Blissful Weariness: Pantheacon 2004

What is Pantheacon? Hell, what ISN'T Pantheacon? Well it isn't Hell for one. Quite the opposite in fact.

Picture a four-star ultra-modern hotel in heart of Silicon Valley (assuming for the moment that it has a heart). Add in vacationers, families and lots of business types in serious suits and grown-up haircuts. A tasteful scene. Logical. Productive. You could hold a muzak convention there.

Now plop down 1,700 witches into this bastion of sensibility. Pagans of all stripes and polka dots, from Gardnerian to Discordian, from Faery to Klingon. Preteens to post-elders. Men, women, migratories, gender neutrals and everything in between and beyond as well. In singles, couples, triples, and other geometric possibilities. It is an amazing spectacle to witness. In fact one of the most popular venues that weekend was not the 130 tracks of official programming but the ho-hum cafe in the middle of the first floor. While you had a ho-hum salad or a ho-hum sandwich there was an endless parade of Vegas worthy headpieces, glittering jewelry (much of it in non-standard locales), vaguely canine collars, shimmering cloaks, heaving bosoms, tastefully contrasting zinc-studded gauntlets, kilts for her, miniskirts for him, go-to-hell thighs and a compendium of boots that would make Worf squeal like a little girl. All of this endlessly processing by at all hours of the day and night. Your meal might take 5 hours, and your booth may have 18 people in it by the end.

But more fun than watching the freaks on parade is watching the geeks watch the freaks. Very few things will cause a Suit to drop his cell phone, but fishnets/raccoon tail/silver lame top/full beard/Elizabeth-Taylor-In-Cleopatra eye makeup and bunny ears will. One dinner at Cafe Ho-Hum I sat next to a devoutly nuclear family who never looked up for their entire meal. They stared rigidly at their plates like they were keeping them from levitating by sheer force of will. All except the 10 year old son who could not keep his focus on his ho-hum hamburger. Every 30 seconds or so his concentration would slip and his head would slowly crank around to see a belly dance troupe undulate by, or a man in a corset. And every 30 seconds his mothers hand would reach out and ratchet his head back to his meal, like he was a mechanical snooze alarm. He was waking up to sights he had never imagined...

"snooze alarm", coincidentally, is one phrase you will not hear at the Con. And the best laid plans for 9am workshops so oft go to bed at 4am. I arrived at the con with a carefully honed and whittled list of seminars and rituals to attend. After much sweat and heartache I had narrowed it down to 70 things that I absolutely had to see. But when your first thought upon waking is "um, hello. And you are - ?" then your morning program has probably already gone ahead without you. And the afternoons quickly get swallowed up by naps, prowling the wondrous vendor mall, 5 hour meals at cafe ho-hum, more naps, and the all important task of laying out your outfit for the nights frolics. So more circled workshops get thrown on the pyre. And the night is suddenly swallowed by the hospitality suites, impromptu drum circles, spontaneous bardics, and the debauched gravity well of the hot tub. And if a swimming pool is fun at 3pm, it is exponentially more fun at 3am. So there go the big ticket evening items as well. Still, cutting class was never more fun than this.

By Sunday though I thought I had at least better show up for SOMETHING. In total the weekend will provide you with 24 different timeslots, and 13 different venues full of folks at any given time. So, the odds of two people doing exactly the same things all weekend are infinite - coincidentally also the number of bottles of beer on the wall in the Discordian ritual.

I won't bore you with a laundry list of what I attended, (but believe me it wasn't boring), but here are a few tips and tricks:

  • 1) Don't attend four different rituals in a row. After the third your trance state will have you either collapsing into a row of chairs, or the friendly folks from Operations will have to scrape you off the ceiling.
  • 2) Don't wear your 25lb. woolen cloak to a packed seminar in a small room.
  • 3) There is a measurable hum throughout the hotel the entire weekend. It will transform you as well as deplete you. Stay hydrated and keep yourself well fed. Or as least as well as Cafe Ho-Hum can.
  • 4) Whatever is going on the room next door, across the way, or 200yds. down the hallway is their business. Or, more probably, their pleasure. Complaints to the management are bad form, but applause is perfectly acceptable.
  • 5) Allow at least 20 minutes to "pop up to your room for something", because on the way you are going to run into at least 15 people that you know (or want to know), and note comparing is mandatory.
  • 6) Schedule your rituals in decreasing seriousness, not increasing. Stumbling out of a rite full of squeeze toys and balloon animals and running into a Norse funereal rite is not going to be beneficial to either party.

    And here are some things that surprised, and for the most part, delighted me:

  • 1) The line between the presenter and the audience is marvelously permeable. The musician that fills your CD case at home may suddenly be trying on cloaks with you in the vendor mall. The creator of your favorite Tarot deck may plop down beside you in the hot tub. And the author who transformed your life may be holding hands with you in a spiral dance at some point. And they're all pretty nice people actually. In fact last hours presenters are very likely next hours participants. Even the stars are jazzed to be at Pantheacon.
  • 2) Not all of the workshops are scintillating. A couple of the ones that I saw I would qualify somewhere between "blech" and "huh?" But most of these were unintentionally entertaining, and for the others sneaking out is not a sin.
  • 3) I have never seen rituals pulled off with more power, juice, and pizzazz with only 5 folks presenting, 4 props, and 3 minutes of prep time.
  • 4) Maids from the hotel in the vendor area. A little frightened, clinging to each other like a Service Scrum, but gamely picking up mojo bags, orisha candles and protection and love oils. Interfaith can happen at every level.

    By Sunday afternoon I was blissfully weary, and by Sunday evening the wheels were definitely coming off. My bag was full of swag I don't remember getting. My room looked like a reverse Wizard of Oz: Glinda the good witch left her stuff and then the tornado hit. My checkbook was blinking and smoldering. And my brain, heart, and spirit were topped off and ready to reinhabit Muggleworld.

    And here is what I will always remember about this years convention:

  • - Sunday morning, a weary server at cafe ho-hum: "you guys kept me up till all hours of the night last night. But I had the BEST time!!"
  • - In the fascinating Druid rite I saw they had, as special guests, a couple of Christian priests. How ballsy is that? Props to the Fathers.
  • - The Getting Published! seminar: A battalion of Orcs is not as terrifying a close room chock-full of unpublished writers. (*shudder*)
  • - Early Monday, after the emotional climax of the Con, a blustery storm blew in and purged and cleansed the hotel that we had used so thoroughly and used so well. And as the pagans were leaving that Monday the power grid left as well. Bwa-ha-ha.

    But lastly and mostly, I will treasure the looks on the Mundanes as they were forced to interface with 1,700 delegates from the wacky-ass pagan world that we call home. The intersection of the super serious business hotel and us, looking like we had all just beamed down to the wrong coordinates after Scotty had gotten drunk and read a couple of Terry Pratchett books.

    Hail the Doubletree Hotel! Hail Eris! Hail Pantheacon!

    Angus McMahan

    2/16/04