My over all sense was that the people attending the Freedom Festival had a very good time. Ken read the Delcaration of Independence at the Symposium that all felt was a goodness. The symposium was a very up lifting event as it allowed many people to express appreciation for friends in their life and thoughts on friendship that were inspiring.
Speaking of friends this Freedom Festival brought some old friends together and their joy of meeting up again added so much to the gathering. This is in part what the Freedom Festival is all about, a coming together of friends and friends of friends. SweetWood Temenos sponsers in part the Freedom Festival as a means for friends to gather in celebration of freedom and to develop a community of such friends into a clan who in time will own and run SweetWood Temenos.
The Freedom Festival was sucessful in that it did bring friends and friends of friends together, strenghtened those bonds through recreation, learning and celebration and brought about two new members and the renewal of another membership. SweetWood Temenos is growing slowly, the clan is developing and more folk are thinking this is a good place to put their money and effort into.
This effort is no small self centered thing. Yes the members of SweetWood Temenos, if this effort is successful, will have a sacred center, a home away from home. But it is more than that, it is like the way of life and values, which define the folk of SweetWood Temenos, is a flame, a sacred light for the rest of humanity to see how they could live if they chose to. The development of SweetWood Temenos and its clan is a Grass Roots effort in encouraging human development and creating as much peace and paradise on this earthly plane of existance as possible.
I feel making the effort and money a priority toward SweetWood Temenos manisfesting is a simple and direct way to change the human community in a positive and progressive way. There is great magic in this as it is a way that the meek shall inherit the World. I appreciate, as president of SweetWood Temenos, the priority of effort and money given through physical labor, time given, donations and membership. Freedom Festival is an expression in part of this priority in the lives of the good folk who attend this gathering.
Our rituals (this year we celebrated the Sun Goddess and Moon God) invoke the Wholeness of Divinity within humanity both collectively and individually. We remembered that feminine and masculine individuations of Divine Wholeness can each be expressed through solar, lunar, terrestrial and astral symbols. Indeed the whole of Nature is full of phenomenon that can act as metaphorical and symbolic vehicles by which the Wholeness of Divinity, immanent and transecendent, can communicate with our souls.
It is my intent that SweetWood Temenos rituals, re-links, re-integrates in a self concious way humanity's nature with the nature of our planet and universe into a harmonious whole. It is my hope and magic that the rituals will foster not only a remembering and nurturing of "thou art Goddess, thou art God" awareness but also awareness of the type or rather the temperament of the Way of Being, the Divine Wholeness, that is the seed pattern and guide of each individual's soul. In this way we each are a priestess or priest to the Divine Wholeness, the one, dwelling in the heart of our souls and the Many, the Greater Wholeness known as Community; for as above so also below.
Never Thirst
Iacchus