Opening of the Madrid Goddess temple

The next day we had a ritual to formally open the temple in Mostoles, Madrid. The main altar has the Dama de Elche and Saucco created a small altar for the Horned God. The walls are decorated with flags and banners of god and goddess images.
Upon entering the temple, we got a stone each, and the elements and deities were invoked in the Iberian tradition (which appears to be similar to the Avalonian tradition in ritual style.). Katie held the flame of Avalon and Jana held the flame of Ibea, and both were blessed together to create a bridge between Avalon and Ibera. We did meditations pouring energy into the stones which no longer serves us, and placed them in a container with water. Then we had messages from the oracles, and I was told to swim like a fish out of my cage, now that the door was open!
We sang songs, opened the circle and took pictures, then went to a big meal then as a community. I have wanted to visit this wonderful temple for a while and look forward to rituals and workshops in the future!

Stepping on the Path - Sacred Drama with Elen of the Trackways

Katie Player, a priestess of Avalon, came to give a workshop on the British Goddess Elen called 'Stepping onto the Path - Sacred Drama with Elen of the trackways, in the recently opened Goddess Temple of Madrid.
We begin with a discussion on the relationship between women and the sacred drama in history.
In ancient times there was no separation between the theatre and ceremony, but now all actors are famous. The Greek theatre that survives is patriarchal, and masks serve as embodiment of the characters. When a Greek actor put on a mask he embodied the god, as the god dwelt in the mask. It was not designed to hide the power, but to empower it! Spanish theatre began as a sacred drama, and today it is manifested in carnival masks.
In Britain, we learned sacred drama almost doesn't exist apart from medieval plays, Bible stories and puppet shows, although some practices survived as Mummer's plays, Morris dancing and May Day festivals. It began to die in World War II, when many actors died - the same family members could play the same roles for centuries - but they were all men! The fear of the power of women on a scene prevailed until the eighteenth century. The first actresses were prostitutes, since for thousands of years a woman could only be one thing; if you are not a virgin, or wife and mother, you're the bitch. The journey to sacred drama is a way out of this lie, and we are turning the wheel.
Katie told us that the woman should be the maid (pure), and the mother is she who gives everything and has nothing left for herself. We reclaim the lover and the Crone (whose wisdom is often discarded). The more we focus on this the less we are affected by the outside world. Women begin to tell their stories, and we begin to change the stories of shame and guilt.
I mentioned how it was at my school, which set a single path for us and forbade us to imagine otherwise. It was expected that women would end up in business - to be trained to be like men.
When a man wakes up in the morning, he thinks, "I'll do this! ', But when a woman wakes up in the morning, she thought," Can I do this? Is it safe to do this? '. Next we talked about voices and the fact that in our culture high voices are beautiful and feminine and masculine undertones are not. Women are taught to make their voices sound higher to be accepted, and some oriental languages, for a woman to pronounce a word in a lower voice is pronouncing it wrong!
In reindeer society the leader is not the strongest male, but the oldest female. The UK was covered in forest long ago, and deer are the largest wild mammals that we have not killed and we are not used to large animals which are not tame. The creatures of the forest know where to hide!
Following this, we saw a slide show of images from Elen, many different representations of artwork, some by people I know. Through this we learned that Elen is associated with mushrooms and Fey - both natural and a queen.
After participating in the sacred drama groups, first creating still drama pieces with our bodies from a word, and other groups had to guess which was our word; and then we were instructed simply to dance to different types of music in any way felt best for us at that time.
We finished with a sharing circle and I found it a very useful workshop and added that the great experiences I've had working with Elen in the past.

Espiral 3

I didn't say too much about Espiral 2 as it was a funny time of year, but I feel the final installment is worth a mention as it was the culmination of the year's study I'd worked so hard for. There had been a lot of additional work building up to Espiral 3, which for me was held at the end of May, so this camp had much more of a feel of introspection and self-study to it. This one felt more akin to the Iron Pentacle of working on the self, rather than the Pearl Pentacle nature of learning the technical side of things and caring for the community.
We wrote our own vows for the initiation ceremony and Morgaine even let me do mine in English and Katrin's in German. I think it's quite important for these things to be done in your native language when it's a promise so personal between you and the Divine - I think with your own words you can connect to deity in a way unlike any other. Irantzu invoked Eguzki in Basque and it of-course wasn't a problem that no-one else understood it because everyone could feel the energy despite not being familiar with the words.
Some of my classmates later told me I'd opened up a good deal more since Espiral 1, but I attributed that to better Spanish and better familiarity with Spain and it's varying degrees of weirdness. It was good though to have my progess recognised by others if not by myself!

Springcamp in Gredos 4-6 April

Springcamp in Gredos was something I'd wanted to do for years (my previous opportunity had been dashed by, ironically, a Spanish exam at the same time.) After finally getting to go last April, and successfully roping Ginger along when I convinced her everything was translated into English, she told me shortly after, "this was one of the best weekends of my life." Needless to say we had a fabulous time, and it made me happy it was the same for her too. When we arrived on the Friday it was overcast and a misty rain hung in the air, but fortunately this turned out to be Ginger's favourite kind of weather and I couldn't drag her away from the river that flows through the bottom of the site (the water baby that she is). She describes such weather as 'ginger friendly', but fortunately by the final day the weather had turned in my favour (I need plenty of sun to recharge the old solar cells.)
Next came the welcome and shared meal between about 25 of us including two adorable kids who were *nice* for *most of the trip*. After dinner we had an icebreaker in the circle, sang songs, and Halo (who'd come from the UK) set the theme for the camp, a story of the faerys. Being the International camp, people of many European nationalities were present and Jana, an English teacher was on hand for translation for whom Spanish or English might be peoples' second or third language. There's a tradition within Reclaiming to have a 'thread' for each camp - for this one it was the faerys and the loyalty of our shadows, and following them through every challenge.
On the Saturday we did a ritual of the Waters of the World, collecting water from bottles that people had brought from home, in a bowl in the centre of the circle. Also in Reclaiming there is the tradition of sending energy from the current camp towards the next camp, in whatever part of the world it is to be held. At the beginning we received energy from Australia, and at the end we sent it to the next camp in California for June. I was even roped into invoking and thanking the element of Fire (which I didn't fluff up as badly as I thought I might.)
Next we had Halo's workshop, 'Reclaiming your inner shadow.' She told us another story and we did some activities to work with our shadows, including automatic writing (an exercise I know from British Reclaiming training), which there are ways to work other than through writing as we were advised for those who don't express themselves the best this way. Afterwards we walked the quartz labyrinth laid outside the roundhouse, chose a crystal from a bowl in the middle while we sang 'Labyrinth of my Shadow'.
After lunch we formed 'afinity groups' according to which object we took from a table - a flower, a twig or a stone. It surprised me that Ginger, as an archaeologist took a twig instead of a stone (then later informed me she already had a stone.) In our small groups we talked about our work, homes, and magickal work in the best Spanish I could scrape together.
After dinner we had the main ritual of Goddess oracles, similar to the ones from the beginning of my stay in Spain. Saucco invoked Cernunnos and three priestesses invoked varias Spring goddesses, one Basque. My translation skills were reigned in and tested, with varying degrees of success, and the sobremesa that went on til 3am  was pretty unwelcome for those who weren't expecting it!
The next morning we were all awoken eye-wateringly early by a nine year old screaming "TIME TO GET UPPPP," (which was the only irritating thing the kids did - Pagan parenting I guess?), and after breakfast Ginger and I had some away time to take photos of some of the stunning views Gredos has to offer.
The last workshop was in dance, taught by Saucco and Irantzu. Saucco taught us the difference between 'danza' (more from the soul) and 'baile' (more artistic and of set movements), and the importance of dance and moving the body in magickal work. We danced slowly first, then more quickly with more upbeat tunes, and we had the chance to dance with everyone in turn. Then we made a circle in the clearing at the top of the hill to do a dance in a circle divided into quarters with pieces of string. There was a representation of each element in each section, and we danced accompanied by Reclaiming chants from the states, feeling the energy of each element. We bid the elements farewell and ended by sending the energy to California.
Afterwards I was engaged in translating a conversation between Halo and Saucco about Iberian deities and interpretations of cards for the kids.
From this trip I learned from Halo a lot more about the style of Reclaiming as it's practiced in the UK and the States. To finish off Jana told me, "Si sigues en tener problemas con las bestias (the kids at work), sólo tienes que gritar ’¡orgasmo!’ y ya está.’ Awesome, I'll remember that one. This was definitely one of the best camps and left me in greater anticipation of Espiral 3 which would be held in this amazing place.