Cackle, Cackle, Cackle! We Are Everywhere! Bwhahahahah!

Here's an interesting blog being written by Pagans attending the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Denver. I'm delighted to see that there are out Pagans at the DNC and I'll be checking their blog frequently this week.

Rita (for more about her history, see the archives over at The Wild Hunt) discusses a situation that nearly all of us encounter from time to time -- doing magic in an unfamiliar location and environment:

This evening, after a great supper at the Mercury Cafe (witchy, hippy hangout, great food, well worth visiting when you're next in Denver), I had the privilege of attended a Circle for Peace in Downtown Denver.

As someone far more used to holding ritual surrounded by trees, I'll admit I had a few misgivings. How could we create the same feeling of closeness to Nature in a downtown parking lot? No problem. If the people involved truly believe in Peace, and in each other....if those in the circle connect with Nature as it exists in that parking lot, the circle just might work.

And so it did.

We were about twenty, young and old, men and women, and we joyfully joined minds and hearts in our hopes that peace and unity would come out of this convention.

We made and decorated prayer flags which will hang from a building for the duration of the convention . . . .

When a large part of your magical working comes from a relationship with the land, it can be difficult to do magic in an unfamiliar place. A witch friend recently remarked to me that she can feel the magical roots of my house, now that I've been doing magic here, alone and with my wonderful circle of women, for a number of years. And, it's true, any place where you repeatedly do magic develops a relationship with you and you come, almost unconsciously, to tap into and rely upon that relationship when you do magic.

But there are times when you're far from home and familiarity. In those situations, I find that paying additional attention to grounding (see Starhawk on Grounding for Activists) helps to make magic possible. Either as a separate step, or as part of the grounding, you can contact the new land, feel what it wants, seek its permission and assistance. For witches who ground with a tree visualization, this can happen when you spread the roots of your tree into the earth of the unfamiliar location.

How do you do magic away from home?

Art foung here.