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On the Freedom Festival 

7/8/2002

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The Freedom Festival

The inspiration for the Freedom Festival came to me in part when I realized the celebration of the United States of America's  Independence is a celebration of freedom and that freedom is also a pagan concept. I thought, then, that the celebration of the United States of America's Independence can be celebrated as a Neo-Pagan Holiday. 

The United States of America is a realm whose free adult members express self-governance through representative democracy and as such it is a free realm or freedom. Its celebration of Independence celebrates the inauguration of this freedom. Freedom I believe fosters a social order that is pluralistic; allowing diverse culture and religious experiences. I believe that the freedom of the United States is essentially Aquarian in spirit.

There is, I believe, a pagan spirituality associated with freedom. The words freedom and friend have a common linguistic root. This root is an Indo-European word that means loved one or dear one. It is also used to construct the Goddess name of Freya, a golden Goddess of love. I believe that Freya, as a Vanir Goddess, is a descendent or an echo of an Old European Goddess whose cult goes back to the time of the ruling Goddess of the Golden Age, the age of Gemini. This same Golden Age Goddess is the Greek Goddess who is both the Grandmother of Zeus and is Astraea or Justice that ruled with Chronos during the Age of Gemini. From the Patriarchical Greek perspective their Golden Age was a matrilineal time where men shared their wives (or women shared their husbands depending on your perspective) and practiced a form of complex marriage that was polyamorous. This ancestress of Freya is the common root of two traditions that diverged some 6,400 years ago at the beginning of the Age of Taurus, one matrilineal and the other patrilineal.

The Freedom Festival is a celebration that believes the freedom of the Age of Aquarius is a democratic and pluralistic social order that includes the re-integration or synthesis of matrilineal sensibilities belonging to late stone and bronze ages. These sensibilities includes such concepts as: all acts of love and pleasure are seen as sacred rites, our planet is a living system and that to know ones Self is to know Divinity. Added to these sensibilities are the comtempory ones of: ones Self-actualization is a spiritual journey, being in harmony with Nature is part of ones Self-actualization, ritual fosters ones self-actualization and harmony with Nature and that holding pluralistic beliefs about religious paths and traditions support the freedom of the Aquarian Age.

The Freedom Festival is a celebration of Aquarian freedom as the informing Spirit of American independence. It is also a celebration that fosters the development of a network of friends, dear ones, and a clan of Friends who share a common ground called SweetWood. The Freedom Festival celebrates a myth wherein a polyamorous sacred marriage of younger Deities from matrilineal and patrilineal traditions creates a synthesis, a Greater Wholeness that inaugurates the Age of Aquarius and its peace and freedom. SweetWood is dedicated to this peace and freedom and holds these 5 values as sacred: deep friendship, positive sexuality, Self knowledge, attunement with Nature(through lifestyle, contemplation and ritual) and pluralistic religious beliefs.

Never Thirst
Iacchus
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