My Freedom Fest Experience

by Kyril Oakwind

Friday June 29, 2001

Today was mainly arrival and tent set-up. People began to filter in gradually, parking in the field near the large circus tent and finding a good campsite. Jack and others have done a good job leveling and creating areas for tents. Kim has been diligently pulling any poison ivy around them so that they are safer for guests. Later we all went to the circle area for the opening circle. It was a nice little ritual of connection to get things started and, of course, included a watersharing. We ended up doing a dance, (some were doing the conga) and chanting for the porta-potty to show up, which had not yet been delivered. Almost immediately after the ritual they came.

Saturday June 30, 2001

My morning started with a discussion at my campsite of politics and the importance of tone. DJ was attending the festival and she is also running for treasurer on the CAW BoD as well as applying as a clergy postulant. She will have her first questioning at Starwood. It was interesting to hear her take on the politics as she also is living at CAW Central now.

Then I went to Jack's workshop on "Freedom in the Age of Aquarius." He spoke of the roots of the word freedom and how it relates to friends and dear ones. We talked about the need for appropriate boundaries and the tolerance of differences. It is important to tolerate individual differences to allow personal freedom but we also spoke of community boundaries that are developed by the customs and behaviors that a group finds acceptable. What do we do then when our personal boundaries are crossed or the group's boundaries are crossed? One thing that was brought up was taking the personal responsibility to let someone know when they are about to or are crossing your boundaries. It isn't really fair to expect someone to know where they are or to blame them for crossing them but at the same time it is important to defend them in an appropriate way. Freedom is a kind of negotiation in some ways. One isn't free if others are always crossing our boundaries and causing us significant discomfort but neither are others free if they must always restrict their behavior in ways that are uncomfortable for them. So having freedom is also about choice - the ability and right to choose for ourselves.

Delta's playshop on prayer flags followed the Freedom workshop and people developed prayer flags of the magick that they wanted to do in the main ritual. Some of them were developed around healing CAW, others around personal symbols but they were all interesting and reflective of their makers. They would be put on the altar and charged up in the main ritual on Sunday. Participants then could either take them home or leave them at SweetWood.

Later was the renewal of wedding vows for Jack Chocolate and Sherry who have been married 25 years. They officiated at it themselves for the most part with some able help by our Jack as priest. They asked me to call fire. The circle was drawn by having us unroll a braided cord as we entered the circle area one by one and then drop it behind us creating the boundary. It was a silver,gold, and white cord, silver for moon/woman/Sherry, I think, and gold for Sun/man/Jack. The white was for their love. After the elements were called they did their vows. There was a watersharing with Sherry carrying the cup around to each of us, and Jack offering us the bread. It was a very nice community sharing. After that we all took hold of the cord again and charged it up. Sharing the bonding rituals like this in our community is one of the special things about our Branch Festivals, at least for me. We are living far apart from each other and are not really able to participate in each other's lives on an ongoing basis but through these kinds of events we can weave the pattern of our lives to include each other as a community. That's what being a tribe is about in part.

After dinner we got together to go over the main ritual so that everyone would know what was happening, particularly those actually having a role in it. Later a symposium honoring Hermes and the realm of communication got started. Jack describes a symposium as drinking together from the old meanings of the word and models it after Greek? Or Roman? I don't remember. But it is getting together to drink watered wine together and discuss weighty topics. He made an invocation to Hermes and the wine was put in ice in a huge cauldron in the center under the central canopy/tent. Finally another group took off to the circle area and got a small bonfire going, played music, and danced.

Sunday July 1, 2001

In the morning, was the SweetWood Temenos meeting and CAW town hall. Jack talked about what SweetWood was and how it was doing financially as well as otherwise. We have about 1/3 of the money in the bank that is necessary to bring in electricity to the site . It was determined that electricity was the first major project as without electricity we couldn't pump a well so there wasn't a lot of point in doing the well first. There was also a brief discussion about why we were not looking at using a windmill for water (on the ridge the wells have to be quite deep and require a stable source of sufficient electricity to work. The windmill would then need to be large and that is costly, more than we can hope to afford at this time.) Members had the opportunity to express their ideas and hear about future plans. We only need about 5-6 new CAW members to have the necessary numbers to begin elections for the BoD. Currently there is an interim BoD until there are sufficient numbers to warrant an election.

Following that was a workshop called the "Invisible Minority" by DJ but as I missed it I can't describe it.

After that was the Scionization ritual for our two new scions. These rituals are also a kind of renewal rite for the community as it includes people from each RING, whom speak about what brought them here, or what the work of that stage is, or something along those lines. And it uses the metaphor of a tree with the seekers as the roots, the scions as the trunk, and the clergy as the leaves. Maerian Morris, a priestess of CAW and editor of GE, once told me though that she thinks that is backward. It should be the seekers who are the leaves bringing in new energy to the church with the clergy as the roots that supply energy to the tree through their vision of what the church has been and could be. In any case, the tree is a nice metaphor and speaks to me in particular.

Tom and I went to eat dinner and give me some time to get ready for the main ritual that evening as I was priestessing it with Jack. The ritual went well, I thought, and the feedback that we have had suggested that people liked it. One woman said that this was the first ritual that she had been in that moved her.