This weekend
The weekend was pretty good, I slept like shit but then again I expected that and it wasn't even quite as bad as I thought it would be.
Friday night Renee, Jesse and I went down to Caryn and Will's to spend the night. I was on the floor in the living room watching TV most of the night, thankfully they had cable and I got my Court TV fix. The next morning we all drove down to Virginia where a group called Mannaheim had this building set up. Most of the people there seemed to be from Mannaheim, then there were the Cedarlight Grove people and one or two others.
Isaac's lecture was interesting, he is beyond a doubt an entertaining speaker (oddly to me he seems much more comfortable sitting in front of a crowd and talking with everyone, less comfortable if you walk up to him and try to talk to him directly, he'll answer your question but seems to want to end the conversation as quickly as possible; pretty much the opposite of me I guess). The first half of the day one lecture was on magic and the theories behind how it works which, as a non magical person, didn't particularly interest me. The second half was on ritual structure and, being as how I just read his book on ritual structure while I was home for Christmas, it was really nothing new to me. Day two was spent in part discussing the dangers of dualism, and I have to say that went a lot better than I thought it would; Isaac seems to have a habit of shooting daggers at the Christian church every chance he can get, and I had pretty much thought the lecture would turn into "Why Christianity sucks and how we are superior to them in every possible way." I don't pretend to have any love for Christianity, if asked I will tell you I find it to be an entirely negative religion on many different levels and what anyone finds positive or uplifting about it I do not understand. And yet I don't feel the need to unnecessarily piss all over it every time I speak, Christianity has nothing to do with my life and I don't find it important enough to spend that much time and energy fighting with it. One or two comments I can take, but there gets to be a point where your hatred has gone a little overboard and I feel a need to yell at you "would you just get over it!" Isaac's crossed that line in a few of his things that I've read, but this time he stayed pretty much on the right side of things.
Probably the most interesting and entirely unexpected part of the weekend was the inroads I made with Mannaheim. The group's senior member (I don't really know what to call him, I had assumed leader until I was informed that they are a completely egalitarian organization and they don't have "leaders"; he does own the building we spent the weekend in though) for whatever reason spent a great deal of time talking to me; I'd actually met him once before, very briefly, when he came to Cedarlight Grove at some point in the last month or two. He remembered who I was and, at the end of the weekend after we'd done a lot of talking, invited both Renee and I to join their listserve and to come to meetings any time we wanted to. They're sort of an Asatru group but not exclusively so, they're Norse mostly because that's what most of their membership are, though they do have a few people kicking around who aren't. He seemed to like the idea of having a few Greek people to join in the conversation. And since the people there seemed to be very nice and friendly, sounds like a good idea to me.
Friday night Renee, Jesse and I went down to Caryn and Will's to spend the night. I was on the floor in the living room watching TV most of the night, thankfully they had cable and I got my Court TV fix. The next morning we all drove down to Virginia where a group called Mannaheim had this building set up. Most of the people there seemed to be from Mannaheim, then there were the Cedarlight Grove people and one or two others.
Isaac's lecture was interesting, he is beyond a doubt an entertaining speaker (oddly to me he seems much more comfortable sitting in front of a crowd and talking with everyone, less comfortable if you walk up to him and try to talk to him directly, he'll answer your question but seems to want to end the conversation as quickly as possible; pretty much the opposite of me I guess). The first half of the day one lecture was on magic and the theories behind how it works which, as a non magical person, didn't particularly interest me. The second half was on ritual structure and, being as how I just read his book on ritual structure while I was home for Christmas, it was really nothing new to me. Day two was spent in part discussing the dangers of dualism, and I have to say that went a lot better than I thought it would; Isaac seems to have a habit of shooting daggers at the Christian church every chance he can get, and I had pretty much thought the lecture would turn into "Why Christianity sucks and how we are superior to them in every possible way." I don't pretend to have any love for Christianity, if asked I will tell you I find it to be an entirely negative religion on many different levels and what anyone finds positive or uplifting about it I do not understand. And yet I don't feel the need to unnecessarily piss all over it every time I speak, Christianity has nothing to do with my life and I don't find it important enough to spend that much time and energy fighting with it. One or two comments I can take, but there gets to be a point where your hatred has gone a little overboard and I feel a need to yell at you "would you just get over it!" Isaac's crossed that line in a few of his things that I've read, but this time he stayed pretty much on the right side of things.
Probably the most interesting and entirely unexpected part of the weekend was the inroads I made with Mannaheim. The group's senior member (I don't really know what to call him, I had assumed leader until I was informed that they are a completely egalitarian organization and they don't have "leaders"; he does own the building we spent the weekend in though) for whatever reason spent a great deal of time talking to me; I'd actually met him once before, very briefly, when he came to Cedarlight Grove at some point in the last month or two. He remembered who I was and, at the end of the weekend after we'd done a lot of talking, invited both Renee and I to join their listserve and to come to meetings any time we wanted to. They're sort of an Asatru group but not exclusively so, they're Norse mostly because that's what most of their membership are, though they do have a few people kicking around who aren't. He seemed to like the idea of having a few Greek people to join in the conversation. And since the people there seemed to be very nice and friendly, sounds like a good idea to me.