The Passing of FyreDancer

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Jan O'Rourke was a lovely woman. She was very active in our local chapter of CoG. She was a member of the board, contacting the media when they aired articles that were wrong about pagans. She was active in the Democratic Party on the west coast of Florida. She used to be a committee chairwoman there. She was co-president of her local UU. She was loving, kind, and smart as a whip.

We knew her as FyreDancer, member of Coven Fangorn.

I had just seen her the weekend before. The EMLC had a retreat and she did a workshop about how to make mead. I've got the handouts at home, and her copy of the brewer's catalogue that she let Doug have so that he could order up the supplies to make a batch. She always did workshops. She always had time for others. She danced around the fire with us, having a ball Saturday night.

At the Religious Freedom Festival, she gave a presentation about being Pagan. She wasn't in the broomcloset. She was at the forefront, fighting for our rights.

I can't believe that her brother killed her. I can't believe that someone would break to the point where they would raise their voice to her, let along their hand in anger.

I've been reading some of the reports, trying to figure this all out. He was afraid that people were tracking him to take away his workman's comp money. He thought his friends took him on a trip to video tape him doing things that would get him in trouble with the insurance agency.

That he did this when people were in the house (it was used as her office as well). They heard her scream. They heard the thump. They thought he was hitting her, so they ran to get help and call 911.

I can't believe she's gone. Such a peaceful, peaceloving woman to go in such a tramatic way. We're all trying to make sense of this. Maybe there is no sense to make of it. It happened, and we must move on.

Tonight I'll be lighting candles for her at my lare shrine. She's become part of my extended EMLC family. I was looking forward to her next presentation at the next meeting. She was planning the psychic fair at the UU March 20th. People were volunteering to go and do readings. She was trying to figure out how to do tea leaf readings.

Blessings to you, FyreDancer. May you dance with the Lord and Lady and shine with a brilliance that would outdazzle the sun. I know that you are watching us and helping us even more than you could here on Earth. Hail to you.

Alpandia

I've been thinking a lot of late about magickal names. Probably because DW's set a date for dedications in July. I've been using "Pandora" a lot for a pseudo magickal name. It's the name I give people who I meet in magickal circles.

Pandora's a name I've been using since high school. Part of this was due to my obsession with Anne Rice - everyone in my group of friends had a "vampire" name based on which vampires we were like in the books. But, of course, like any name that comes to you, it sometimes fits you better than you would like. I'd definately have peeked inside the box!

In college it got shortened to Pandy or Pandie. I became PandyBear, or sometimes Pandie the (fill in the blank) Bear, where the blank could be anything depending on my mood and the situation. More people knew my nick name in college than my real name, and most of my college friends still refer to me by the nick name, even though there were no other "Stacy"'s in our group of friends.

But in magickal work, I'd use Pandora. Pandie always seemed too juvenile and familiar a name to use. You use that with friends. When working serious magick, you don't want to be flaky.

I use Pandie to post on bulletin boards typically. It's a familiar name, I'm used to it, and it's a name that's typically available. I started participating in the Stregheria board that Maggie ran before handing the stregheria.com domain over to Raven, and I used Pandie as my name. It seemed to fit there, as Maggie was Feast of the Magi, and I was Pandie, the inquisitive little student. And Maggie, in typical Maggie fashion, typoed my name to be Pandia. After this happened several times, I decided to see if there was anything behind it.

Imagine my suprise when I found Pandia in the book "Goddesses and Heroines"! It says that her name means "all goddess" or "goddess of all". It's not known if she was a powerful goddess whose legend was lost or mearly a local form of the Moon goddess Selene. In other legends, she's the goddess of the Brightness, the eternally bright one, and was the daughter of Selene. She my also have been the Goddess of the Full Moon, as she was the mate of Zeus Pandion, the Full Moon God.

I was really flabergasted, as I wasn't expecting to find anything. When I shared this with Maggie, she just laughed and said "Of course that's what the name means! I was talking about you!" How funny - the Universe kept throwing this name at me through Maggie, my teacher and friend.

Everytime I've meditated on a magickal name over the last few months, Pandia keeps coming up. Hell, I even got more Moon-vibes this weekend when I drew a spirit bag at the EMLC retreat that had "The Moon" as my tarot card! But I keep getting the feeling that there's something missing - like its a little too fluff. I guess because it's so similiar to Pandie. While I don't mind being light and light hearted, I think there needs to be anchoring and balance. A little bit of darkness to balance all that "eternal brightness".

As I was surfing the internet looking for information on Etruscan deities, I found a list of some that I'd never seen before. Among the names I found Alpan. Alpan is the goddess of love and is one of the lasas. She was also the ruler of the Underworld. I felt drawn to this name as I stared at the list. It was the first one I clicked on to find out who this strange Goddess was - and that's not just because she was towards the top of the list!

Then I thought - Alpandia. It combines the darkness of the Underworld with the eternal brightness. Plus there's a water connection - both with the Underworld and the Moon. I think it's a good balance. Alpandia. I'm not pretentiously taking on a goddess name. Not that there's anything wrong with calling yourself by a goddess' name that you are close with, but I feel, as I'm still developing, I'm not at the point yet where I want to invoke that sort of strong energy right off into myself. I've creating a name by joining the names, including aspects of each.

Al-PAN-di-ah. I like the ring of it.

It's been playing in my head for a while now, and drawing that Moon card in my spirit bag just seems like more of a message to me. Writing it down gives it more legitimacy.

I think I kinda like it.

EMLC Retreat

Just got back from the EMLC retreat this weekend. When I say "just got back", I mean that after a weekend of dancing around the fire, sucking up ash, sleeping on the ground in a tent, I crashed hard when I got home and I am only now just able to function at the higher level that is required for actually pressing the correct key on the keyboard for spelling out words.

Part of the retreat was a ritual where we were to bring a representation of a particular Goddess we wanted to honour or that we felt close to, and an offering for Her. For almost the entire week before ritual, I kept seeing owls. I found my owl candle, and regardless of where I put them, they always managed to come back to the surface so I saw them again. And I kept dreaming of owls, too. So I figured that Athena had a message for me. So I brought my owl ornament to circle (and left it *pout*)and left an offering to Athena during ritual.

Ritual was odd. It was an "audience participation" ritual, where each person in circle had a different part. Whether it was censing the circle or calling West or whatnot. The HP's officiated, but didn't cast or close the circle. The energy, therefore, was a little weird for me. I'm very used to a very structured circle casting. The energies that were abound were definately not organized. Though, it felt like they were inside another circle, which I found out later was cast by Lord Reikin. During ritual, my job was to dismiss the Goddess. I've never done anything like this before, and I was a little hesitant. What do I say? What do I do?

In the end, I did what I felt was necessary. I thanked the Lady for attending our rite and asked her to accept our offerings. I bid Her fairwell, and did feel like an energy sort of spiraled away from the altar towards the Moon. It was very powerful. I felt a little woozy afterwards.

Being with the other ELMC people was great fun. I met a lot of new people, and got a chance to attend several workshops. I'm now the "Other Stacy from DragonWhisper" - because Pantera is very popular :) I found the mead making workshop very interesting. Doug now has something he can do that's easy and will produce mead! I didn't really get a lot from the pastoral counseling workshop, as it was a lot of stuff I already knew and impliment when people come to me for assistance. I loved Lady Bridget's bracelet workshop. It was soooooo much fun to make my natal bracelet! And I love spending any amount of time with Lady Bridget. She's so down to earth, and explains things in a way that I really understand.

I keep thinking of new ways to incorporate the bracelets. She has a suggestion about anniversaries and whatnot. I was thinking that, for pagans, a good thing to make bracelets for would be to commemorate initiations!

The workshop that I thought was very interesting was the "Most Important Aspect of Ritual". Arachne, who led the workshop, said that this was the Great Rite - the Union of the God and Goddess that formed the Universe. And I have been thinking about that, because I know that the ritual rites themselves are all a celebration of the unioon of the God and Goddess and their love for each other and their children. And by working within the ritual framework, we attune ourselves to the energies at play - as the love of the Lord and Lady manifest in different ways, whether it's physically joining to produce the new Sun God, or if it's the separation that is necessary for rebirth to occur, but they are still joined together emotionally.

I guess it was an "ah ha" moment. I know that ritual is also to build community and align yourself with the energies at play around you. But those energies would not exist without the God and Goddess, and their love for each other.

The rest of the weekend was nice. We danced around the fire. Gods, it's so wonderful to dance around the fire with my coven sisters! It's such a magickal place that we get to, and we raise very good energy together moving in our spiral around the flames.

Coming home I got to spend some time chatting with Amaranthea, as she needed to have a little bit of a rest before driving the rest of the way home. It's always nice to have some one-on-one time with her just talking. I'm going to be looking for some Ostara material that maybe we can incorporate into our Strega Primavera rite. Just gotta be something that will not take away or detract from what we do for Primavera already.