All Hail Pantheacon!!!!

So, I went to Pantheacon.

IT WAS THE COOLEST THING EVER!!!!!!! SQUEEEEEE!!!!!!

*ahem*, that is to say, I really enjoyed myself.

Ladies and gentlemen, elves and fauns, witches and wizards, Aphrodite and Pan, may I present to you:

Pantheacon: Act One
"Arrival"

Because Kian and I had never been to P-con before, and because we are both introverts with a strong sense of crowd aversion, and because I took the absolutely nutty step of volunteering to be in the OLT at P-con without having ever seen it, we were a little apprehensive. What would it be like? (awesome) Would it be overwhelming? (yes) Would we be ok? (yes) What should we bring? (everything!)

We decided we would go with the "in for a penny, in for a pound" approach, and sign up to stay for the whole weekend. If we decided we hated it, or if it made our introvert instincts flare, we could always just leave. It's not like we would be that far away home. And if we liked it, but then hadn't signed up to stay the whole time, that would be disappointing. So in with both feet it was!

K took the day off of work on Friday (the 13th, hehe), and after my morning class, we loaded up the car, pet the kitties one last time, and drove up the freeway in the rain to pick up our friend Maia, who was riding down with us. Maia was almost beside herself with excitement, which was totally contagious, and by the time we got there, we were sooo ready.
Pulling into the parking lot we began to see pagan bumper stickers, pagans in hats, pagans in cloaks, people carrying drums, people wheeling carts with ritual wear in garmet bags, you name it, we saw it. We got parked, grabbed the essentials, and crammed into an elevator to go hunt down our room keys.
Having successfully obtained our room keys, the questions quickly arose. How do we get all our stuff inside? when do we eat? will we be able to make it to a 3:30 session? K was getting really hungry, and I wanted to wait till a cart freed up to bring in our luggage, but we both wanted to go to a 3:30 session and we both needed to get registered. These were conflicting desires. In the end K ate and went to a session, while I waited for a cart and brought stuff up. ( let the record show that I was not simply being a wimp- we had three cases of bottled water and lots of cans for soup-making that would have been both very heavy and extremely inconvenient to lug up by hand.)

Having brought stuff up with Jack of Bears, who was Caya Cart Master, I decided it was time to get registered. I went down, got in line, got my name tag (huzzah!) and got...a ribbon. It was at this point that I suddenly noticed ALL the ribbons. Ribbons for groups, ribbons for websites, ribbons for no apparent reason at all, witty ribbons, dry ribbons, ribbons with pictures, ribbons with quotes, ribbons EVERYWHERE. I was intrigued.
Returning upstairs to the Caya room, aka the Bear Cave (because it was also functioning as Jack and Iris' room, poor things), I got my first ribbons! They were 1) CAYA COVEN: HELLA SACRED, and 2) Major Tom is an Ascended Master (which is still my favorite). I also ran into Rowan, and we went down to peruse the vending room.

Holy hell, the vending room. I have never in my life seen so much stuff and so many people crammed into one room. So much AMAZING stuff. I was absolutely overwhelmed. I couldn't even begin to process it. Masks, crowns, jewelry, wands, carvings, drinking horns, hip scarves, pottery, henna, books, statues, and every other possible thing you could ever conceive of wanting. People were everywhere, in every state of dress or undress, from jeans and t-shirts and leather jackets, to long flowing dresses, to the incredible number of utilikilts (why don't THEY have a booth at p-con? they'd make a killing) to corsets, and so on. Eventually Rowan and I (and her kids, Indigo and Turtle) decided to go back up and see what everyone else was up to. There were rumors of dinner, and I needed to track down K.

After dinner, K and I went to our first event, "Silk and Honey: Erotic Tales from the African Diaspora", by Luisah Teish. It was interesting- it was not quite what I had imagined, but was still entertaining. In spite of the fact that it was advertised in the program as being 18+, it was probably only PG-13 rated, and was really tales about her life, rather than mythology or folk stories as I had expected. Still, she was a wonderful story teller, so in spite of it not being what I had expected, it was still a good time.
We didn't attend any of the events happening at 9pm, but at 11 we parted ways. K went to the Pomba Gira masked fete, and I went to the Grove of Artemis Amazon Ritual. It was, as I knew it would be, so so so awesome.

Though I am not a member of Caya's Amazon group, I know all of the women in it, and I do regularly go to the Grove of Artemis rituals, so I was excited to go a ritual full of people I knew. It was amazing. Because it was an Amazon ritual, we all (well, virtually all) began by taking our tops off. Now, admittedly, I am bi, so I was not averse to the idea of being topless in a room with a lot of other topless women in the first place. But attraction aside, it's such a great equalizer, and it is simply visually fascinating. Big breasts, small breasts, saggy breasts, tummies, abs, rolls, hips, the variety of the female figure was astounding. We cast the circle by holding hands and one by one turning to the woman on our left and saying "hand to hand, and heart to heart I cast this circle". Then there was singing and dancing, and drumming, and the Amazons performed a knife dance, which was awesome. At some point (and if I'm getting the details of this out of order, someone let me know- I was already tired, and a lot has happened since then), we danced around each other in a sort of double-helix pattern (two lines, going opposite ways and weaving in and out of each other) singing
"sister sister, what have they done to you,
sister sister where will you go?
sister sister, come to the temple,
sister sister artemis knows".
At first I was thinking that it seemed a bit morbid, but instead it had a very sort of caring, supportive vibe.
The main part of the ritual came with Lady Kahina holding up the giant labrys, and each woman came up to declare "I am an Amazon, and I love women! I am an Amazon because...." It was interesting, and got a variety of answers. I didn't get a chance to do it, because there was such a crowd, but just for the record, I AM AN AMAZON, AND I LOVE WOMEN. I AM AN AMAZON BECAUSE I AM NOT AFRAID OF FAILURE. *ahem*
In any case, the ritual was most excellent, with great energy, and I know that every woman there absolutely loved it.

When it was over, I went back upstairs, and K and I ended up hanging out in the bear cave for a while before turning in relatively early. We'd been warned about the exhaustion that can set in, and since we really wanted to last all weekend, we decided we'd better be prudent. sigh.

Coming soon- Act Two: "Tarot, Plant Familiars, and the Delightful Madness that was the OLT"