After a day spent outdoors with your closest spiritual family, you decide to zip up your sleeping bag and turn in for the night. The rhythmic sound of nearby drums lulls you into a deep, restful sleep. Tomorrow, you’ll do it all over again.
If that scenario sounds familiar, it means you’ve probably been to festival.
FPG (Florida Pagan Gathering), which took place from October 25 – 29, is over now and it’s been the most difficult “return to reality” that I’ve ever experienced. This festival happens twice every year — once at Samhain and once at Beltane, so we only have to wait about six months for the next one! Don’t worry… I took some pictures to document this experience; however, you do sign a rather explicit agreement to not take pictures of other people without their permission, so most of the photos I share will either be of things or just little ol’ me.
If you’re looking for an outdoor pagan festival in central Florida where you can camp, this is the place to be!
In their own words…
For the last 26 years the Florida Pagan Gathering has hosted Pagans, Wiccans, Witches, Heathens and Druids from all over the world! FPG is a family friendly and inclusive event open to all people of an open mind and Pagan-friendly heart and is hosted at Camp Kiwanis in Silver Springs, Florida
-FLAPagan.org
October is the perfect month to camp outside here. As far as Florida heat goes, it’s not too hot during the day — and the low temperatures overnight hang out around 60, which to me is still freezing, but tolerable with several layers of thermal clothing.
Headliners
It was an honor to be featured at FPG next to some great people. I’ll include their links so you can find out more about them.
My experience
There were some workshops this year that sounded really interesting. Usually, I’d use this space to give a quick summary of everything I attended. Unfortunately, I didn’t attend any of them. I feel like that makes me a bad headliner, but I really needed the space to disconnect this time. Instead of recapping the workshops, I’m just going to give you a photo journal.
Our properly-lit tent. Original image.
Selene and I arrived on Wednesday evening. It was already dark, so we just barely saw the baby bear running across the road near the camp entrance. After checking to see if registration was still open (which it wasn’t), we walked into a big group of our extended spiritual family and gave lots of hugs.
We missed out on Opening Ritual and the goth-themed Meet and Greet. We had hoped to arrive quite a bit earlier, but the spirits of the road had other plans and the drive took us longer than we had anticipated.
It was sometime around midnight when we finished setting up our tent. This is pretty typical for us, so we’ve gotten a good feel for blindly getting things accomplished.
We do like to light things up, though! You’ll see a string of fairy lights draped all around the outside of our tent, which helps to see it at a distance. At previous festivals, we’ve noticed people tend to trip on our guy lines at night, so this time around we brought a batch of solar-powered outdoor lights to stick in everywhere we staked something to the ground. They’re just bright enough to notice. I’m not sure if they helped other people, but they certainly helped me!
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Full campstead with kitchen and lounging areas. Original image.
The next morning, we walked back to registration, signed waivers, and received our legendary FPG wristbands (which provide protection until you finally return home). We were formally introduced to some of the staff — people I’ve seen around, but have never really had a one-on-one conversation with — and they very kindly cooked us some breakfast.
We headed back to finish setting up the rest of our campsite, which has now been expanded to include a screen room, table, chairs, and a full camping kitchen with multiple stoves. Yeah, we don’t travel lightly.
Travel camping altar. Original image.
But the campsite isn’t complete until we have our altar set up. This travel altar is special and we store it with our camping gear. It isn’t used unless we’re at festival. It might be missing a few of your standard tools, but that’s only because we’re slowly adding to it. Each place we go, we try to find a new item. The god and goddess statues, for instance, were purchased from a vendor at Phoenix Festivals. This trip we found the salt and water dishes. Will we find a camping wand or athame in the future? Only time will tell!
Sometime Thursday afternoon, I was summoned for a sound check. Everything was already prepped for me, so all I had to do was plug in and play. The whole thing probably only took about 15 minutes. Afterwards, I spent some time back at camp going over my setlist.
In the evening, there was a croning ritual where four women were croned. I’ve never seen a croning ritual before… and unfortunately, I still haven’t. At least not an entire one. The ritual was scheduled to end immediately before my concert, but it started a little late. Selene and I stayed for as much as we could, but had to leave early to get across the campgrounds and finish a final sound check.
Me, playing and singing. Original image, credit to Selene.
And then it was time for my show! One of the first songs I played was a new one called “IO Pan!” It’s so new, in fact, that I only finished writing it a few weeks ago. As you might guess, it’s a song about Pan. If you read articles on my website frequently, you might also notice that Pan and I have a pretty good relationship. I was able to record a rough track of this song very recently and it is now live on all major streaming platforms.
Wait, wait, let me ramble about this song a little bit more because something pretty cool happened there. My song-writing process takes many forms — sometimes I start with words, sometimes I start with music. Sometimes it’s all at once… and sometimes it’s spread out over years. With this song, I unintentionally wrote the music years ago and left it sitting around in my brain. Around the time I started setting up my personal Pan altar, Selene suggested that I should write my own invocation for Pan. So I did. I wrote words.
And then one day I realized those words and the music from long ago were made for each other! They fit perfectly. All of a sudden I heard this complete song in my head. Anyway, to make a long story short, there was just one part of the song I couldn’t figure out. However much I tried, what I could produce in this reality didn’t match what was in my brain. No matter… that happens sometimes. Usually it gets worked out in performance.
So, let’s return to the night of the show. Towards the end of the song, I decided to change it up a little bit. I broke the chorus into a call and response. The audience was kind enough to participate, emphatically shouting Pan’s name at the appropriate cue. In a brief moment, I realized the sound hitting my ears was the exact thing I had heard in my head — the thing I was trying to replicate on my own. It just required a crowd. A lot of shows fade in my memory, but I’m pretty sure I’ll remember this one forever because of that.
If you look by my feet in the picture, you’ll see a pot and some bottles. I brought a collection of ingredients with me — distilled water, an emulsifier, witch hazel, essential oils, and of course a substitute for gold chloride. Can you guess what those are for? Yep, I attempted to make a cold water fluid condenser on stage. For whatever reason, the idea of adding things to a pot really, really excited some of the kids, so two of them became my assistants for the night. Every few songs, they’d run up, pull oils out of my bag, and add them to the concoction.
The general idea here is that fluid condensers are extremely receptive to energetic charge. Making music in general raises a lot of energy, but when a room full of people participate, the levels skyrocket.
I haven’t quite figured out what to call this concoction yet. Musical condenser? Charged music water? Melodic Potion? I’m sure a good name will come to me soon, but I’m open to suggestions.
Musically Charged Super Holy Water. Original image.
On Friday morning, I bottled my “Musically-Charged Super Ultimate Holy Water” (does that have a nice ring to it?) into every spare amber bottle we had lying around and took it with me to give out at my workshop. I have no earthly idea what people plan to do with this stuff, but I hope to hear about it some day. Personally, I’ve been applying it every time I want a boost during the day or prior to recording music — so far, it’s working fantastically.
The workshop, which I titled “The Magickal Voice” went well. It gave me a chance to talk out some ideas on the magick of sound and voice that have been swimming around in my head since before I was inspired to start this website, my YouTube channel, and everything else I’ve been up to recently. Some people contributed some very interesting thoughts that I will be using to rework and add to my collection of information for the next time. The opening question was this: “If I use a different voice (tone, pitch, inflections, etc) to perform an evocation, will I achieve a different energetic result?”
Teaching a workshop on The Magickal Voice. Original Image, credit to Tempest.
I brought my laptop to show a video and some pictures, but the sun was so bright that nobody could see the screen. Oh well! Luckily I brought handouts on brightly-colored yellow paper. I had planned on talking for only an hour, but went for a full 90 minutes. Our coven classes can go longer than that, but Selene and I split them up so we each teach half. This was the longest class I’ve ever taught on my own.
Cornbread mix? Original image.
Energy drinks! Original Image.
With a week out in the woods, someone will inevitably need supplies. There’s a grocery store about 10 minutes down the street from the camp site, so you’re covered whether your friends need a tube of cornbread muffins or energy drinks. Selene and I went back and forth pretty much every day so we could keep our cooler filled with ice. It was only on the last day that we realized ice was sold on site.
There was a sweat lodge that ran on Friday night. I’d like to do that one day, but this wasn’t the time. There was also a firewalk scheduled, but it unfortunately got cancelled due to the facilitator having an emergency. I’ve done the firewalk twice before at FPG and it is a very powerful experience to walk on burning coals.
Spinning fire. Original image, credit to Selene.
Instead of walking on fire, however, I got to dance with it. I was spinning my glow poi around the fire circle when someone from the drum troupe offered me use of their fire poi. How kind! I hadn’t spun fire for years and it is always quite a cathartic experience.
Saturday was the last full day of festival and I couldn’t believe how quickly it arrived. Two of our coveners (who now live hours away from us) drove up for a day trip, so it was great to see them and spend some time together.
Our Coven at FPG Samhain 2023. Original image, credit to Tempest.
Look at our bright and smiling faces!
Main ritual was beautiful, including a wonderful re-enactment of the descent of the goddess and a fantastic spiral dance.
Sunday morning was spent packing up. There was a short closing ritual to give thanks and ground out all the energy that had been raised. If I recall correctly, some of the bonfire ash is saved and then used to relight the fire at the next festival, so it keeps carries some of the energy over in perpetuity. Lovely tradition!
Vending
FPG has “Vendor’s Row,” which is a long line of vendor tents.
There are tons of great shops. You can find crystals, clothing, ritual garb, incense, altar tools, and more. In addition to our salt and water bowls, Selene also found a pretty badass crown made out of rose quartz.
There’s also a variety of divination going on — tarot readers, rune readers, etc. I’m pretty sure someone even had a “photograph your aura” thing going on, which sounds interesting. I’ll have to try that some day.
Final Thoughts
I absolutely cannot wait until next year. Selene and I had such a great time. As always, it’s such a pleasure to see all of our family.
Usually, the last day of festival I’m like “Alright! Ready to go home!” but this time was different. I didn’t want to leave.
See everyone next year! Or maybe even at Beltane 2024.
Oh hey! You made it all the way down here? That must have been quite a journey. Come on in and I’ll make you a spot of tea. While you’re resting, I’ll briefly mention the fact that there are possibly Amazon Affiliate links within this post. If you use one of those links to make a purchase, Amazon pays me a small commission. How did you say you take your tea? Cream and sugar?
Aerik Arkadian 
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