Mystic South 2024

 

cool door in the hotel

This past weekend I attended the Mystic South conference for the second time (the first time was in 2017). Mystic South is a large esoteric/pagan/witchcraft/occult conference that takes place in Atlanta, Georgia, USA each summer and features a wide range of workshops, some rituals, and a dance - the Phoenix Ball - as well as a market area. It offers a great chance for people to socialize, learn, and have fun and while many of the attendees were local there were also many like myself that had come from a greater distance.
I'm just going to share some recaps of the event with some pictures. This is hardly a comprehensive description and for a more rounded picture I'd suggest checking out John Beckett's '11 Things About Mystic South 2024' and Thumper Forge's 'Things You Hear At Mystic South, 2024 Edition' (you can try to guess which 'thing' I said). 

Travel 
 So, in the case of myself and my inestimable travel buddy Mel getting to Mystic South was an adventure in itself, which involved an hour drive to the airport, multi-hour flight, and then a very intense shuttle ride through Atlanta's rush hour traffic. It was all just part of the adventure but it was, admittedly, a stressful way to start. Going home, as it would turn out, was even more eventful but we did make it back safely. Eventually. 

Keeping Busy  
   So, I was a headliner at the event and gave two presentations as well as sitting on a panel discussion with Wendy Mata Houseman and Sen Elias. While I was there myself and Mel were guests on the That Witch Life podcast with Courtney Weber and Kanani. I also was part of a meet'n'greet for Moon Books.
    Presentations - My first presentation was on European Fairies in the US, a topic inspired by my forthcoming book Celtic Fairies in North America, but with a slightly more focused approach. Its a great subject to dig into because there's a lot of material there and as usual I ended up running out of time before I could get to all of it. Despite that there were some good questions in the Q&A and people seemed happy with it overall. My second presentation focused on witches and fairies, looking at evidence of early modern witches in Ireland and Scotland and the intersection of fairy beliefs, especially the idea of fairies teaching witches, then segued into modern material, slightly, then a discussion of the fairy as familiar spirit. As with my first presentation time went by quickly and honestly even with a couple hours there wouldn't be enough time to get into all the layers of this topic, but we definitely covered the highlights. There were a lot of great questions afterwards and we ended up running slightly past our allotted time slot. Overall I felt like everything here went pretty well though.
  Panel - I was excited to get to be on a panel with Wendy Mata Houseman and Sen Elias, who are both amazing people and extremely knowledgeable on folk magic. The panel questions focused on various aspects of folk magic practices and I loved seeing how similar our approaches were despite our varied backgrounds; it makes me believe that folk magic has a cross-cultural aspect underlying the unique qualities of every version. Although I was on the panel I think I got a great deal out of listening to my co-panelists and I kind of wish I could have been in the audience instead - it was a great discussion. 
  Podcast - this was my third time guesting on That Witch Life, but the first time live and the first time I was sitting down and chatting with Courtney and Kanani in person (the third host, Hilary, wasn't at Mystic South). It was a good time, and we managed to talk about a few on topic things in between discussions of random fae-ness and what a fairy would wear during a late night hotel fire alarm (no really). I think it will be an interesting episode when it comes out. 
   Meet'n'greet - Moon Books arranged to have an author meet'n'greet at Mystic South with a half dozen people who write for Moon. This was the first time I've ever done something like that and my first time meeting other people who write for my publisher, and I don't think I was too awkward about it. I met some really nice people, signed some books, and had some great discussions. 

my badge before I added some extra ribbons

Attending Things...Or Not 
    Mystic South, like some other large events uses an app called Sched to allow attendees to see the full schedule, choose what they want to go to, and have a clear idea of what they're doing when. I had signed up for a lot of fascinating looking presentations and activities and had been looking forward to attending them, but unfortunately I only made it to 2: Frater Aaron's 'The Ecstatic Craft Hidden Within Grimm's Fairy Tales' and Michael Smith's 'Through the Hidden Door'. Ecstatic Craft was a PAPERS presentation, which is intended to have a more academic tone. I believe the paper will be publicly available later. It was an interesting survey of different initiatory themes found throughout Grimm's fairy tales. 'Through the Hidden Door' was a discussion of modern fairy belief and the teacher's personal gnosis, and included a guided meditation. It was quite insightful to get to hear about another person's approach to a topic that is so pivotal to both my academic study and personal life. 

Rubber ducks. Everywhere

Duck Raiding
  A small sidenote to the wider weekend - the people behind the conference were hiding rubber ducks and smaller resin (?) ducks all around and we were encouraged to take them. I may have already been taking them before that. Anyway, once we found out its kind of a game that goes on during the conference all bets were off, because Mel and I are both extremely competitive people. Ultimately I ended up with the higher rubber duck count but Mel beat me on the resin ducks, so I guess we both won. 

Conversations
   I said I had planned to go to many things while I was at Mystic South and didn't make it to hardly any. This is because the main theme for me at this conference was conversations. I lost count of how many great discussions I had, both with friends and with new people. I even helped a wayward kitten find a new home, which is honestly one of the highlights of the whole week for me. 
   A lot of these types of conferences advertise themselves as community building and this one definitely was. I was able to meet friends in person I've only known on social media and to make some new friends along the way too. Meals stretched to hours as we sat and talked, and I came away with some intriguing new ideas to explore as well as a deeper sense of connection. To be completely honest it was exhausting but not in a bad way, rather it was exhausting in a way that felt like an accomplishment. I wish I had gotten to more presentations, but I also feel like I still learned a lot and more importantly like I gained a lot. I am not generally a very social person - I am the classic introvert trope - but I wouldn't trade any of those myriad discussions for extra downtime or my usual hiding in my quiet hotel room. It pushed my limits, I pushed my limits, but if anything I wish I'd had more time to hang out with people and chat. 

my hotel room....which I didn't see very much of

The Market Area
   Every pagan conference I've gone to has always had a market area and Mystic South is no exception. What makes it different is that it effectively had a full on books store in a room past the rest of the market area, which was also hosting author book signings. Luckily for me my budget wasn't prepared for book shopping because I could never have fit everything in my luggage to get home. As it was though I was able to see a range of titles that will go on the to-buy-later list, and to have a nice chat with a couple people during book signings, most notably Joshua Cutchin, whose work on the overlap between fairylore, UFO/aliens, and bigfoot has long fascinated me. 
   The rest of the market area held a diverse array of options, from jewelry to knitted objects, from D&D dice to artwork. I loved seeing so many handmade goods and so many artists - honestly in the AI era its inspiring to know that real artists are still around and being appreciated. Before successfully escaping I did find gifts for my kids and a couple things for myself too.

the display of my books in the Sojourner area of the marketplace

Pagan Prom
    One thing that Mel and I both remembered from Mystic South in 2017 was the dance party they'd had. It was super fun and we both were excited to go again to what we have jokingly nicknamed pagan prom. Although the DJs playlist was a little out of my comfort zone it was still a great time and I will always remember doing the Time Warp with a couple dozen other witches and pagans who were all just embracing the moment. 

all dressed up for pagan prom, er, Phoenix Ball

Overall Mystic South was a great experience. There were, as to be expected, some bumps in the road - like the Starbucks being inexplicably closed after we'd hiked out there in search of morning coffee - but it was a really good time. 

Fairy Facts: Bean Sidhe

 For this installment of fairy facts I wanted to discuss a popular but often misunderstood being, the Bean sidhe. I will note at the start that there is an ongoing debate about whether or not the Bean sidhe is a fairy or a separate type of being, but I am including her here because of the long standing translation of bean sidhe as fairy woman and her wider association with the Otherworld. I recommend Patricia Lysaght's book 'Banshee: The Irish death messenger' if you really want to deep dive into who and what the mná sidhe (banshees) are. 

Name: Bean Sidhe (Irish), Ban-sìth (Scottish). Anglicized as Banshee, the term literally means 'Otherworldly woman'. In Ireland the bean sidhe may also be known regionally as the Bean Chaointe or Badb.

Description: Descriptions of these beings vary across stories. By some accounts they appear as old women with grey hair, while others describe younger women, sometimes blonde, whose eyes are red from weeping. In a few accounts of a Bean sidhe who is known by name as one of the Tuatha Dé Danann, like Clíodhna, they may be described as enchantingly beautiful. They may wear white, grey, or green, sometimes with red shoes. 
In folklore they can take the shape of owls or of hooded crows.

Found: Ireland, Scotland, and related communities. Also becoming more common across popular culture. 

Folklore: Although fairly localized to Ireland and parts of Scotland there is a wide array of Bean Sidhe folklore. This can roughly be broken up into three types: Death omens, Supernatural dangers, Fairy women. Each type has specific folklore surrounding it, although they are both part of one cohesive concept. 

Death Omens. The Bean sidhe as death omen is perhaps her most well known role. It is said that all of the older Irish families have a bean sidhe who follows their family line, usually connected through ancestry, and who appears to wail before a death in that family. There are a range of stories of people in families hearing the bean sidhe before a death as well as those who are unrelated hearing a bean sidhe only to later find out that a local person died. The wailing or cry of the bean sidhe is extremely eerie, not comparable to any normal sounds, and is said to be a kind of keen or caoine, a mourning cry or song.

Supernatural Dangers. The cry or wail of the bean sidhe doesn't cause death or harm to those who hear it, but the bean sidhe herself can be dangerous in other ways. There are various stories of a person who finds a comb on the ground, sometimes of the roadway, takes it home, only to have an irate bean sidhe show up after dark demanding the return of her property. She circles the house, clawing and yelling to be given back her comb - eventually the person relents and passes the comb through a window, but clasped in iron fire tongs. After pulling the tongs back in they are found to be horribly twisted, hinting at the harm that the bean sidhe would have done to the hand that passed them out. There are stories on Duchas.ie as well of people who were chased by the bean sidhe, escaped, only to fall ill and die within a short period of time. 

Fairy Women. The stories around the bean sidhe also include tales that don't fit easily into either previous concept and are usually simply descriptions of a person seeing a bean sidhe who is neither crying nor threatening them. For example, Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries recounts a story of a man who saw a bean sidhe by Lough Gur sitting on a rock and combing her hair. These types of tales often figure into the other two categories - in the above the bean sidhe is described combing her hair and the comb is a key part of many stories of the bean sidhe as a danger. 

The folklore around the bean sidhe is complex. Some are said to be women of the Tuatha Dé Danann, including Áine, Clíodhna, and Aoibheall, who watch over family lines they are bound to. Some are less renowned women of the Otherworld who do the same thing for a similar reason. There are also an array of stories of human women who became mná sidhe: women who died in childbirth, women who committed a horrific offense or who died by violence themselves, or women who were professional keeners in life but failed to do their jobs well. In some the first cases the woman was only bound to act as a bean sidhe until the time that her natural life span would have ended; in the latter it is a less fixed period where she must 'earn' her place in the afterlife. 

Where It Gets Muddy: A lot of the wider understandings of the bean sidhe have been shaped by popculture in the last 50 years or so, and much of that is wrong or badly skewed. White Wolf's Changeling games for example make the bean sidhe incorporeal beings who attack to drain the life force from their victims. The Banshee from the TV show Charmed are witches who become monsters through great sorrow and kill with their wail. Mercedes Lackey's SERRAted Edge series made bean sidhe into 'bane sidhe', explained as 'death of elves', a wraithlike creature who fed on life forces and killed with its cry. In most of these confusions the different concepts of the folkloric bean sidhe are taken and blended then added to for plot purposes creating something close to but very different from the folklore.

What They Aren't: Despite growing claims to the contrary there are no male bean sidhe, nor could there be simply by the nature of the term. A male would be a fear sidhe, an Otherworldly man. If it identifies as male its not a bean sidhe. 
Bean sidhe also don't attack or cause harm with their voice, Marvel comic characters and popculture to the contrary. 
Its probably also worth noting that while the bean sidhe can be an omen of death they are not general death omens and are always associated with specific families they follow. Unlike, say, Mothman, they do not appear before disasters or warn of major coming events; they are strictly indicators of an impending death within a family they follow.