Experiencing Deity Workshops

Each month the Pagan Society will be hosting two workshops, led and facilitated by Kim Huggens focusing on different aspects of Divinity that relate (sometimes closely, sometimes loosely!) to the time of year. One of these workshops will be a feminine deity – a Goddess workshop – and the other will be a masculine deity – a God workshop. They will each take place fortnightly.

These workshops are designed to introduce people to a wide variety of deities from different cultures and mythologies, and to deepen participants’ understanding of these figures academically, emotionally, and spiritually. They will involve a mixture of participatory events, as well as short talks, craft-making sessions, and sometimes short rituals, altars, games, discussions, pathworkings, or spellworkings appropriate to the deity.

The Goddess and God workshops are open to anybody with an interest in the many faces of the Divine, and they are not gender-specific. It is the workshop-creator’s belief that everybody contains aspects of masculine and feminine, and that the soul itself is not gendered; therefore everybody can relate to both Goddesses and Gods. As such, feel free to attend a Goddess workshop if you are a man, and vice versa. In turn, the workshop-creator promises not to have the workshops revolve around these deities as women or men, but instead to work with them based on their achievements, myths, festivals, and sacred items. For instance, we will not explore Demeter in the realm of the bereft woman, but instead as a deity who experiences the loss we all feel in our lives at times.

People are also free to take as much or as little an active role in these workshops as they like. If you are there simply from an academic point of view, please don’t feel you have to take part in some of the more magical aspects. However, we do ask that if you choose to sit out of an activity that you retain an open mind and constructive attitude towards those taking part. Our aim is to create an open and inclusive atmosphere where people can interact with these activities in an environment they do not feel judged by.

For a list of the deities, month by month, and the themes of the workshops, go here. (These are subject to change throughout the year.) You can also see the handouts and notes from the previous sessions at the same place.

The workshops will variously contain some or all of these activities (mostly they won’t contain all of them, due to time restraints!):

- Creating an altar. This will be created at the start of the workshop, so people are encouraged to find out a little about the deity in question so they can bring something to add. The workshop organizer will bring the bulk of the items. People will have an opportunity to talk about the items they brought for the altar. This altar may also be used during any magical activities.

- Brief talk on the deity. This will focus on the academic side of things: the origins of the deity, the historical practices and worship surrounding them, sources for their myths, etc.

- Handouts with images and source texts. The images will be given every workshop, and will be called the “Treasure House of Images”. It is hoped that people can eventually put together their own folder of these handouts, and therefore have easy access to a variety of images associated with and of the deities. Source texts will be provided where possible, e.g. if the texts are in the public domain. Otherwise, bibliographical information will be given.

- Arts and crafts. This may involve making devotional items for the deity, or making something that will later be used in a psycho-spiritual manner. Ideas include Brighid’s crosses, necklaces for Yemaya, Corn dolly sacrifices for Demeter/Persephone, love songs/erotic poetry for Inanna, masks for Oya, runes for Odin, phallic wands for Pan…

- Other creative pursuits: some of the workshops may involve dances, music, songs, drumming, and dancing, but only where appropriate to the deity.

- Pathworking or meditations to explore the themes of the deity and their myth with relevance to our personal lives.

- Spellworking based around the themes of the deity and their myth to effect change in our personal lives.

- Offerings/short ritual for the deity - usually only for workshops approaching the Sabbats. Where possible, we will try to key these into the Pagan Society Sabbat rituals as well.

Each workshop will also have certain colours that people will be asked to try and dress in if they can – colours suitable for the deity or season, for instance – as well as food and drink sacred to the deity. These will be on the altar and will be partaken of towards the end.

Some specific ideas for deities include:

- Getting a bit of the flame from the Brighid Shrine at Kildare and passing it around the group, each person lighting their own candle from it.

- A rebirthing ritual around the Winter Solstice for Amaterasu, based on the myth of her re-emergence from the Heavenly Rock Cave.

- Fun and word games for Legba the trickster. Sacred hide and seek.

- A harvest festival for Lugh Samildanach in August around Lughnassadh.

About the Workshop Leader

Kim Huggens is a 24 year old Pagan and Vodou practitioner, studying for a PhD in the Ancient History and Archaeology department of Cardiff University. She is the author of the recently released “Sol Invictus: The God Tarot”, and the forthcoming “Pistis Sophia: The Goddess Tarot”, as well as the Editor of, and regular contributor to, Offerings online magazine. Her work has also recently appeared in the anthology Horns of Power, edited by Sorita D’Este, and is forthcoming in the Academic and Religious Journal for Greek, Roman, and Persian Studies. She is a regular speaker at UKPagan events, Witchfest Wales, and the Mercian Gathering, and in her spare time works in a vetinary clinic, plays Dungeons and Dragons, and writes short fiction.