of spreading things out with a
focal point, then fishnet/ tangles/
knots – not impossible to communicate with but it has a more complex
structure.
·
Webs are a good tool for talking to equals, but
perhaps not so much with authority figures. They are good for establishing
relationships between equals who share common values – but it may be harder to
weed someone out with a hidden agenda. Every disagreement is a moral test.
·
Hierarchy trees are sometimes seen as
neo-feudalism, but on the other hand they are an efficient way for information
to flow easily and quickly up and down the ‘branches’ of the tree. We need to
be able to tell a demand from a request and watch how we frame out
conversations.
Things can easily go wrong in both types of structure, but
Starhawk here, based on forty years’ experience, gives some positive advice for
organising an event in a group, here a ritual:
·
There needs to be specific intent
·
One focus per cone of power
·
One gift per drum-trance (don’t over-libate)
·
When negative feedback emerges, it needs to be
dealt with in a timely fashion – will the critique be private or public? What
can be changed?
Thankfully she also gave advice on what to do when the shit
really hits the fan. I think every Pagan who has worked in a group has come
across, at some point or other, the horrible term people try to avoid – ‘bitchcraft’,
when it rears its ugly head. Fortunately here Starhawk once again comes to the
rescue on how to save (or at least minimise the lasting damage of) a warring
group that has fallen out over a particular incident:
·
Come up with a communication agreement (don’t
end up having a meeting about a meeting.)
·
Younger Self may yell – “No-one listens to me!”
Strong feelings are valid but there are many ways of looking at the issue – be gentle
with yourself.
·
DON’T try to resolve conflicts over email –
quote – “I will disenvowel you! [i.e., take all the vowels out] if you refuse
to talk to me about this face-to-face.” Unquote. Bad email communication can be
used as an excuse - you can’t pretend you didn’t mean what you wrote! So much
communication is non-verbal, which doesn’t come through in email.
·
Say, “Can you tell me what it is specifically I’m
doing to abuse my power? I can see you’re feeling something but you have to
take responsibility to tell me what I’ve done to evoke those feelings – if you
can’t then I can’t take your criticism seriously.”
Or:
“I’d love to hear DIRECTLY from YOU what has
upset you. Please come to me directly – I’ll find out eventually anyway.” (Don’t
gossip about me behind my back – my spies, they are everywhere!) (N.B, Starhawk
did not actually say this.)
The workshop was followed by a UK Reclaiming meeting, the
first I had attended, since my Reclaiming involvement is mostly with the
Spanish group. It was with a deep sense of irony that there were many people
who deliberately were not present (apparently a little while ago an online spat
had occurred that divided the UK Reclaiming community right down the middle,
beyond repair – I opted not to get involved or even ask what happened.)
Starhawk was fully aware of this and seemed slightly shifty about it – however the
meeting went well, much was planned and it was the best UK networking
opportunity I’ve been given.
April and May was a good time for my progression in
involvement in activism, with inspiring LGBT and Pagan leaders to learn from in
intensive sessions in such a short space of time. It thrills me that Starhawk’s
teachings reaches all corners of the Pagan community and hopefully, in time,
beyond; we are always faced with new political, environmental and societal
challenges, and four months down the line we are facing crisis in Syria and unscientific
badger culls – but the people are mobilising! And it’s wonderful to see!
The workshop was given as a promotion for Starhawk’s new
book, ‘The Empowerment Manual: A collaborative guide for groups’, and a video
was shown as a new teaser for the movie of ‘The Fifth Sacred Thing’, her
revolutionary ecotopian novel. The link for the book on Amazon is here:
And here is a free bonus chapter in PDF format!
And I’ll leave you with the fabulous video and link to the
movie website:
Go forth and demand the impossible!
