The Witch of Forest Grove

There are over a hundred of us from the UK, the US and Canada gathered in the pavillion around a great fire whose stones are covered in offering bowls full of herbs, spices, and food. There is a massive altar in the Northeast full of bones, antlers, masks, skulls, and offerings. A great silver world tree decorated with wolf pelts sits in the center towering above the other altars. We sit and chatter in excitement and anticipation. Most of us have all just arrived and the opening ceremony is about to begin.

The pavillion becomes hushed and a beautifully masked procession in blue and black robes enters walking sunwise around the fire. There is drumming and helpers circling the great room with enough burning sage to fill the air like fog. A man with long black hair circles the room dipping cedar sprigs into blessed water and flicking it on all of us smiling in wicked trickster glee as we squeal like delighted children from being splashed. He turns out to be the host of this event. The guardians of the tradition of the Wolven Path are invoked – the raven of the North and air, the boar of the South and water, the stag of the East and the sun, and the mother bear of the West and the earth. The spirits are welcomed and the ancestors called. We are now purified and ready to be in the presence of the spirits for the duration of this gathering.

My first commitment is to a drumming rehearsal for a Yoruban Yemoja Ceremony to be held two days later hosted by the lovely Marsha Scarbrough. A few of us gather in a building behind the dorms and we learn the drum rhythms on our djembes to invoke the different orisha and the words to sing to call the spirits. The beautiful and delicate pixie-like Marie-Josée leads us aided by the lovely Kate with the powerful presence of her great taiko drums. When I return to my dorm room to unpack I see beautiful branches decorated with ogham staves and animals hanging from all the trees around the camp.

Dinner the first night is a delicious vegetarian curry with basmati rice and sinful chickpea samosas. My friend Nikiah and I stay up late into the night talking in front of the warm fire in our dorm’s common room. Her face is smudged with blue paint from a wild evening ceremony of drumming and trance dancing. We finally get to catch up. With her busy life with her children and mine with my man-children, our time together is always limited so we revel in the limitless space we are gifted. We could be any women in any time talking in hushed voices by a fire. We look so cozy others join us on the following nights. The second night we stay up late talking to a healer, a sweet Russian woman around my grandmother’s age whose words and stories make us laugh and cry. I know I will see her again someday… such a beautiful soul.

I learn these shamans have gods; the Celtic gods, animal deities, and ancestral deities. They reverence the earth and the dead. They believe we are surrounded by spirits. Their beliefs and practices are not so foreign as I was expecting. I meet other witches who have come because they too have a shamanic bent to their craft. Witches call it hedgecrossing, Shamans call it journeying. We call them familiars, they call them guides and power animals. We call them gods, they call them great spirits. We call it circle casting, they call it sacred space or nothing at all when they invoke the four directions, the above, and the below. They spend less time on labels and analyzing and more time on doing and experiencing. They speak in symbols and stories and I gleefully absorb it all as it is already the language of my brain. I learn much from the others while I am there. I learn I am holding myself back for no reason. I learn to trust myself and my familiar spirits. I learn to trust the messages they give me and the things they teach me. Everyone I meet is open and joyful and friendly. I find no judgement here, only love.

Fifty or so shamans sit in a room in a circle around grandfather fire. One is drumming as she slowly walks sunwise around the flames. The rest are absent. The room is full of vacant bodies. All of us are in the otherworld talking to spirits to ask questions for one another. Often the answers come easier and clearer when asked by others for you. The fire crackles and pops. White ash floats around the four quarters of the large pavillion like thousands of moths. The drum beat changes with long pauses between the beater hitting the rawhide. It is the signal to return. We slip back into our skins and back into this world. We collect ourselves and open our eyes. We sit close and whisper the answers we received to one another. The answers mean nothing to me, but everything to those I asked them for. I write down what the others tell me so I don’t forget.  The messages are big, not small. They will pertain to the rest of my life depending which way I turn at the next crossroad. I intend to do this with my apprentice. I think she would be very very good at travelling for others as she’s already very intuitive without having to leave this world (she can be uncannily dead-on with messages). Thank you to Christina Pratt for the questions to ask as many we fear to seek answers for on our own.

Almost every workshop requires hedgecrossing/journeying. They assume you know how to do it. There was only a small handful of newbies – maybe five out of a hundred and forty. This year they hosted an introduction to journeying, but not the year before. If you go to the conference next year you will need to learn how to travel between worlds first. It’s like handspinning, no one can really teach you how, you just have to do it and experience it for yourself.

My favourite ceremony is the Yemoja ritual I volunteer to help with. We spend hours prepping and decorating the pavillion around the fire. I pick pepper seeds out of pods for the altar with some helpful young men and then the drummers sit down to rehearse the songs for the orishas again. We will be using rattles and shakers as well. A banner of Yemoja, the mother of all and orisha of the ocean, hangs over the beautiful altar decorated in white and blue. There is a bowl of sea water, food and flower offerings, and many vigil candles.

Marie-Josée sings a beautiful song to Yemoja and then the drumming begins. Marsha and her helpers pass around bowls of food for the participants to eat – a root for the bitterness, salt for the sea, honey for sweetness, peppercorns for heat and passion, and oil for smoothing things over. We invoke Exu, Legba, first and then all four hundred orishas. The ritual is entirely musical with the participants following specific traditional dances. It goes on for hours and hours. After we sing the last song the crowd loses themselves in the energy and three hours of wild dancing and drumming follow – the drummers feeding the dancers and vice versa. The dancers take turns performing sensual joyful dances for each of the drummers. Sometimes they succeed in distracting us from our rhythms. You can tell the orisha are present and fully enjoying their offerings. John-Luke runs wildly around and smears myself and others with black face paint –seemingly inspired by the moment. It goes on and on. When my arms tire from drumming I rattle. The ritual assistants cut up the fruit offerings and hand it out to the participants. They feed me grapes and pineapple with their fingers so I don’t have to stop drumming.  When we all tire I go to the fire and burn offerings for Papa Legba and speak to him in French and say my thanks and farewell. The drum beats and songs stay in my head for the rest of the conference.

Ah, the vending. Many didn’t know us merchants were there tucked away in a room by the kitchen and dining hall. For the low cost per table though it was well worth it to vend. Some were afraid of my products and art while others loved them. My illustrations and reliquaries seemed to be the biggest hit, but only a couple of animal skulls found homes. On the bright side, I won’t have to madly craft stock for the next festival coming up, the Gathering, on the May long weekend. I’ll just relaxedly get more woodwork done.

There was another woodcarver, a crystal seller, jewelers, yummy soaps and lotions, cards & artwork, wings and smudge fans, and a wonderful woman (aka “the bone collector”) with bits of fur, bone, and skulls to sell. I bought a beautiful raw amber and jet necklace, traded for some lovely soaps and lotions, and purchased all the animal bits I spoke of in my last post that now adorn Old Woman’s altar upstairs in my bedroom. I shared a table with my friend Nikiah who was selling her beautiful necklaces, smudge fans, rattles, and drums.

From the site of the Shamanic Conference was a 360° view of mountains. Some low and green and some touching the sky and still covered in snow. On one day I saw six bald eagles circling together. Another day while walking with Nikiah we saw an osprey fishing in the river. On the last day a beautiful sleek mink followed me along the river’s path, running through stones as fast as I was walking on the trail. I stopped and looked at it and it stopped and looked at me. It didn’t scare and run away.  The mink just kept going, and so did I, in the same direction. The mink is a maker of shamans. We were surrounded by robins and crows the whole weekend. The robins taking advantage of the rain bringing out all the worms and the crows taking advantage of our presence for food scraps. It was hard to say farewell to those beautiful snowy mountains and the fast-moving river. I’ve visited this place before in early winter to watch hundreds of eagles feast on the returning salmon. The drive home was beautiful. If you ever get the chance to visit BC, you must drive along the Sea to Sky Highway. You will think you have driven into a scene from Lord of the Rings or our ancient prehistoric past.

Would I go back next year? Yes, yes I would.

• The Sacred Circle of the Great Mystery Shamanic Society
• 2nd BC Shamanic Conference & Gathering 2011