Merry meet!

Many people have been writing to ask about Lake Circle's plans for Beltane.  Well, there's good news and bad news...first the bad.

We have had difficulty finding a suitable location; the general feeling is that our traditional one has too many limitations (no nighttime drumming, no swimming, tourists walking through, etc.), but the alternatives all seem to be too far away or too expensive.

Now for the good news -

We're still hoping to do a public LC event in the summer or fall, but for Beltane many of us will instead be attending "Beltane 2006: A Pagan Odyssey" in Oxford,  Connecticut, May 5-7. 

It looks like a LOT of fun, the price is very reasonable, it's only about 2 hours from NYC, and to cap it off one of our favorite pagan bands, Shaman, will be (finally!) reuniting there to play their distinctive "hippie-Celtic-rock".

The event is sponsored by the Panthean Temple (formerly the Pagan Community Church), and they've really got it going on - dozens of presenters and entertainers, a swimming hole, separate areas for quiet family camping, RV camping, and a "party pagan camp". 

There are lots of kids' activities, fresh water is provided for free, and there are "nice" porta-potties.  If you want a hot shower, we recommend picking up a "Sun shower" from a local camping or department store - they're surprisingly effective

Full information is available at the Panthean Temple website:
http://www.pagancommunitychurch.org/

If you register before March 15th, it's only $80/pp excluding food.  You can cook for yourself, but "Chef Jaji" will be there with an extensive and reasonably priced menu.

So...while this isn't a Lake Circle event, it will be a good opportunity to catch up with many of your old LC friends and acquaintances - plus a few hundred other area paganfolk.

If you have any questions about camping or what to expect at pagan festivals like this, feel free to write to us and we'll do our best to answer or point you to someone who can.

Blessed Be - we'll see you in Connecticut in May!

- Lake Circle Coven


* Lake Circle is not connected with Pagan Community Church in any way, we're just passing
   this on because we feel our mailing list subscribers might enjoy attending this event with us.
   Your email address has not been and will not be shared with any other group.

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What's the gathering about/like?
Logistical Stuff
First time at a Pagan festival? Click me...


What the gathering's about/like:
Our gatherings are planned to foster an atmosphere of safety and welcome for Neo-Pagans and those who feel an affinity with the movement. If you are sincerely interested in being there for positive reasons, you are welcome. Some groups who attend may have private things going on at times, and some workshops may have requirements to participate, but we're generally not of the "Sorry, only 7th level Elven magic users can know the great secrets" school of things. Not that there's anything wrong with being a 7th level Elven magic user.

The organizers pre-plan the logistics of food and so forth and some of the minor group rituals, but the focus of much of the weekend's magick is the Saturday night ritual, which is cooperatively created by all willing attendees in small working groups. There will be a general theme appropriate to the season, so that the separately created bits of magic fit together, but props, archetypes, chants, songs, props...whatever you can imagine...are planned on Saturday by the participants.

Often, some of the workshops will dovetail nicely with the ritual, and everybody will be wearing the masks or shaking the rattles they made that afternoon on the lakeshore. Artsy/craftsy materials are a good thing to bring along for this reason. Someone may find a brilliant use for that bolt of silver lamé, those body paints that sat in your closet for a year already, or the crate of deely-boppers collecting dust in the basement of a circa 1984 convenience store.



Logistical Stuff
The site will open Friday evening and close by 11am Monday morning. There will be a casual evening meal Friday night, three proper ones on Saturday, two biggies and a "let's see what we can make of the leftovers" on Sunday. Monday morning we have to get the kitchen stuff packed up early.
All LC-planned activities and the meals listed above are covered by the registration fee. You will be able to register and pay online through Paypal until the Monday before the campout or mail a check at least two weeks prior to the event to get the lower rate. If you will do a class or workshop that we like the sound of, you get a discount.

Directions to the location will be sent upon registration or you can contact us and ask; you don't want to be lying in your sleeping bag knowing that directions to the event are openly posted on the internet, do you?

You will need to bring a tent, sleeping bag, a cup-bowl-plate-fork-etc, and most of the other things you'd need when camping. There is no need to bring your own cooking equipment unless you can't risk anything going wrong with the caffeine supply and it must be within ten feet of the place where you wake up.

About half of registrants check off the 'vegetarian' box on the form, and these kinds of food are cheaper and easier to deal with in the woods, so there is little meat involved and it is always a side dish or optional additive. We are not the veggie police - if you show up with a giant haunch of venison and know how to cook it over an open fire you will see lots of smiling faces =)



So this is your first Pagan festival...
One of the most common exclamations heard from people attending their first Pagan gathering - Lake Circle or one of the hundreds of others - is "gee...it feels like...coming home."

Lake Circle events are planned to include people of all levels of experience from I just realized I like candles a little too much to I know the secret teachings of 101 traditions. The former will find plenty of opportunities to learn, the latter hopefully to share their learning, and everybody gets to socialize in a tiny, temporary village full of tolerant, smart, wacky, spiritual, etc. people.

If you are drawn to Neo-Paganism and you come to the gathering, you will most likely be thrilled to find a large, worldwide community of people who appreciate important parts of you that you've learned to not discuss with most humans because they look at you as if you just told them you could see future events sometimes...which you may well have done! If you read over the material available on the website and still have questions, you can drop us a line and we'll try to answer questions relevant to the gathering.


"I strongly recommend camping with...Lake Circle. If most festivals make you feel included in a community, Lake Circle wants you to consider yourself part of the family."
--Our Pagan Times


"If you are lucky, you might get a chance to celebrate nature with Lake Circle Coven...Good food and ritual drumming under an open sky make for magic!"
--Village Voice