I Watched Pantheacon Die

(This article originally published by Gods and Radicals)

I Watched Pantheacon Die

Patacelsus

    I walked into the lab my friend works in. “Have you ever heard of Pantheacon?”. She scrunches up her eyebrows and replies, “No, what's that?” “Thank the gods”, I replied, “It's awful, you're better off not knowing.” My friend is a witch that dances her spells, like in the remake of Susperia. I gave her my phone with the itinerary or whatever you call it. She scrunched her nose up, “Forty dollars?”. I smiled, “I know right, that's the first thing...” And then I gave her a truncated version of what you'll read later if you make it to the end of this account.

    Pantheacon. What could I say that hasn't already been said by Rhyd and Alley? A few years ago, when I had seen that Rhyd would be there, I just said to myself, 'It's too bougie there, you're not going to have a good time.' I almost went, but being it was Pantheacon, I decided I'd rather shoot my dick with a pistol than go, and prayed that the Lares look out for him. I had gone once around ten or eleven years ago, and decided I could just skip that whole Bay Area Pagan community. But how could I not go, for at least half a day, to the last Pantheacon? Like showing up to see a tumor go into remission. Miraculous! I'm just as human as anyone else, and so spiteful joy awaited me on a Sunday. The Bay Area Pagan community kind of sucks, and its worst elements collect at Pantheacon like filling up a sack. Nah, that's too dramatic. They are fluff balls though. Fluff balls that wear three wolf moon t-shirts.

    The forty dollars for me was no problem. I work in the California cannabis industry, and needless to say I and my wife have ascended to California poor, wherein you make good money but it all gets chewed up in rent. And we actually have fairly cheap rent for what we get. Anyway, I got there, parked illegally like everyone else apparently, that was fun, and payed my forty to know the story.

    I had gotten there too late to attend the eco-activism talk that I wanted to support because that was the kind of shit these so called Earth children would have been into had they not been full of pillow stuffing. Sadly, it was in the morning and my car needed oil, and I hate going over the 17 with an active service warning, or any problems with a car really. I'm surprised a bus load of Facebook fucks haven't died from the conditions regularly seen on that road. Accidents happen regularly on the 17, you'd figure statistically it would have to happen at least once, but nothing. Eh well.

    So being that I now had nothing but time to kill, I decided to see what all the vendors had to offer. It is kind of like the Portland Saturday Market, except inside, with 1/50th the vendors, and all vaguely witchcraft themed. Here you can buy three wolf moon t-shirts and books about native spirituality written by white people. I don't want to go into it, you've heard it all before I'm sure. And yes, there was some neat stuff too. Of course there was. But that's all it was, neat stuff you can buy.

    So apparently there are these things called hospitality suites in which various groups are just, there, to provide you with what I'd have to figure is information on what their deal is. Honestly, I didn't bother to look. The last thing I wanted was actually to talk to anyone. Not because I thought they were bad people or anything. I'm introverted. If you're an actual introvert, you know that means that socializing doesn't energize you like it does an extrovert, it enervates you. I had hours of being at the Double-tree Inn near the San Jose airport with the faeries. I really needed to conserve my ability to tolerate having people around me without being a total asshole. I actually like this idea of hospitality suites, truly a marketplace of ideas, as long as you have the scroll.

    I had the notion of going to two lectures in the afternoon. The first was a lecture titled “Goddess Thelema”, and since I've always liked the Book of the Law, and always had a soft spot for Thelemites, I thought I'd go check it out. It was either that or listen to Don Lilo Briquette tell a room full of people they don't do magik unless they are good at something that he is also good at. If you want a truly deep spiritual experience do shrooms and then chill in comfort and darkness. If you want to measure dick length do ceremonial magik.

    So the Goddess Thelema turned out to be a short talk on, then guided meditation through, a new set of tantric practices that are, you guessed it, Thelema themed. This of course fits in with the Tantric world view, in which Tantra, as a body of knowledge, is both bestowed by celestial beings and is a body of knowledge that can simply be taken up and used. That's why there is, in modern times, Vaishnava tantra, Saktic tantra, Saivic tantra, Jain, and Buddhist tantra. Wildly different metaphysics and epistemologies, but sharing the same Tantric mindset. Basically using magik to speed ones own spiritual development. Tantra has given us Ayurveda, yoga, and alchemy. So Brandy Williams was of the opinion that Crowley built most of his system on cribbed Tantric knowledge. I don't know enough about it to say whether or not this is correct, honestly. And I was there for goddess stuff and got experimental tantra instead. So an ok time I guess. It did kind of seem like a book commercial, I must admit.

    The second lecture I went to was “'Shamanism' and Cultural Appropriation: Indigenous Perspectives”. When I told my friend I was going to this lecture, she asked, “So like what, white people being told to please not use the word Shaman?” 

    “Yeah probably.”

    “Ugh.” I think that was the point that she became glad she had never heard of Pantheacon. Not sure though, didn't ask.

    So if you've gotten any kind of degree in the social sciences in the past 20 years, you probably, maybe, already know that the word Shaman has been used too much to classify ethnographic material so diverse the word is inadequate at best, certainly incorrect both in and out of its own ethnic context, and mostly, the clumsy classification of an earlier generation of social scientists that doesn't get used much if at all anymore. But also old books from those eras are still in print and the naïve and ignorant just use whatever terminology they pick up from these old, out of date, misguided books. Kind of like when people think Dark Ages is still a term that is used, when in reality it has been replaced by “Late Antiquity” and “Early Medieval”. Anyway, back to what happened.

    The lecture was clearly for folks that don't know this shit, and don't respect anything because they've become consumers of all things, spirituality included. I do have to wonder how long it took them to actually get a space at Pantheacon. Was this the first, last time? Was it a regular rehearsal of heart felt plea, followed by performative virtue signaling that clearly was changing nothing. I don't know because I didn't ask. I only wanted to listen in this talk. I almost spoke once, but Fortuna blessed me with misfortune and I didn't get he chance, thus keeping to my original desire.

    So it started with a ritual cleansing of the space, which I watched while helping to set up chairs in an irregular ellipsoid one often finds in the sloppy rhomboid-esque shaped conference halls of the 20th century. When everyone was seated and the thing started I was the only one that had no one to either side of him, until a late comer sat near me. Until swiftly he left, then it was back to being shown kingly hospitality by the Pantheacon goers once again. The opening ritual was a song. I could say more about it but why bother? Then three native folks, one native to Siberia and two Native to California, tried their best to explain why they would like people to stop using native spiritual techniques out of the context of the cultures they were taken from. A reasonable request, made with heart, to a group as sanctimonious in their assent just as the three wolf moon t-shirts for sale are probably expensive. I didn't check their price though. Maybe I should have, ugh I suck at this journalism bullshit. But to be fair, I was there too, so for half a day I too threw my 40 scrolls in support of three wolf moon t-shirts as a vendor, and so agreed silently that this shit was lame and should stop. There were also three points that these native peoples, sharing their perspectives pointed out. That much of their ritual and practice was based on location and ethnic identity. That consent was needed to practice. You know, the normal amount of respect generally assumed, like, anywhere. Also was related the notion that you can't pick and choose ritual praxis. That something that is shared isn't given. Which I took issue with. Not that sharing isn't giving, but that it was put in a way that suggested that there is no giving of ritual, technique, or knowledge. Trust me, in some parts of the world, being told is definitely being given. If a lama doesn't want you to know something, he won't tell you. But I digress. 

    The presenters put all this praxiomatic miscegenation on the doorstep of colonialism, and in their case, that is the cause of their woe. But the tendency for appropriation of magik praxis goes farther back in European history than colonialism. One could argue that it is a tendency in Indo-European spirituality that goes back deep and continuously manifests, sometimes to no harm, sometimes to great harm. The appropriation of native beliefs for the commodity market is more appropriately the driver of this miserable state of affairs. But the tendency for appropriation of praxis probably won't go away even if the capitalism does. And I'm not sure it should. Some cultures are happy to spread their culture far and wide, some don't like that. We should respect the cultures that don't like that, while also continuing to share knowledge among those of us who both give and take. Fuck sake, if you're going to appropriate  ritual praxis against someone's will, hold up the Catholic church or something like that. Steal ritual from the spiritually rich, and give magik to the spiritually poor. Or not, you could also dumpster dive the annals of history, or just make stuff up. If you've ever read anything else I've written, you'd know I consider this to be an equally effective formation of ritual praxis. The three presenters concluded and then opened for questions. That was the performative virtue signaling part. I waited for as long as I could before my bladder felt like it was going to burst, but I wanted to sit quietly and observe more than I wanted to not be in pain, so I must have been there for like half an hour pulling off a yogic bladder feat to make a siddha weep. Then finally the next group wanted everyone out soon'ish and I took that as my moment to step out, thanking the presenters as I left. As I emptied my bladder in the nearby men's bathroom, I was amazed at how much piss I had in me. So much it seems that I had to go twice, like it collected in my kidneys or something. Yeesh. I need to stop doing that, pretty soon I'm going to be old enough to piss myself doing that. So, I got in my car, navigated my way out of the overfull parking lot, and drove home. Pantheacon is finally dead. I don't know if its death will break up the insularity of this weaksauce witch culture. I'm willing to bet 5 pounds of flax that a new con will emerge in a few years to fill the chthonic yawning hollow howling void Pantheacon will leave behind. It isn't like Pantheacon dying is going to make three wolf moon t-shirts go away. Or books offering native spirituality as a product. Or people more interested in playing authoritarian hierarchical games and dick measuring contests instead of exploring this magikal universe we're all in. Fuck it! Something I hate died, why can't I be truly happy about it? Maybe because despite the insufferability of this community, which I wish to have no contact with, they were at least trying to use their imagination, and do art. Not very hard mind you, and not very well. But they were trying. So bye bye Pantheacon, we'll see you again in Pantheacon II: The Search for More Money.