"Seduction of Avalon" GLASTONBURY SYNDROME Final Edit

“Glastonbury Syndrome”: An Ecstatic Moment in Pilgrimage.

By Christina Beard-Moose, PhD

The point of travelling is notTo arrive but to return home

Laden with pollen you shall work upInto honey the mind feeds on.

-R.S. Thomas (in www.PilgrimagePt.com 2011)

This chapter discusses two specific phenomena within the

performative action of tourism, travelling and pilgrimage to

Avalon, otherwise known as Glastonbury, Somerset, England.

These are communitas and the hyperkulturemic experience. In 2014, I

will commence the fourth summer of fieldwork for my project, The

Seduction of Avalon: Tourism, Pilgrimage and the Goddess. The group of

twenty-one women who are intimately participating in this project

and I are pilgrims/travellers/ tourists who have found ourselves

drawn to a English “homeland” which we – Americans, Canadians,

Australians, Europeans, et al – had never before seen. This

tour/ travel/pilgrimage is undertaken to fulfill a longing for

and finding of the feminine divine, the Goddess.

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This offering begins my analysis in which I specifically

attend to the kairotic moment of the pilgrimage. I consider, in

detail, the end of the journey where the ecstatic experience is

attained and the pilgrim/traveller/tourist, in communitas with

others on the same journey, achieves her goal, whether

intentional or serendipitous, whether as dedicated pilgrim or as

a tourist cum pilgrim or just being in the right place at the

right time. This kairotic moment has been called by other names in

other places; Jerusalem Syndrome and Stendhal’s Syndrome are the

most prominent appellations (Bamforth 2010; Gitlitz and Davidson

2002; Stone 2006). I seek to understand this phenomenon as I

have both seen and experienced it in Glastonbury. I also seek to

examine the force of the kairotic moment in a larger context that

will be useful for future study.

As I enter this project, I am always already in the state of

treble-plus consciousness. At once I am an anthropologist, a

feminist, and a pagan deist. I ground my narrative in epiphanies

from my own experiences of the last 25 years in the great sacred

spaces of Ireland, England, and North America. I also rely on

the new fieldwork and interviews that are in progress for this

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project. I have already met with much varied experience among

those I have interviewed. Yet, for each of us, the

pilgrimage/tour has led to an ecstatic experience, a kairotic

moment. These women, who choose to undertake the journey, find

multiple forms of that experience that can only continue to

evolve, split off and evolve again. Barbara Tedlock, a shaman in

her own right, calls this rhizomatic thought - that is, that which

is always emerging at the center with no discernible beginning or

ending points (Tedlock 2009, 2011). This is an aptly fitting

description for the experience encountered in the places and

spaces of Glastonbury/Avalon.

Communitas and Hyperkulturemic Experience

When I returned to university at 32, I had already been on

pilgrimage. In point of fact, it was among the thoughts and

experiences of that experience that drove me to re-pursue higher

education, and thereby, to change my life. I took my first

pilgrimage to Ireland in 1989. However, when I boarded the plane

in Nashville, Tennessee, to Shannon, County Clare, Ireland, I

wasn’t aware that I was going on pilgrimage. At that point, I

was a spiritual searcher struggling to hold on to a Christian-

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based sacrality on which I had been liberally raised. Once I

became a reader and a searcher, which was precipitated by the

forthcoming birth of my only son, I found that there was a

breadth and depth of spiritual meaning in the world that the

religion of my youth had entirely ignored (For examples of this

knowledge, see Adler 1981; Bolen 1984; Bradley 1982; Christ and

Plaskow 1979; Condren 1989; Spretnak 1984; Starhawk 1979; Stone

1976).

I worked with the Cherokee Indians in North Carolina on

issues of tourism and women’s identity between 1996 and 2009 for

my dissertation fieldwork and subsequent book (Beard-Moose 2009).

Immersion in that community brought back fresh my interest in and

recognition of pilgrimages and spiritual searching. Cherokees

from all over North America are drawn back, seduced, if you will,

to return to their homelands, mother towns and long-lost myths.

When they return, they are, in effect, both strangers and

tourists. But, because of their enculturated Cherokee

identities, even as strangers and tourists, they have an

expectation of the land and of the people who inhabit the

present. I have witnessed, the kairotic moment, of Cherokees

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returning to a never-before-experienced homeland as I had in

Ireland. I have seen overwhelmed faces and tears flooding the

sacred places in the Appalachian Mountains. I have seen the

recognition that I believe comes with the pilgrimage.

But, other strangers, other tourists, from all over the

world are seduced to take their own pilgrimages. Gitlitz and

Davidson commented that

. . . Homo sapiens . . . might . . . be defined as the animalwho goes on pilgrimage, for travel to holy places is a near-universal phenomenon among our species. The terms “pilgrim”and “pilgrimage” are used so loosely in modern popular culture that someone is likely to label travel to anywhere for any reason a pilgrimage. America’s Pilgrim Fathers landing at Plymouth Rock. Aunt Leah’s annual excursion to Bloomingdale’s. . . Aging hippies lighting candles at Jim Morrison’s grave in Paris’s Père Lachaise Cemetery the way their great grandparents did at Chopin’s grave 100 yards from Morrison’s. . . Graceland. . . (Gitlitz and Davidson 2006:2)

People feel, and, according to Edith and Victor Turner, that feeling

and the will to be engaged in a certain place “constitute the

structure of cultural experience” we think of as pilgrimage just

as surely as going to Jerusalem or Mecca (Turner and Turner

1982).

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Gitlitz and Davidson broadly define pilgrimage as “(1) a

journey to a (2) special place in which (3) both the journey and

the destination have spiritual significance for the journeyer”

(Gitlitz and Davidson 2002: xvii). Rountree quotes one of her

informants on pilgrimage to Crete, Greece, saying pilgrimage is

“a sacred journey to a sacred place with a sacred purpose”

(2002:482). But the going on the tour/pilgrimage is only the

beginning of the search. I introduce two ideas that explain what

happens to the pilgrim/tourist/seeker when she finally reaches,

1) like-minded fellow pilgrims, and/or, 2) that place which is

sought. These are Communitas and Hyperkulturemia.

Communitas: Flowing Mutuality

Victor Turner provided an enduring anthropological analysis

of a primary form within pilgrimage, communitas. Turner built on

his idea of communitas on Van Gennep’s original discussion of the

liminal period Rites of Passage (Turner 1969, Van Gennep 1960).

Hambrick tells us that communitas, then, is “. . . Turner’s name

for the distinctive type of community that emerges in the liminal

period and is a relatively unstructured and undifferentiated

communion or fellowship” (Hambrick 1979:540). In one way,

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communitas, as described by Turner, is specifically Christian,

specifically colonial, and an antithesis to specifically

nineteenth-century secularism (Coleman 2006). Rountree explains,

“[a] common theme amongst those critiquing Turner is that

pilgrimage is not anti-structural, but rather serves to reinforce

social boundaries and distinctions” (2002: 492). She goes on to

recount the research of John Eade at Lourdes. “On the role of

lay helpers at Lourdes. . . [he] found that the helpers were

required to implement official discourse and practices and to

encourage ‘correct’ behavior at all times” (2002: 492). In this

case, for Eade, structure trumps communitas (Eade in Rountree

2002).

However, numerous scholars, including Edith Turner, find

this “community of fellowship” wherever Homo sapiens gather to go

on pilgrimage or any number of group activities, whether

intentional or not (Eade and Sallnow 1991; Turner 2011).

Communitas, according to Edith Turner, then, is inspired fellowship. I

am especially interested in her explanation in connection with a

spiritual and voice-filled instance of communitas within the

context of an Iñupiat prayer to literally change the winds from

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south to north and allow whales to be close enough for the

community to have a successful hunt. She explains,

Music can be pure communitas and the voices in flow start[ed] the communitas. Moreover, having moved forward, we were all touching each other, with the whaleboat in the center, in alignment each-with-each, a sense that grew, like a tower, like a fountain in the midst of us (2011:x).

This tower of enveloping sound, but more than sound, of feeling

from the very heart of each and all, is communitas. I know this.

I have been in the middle of it, born witness to it, felt the

“vibe” of it.

In the context of my project, the abovementioned type of

communitas can be shown at the Glastonbury Goddess Conference

[GGC], held annually in the Glastonbury Town Hall. I travelled

there to add to my personal experience of Glastonbury and to meet

others who might join the project in July/August 2012i. Here is

my account of the opening evening ceremony for the 2012 GGC from

my fieldnotes.

When we arrived back at the Glastonbury Town Hall for the opening ceremony, every person was already there and/or streaming into the site. As we found some seats, we tried to get our bearings since the formerly well-lit space was plunged into half-light with clouds of mist dispersed into the area. The mist is evocative of much of the literature surrounding the

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myth and legend of Glastonbury/Avalon (Bradley 1982). At the center of the great hall was set a circular “cage” – literallychain-link fence panels some eight feet tall – in which sat figures shrouded in darkness. All around the outside of the cage

were “regular people” dressed in ordinary clothing: a policeofficer, a secretary, a military person, a business Man, a business Woman, a nurse, a doctor, etc. On their faces they wore plain white androgynous masks so that you couldn’t really tell one from the next. We were instructed to sit or stand in the general vicinity of the nine groups that we formed during the morning of the first day. These “Cornucopia Gatheringii” groups were intended to give each participant a “home” group with others that one could become familiar with through individual group time and ritual apart from the whole. Each

“Gathering” would then be ready to participate when our turnto honor the Goddesses came.

There was a cacophony of sounds from the 21st century world.There were blaring car horns, sirens of all kinds, the sound ofguns pulling off hundreds of rounds of ammunition, explosions, people screaming and crying, noises of construction machinery

putting up more and more and more concrete and steel. Slowly, a drumbeat began to sound. It was low and steady and inaudible at first. Beneath all of this noise came the

marked beat of a frame drum. Barely discernable at first, the drum became more clear through the din. The 21st century noise began to give way, to relax and wane. The difference was palpable. A sense of peace laced with mystery overrode the entire hall. Each of the participants – even the children in the crowd – became quiet, waiting, holding our collective breaths. Then. . .

One by one, the figures in the caged center revealed themselves as goddesses of the earth, certainly not each and every goddess, but one for each cardinal and ordinal direction

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and one for the center of all things. These were the Old Ones of the Isles of Albion (Isle of Albion 2013). The forgotten ones – but not completely forgotten – each sang her own song and told her own story of being shut up and shut out of life in the 21st century. The goddesses were: Center: Britannia aka Brigit Ana; East: Grainne; Southeast: Rhiannon; South: Nimue; Southwest: Madron; West: Banbha; Northwest: Keridwen; North: Arinarhod; and Northeast: Brigit. Each goddess freed herself and then the next to her right until all 9 were dancingaround the center circle and had banished the cage that had

previously held them. More drummers joined the solitary beat and the sound and energy of the nearly 200 people in the room was overwhelming, dizzying. In a deep meditative

state, I watched and felt the room move around in waves as the goddesses continued to move into a tight circle and then back out to a wide one. Over and over they circled until each collapsed back onto her own dais.

As the ceremony closed, everyone in the town hall had had a rousing sing, dance, laugh, cry. . .every emotion was represented .

“Communitas arose, a tower of the senses, fierce with

spirituality” (Turner 2011:xi). I would venture to say that

every adult at that moment in the gathering was a pilgrim, a

seeker as well as a traveller/tourist. We fairly floated out

into the night.

In July 2013, I had the occasion to speak with the GGC’s

founding mother, Kathy Jones in Glastonbury. Over tea with

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friends we talked about the history of the conference as well as

that of the Glastonbury Goddess Temple which has a permanent

residence in the Glastonbury Experience on the High Street and

the Conference. Jones says of the GGC

[I] think [the conference] goes alongside people’s pilgrimage to Avalon. It’s a way for people to come to Avalon knowing they are going to have Goddess experiences by coming. Isuppose they are coming in pilgrimage. They come from their lands, but it provides a focus for them to come. . . the conference itself is now a pilgrimage. Through the days, it isa sacred journey and a journey into the mysteries of Avalon. It is designed so that transformation will/can appear (Jones 2013).

Surely this event is a testament to the draw of Avalon to a

worldwide audience that is seeking the feminine divine and the

communitas that, in my experience, goes along with it.

The Elemental Experience

Now let us turn to the other phenomenon, hyperkulturemia,

commonly referred to as the “Stendhal Syndrome” (Bamforth 2010).

The Stendhal Syndrome essentially is to become overwhelmed at the

site or object at the end of the journey, e.g. great art in

Florence, Rome, Paris; the wailing wall in Jerusalem; the Dome of

the Rock; Mecca and the great black stone; the waters made

healing by the Blessed Virgin at Lourdes; “going to water” in the

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ice-cold streams of Cherokee-country; or standing before the

magnificent gates to “Graceland” in Memphis. It can also be

extrapolated to include scenes of the grandeur of nature, e.g.

the Grand Canyon; a calving wall of ice at the edge of a sea

glacier; the Himalayas.

Stendhal Syndrome was formally diagnosed and named

hyperkulturemia by Italian psychiatrist Graziella Magherini in

1989. Magherini described patients at the Santa Maria Nuova

Hospital as exhibiting psychosomatic symptoms such as

tachycardia, dizziness, fainting, confusion and sometimes,

hallucinations (Magherini 1989). This phenomenon has greatly

been ignored when discussing tourism and the meaning behind the

spectacle of pilgrimage with the exception of the pilgrimage of

Jewish peoples to Jerusalem and Muslim peoples to Mecca. There

we see a corollary to Stendhal Syndrome, Jerusalem Syndrome

(Fried 1988). Literature that takes this set of “symptoms”

seriously as part of the pilgrimage, and further that involves

the “performance of tourism,” acting in accordance with the

expectations for people on tour, is lacking (Bamforth 2010;

Gitlitz and Davidson 2002; Stone 2006).

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I propose we look deeper into this phenomenon of

hyperkulturemia and unpack some of the hidden meaning there.

Since this “condition” was first named in the late 1980s but

recognized as early as the 1820s by Stendhal, (in spite of the

fact that Marie-Henri Beyle did not “name” it as such) we can

think of it in terms of a tourist/traveller/pilgrim’s affliction.

The ultimate malaise, as defined.

“Hyper” – over, above, beyond or excessive, abnormally high

–

“kultur”– culture or civilization in general, but

historically, [capital C] culture, that includes

great art, music and all things “high” society –

“emia” – denotes presence in the blood of an indicated

substance or organism; usually abnormally or in

abnormal amounts.

Or, in my interpretation, it is excessive superior [capital C]

culture or beauty that ‘gets in the blood’ and causes mental

illness, usually short-term. One cannot die from hyperkulturemia.

But, the cure, according to Bamforth, is to remove oneself from

the venue, or even the country and into a hospital in order to

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calm down and get over the feeling (2010). The sufferer should

definitely not flow with the experience to see where it takes

her. This idea of flow harkens back to Edith Turner’s

explanation of communitas. She says that, “[t]here appear to be

innumerable threads of crisscrossing lines of meaning, flows

(emphasis mine) of meaning in communitas” (Turner 2011:4).

I take issue with the way in which hyperkulturemia or

“Stendhal Syndrome” has been used thus far in academia. On the

suffix, -emia. The closest I could get in many a dictionary, and

I find this interesting, was –emic; as in phonemic (see Pike

1982). The term is generally described in the anthropological

evaluative manner as the insider’s, or subjective, point of view.

So, let us think about being “hyperkulturemic” instead. An emic

perspective generally means to try to avoid the projection of the

etic, outsiders, e.g. our own cultural viewpoint onto any given

cultural phenomenon. So, I posit another reading of this so-

called “condition” of tourists/travellers/pilgrims, specifically

that superabundant unparalleled sites/sights get into the

consciousness, the being, of the tourist/traveller/pilgrim due to

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a sudden and extreme emic understanding and resulting ‘awe’ of

said superior cultural or natural places, spaces, or artifacts.

The Uffizi Gallery, the pyramids at Giza, the Grand Canyon, or

Glastonbury Tor are all places wherein this “condition” could

take place.

Here are two examples in which the travellers/tourists

experienced the visceral sensations of hyperkulturemic experience. One

occurs in the travels of Sue and Anne Kidd on their

mother/daughter tour of sacred places in Greece and France. The

other is my own in Ireland in 1989. First, let us look at the

Kidds. At more than one point along their journeys (which they

did not typify as “pilgrimage,” at first) one or both women are

overcome by the intensity of the experiences in which they find

themselves. One place in particular is the ancient Sanctuary of

Demeter of Eleusis, modern-day Elefsina outside of Athens (Kidd

and Taylor 2009). During their two hour exploration of this

nearly-forgotten, yet majestic, set of ruins where, for three

thousand years initiates to the Demeter/Persephone cult of

ancient Greece danced around a sacred well and left offerings to

the reunion of the mother/daughter, Sue and Anne describe bouts

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of hyperkulturemic experience. They were “overcome” by the gravity

of the place, nearly swooning with the magnitude of longing and

satisfaction left over in the very stones of the temple. The

women made their pilgrimage and it changed their lives both

individually and as mother and daughter, even as they were

overwhelmed (Kidd and Taylor 2009). Did they recognize their

experiences hyperkulturemic as such? It appears not. Yet, the

effect of being on that sacred ground is described as such in

exquisite detail.

My chance to make that trip to Ireland quite literally

dropped into my lap. I won a Nashville radio station’s St.

Patrick’s Day contest to the emerald isle. Upon stepping onto

the tarmac in Shannon, I connected with a land of ancestors,

ruins, and spiritual promise. Being there was more than a

revelation. I was stunned with the way that I physically

experienced the land, the buildings, the ruins, the towns, and

the people. I was shaken to the core of my being. That sacred

landscape came into sharpest focus in two distinct places: first,

the Poulnabrone Dolman on the Burren of County Claire, and

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second, Newgrange, a Neolithic mound in County Meath. I will

discuss my Newgrange experience briefly,.

At Newgrange, the energy was palpable to me. Waves of

warmth connected me to the earth and the universe. Walking up to

the entrance of the great mound to face and touch the monumental

curb stones entirely covered with Neolithic carvings of the

triskele (identify) in front of the solid quartz rock-faced mound

left me shaking in the knees. Then, quietly treading the 5000-

year-old path I entered into a birth canal-like passageway which

opens on an interior womb-space that gets light on exactly one

day a year on the Winter Solstice. It sent chills up my spine.

There was something so right about the space and the beautiful

simplicity of a spiritual quest connected to the land and the

rising sun. I was overcome. I was a complete stranger, a

tourist/traveller cum pilgrim to a so-called foreign country.

Yet, I was seduced. I had never felt more at home. That is the

kairotic moment I am writing about here, when one is

simultaneously transfixed and overcome by the sheer power of

place and space, overcome with hyperkulturemic experience.

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What is unfortunate about Magherini’s “diagnosis” and naming

of hyperkulturemia as a “condition” should be clear. Medicalizing

what appears to be an obvious reaction to the liminal /liminoid

experience takes away from the kairotic moment, from the

communitas and the hyperkulturemic experience. There is a literal kinetic

connection between the subject (tourist/traveller/pilgrim) and

the object (i.e. Newgrange or Eleusis) of the pilgrimage. Once

that moment is experienced, one is forever changed.

Thus we can begin to understand the woman from Tennessee;

raised Protestant, baptized and thoroughly enculturated as a

child into WASPness; who goes as a tourist to Neolithic sites (of

which she’d never even heard) and comes home a traveller and a

pilgrim. Of course, I am that woman. To be clear, I was not

brought up in a household where pilgrimage was a part of “being a

Christian.” In fact, the Christianity that I was taught was

rather progressive and not frightening at all. There were no

hell-fire and brimstone sermons on Sunday or at home. My

religion did not threaten me. Why then, as an adult should I

abandon that fairly innocuous upbringing to embrace another

spiritual mode of thinking and to undertake a pilgrimage, first

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to Ireland, later to Stonehenge and Avebury, Glastonbury and

Avalon, as so defined? I was clearly searching for something.

But, what are we looking for that is lacking from our spiritual

upbringing? Where does monotheism fail those of us who change

our minds? And, why do so many of us “come homeiii,” ultimately,

to Glastonbury, Somerset County, England, to fill the void?

That is the nub of the question. While the answers are as

varied as the people with whom I am working, twenty-two, at this

moment in time, I have discovered a common theme: the Divine

Feminine. Each woman has agreed to individual interviews and to

writing her own version of her experiences in Glastonbury/Avalon.

In the course of fieldwork in Glastonbury, I have been in the

company of many hundreds of other people, as well. Participating

and observing, doing the on-the-ground work of cultural

anthropology, I am beginning to find some answers. For me, I

found a spiritual heartbeat in the earth herself, a connection to

the Goddess in her many forms, and a language that could express

deeply held beliefs about the nature of the universe. Rountree

(2002) has found something similar in her work on pilgrimage in

Crete, Malta and Turkey. My project, The Seduction of Avalon, of

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which this chapter is only the beginning, seeks to illuminate

this line of inquiry.

The Women Speak

Let’s turn now to a few of those women who have already

given some answers to my queries about that moment of

hyperkulturemic experience. I asked them if they thought of their

trip as a pilgrimage before starting out and what they were

looking for.

Petra from Canada said,

I really always find [the hyperkulturemic experience]. It’s just a matter of degree. There are no mistakes and the regrets I have (for not visiting all the sacred sites) bring me back on another trip. I guess then it’s as much an inner journey for me as an outer one but that’s not to say I’m focused on myself – quite the opposite - the focus is very much outward directed and in fact “pulls” me on. It is therelationship of self to source that is of essence.

This is not to say I don’t “pay homage” or honour the particular sites. I’ve always felt a strong presence at the [Holy] Thorn and bring it somewater when I come. . . I also follow some of the suggested Avalon pilgrimages in Kathy Jones’ books and make my focus “finding Brighid” when I choose where to go on pilgrimage. I would say the “it” [thehyperkulturemic experience] goes from a vague sense before setting out to one defined and structured by the encounters while on pilgrimage. Being able to consciously ask and develop intent before the

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pilgrimage makes the guidance received while on it somuch clearer and better understood.

When asked why she went on pilgrimage, Elle from England:

née USA answered,

I don’t know that I was looking for anything in particular, more like I just knew I had to go there. When I got there, my connection with Goddess deepenedand I found a spiritual oasis where I could commune with Her and be in Her energy. It was everything I could’ve asked for if I were to ask for anything.

Sara from Italy responded,

I carefully planned my pilgrimage to Glastonbury. I documented. I organized the stages ofeach [part] before I left. It was a trip planned specifically to meet certain needs (spiritual, existential). At a superficial level, [I went] looking for the opportunity to live fully (I traveledalone) an[d] experience the [iconic] land that I consider to be full of buried wisdom. I was looking for factual information and a direct experience of concepts which until then had only been able to read the texts. I wanted to lose myself in contemplation of places, breathing the air. At a deep level, I tried to find a part of me in the Goddess.

My journey has been deeply satisfying because I think I have found what I was looking for. The results were immediate (on site) and I was able to reflect on them in the months after my return. Something inside me, still carries the air of those sacred places, even after months away.

While Kim from the United States replied,

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I was looking for a number of things I guess. . .certainly I was interested in experiencing the Arthurian connections. I was intrigued by the notion of Avalon, and the juxtaposition of legend/myth with a real place. But what I experiencedwas something much more spiritual than academic. There was a physicality... a vibration... a welcoming... that made me feel connected to somethingancient. It was a very internal and emotional experience. I felt closer to the Mother there than anywhere I've been since.

As you see, there is a common thread and many similarities.

I am finding women who are longing for and searching out the

Divine Feminine, the Goddess and the states of Communitas and

hyperkulturemic experience that accompany both the search and the

pinnacle of the search. We tourists/travellers/pilgrims, are

drawn to the sites/sights and sounds of a English and Irish

“homeland” we have never seen before. Druids and Priestesses

populate our myths. They begin as fairy tales, just myths not

unlike those of Samson and Delilah, Noah and the Ark or

Methuselah. Our myths populate our childhood imaginations with

witches and wizards, gnomes and fairies. Our “ancestors” are the

Tuatha de Danann, Brigit, Cerridwen, the Horned God, Arthur and

Gwen, Morgaine la Fey and Taliesin the Merlin, selkies and

dragons and sidhe, in myths of mysticism lost, ready to be found.

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I believe it is one reason that the Harry Potter series by J.K.

Rowling is so wildly popular. The author has brought to life a

world beyond the known world with great detail to historical

text, myth, and legend.

As my work on The Seduction of Avalon project goes forward, my

participants and I will delve deeper into the hyperkulturemic

experience and into the singularity of meaning and reward that is

common to kairotic moment. Whether it is the Avalon of the inner

space to which we travel in meditation and trance or to the

physical destination of Glastonbury, the Isle of Glass, as

tourists/travellers/pilgrims, we are all focused on the same

thing. And that is, finding the Divine Feminine which creates

peace and healing and a sense of coming home.

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———. 2006. Pilgrimage and the Jews. Westport: Praeger Publishers.

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i I will be returning in July/August 2014 to resume on-the-ground fieldwork.ii The Grain Priestesses are also part of the inner circle, but lesser ones, all “in-training” to become “spinners”, priestesses, in their own right. Melissae. Busy bees. That’s what they are referred to as. They are not all young, by any means. Middle-aged melissae. Perhaps that is an oxymoron. Once the room settled to a dull roar with the near constant din of babies, toddlers, children, adolescents, teenagers, 20- and 30- and 40- and 50- and 60- and 70-somethings “quietly” listening to the instructions, we were introduced. First, the mavens – the webster and the spinners – introduced themselves. Then, the grain priestesses and then the performers and artists and caregivers. All the rest of us would be introduced to each other through our grain priestesses in our individual “Cornucopia Gatherings.” The gatherings were broken into the nine directions: East; Southeast; South; Southwest; West; Northwest; North; Northeast and the Center. iii “Coming home” to an ostensibly “strange land” or to embrace a spirituality of the Feminine Divine came into common usage due to Adler’s work on Pagans in America(Adler 1981). “Coming home,” then, is an intuitive knowing. It is finding something, or somewhere, that perhaps one didn’t even know was missing.