Neo-pagan dabblings; Cerridwen; twigs

On Saturday, I participated in a day of neo-pagan revivalism by attending a Goddess Workshop at The Crystal Dragon in Caversham (annoyingly amateurish website – get that background), a local business comprising a New Age shop selling crystals, tarot cards etc and a number of rooms out back that are used for a variety of alternative therapies including Crystal Light Bed Healing. Saturday’s workshop was titled ‘Dark Lady: Journey to Meet Cerridwen of the Cauldron’ and was timed to coincide with the festival of Samhain.

The workshop was led by Vicky, an apparently full-time ‘Priestess of Avalon’ who trained at the Isle of Avalon Foundation near Glastonbury (Vicky’s website is here). I was quite impressed with Vicky and at least two out of the four other women attending seemed quite normal. The day started with welcoming Cerridwen into the circle and went on to include making our own goddesses out of twigs bound together and scraps of material, and a dabble with scrying, which apparently involves staring intently at an object of your choice (crystal ball, bowl of water e.g.) and seeing what words/images emerge from your subconscious mind. I must have been doing something wrong as I didn’t find that anything much emerged, but the other women seemed to manage to find things to say although I cynically suspected that they might have been making it up. My goddess [pictured] turned out to be a somewhat abstract figure with a certain amount of difficulty in standing upright.

The only downside of the day was that it involved sitting on a thin cushion on a laminate floor for several hours. I could barely walk on Sunday.

After the workshop, Ruth and I had a nice dinner on Saturday evening with Claire and Helen - my autumnal pear tart was a reasonable success despite an initial pastry crisis. I had attempted, as I usually do, to make a bit of a seasonal display with autumn leaves and a pumpkin - as happened last year, I had barely arranged the leaves in the fireplace before cunning rabbity ears detected them and the munching began. Here's Lola really getting stuck in to the display. Disrespectful mare. Briefly considered sacrificing her to Cerridwen but then relented.