Twilight 2008

Over Columbus Day weekend, I attended my very first Pagan spiritual retreat. I've been trying to process the experience as fully as possible, but it's difficult. Suffice it to say that it was an intensely meaningful weekend, whose repercutions I hope to continue feeling for a long time to come!

Allow me to start by explaining the format of the weekend. Basically, the entire time we are there is a ritual. We have an Opening Circle Friday night to get it started, and the ritual isn't over until the Closing Circle on Monday. Every day we have four attunements to keep us tuned into the flow of the ritual: one before breakfast, one at noon, one before dinner, and one at midnight. No one makes it to all of them, but they are nice. The ritual follows the path of the four elements. Saturday morning is dedicated to air (this when we are getting oriented to our clans and the weekend, so lots of communication going on). Saturday afternoon is fire (when we're building energy to get to the heart of our work). Starting Saturday night and lasting through all of Sunday is water, when we really dive in deep. On Monday we move in to earth to ground and prepare us to return home. In addition, each person is part of a clan. You rank your top four selections during the application process, but only find out which one you go into two weeks before the event. Each clan focuses on different concepts or techniques, and all of them seem fascinating. I was in Eagle clan, which focused on core shamanism.

I could not have picked a better clan! Not only was our clan work perfectly suited to my practice, but everyone in my clan was so wonderful! They really made my weekend what it was (namely, a wonderful, transformative experience).

It's incredibly difficult to write about this kind of deep spiritual work in a way that conveys the magic of the experience, let alone is interesting to read, so I don't think I'll even try, at least right now. Perhaps eventually I will try to write about some of what we did. I learned a lot over the course of that weekend: about reaching out to people, about fearing to be the fool, about stepping so far outside my comfort zone I couldn't see it with a telescope on a clear night, about the magic of community (both with people and with spirit guides).... This was the perfect way to usher in the dark half of the year.

My challenge now is to keep those lessons from slipping away, to keep the magic alive and integrate it into my regular life. It is easy to connect to spirit and magic in a secluded setting surrounded by people who share that same goal, but more difficult when faced with challenges of a job you now realize you hate and surrounded by people who, while wonderful people, are not interested in hearing about your struggles on a spiritual path. But I will integrate it into my life. I won't let the magic slip away.