This year, in addition to community meet and greets, classes, and healing services, Sacred Paths Center has established itself as a venue for touring Pagan musicians. But now, they are stepping even farther out, hosting "The Quest," an improv performance as part of the Minnesota Fringe Festival. The show is presented at 7:00 p.m. daily, and running from Friday, August 6th through Sunday, August 15th. Tickets are available at the door or  Click Here to Buy Tickets.

Described as, "A modern day quest for… something important. You tell us what. The hero's journey surrounds your seats and moves between them. Joseph Campbell's classic hero cycle twisted by our own interesting times." This is an long-improv performance, drawing on Joseph Campbell's Hero of a Thousand Faces. For each performance, The Myth Players will invite the audience to determine the specific locations at the start of every performance. It's a lighter, comedic look at Myth. To get a feel for it, check out their awesome trailer:

Producers Damian Johnson and Matt Kelly took their inspiration from Michael Gellman's teachings on how to improvise full stories. The show isn't about props and settings, since the audience determines the local. It is about taking the journey in the mind. The players will use the shape of the space, their bodies and pathways through the audience to build the terrain for The Quest.

The Myth Players are a mix of new and more established improvisers – Rita Boersma, John Eisenrich, Damian Johnson, Matt Kelly, Josh Lanset, Emily Schorr Lesnick, Adam Litz, Matt Pitner, Joe Rapp, Taj Ruler, Jen Scott, Eric Simons, Josh Stenseth; directed by Jason Bindas. Discover The Quest at Sacred Paths Center at 777 Raymond in St. Paul, right off University, near the 94 and 280 intersection.

by JRob Zeteluman

It was a cold and blustery night 15 years ago. Teisha and Paul (who would go on to be the force behind the Sacred Paths Center) gathered with their first daughter (who was still a toddler at the time) and one other person at Susan's Coffee Shop, next door to Evenstar Bookstore. This was the first gathering of Coffee Cauldron.

Today Coffee Cauldron is the oldest and most popular Pagan gathering in the Twin Cities. On the first and third Wednesday's of every month, an average of 30 to 60 local Pagans gather to hang-out, chat, play games, network, make plans, perform spiritual healings, knit, work on chain-mail, or whatever they feel like doing.

The event defies structure. Early on there were attempts to have themes for the gatherings, but they never worked, attendees preferring to just hang-out. When asked for really good Coffee Cauldron stories, people tended to be at a loss. There were maybe a couple stories, but the event isn't about generating monumental occurrences, but rather about friends coming together and sharing the joys of their lives. New-born children are introduced to the community, as are new partners, new jewelry, new tools, new toys … stories are told at the gathering rather than stories being told about the gathering.

The Time Line of Coffee Cauldron

For Paul and Teisha, the history of Coffee Cauldron is interwoven with the history of their lives together. The dates their children were born are the landmarks to remember the timeline of Coffee Cauldron. Read the rest of this entry »

On a lighter note, I thought I'd share a link to a photo of a stonehenge reconstruction which is truly beyond belief.  The photographer also has some really nice shots of Burning Man, as well.  But I thought I'd share.  The barista at Bob's Java Hut this morning thought I would appreciate it's uniqueness. 

A more appropriate photo of Stonehenge was taken recently by Corrine Kenner, local author of numerous Tarot books.  She was just in England for some big Tarot conference. I thought I'd throw that image in to clear the palette, so to speak.

I was once watching a taped episode of “Roswell”—that science-fiction show where several kids living in modern day Roswell, New Mexico were really aliens and had to figure out how to deal with that, as well as with being in high school—and during the opening credits, when the name of the show fades in above a scene of the desert, I suddenly had the oddest feeling that it meant something.Something more than just the name of the infamous town in the South West where supposedly a chance UFO crashed way back in the 40’s and people have been arguing ever since about a. whether it really happened b. whether it’s some sort of government conspiracy and c. what it all means, anyway. I suddenly had the oddest feeling that it somehow related to contact with the Otherworld and to the Craft.

Snatching up the remote, I paused the show at that moment and went to go get one of my baby name books (always good for finding names for characters when you’re a writer) and soon discovered that the name “Roswell” is actually Old English for “field of roses.” The minute I read that, the odd feeling turned into an overwhelming “yes!” sensation and I knew then that it was no coincidence that this particular “UFO crash” had happened at Roswell. I knew that it had happened for a reason and that this reason was both symbolic and also related in some fashion with the forces at work in that region, in particular the ley lines that exist in America and the power nodes that connect them, the currents that flow through and empower this land.

Of course, the concept of a “field of roses” has appeared before in relation to the past and to the Craft. Carlo Ginzburg wrote about the Benandanti in his books, a folk who went in spirit four times during the year to battle for the fertility of the land, once “over the wheat and all the other grains, another time over the livestock, and at other times over the vineyard.”2 There, they “fought, played, leaped about, and rode various animals, and did different things amongst themselves; and…the women beat the men who were with them with sorghum stalks, while the men had only bunches of fennel.”1 The place they went to they sometimes called the Field of Josafat and it was said to be the “meadow of the dead overflowing with roses.”3

Read the rest of this entry »