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TriFire
May 24 - 27, 2024
Camp West Mar
Sabillasville, MD |
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TriFire is an Alchemical Fire Circle event dedicated to personal healing and transformation through song, dance, meditation, and drumming in the tradition originated by the Vegas Vortex and MayFire. We hold three all-night fires from 11pm until dawn (approximately 6am), each night with its own theme. During the day we have workshops for exploring the deeper themes of alchemy, rhythm, and community.
Come and join us as we gather around the sacred fire, our sun in this microcosm of the macrocosm we create on earth. We'll dance under the stars, journey through the planets, and give of ourselves for the good of the assembled. We will explore the mysteries of the One Mind and the One Thing to emerge better than we were before: our highest vision, the phoenix in flight, the rising sun! |
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Stones Family Gathering
Aug 29 - Sept 2, 2024
Buffalo Gap Resort
Capon Bridge, WV |
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What is the Stones Family Gathering?
It's what we make of it! A gathering of Tribe to raise stones.
Five days of togetherness and Ceremony ending with new stones raised up to honor the community that created them.
We will return to Buffalo Gap and continue the work we began last year! |
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Due to life circumstances we’re canceling the May LGBTQ+ Circle. We’ll be taking our usual summer break, and starting up again in the fall. We’ll send an email reminder when the regular monthly circles are back on the schedule.
In the meantime, here’s where you can find Ron Padron in-person for Pride month! For more information on these events you can check out Ron’s website:
https://www.whiterosewitching.com/events
We hope everyone has a wonderful summer, and we hope to see you soon!
Yours,
SCC and the Queer Circle team |
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Crafting Queer Ancestor Talismans
Wednesday, June 19, 2024
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Frederick
Frederick, MD
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A Lavender Path: Honoring Queer Ancestors
Sunday, June 30, 2024
Delmarva Pagan Pride
Legislative Mall
Dover, DE
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Community Articles & Updates:
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From Lead to Gold
from "Argon" Jon Noll
Back in 2007, I first heard about Alchemical Fire Circles described to me as, “a place where we explore personal transformation through the use of alchemical metaphors and Jungian archetypes.” As a student of Psychology, they had me at Jung. Life didn’t allow for me to attend that year, but the following year I made a point to be there.
Stepping into the event for the first time was like being welcomed into a family within a family. Those in attendance were formed into smaller groups to meet a couple times a day to check in with each other, develop relationships, create ritual, and discuss the deep metaphors with which we were operating.
The night was spent in a constant ebb and flow of music, song, rhythm, dance, chant, poetry and speech. The food altar was stocked with fruits, nuts and other nourishment to keep us going through the wee hours, the time when magic truly begins to take place. But this is merely what one sees on the outside. Internally, a change is taking place. Your focus determines your reality and this adage rings true nowhere else like it does than around an Alchemical Fire Circle.
One goes into an Alchemical Fire Circle with an expectation to work on a specific issue, to transform it into something else, something positive, something golden. Sometimes that change comes easily, other times not, and sometimes it happens in ways one could never expect.
As I danced around the fire, endlessly searching for the thing, the moment that I would break through the wall keeping me from what I wanted, I heard a voice behind me, “Your fears are chasing you, your fears are chasing you.” And they were.
“Your fears are chasing you, your fears are chasing you!” Louder, the voice became and more quickly did my feet dance.
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“Your fears are chasing you, your fears are chasing you!” Over and over this mantra was being repeated as one of my brethren literally chased me around the fire until the moment of clarity hit me. I could never outrun my fears, they would always be lurking behind me and the only way to conquer them was to embrace them. And so I did. I stopped dead in my tracks, turned around and ran into my fears personified, embracing them in my arms, my heart, my soul, so that we could be one.
The night changed from there on. I found joy in stepping outside of my comfort zone (something unheard of for a natural introvert such as myself). I stood in a semicircle of musicians, banging away on a tambourine with fierce abandon. I sat playing the clave with percussionists with inordinately more experience than myself... yet I felt at home. Then the dawn came, and other gifts were granted.
As the festivities began to close, a good friend was honored for his service throughout the event by being recognized for tending the fire just as he tended the tribe and was inducted into the Order of the Bracers. My joy at seeing his joy led to my first perception of another's aura. I could see the energy of the circle, the participants, the fire, the love... and I haven't walked away since.
If this journey of self exploration sounds like something you would like to try, please join us at TriFire. We erect a physical and magical container as a safe laboratory where we work our process (labor) and speak our prayers (oratory) in the way of the alchemists of old, Ora et Labora. We dissolve our lead into its base components and recombine them, and in the process ourselves, to make something new, Solve et Coagula.
In Alchemical Fire Circles, we are challenged to find the barriers that we erect between ourselves and others, and to gently retract those barriers in order to let ourselves out just as much as to let others in. That is how you convert Lead into Gold. |
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Financial Update: SCC ended 2023 in a good place in the black by $1,407. We had $40,794 in expenses and $42,201 in income.
In 2024, we’ve had increased fixed and variable costs. Wild Apricot (host for our website, membership system, payments, & communications) raised their prices; venues have raised fees; and event supplies’ prices–particular food–have all increased.
With that said, SCC is doing well!. We have maintained an operating budget (thanks to you, and thanks to our amazing planners!) sufficient for us to stay flexible.
Highlights:
Land Acknowledgements:
SCC is now donating to the First Nations whose land we have used for each of our events. Thanks to Rhiannon’s research, we were able to gratefully donate a total of $400 to the Meherrin Nation, and $400 to the Lenape Nation, $200 to the Eastern Shawnee Tribe, and are sending $100 to the Haudenosaunee Confederacy soon.
Sunshine Funds: as of April 25, 2024, we have $717.34 in Sunshine Funds!
Chris "Tinder" McGrath
SCC Financial Officer
he/him/his |
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Where we gather, we are home. Where we go, we will raise Stones.
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THE STONE CIRCLE COUNCIL
