Pagan convention stars, a woman who’s efforts deserve a gold star, and 400rabbits watching stars explode. What in the name of Eris is TwoSnakes talking about? Find out in February’s edition of Living Reciprocity.

How many of you have you ever been to a pagan convention? I just had my first experience at one this past weekend. ConVocation, presented by the Magical Education Council (MEC) is a fabulous event, and I cannot recommend it enough. Con Chair Cindy Dugan and her staff must have put in an increadible effort, because I have been to science fiction conventions in the past, and none of them ran as smoothly or seamlessly as what I witnessed this weekend.

ConVocation had some outstanding speakers like M. Macha NightMare, Raven Kaldera, Steve MacDonald, Kenn Day, Jason Mankey and my own mentor Mateyo Empie (I could list them all, but go check out the ConVo site for yourself)

M. Macha NightMare had a wonderful discussion about interfaith and networking that I was very pleased to attend. I was also able to become acquainted with Andrieh Vitimus, who has some great presentations and insight into the pagan community in regards to money and personality issues. I was helping with a chocolate and coffee ritual called Awake and Aware so I had to miss out on the presentation of his I wanted to see the most “Don’t Check Your Brain at the Door” an amusing conversation about some of paganism’s more outlandish aspects. If you are reading this Andrieh, you should consider putting some clips on YouTube for me. Andrieh Vitimus also has a new book out as well, make sure to check it out.

Lastly I want to mention Raven Kaldera’s brother, Corwin, who had an extended conversation with me after Mateyo’s renowned fire ceremony. Here is to hoping that I will be able to visit Cauldron Farm sometime in the near future.

Speaking of conventions Mateyo just returned from PantheaCon where she had several very well received presentations, and was able to meet and greet with Z Budapest among others. I have to say I am envious. Anyone care to sponsor me to any other pagan conventions this year? I’m sure I could figure out something to present on!

In this issue Living Reciprocity I want to spotlight two pagans who want to remain in the broom closet. I have been telling you all that being in the broom closet was allowed haven’t I?

Everyday Spiritual Warriors

OK, now to the part you are all here for. It’s time to recognize and support someone who is doing an amazing thing not just for the pagan community, but for that larger family of humanity. I would like you to meet Bess, who spends and extraordinary amount of her time advocating for disabled people, on both the local and State level of her community.

You have been nominated as a Everyday Spiritual Warrior because of you advocacy work, can you tell me about what you do?
I work within my community, as well as network with other parents and advocates in neighboring counties, and at the state-level, to advocate for all people with disabilities. I am not a “professional” advocate and what I have been led to do is use my abilities to move towards positive change. In a more official capacity, I am on our Intermediate School District’s Parent Advisory Committee, as well as the Secretary and Public Policy Coordinator of our local Regional Interagency Consumer Committee (RICC), which works with our state’s Developmental Disabilities Council. There are over 50 RICC’s throughout the State of Michigan. I also started a Yahoo Parent Support Group for all parents of children/adults with disabilities in our county. This allows parents who can’t get to face-to-face support group meetings, to stay connected and lessen the isolation - to increase much-needed emotional support and pass on information. Knowledge is power. I work with others to arrange for speakers and presenters to come to our county to educate and inform individuals with disabilities, their family members and friends about the rights of those who are disabled. I am a firm believer in the right to self-determination. I, along with others, mentor parents of young children coming into the special education/community mental health systems (which also provides supports and services for those who are developmentally-disabled). Together, we refer and we work towards fixing broken systems.

How did you get started with it?
I am the mother of a young teenage son who is severely, multiply-impaired, nonverbal and uses a wheelchair for mobility. In addition, he is developmentally-disabled. With his birth, I began my journey.

What is the one thing you wish more people knew about your cause?
We need you! To stop and look around and “see” those that are for the most part invisible in our communities and society. Listen in a “new way” to those that are not in “the majority” and who may be speechless or have difficulty in communication and in expressing themselves; to stand up and be their voice. This doesn’t mean speaking up for what YOU think they may want or need, but taking the time to find out what THEY really want and need, and assisting them in achieving that goal or success or the fulfillment of their dreams. I want people to learn to be truly more tolerant and to push themselves to step outside of their comfort zone; to not be afraid, and to get involved - to connect. I want people to get to know “the person“ and not the perception or the stigma that is often-times attached to those who only appear “different". We are all more alike than we are different, and it has been my pleasure to realize exactly what is the human spirit by this connection. I revel in the diversity of the human race. Knowing more about my cause is to become aware that eventually everyone at some point in their life will be disabled in some form - and to do something about it now.

What can people do to help?
Look around your community for groups/clubs/associations/organizations to join. Volunteer. Become active and I will guarantee you that you will be welcomed into the disability community, and develop life-long friendships. There are precious moments of clarity when I know that something very special has happened, when I am able to make a difference.

What are the most rewarding and frustrating aspects of your advocacy work?
The rewards are in the small accomplishments; growing personally and on a spiritual level. The reward is in the progress made one person at a time, one baby step at a time, and knowing that today is a little bit better than yesterday…and that tomorrow is a new day, and that the world and the universe IS better for everyone’s efforts - one second, one minute and one day at a time. The frustration is that there are not enough hours in the day and the fact that not enough people say to themselves, “If not me, than who?” Just do it. System changes are very slow to happen. I need more help in-home, so that I can effectively advocate for my son and others. I am limited physically due to medical conditions of my own, but the current systems in place put limits on the assistance that they give me in providing physical care for my son.

How does being a pagan affect your work?
For me, personally, it makes all the difference in the world. I am a much better listener and facilitator. I am not bound by “differences”, and I respect and fully understand that each of us has our own path to follow. I am able to both see the small and much larger picture. I listen to my inner-self, goddess or god or whatever you choose to call this presence. I draw upon and trust that part of me that is empathic. When you are heading towards a much greater understanding and you evolve, there comes with this the realization that you are a part of creation itself - changing future outcomes. You are doing what is right and meant to be, according to your path, your role in this life on this earth and sending it back into the universe.

How long have you been pagan?
I’ve probably always been a Pagan, but just didn’t know that there was a word for it - until about 3 years ago.

Does your family share your beliefs?
No one in my family shares my beliefs. For the most part, they are non-practicing according to the Christian faith.

Can you tell me about your path?
It’s difficult to answer this question. I’ve always answered that I’m a Gnostic Pagan who refuses to be categorized or labeled. However, I would have to say that my journey, so far, takes me closest to the Dianic tradition, Gaia or Native American. But then again, I feel that there is yet more to discover and experience…..therefore we come back to Gnosticism and once again I don‘t want to be limited by labels. Time will tell as it should. Life is an ongoing process of discovery and learning.

Tell me about yourself
I’m a voracious reader and information junkie, and I normally don’t concentrate on just one area of interest or topic at a time….I’m all over the place. I’m also a people-watcher and am just as happy studying people and trying to figure out why they do what they do and who they really are.. I question what inspires and motivates them. I love conversations about religion and spirituality where it doesn’t become “more” than to agree to disagree, but that there is a common meeting place of the mind and heart; to still walk away friends or loving that person. Music and all art forms are also very important in my life. Although I possess no musical talent myself, whenever I can, I believe that music is a universal language. I immerse myself in photography and art in different mediums. Unfortunately, these days I’ve had little time. I love new innovations and ideas. I like to be a problem-solver.

I understand your desire to be in the “broom closet” but is there any links to yourself or advocacy sites you would like to share?
My Space
National Coalition on Self-Determination - Speaking out for Freedom
Michigan Partners for Freedom (What’s going on in YOUR state?)
The Arc of the United States
Our-Kids Website - Devoted to Raising Special Kids with Special Needs
Who Will Care
List of other sites in PDF format

I want every single person reading this blog to do two thinks. Click on one of the links above and see how you might be able to make a difference. And take a second and go to Bess’ MySpace page and leave her a message telling her just how wonderful she is! I know first hand that she is burning the candle at both ends, and could really use some positive energy.

Pagans In Business

I think it was the loss of Mandy and Deos from Deos Shadow that started it. Tommy Elf of From The Edge of the Circle podcast led me to conversation on The Wild Hunt, which led me to Chrysalis, which in turn took me to Pax’s awesome Yahoo group Pagan Community Builders. Side note here, if you are one of those who wants to help find that next level for the pagan community, this is the group for you.

On this list I have had the great pleasure of meeting many people I admire, and to get people outside that paradigm of thinking about shops and craftspeople when they think of pagans in business, I am highlighting the esteemed 400rabbits, a professor who is helping guide the next generation of professionals from within and without the pagan community. Born in Mexico, 400rabbits came to the United States when he was twelve, and has followed his ambitions to the middle of Appalachia where he chases stars…literally.

What lead you to your career path?
I grew up in a family that had high regard education. Education in this sense was not a path to a high paying career, although this was a consideration, but it was a means to find liberation from oppression and misguided thoughts. I had an interest in science, particularly cosmology, since early adolescence. I kept that interest into college, where I majored in physics. This was as challenging an area of study as I could find. This led me to a teaching career. Teaching science has become a passion for me, and has made me glad that I followed this career path.

What types of careers are you preparing your typical student for?
Most of my students are engineering, science, and construction management majors. There also some premed students. At this point in history, with all the crises that we are facing simultaneously in our global civilization, I expect that most of my students will have green collar jobs at some point in their professional life. We have a now a federal stimulus package that has a generous investment in infrastructure to increase energy efficiency and create an electric power delivery and transportation infrastructure that incorporates renewal energy.. This effort, I see now, is part of a multigenerational project to rebuild our civilization with a new consciousness about our patterns of consumption. As a result of this awareness, I am now teaching differently from how I taught just a few years ago.

What is the most rewarding aspect of your career?
Along the lines of my previous answer, I would say it is the intellectual challenge of the subject matter when it comes to research. In terms of my teaching, I would say I am helping improve the quality of my students’ lives by helping them to be intellectually self-sufficient problems solvers. I am teaching what I hope will be the leaders that will save our civilization from the poor choices that we have made for generations.

Has being a pagan ever affected your ability to share opinion or theory in the workplace?
I have a coworker who is perplexed by the number of students who identify as Pagan and/or Wiccan, and that is the extent of his discomfort. We have had a faculty member in my workplace that in the past has been openly hostile to Wicca, but he no longer works here. I haven’t had the feeling that I had to censor myself as a consequence of this hostility. I do feel better when I and my coworkers observe that there are boundaries between the professional realm and the realm of personal faith, and by and large this is true. That being said, I do live in the American South, and I routinely get emails from administrative assistants with Bible verses as part of their contact information. I understand this is part of the cultural landscape, and so I choose which conflicts that involve religious expressions in the workplace I engage in carefully.

Do you wish you could be more open, or does it make little difference to you either way?
The extent that I am open about my interests in spirituality is limited right now to the books in my office bookshelf. There you will find books on mythology, archeoastronomy and shamanism. I don’t know if my colleagues and students have picked up something out of that or not. I do have a SafeZone triangle sticker on my door that announces to everyone that if they are GLBT they could talk to me safely about their concerns. This brings me close enough to being outside of the norm, that perhaps if I were to come out about my spirituality fully to my colleagues they would not be surprised. At this point I don’t have a particular need to be open in my workplace mainly because I haven’t experienced a direct threat to aspects of my spiritual life, nor does the insights I get from my practice appear germane to the daily operations of my department.

How long have you been pagan?
Every pagan that I’ve met has a similar story about how they’ve always known that there was something different about how they perceived the world. I was eleven when I started to build stone circles in abandoned lots and disclosed to my mother my belief in the fey folk. I was just shy of eighteen when I had a dream that I considered an initiation into a knowledge of reality that is beyond our modern picture of the world. That was 15 years ago. Most of this time, my practices have been solitary, but there were a few years where I took a position of leadership in a pagan community.

Tell me a bit about your personal path
There is an eclecticism that borders in the cliché pagan response. There are three main strands that inform my daily practice: Neoplatonism, Mesoamerican Reconstructionism, and the Unnamed Path. I turn to neoplatonism and the ideas of alchemy that are the stock of the Western Occultism because these are some of the more developed schools in the culture we live in. I grew up with the images of Aztec, Maya, Zapotec and Huastec religions, and they have given me a rich vocabulary for the spiritual world. I am also part Zapotec from my father’s family. For the past thirteen years I have followed the Classic Period Maya Calendar, which gives me a focus for my daily meditations and divination work. In the last couple of years I’ve worked with Hyperion’s Unnamed Path because it specifically addresses the spirituality in Queer sexuality and relationships.

In my personal experience, it seems like Latin American cultures have a lot easier time incorporating pagan faiths into the “Christian world”, especially in the United States. Would you say this is true in your case? If yes, how so?
I am a product of two cultures: my father is Mexican, my mother is Anglo. Different cultures do have different flavors to their religious life, and I do have to navigate through many cultures. A Hispanic minister who is a friend of mine explains to me that the Germanic spirit produced a religious expression that turns towards the Idealism of pure form, and that is the dominant spirit of our formal religious institutions. The Anglo-Saxon spirit has produced a spirituality that turns towards the concrete and practical, and hence takes the form of flexible structures and the self-help movement. The Latin American spirituality has a decidedly mystical and metaphysical bent to it, which is also quirky and homey as well as inconsistent and disorganized. There are conflicts in Latin American history and culture that have never been resolved into a whole picture, a unified model of the world. In absence of coherence there was the opportunity to have raw spiritual expression emerge in communities that have done their best to survive with their internal contradictions. There is a lot of Pagan-Christian syncretism as a strategy of Catholic authorities to manage and contain this raw spiritual expression. There are Germanic, Anglo-Saxon, and Latin American spiritual influences in what I do.. I can see that others in my place would be anxious about wanting to resolve inconsistent beliefs. I enjoy this place of tension, and that is the Latino in me.

Does your family share your beliefs?
No. My family doesn’t have a religion or spiritual belief that is explicit. That being said, there is a metaphysical orientation that at the most emerges as an interest in UFO’s.

How does your path affect you scientific career and vise versa?
To the extent that I would never write my beliefs into a research grant proposal, these are separate dimensions in my life. There is no complete separation however. My spiritual practices involve shamanic journeys, which as of late have involved encountering complex mathematical structures that couldn’t possibly have a representation in 2 or 3 dimensional space. This is interesting to me because these structures have an objective reality and can be discussed independently of how I encountered them. I still don’t know how these pertain to my research, although I found structures in my work that are evocative of things I’ve encountered in shamanic journeys I took years ago. I know I’m not the first scientist to experience and report this kind of phenomenon. The physicist Wolfgang Pauli and psychologist Carl Jung had an ongoing relationship where the content of the former’s dreams were discussed for the spiritual and scientific insight. I do have a lemma, which I’ve taken from Neil Gaiman, as a guide to how to think about scientific problems: “Any view of the universe that is not strange is false.”

Can you tell me a bit about your research?
I model supernova explosions in computer simulations.

Understanding your desire to remain in the “broom closet” can you tell me a bit about yourself?
I am conlanger, which means that I enjoy inventing languages and writing systems, which I then use to record shamanic journeys and dreams. I also study calligraphy, particularly of the Mayan writing system. I am a fan of two classic period Mayan artists from the seventh century: Ah Maxam and Ah Nik’te. I have gone to the vault of the Newberry Library in Chicago to touch and read the one surviving copy of the Popol Vuh, which is the closest thing we have in this continent to a native version of the Dead Sea Scrolls. This was after having mole tamales for lunch. I drink Yerba Mate all day long, and make my own version of Nutella out of roasted hazelnuts. Yes, I like food.

Blatant and Shameless

If you are looking to do some shopping, take a visit to my wife Spider’s ebay store at SpiderCreationsOnline.com.

And while you are here at Witchmoot, make sure to sign up for an email subscription, so you will be the first to see new articles as they are posted.

If you are in Michigan, make sure you get over to Motor City Pagans and register your business or group in the directory.

Lastly, I have been toying with an idea. In my work helping Mateyo, and in observing some of the amazing authors and guests this weekend, I have once again noticed how hard it can be just getting basic publicity. I have been thinking about adding to my blogs here at witchmoot.com, and adding Ten Questions With TwoSnakes. If you are an author with a new book, an artist with a new exhibit opening, a musician with a cd, or if you are promoting an event or an appearance, I would ask you 10 questions. Some would be in regard to what you are promoting, some would be a bit more whimsical, and some might even be off topic completely. But they will all be short and sweet, and should be something easy to fill out and get back to me. If you are interested, or know somebody who should be, please have them contact me. I would especially like to hear from publishers, music labels, and people on the speaking circuit, as this would be a weekly blog at minimum, and I would need a lot of material.

I Can’t Do It Without You!

Living Reciprocity won’t work without your help! Send me people to talk about. Send me business’ information to promote, and share share share. An important and fundamental part of building community is recognizing the amazing things we as pagans are doing. And the one who is doing it without fanfare or recognition is the one that needs it the most, so send me those names!

Please contact me using the comment link above, visit my MySpace page, PaganSpace or you can email me at twosnakes@witchmoot.com.