Back in San Jose...

I say that because I spent almost my whole weekend, except sleeping hours, at PantheaCon, which was not really anywhere or anyplace, it was a thing that hit somewhere between a ritual, a csi-fi-con, a life changing experince, an infomercial, and a way to touch god. My favorite print advertisement this weekend?"Estalished 1902, OTO- Yes, we're a Cult!"Before I gow on to talk about the event I need to thank Yani and Gasper who housed me this weekend, even if they rarely saw me. They put up with a few points of wierd woo woo shit they didn't understand, and were mostly graceful about it except the one time they weren't, and so be it. It was still lovely.So, let the describing begin.Friday I was hyper-caffinated and had no sleep, but once I realized no one was giving me shit for using the mens room, I coped my shit together and headed to opening ritual. The person supposed to run the ritual was stuck on the east coast, so the event organizer stepped in to do one, and asked who the farthest away folks were. East was a kick ass guy from Hamburg who was with Ecclesia Antinoi who I got to know, along with the other Antinoi, pretty well via the LGBT suite and many drinks. When they asked who had come from furthest south and someone said LA, I asked if they wanted Home, or where you flew from today. They Said Home. I said Sydney. I took South. West was 10 miles away- ha!. North was a great guy from Central Canada. The Antinoi had no familiarity with genericc pagan ritual, so his was a follow along calling of East. I saw the energy in the room drop, so when South came I buckled on my performance voice and folks started screaming and hollering and it was great. I also in doing so got a chance to say "Hi, I'm a guy" sorta, which helped, and it came up in a few other panels, so by the time the weekend was over most folks got it, and hell, a great gaggle of fag boys were flirting with me.I then headed off to Kenaz Filan's class on The Posession Experience, which was interesting but not amazingly informative, except that the class piped in with some great questions and finally some info flowed. Then off to Basics of Sheilding with Estara T'shirai, and Ilearned very little "new", but did come out with some great ways to rephrase the skillset for talking to others about it, and get to voice some ideas for not attacking psychic vampires. Dinner was random, and I got to wait in the line alone, and ended up being randomly paired up with one of the women who own Good Vibrations, how fabulous.Morgan Felidae of the Gray School of Wizardry distinctly underimpressed me in her class "My Magic is Not Your Religion", speaking about the sepration of faith and magical ability. GREAT idea. But instead of teaching, she literally read her essay on it, sometimes 2 pages at a time, and rarely really interacted with her audience... I almost fell asleep, and almost left, but the info was so good, I couldn't. Thus, my opinion- read her stuff online, or read books, real life classes she pointed out are not her fortay. But her concepts were really interesting. At 9 I told myself I *would* go to LaSara Firefox's class on Energetics of Attraction. The NLP concepts were fascinating, my partner for the class was lovely- I was falling asleep. S ohalf way through I excused myself, but yup, a few really interesting ideas.Taxi, crash, sleep overtime. Woke up at 10am and Gasper was sweet enough to drive me in as the taxi was estimating 20+ minutes to pickup, and I would be late for Christopher Penczak's "Invocation, Channeling and the Oracular Mysteries." SOOOO glad I made it to this packed, closed door, class. Of ALL the teachers I saw this weekend, I have to say Christopher and Thorn (coming shortly) were by and far the most informative, energetic, and easy for a variety of levels to digest at their own frequency as it were. I shortly became a Penczak junkie, ok, not a bad one, but gosh he's cute, smart, funny, knowledgeable, and fabulously queer. Anyway, the class was really informative and again, though I knew a lot of it, the stuff on the enlightened masters and astral courts was new to me, I've picked up that I need some more knowledge/training in ceremonial magic work, and more. His visualization was that we all have a door at the back of our scull/top of our spine, where if we do journeying work, we go out through that doorway. If you know how to go out through that doorway, chances are, you can learn how to let other things in through that same doorway. However, we need to gaurd that doorway so random shit doesn't get in, thus he did a great guided meditation to find our personal gaurdian of that doorway, then step through. I started laughing out loud apparently during the visualization, after going through all of it and then you open the door and... MamaBear just looked at me and said "why are you wasting my time?" ok, not quite, but close, and her words were funnier but SO not in english, and I fell over laughing as she really isn't usually funny, but gosh, ha ha ha.After the lunch break (shopping/drooling), I headed off to Baba Esu Wemimo speak on Maintaining Good Charachter in Yoruba faith with the Orishas. Stunning presentation, though wow, he had the energy of one of those pyramid scheme guys. Then rush off to T. Thorn Coyle's class on The Iron Pentacle. Other than getting seasick and having to reverse left and right (afterwards when I said this, she asked if home was south of the equator, I said, um, yeah... and she said that made sense then, most folks she knew from south of the equator had to flip left and right on the pentacle, and work widdershins), it was an amazing, invergerating, and really informative participatory lecture. Faerey magic stuff (not as in the flyin things, as in the work of Anderson), is really interesting to me.I had gotten sick when reading the description for the Bennu-Kepher Lodge of the Golden Dawn's ritual "Opening the Mouth of Khepri" and had a fucked up vision, so I had to go. Hm, curious. It was... ok. Lots of pontification, extreme ceremony, gold paint and hugging. But my mouth kept making scarab noises... hm.Then off to "Creating Sacred Queer Community"- which rocked because there were a lot of folks there from Between the Worlds, the gay mens' sprituality gathering in Ohio. Ea was a great speaker, like him a lot, and is funny over drinks too. Some interesting ideas shared around, then we all grabbed drinks up at the GLBT hospitality suite.Then... all hail Discordia. I am a Pope. The Papal Innauguration and Wilson memorial was actually quite good, and during it I got to steal and hand the golden apple off to the hot genderfucker with full beard and a dress (a MUPpet, a follower of Mup) who I ended up spening quite a bit of time with. E was totally the prettiest. I ate pope guts.Then back to the CLBT suite after a short stop to the Gren Faerie Absinthe Lounge. The GLBT suite was great, som fabulous flirting, intense coversations both magical and profane, and some damn hot people. At 4am after it turning into an 8 people left talking about gender and queerdom (a gay boy had asked Stacy in the dress what her story was), Stacy and I headed, lost, out to find er car, then e dropped me off at Gasper's place after we got lost a few times.Sunday morning, 3 hours of sleep later, I caught another cab and got there for Georgia Ann Hodnett do "You are a What?", which revolved pretty much around her work with a few online groups and her demanding that Harry Benjamin Sydrome get more coverage in the US. I find the syndrome interesting, and need to read more, because it states that gender is hard wired in the brain and that male brains can be in female bodies and visa versa and that body changing is necessary because of gendered brains. Its really interesting, and I have no doubt it exists, but in pushing to accept the syndrome, what will happen to the rest of the gender radical, trans, or fucker folks? What of those of us who know many truths? I'm curious what the lines are for the syndrome, and how queerdom affects it.... must do more research.I then went to see Donald Michael Kraig speek on Hypnosis that works, and gosh I'm glad he did. The history and application stuff was interesting, but his short mention of MK-Ultras techniques combining pain, pleasure, sleep dep, chemicals etc WITH hypnosis gave me a key into some of my history with hypnosis as an erotic tool that I hadn't been able to verbalize. I would like to formally train in hypnotherapy at some point I think...I had high hopes for Isaac Bonewits' presentation on Varieties of Initiatory Experience, but I was dissapointed when he focussed almost entirely on modern wicca and druidic experience. However, his 3-step system of styles of initiation I found facinating (initiation as community acknowledgement, initiation as ordeal, initiation as passing on power/energy), even if I have decided that wiccan and modern druiding ordeals seem to be, well, pussy. I talked to someone outside later about varieties of ordeal work and their eyes went buggy. Hm.I had had other plans, but then I went to The Sorcerer's Initiation Ritual with Penczak, and I am glad I went. Some work happened in there, or at least started in there, that was important. By the end of the ritual I had painted my mouth shut, made a few deals other side, and yeah... can't say more. Other than with my mouth painted shut it was part of no words til sunrise, that I fucked up on once and lost 8 things from the deal from saying 8 words. Power of words lil one, power of words.In silence I went to dinner.In silence I went to Taylor Ellwood's lecture and guided work on Neurotransmitter Spirit Guides, IE how to do magic to effect your brain chemistry. Whether Hunter is aware of it or not, that boy has some great basic skills in this, and I want to but "Spirit Alchemy" for him so he can, gosh, apply his laying on shit to his own brain.In silence I went to see Aupuni Iwi'ula of the Kamala Foundation speak on his work as a kahuna, and hawai'ian spirituality. I helped for no reason and put out energy and words for no reason on a pure slip during the purging ritual... so right afterwards I headed to go catch a cab, come back, read, do some more work a la the deal, then sleep.Today has been packing. Laundry should arrive tomorrow.So thats mostly what I got up to this weekend. Amazing outfits. I bought myself a small necklace. I found a sigil for some stuff Hunter and I had been talking about. I hit a few walls. I found some great ideas. I hope to do it again next year, maybe teaching next time.