Tales from the Dark Zone

September Events:

Note these events are listed for information purposes only. Dates and locations may be subject to change; see the source for details. If I’ve missed anyone and you’d like to add to this listing, please contact me. All times MDT.

Aug 25-Sep 4:  Calgary Pride Week.  http://calgarypride.ca

Aug 26, 9:00 am:  EmergeMARKET at Alex Community Food Centre.  http://www.emergehub.ca/emergemarket.html

Aug 26, 2:00 pm:  Calgary Heathen Meet and Greet in Pearce Estate Park.

Aug 26, 7:00 pm:  Family-friendly Paranormal Investigation at East Coulee School Museum, hosted by Ghost Hunt Alberta.  Sold out!

Sep 2:  Muin/Vine Tree Month begins, according to Robert Graves.

Sep 2, 9:00 am:  Calgary Highland Games at Springbank Park for All Seasons. http://calgaryhighlandgames.org/

Sep 2, 7:00 pm:  COGCOA Coffee Cauldron.  http://cogcoa.ab.ca

Sep 3: Calgary Pride Parade, and Pride in the Park at Prince’s Island.

Sep 3, 11:30 pm:  Rocky Horror Picture Show at Globe Cinema.

Sep 4:  Labour Day.  Unofficial end of summer.

Sep 4 – Oct 30, 7:00 pm semi-monthly:  Meditation by Samaria at The Wellness Body and Spa.  https://samariasspiritual.guru/p/samarias-meditation

Sep 5, 5:29 am:  Mercury Retrograde ends.

Sep 6, 1:03 am:  Full (Corn or Harvest) Moon.

Sep 6, 7:00 pm:  Calgary Witches’ Meetings Full Moon Circle in NE Calgary. Must have previously attended a CWM event to attend.

Sep 9, 10:00 am:  Calgary New Age Craft Market at Hillhurst-Sunnyside Community Hall.

Sep 13-17:  Beakerhead in downtown Calgary. https://beakerhead.com/

Sep 16, 10:00 am:  Hergest's Magickal Mystery Mathom Sale, Part III. Contact me for location.
Sep 19, 11:30 pm:  New Moon. Muin/Vine Lunar Month begins.

Sep 22, 2:02 pm:  Autumnal Equinox.

Sep 23, 11:00 am:  Calgary Pagan Pride Picnic at Edworthy Park.
Sep 23, 11:00 am:  VegFest Calgary 2017, Vegan Food and Lifestyle Festival, at Millennium Park.  http://www.vegfestcalgary.com

Sep 23, 7:00 pm:  “Witches Night Out YYC” Costumed Fundraiser for Calgary Women’s Emergency Shelter.

Sep 29, 8:00 pm:  Paranormal Investigation and Pub Night at Ceili’s Pub, hosted by Ghost Hunt Alberta. Tickets through Eventbrite.

Sep 30, 11:00 am:  Calgary Kinky Flea Market at Forest Heights Community Centre.

 

Last month, I reviewed Shirley Maclaine’s story of her pilgrimage across northern Spain.  This month, I embarked on a pilgrimage of a different type. 
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As witches and pagans, we sometimes seek to create ecstatic experiences in our rituals, transformational whammies that will have lasting effects.  True ecstatic experiences are rare things, and as varied as those experiencing them. It could be you, your team, or a family member winning the championship.  Perhaps it’s your reaching the top of Kilimanjaro, seeing Macchu Picchu for the first time, or watching the Man burn in the Nevada desert.  More often, we remember the disasters that mark a generation, when the unthinkable happened: the assassinations of Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.,  the Challenger disaster, or 9/11. 
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With a total eclipse of the Sun, we have the perfect opportunity for science and religion to come together. We know where and when, and only local weather can stand in the way.  This week, millions of people in America, regardless of faith, colour, gender, politics, or economic status, were fortunate enough to be in the Dark Zone together.
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Many more got most of it, the older of us not for the first time, seeing the crescent Sun through our eclipse glasses, building pinhole cameras and seeing the negative shadows through leaves or a colander.  It’s a cool experience, teaches kids about science, and has us think in abstract terms about what it means in terms of our own religions. Perhaps you saw the live broadcasts or videos, and the photographs in newspapers and magazines.
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In the Dark Zone, it’s different. 
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At Rexburg Nature Park, as at several sites around the town, the participants have assembled: the astrophotographers, the families with their dogs and cats, the groups of friends of all ages, including a few Furries.  A couple of police officers sit under a canopy, and a group of pink-shirted volunteers have a water station under another. The sky is delightfully clear (though still a trifle smoky). You know most of it: the slow dimming of the light during the partial phase, the hot day getting cooler, the crescent “shadows” under the trees.  People are hacking their phones by putting their glasses over their cell phone cameras. Totality approaches; the thin crescent thins more and more.  I put down my glasses, and watch my fellow participants. 
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Then an Unseen Hand suddenly turns a giant dimmer switch on the sky.  The participants gasp; it’s as if darkness visibly, quickly falls to earth and collapses sideways into itself. I quickly look through my glasses as the last speck of sunlight disappears. 
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An instant later, the Black Sun burns.  They’ve turned off the Sun, and punched a hole in the sky.
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I remove my glasses; the crowd is still murmuring, and I start drumming.  An older man next to me quotes Genesis or Isaiah about “darkness covering the earth”. (And wasn’t there darkness in the crucifixion story, again about death and rebirth?)  I look at the Black Sun with my naked eyes, the corona burning in a roughly triangular shape.  The park is lit by the Black Sun and earthshine. The planets are out:  Jupiter on the eastern horizon, Mercury on the left, the dim star Regulus next to the corona, then Mars and Venus on the right.  It’s surreal; it’s as if the world is inside out and upside down.  So much to look at, and time is moving rapidly. I grab for a camera, and like a fool go for the cell phone; I’m not thinking straight. I look at the Black Sun through my binoculars, seeing a thin rim of red on the trailing edge. Time to go.  I try to catch a photo of Jupiter, but the returning light washes it out. Just like that, the Black Sun is gone. 
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There’s some light applause among the participants.  I’m breathing heavily, feeling ecstatic, not believing what I’d just seen.  I say to myself, “this must be what death is like.” I’d missed Baily’s Beads, missed the animal activity, but it didn’t matter.  It’s been over two minutes since the beginning of totality, but it seems half that.
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Immediately a few people begin to leave, trying to miss the traffic, but there’s no way I’ll be able to ground quickly after this. I continue to rest, watching the light return, the people leave. After awhile, I get down on my hands and knees, sending energy into the earth. Realize it looks like I’m prostrating myself before the Sun, but I feel better.
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It continues to brighten, more people leave, and eventually a couple of Frisbee players start tossing a disc near me. It’s almost time for me to go.  I chat with a couple of my neighbours, sharing feelings about the experience, as it’s too profound not to.  I approach the young couple next to me, who’d appeared in some of my crowd shots (with the Furries behind), and I offer to send them copies of my photos of them watching.  I load up the car, make a last visit to the porta-potties, and wait until the Moon’s shadow has departed. Then I hit the road.
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Totality is an awe-inspiring experience beyond words; that’s why I consider it one of the Mysteries of our faith.  Photos, videos, and stories can give you a glimpse of what it was like, but it’s certainly an ecstatic experience that pagans should try to experience at least once in their lifetime.  It’s a visible demonstration of death and rebirth shared by our ancestors back to the dawn of civilization.  For me, it gave rise to thoughts of mortality and community; I think, too, that it happening in America caused me to mimic American behavior and be more open, when I’m so often closed off from others. 
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Although there are “annular” (“ring”) eclipses in 2021 in a band of remote locations from Nipigon, Ontario to Iqualuit on Baffin Island, and in 2023 across the southwestern U.S., I think of these as 360-degree partial eclipses, with a different effect than totality.
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Certainly try for April 8, 2024 in eastern Canada (ironically, it just misses Toronto, the “centre of the universe”), but Niagara Falls should be awesome –and crowded, as will Montreal (just barely), New Brunswick, western P.E.I., and Newfoundland.  Or you may head for Texas instead, where it will certainly be warmer. Reserve early (like a year ahead), and aim to be somewhere where they’re predicting clear skies.   Bookmark http://greatamericaneclipse.com for info.  I know I want to do this again; hopefully with some of you this time.
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Postscript:  I call it the Black Sun, because that’s what it looked like. I’m also reminded of Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun”.  I Googled “Black Sun” and discovered it’s another term for the Norse Sun Wheel, so the term may be associated with White Supremacists.  I deplore them, and use of the term is no endorsement. I’m sorry I have to live in times where I feel I need to make this statement.