Florida Pagan Gathering 2007

By Wayland Raven

Hello friends of Coven of the Raven,
My dear friend Diane Lonsway has harassed me for the last several years to go to the Florida Pagan Gathering with her. This year she cut to the chase, bought my plane ticket, made arrangements for me to stay in her room, even bought all of my meals. There was no way I could refuse. I moaned and groaned about traveling, being away from my business, all of my usual fretting. She frankly didn’t care. I was going, bitching or not. I am glad that I did.

This year FPG had a true gathering of Elders. Not only was my pal Edain McCoy there, who I surprised because she didn’t know I was coming, they also featured Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone, Gavin and Yvonne Frost, Selena Fox and Issac Bonewitz among others. Diane and I discussed the possibility of doing a video interview of Janet Farrar while she was here from Ireland. From that first discussion it evolved that we would try to interview all of the various Elders and we ended up getting most of them. What an honor to sit down on camera with the giants of our faith.  Diane is putting the video together and we are hoping that she will be able to offer some of the videos through her www.paganvideos.com If you have any questions about the videos or want to thank her for taking poor, pitiful, bitching, moaning Wayland Raven to Florida for one of the most remarkable times of his life, you can email her at ddolph1n@yahoo.com

During the course of my interviews there was one common theme that kept coming from these Elders. When I asked Gavin Frost how the Craft today compares with the early days of neo-paganism he said, “It is disastrous.” He sited witch wars, polarization between traditions and covens, arguments within the pagan community and some of the hateful feelings that have been created simply because of spiritual differences. “We never had any of that before.” At one of our meals Gavin got up and impromptu addressed the crowd. “You have seen all of the various elders who are together at this gathering. We have had many differences over the years. Have you seen how happy we are to be together. How we treat each other? Do you goddamned get it???” He then sat down and for a few moments it was silent and then there was applause. It is a good lesson for all of us who have covens, traditions, are solitary or have anything that might in one way or another separate us. Our Craft family, our pagan friends… we all have more in common together than the differences. We need to keep our eye on the love between us.

There are many photographs at www.flapagan.org under New Photos.

Wayland Raven