Over the weekend of March 29, 2025, Sacred Space Conference came to Towson to bring together witches and spiritual explorer from all walks of life for a truly unforgettable weekend. From the moment I stepped into the venue, there was a palpable buzz of energy from the sheer amount of witches in the hotel. There were classes, rituals, and vendors from prominent speakers and authors from around the US and beyond all presenting their knowledge and wares for the conference to see. It was a deep yet delightful experience through and through.
It’s taken me a bit to come back to Earth after Sacred Space. It was such a beautiful time, sandwiched in stress, alongside the euphoria of attending such an energy rich event all weekend, then con drop… It’s been an emotional roller coaster to say the least! Sacred Space was amazing though. It was the first conference of its kind that I had attended and I intend to go to many more in the future.
Admittedly, I did not get to attend many of the classes offered. I think I attended a total of 3 scheduled rituals/workshops. Majority of my time was spent working at the registration table and selling books. Even still, doing that I had a wonderful time. Being front and center of the main liminal space of the conference meant bearing witness to everyone’s love shared, kindnesses between strangers, friendships being made and strengthened. It was truly a beautiful thing to be a center stage bystander of, and even be a part of sometimes.
Of course, I brought my trusty bag of crow trinkets. Which was a huge source of entertainment.
It is a wonderful way to make friends, offer a token of gratitude for their positive energy, and have a task that helps you break the ice and create conversation. It helps tremendously in social settings with lots of strangers. You can see the menagerie of silly things I was giving away. No need for painful small talk when I can have people grab a trinket instead.
Anywho!
Day One of Sacred Space Conference
On the the first day I arrived a little bit before my first volunteer shift. I was going home each night; not staying at the hotel, so I missed a lot of the morning classes because of that.
Instead of interrupting something going on, I found a public business desk outside of the vendors area and chilled there for a bit. It had plugs for my phone and comfy chairs so I figured it was a good place to hang out while I waited. It was already late into the running classes by the time I arrived so I didn’t want to interrupt walking in at that point. Conference pro-tip: You can walk into a class late, but it’s frowned upon or even prohibited during rituals. I still didn’t want to be a source of interruption because at that point I wasn’t sure what protocol for interruptions was. Better to be safe than sorry. So I sat there and bullshitted on my phone for a while. Eventually, Coby Michael would come out of the vendors area and I would get to meet him for the first time. Coby’s very sweet. I was glad to get to know him and get some of his perspectives on stuff, especially with his experiences within the vampyre community.
At some point, while we were sitting at this desk, I realized there was a little duck sitting on the post underneath the lighting on the desk.
I added a crow friend to it.
As some of you may know, I have started/adopted a duck trend into the vampyre community by accident. But I didn’t have ducks at this event, someone else did. That someone else was Mortellus, a very very crow coded necromancer/occultist/priestex. Something about that just tickled me to death ๐ I discovered the ducks belonged to Mortellus when they were like OMG CROW NEXT TO MY DUCK and I was like omg no way I put the crow there! And that’s how we met.
From there, I worked 2 back to back shifts from I believe 1:30-5?ish? There was a break from 5-7pm every night for dinner.
At the end of my shift I went to the upstairs area where classes were since I hadn’t been up there yet, just to check it out. I even had a selfie moment. I’m so bad at MaKiNg CoNtEnT so I was trying to purposely do the thing here.
The “first timer” ribbons for the badges were such a good idea. People with annual events with badges, do this. See the yellow dot on my badge? They had a Green/Yellow/Red dot system for how welcoming you are to being touched. Green means you’re okay with hugs, yellow means ask first, red is please no touchy. Honestly, brilliant. 10/10 practice. Definitely taking notes about things like this.
Anywho, after my selfie moment, I was meandering in the liminal sacred lobby space figuring out what I was going to do for dinner when Nancy, a member of The Vampyre Coven and friend on facebook for many years scooped me up and said “Come to dinner with us”! We went to the all you can eat KPot place in Towson.
Nancy and her Coven mates were lovely. I appreciated them all so much for being welcoming and having me tag along. One of the people with us was someone named Lyndsay O’Malley. I was like “Oh shit, a real one!” ๐ She is actually a descendant of Grace O’Malley, which is cool af. Grace O’Malley was a badass and if I had to tie my O’Mallie persona to a past life, it’d be Grace. (I know that’s not how that works, I’m just sayin’) Lndsay O’Malley was a presenter at Sacred Space who taught a class on writing Chants & exploring Chanting exercises. She’s written a booklet of chants to lesser-known Celtic deities!
Kpot was excellent, I came back to the conference ready to finish out the last couple classes… but then I had to handle some sad personal business that forced my hand to leaving early that evening. It was the best choice for the circumstances though.
Day Two of Sacred Space Conference
For Day Two, I worked from 3PM-5PM so I didn’t show up till a little before my shift again. In the future, I hope to be able to get a hotel room at the conference so I can be better equipped to attend more things. I would highly recommend staying in the hotel for the conference, even if you’re local. Unless you’re an early riser, as I am not. But I did get to experience 2 things after dinner that were absolutely fantastic.
Seiรฐr with the Frederick Cuups Seiรฐr group.
Experiencing Seiรฐr was so interesting. Despite being a witch, I am also skeptic minded and I want to dissect and understand things. I want to know how Seiรฐr actually works so badly ๐ There was an individual named Mara who was the “host” of the ritual. They led people on a guided journey to a place, then invited the seer to come sit in a particular place. Then members of the audience were able to ask the seers questions.
Midwinter Blรณt by Carl Larsson (1915) [public domain].
In Seiรฐr, the Seers are picking up spirits and channeling their messages. The member of the audience who is currently up usually steps up, asks the Seer if a particular passed love one is seen and then a question to that spirit is asked if the spirit steps forward. Sometimes the audience member will is a broad question like “are there any deities or spirits out there with messages for me” but 90% of the time it was a passed loved one.
Each time, the Seer says “yes, they have stepped forward” then the audience member asks a question. To me, being on the outside looking in, the messages brought forth were extremely arbitrary sounding most of the time. There was immediate heavy emotion from almost every participant before they even got to the point of asking their question, so it was hard to gauge the reaction to the messages half the time cause they’d already devolved.
Some of the Seers were very distant and spoke in less words. Irene being the charismatic creature that she is, would deliver much more detailed location descriptions and dig a little deeper into her messages, was just much more vibrant with her delivery. That may be a matter of experience levels, though. I’m so curious what they’re experiencing and how they’re really picking up these messages. I don’t know if I can come up off of the ground enough to experience something like that myself but I’d love to try one day. They have guardians though that I assume are the tethers to Earth and aftercare folks during these rites and I think I’d be awesome at that. I hope to be able to follow up and experience more Seiรฐr in the future.
What I can say though, is this particular ritual solidifies my need to continue to put myself in rooms with group rituals like these. I don’t have a lot of opportunities where I get to sit and watch larger rituals with people I know are well practiced. The visual experience of seeing the energy pouring off of the Seiรฐr team was wild. Where I sat in the audience I had a clear view of Irene and the Seer gang as they were preparing for their work. As Mara was setting the scene and they were building their energy and opening up to spirit, the yellow/orange glow of the immediate aura around them was insane. There was even a point during one of the Seers turns where I swore I saw what looked like a puff of smoke come off of one of them. So, I know there’s something going on but my logical brain really wants to know what.
It was powerful. There was probably 100 people in the audience while all this was going on. There was a lot of emotion, everyone around was feeding the ritual and the cycle of energy flowing through the room felt awesome, albeit heavy at times. I both felt and witnessed on others the physical impairment and kinda brain fogginess from being sort of ritual high afterwards.
What better way to follow that up with an intense talk about death! (why are we like this?!)
Mortellus talks about Death
I’m not sure what I expected when it came to Mortellus and “The Journey to the Center of the Earth: Meeting Death” – but this certainly was not it. I don’t mean that in a bad way at all. It was just a different experience than I thought it would be. Mortellus took us all on a guided journey of how they died twice as a child, and how the second time they were saved by The Morrigan. Then they went into a discussion that took everyone through how they take care of people during the liminal stage between the time you die and the time you’re laid to rest. Mortellus is a mortician and therefore a psychopomp, and they took us on a very up close and personal journey with what they do as a mortician and preparing the body that makes you face your mortality. It makes you face the need to plan for what you want when you die. It was a moving introspective experience… that ended with Hershey Kisses. I made a joke on my FB page about “today I learned chocolate is essential for ending death rituals” but it’s kind of true. The chocolate is grounding and pulls you back up to reality. I enjoyed this as I’ve always had an interest in tending to the dead but it’s something I’ve never had a real outlet for.
What a way to end the evening on a somber and introspective note.
The Loving Reaper by Jenny Jinya
Day Three of Sacred Space.
Day Three I worked another registration shift and then afterwards was able to attend a workshop about Hellenic Hekate taught by Gwendolyn Reese.
Gwendolyn’s workshop was intriguing for sure. As someone who has worked with Hekate for a long time, I had a decent base of knowledge going into this workshop about Hekate. What I gained from this workshop is a deeper understanding of some of her traits and therefore also a deeper understanding of why Hekate was the first goddess in my life and an everlasting force ever since.
There was a couple main takeaways from this class for me:
- Hekate’s always been a protector of the vulnerable. This is seen through many of her epithets and/or roles. I knew this, but I don’t think I realized the depths of it prior.
- Hekate’s liminal aspects lend to her protective habits. As a midwife and goddess of childbirth, she protects those transitioning from the womb to the world. As a psychopomp, she protects those transitioning from the living to the dead. She protects the vulnerable and the marginalized. The ones floating in unsafe spaces. The ones sandwiched between oppressive regimes. Those in transitional phases. Those on the fringes of society. She is a guardian and protector of those who are at their most liminal and most vulnerable. The caterpillar in the chrysalis is at its most vulnerable in the midst of that liminal state before it emerges a butterfly. We as people experience those same vulnerable times and Hekate is a strong protector in those moments.
- Some of the views regarding the command of the restless dead and some of her Cthonic aspects comes from the way the worst criminals in the ancient world were disposed of. skip brackets to skip description of how
[[[ The restless dead in the case of the Hellenic times were the untimely dead, the more harsh and untimely the death, the more restless they are. Criminals who were executed would oftentimes be take out to the outskirts of the city limited, and then buried above ground by having rocks piled on top of them. The Hounds of Hekate, aka wild dogs, would come and eat the remains. The spirits of these executed were considered especially restless/heinous, yet still under the dominion of Hekate. This is likely where Hekate’s LHP/Demonic reverence comes from]]]I was particularly struck by the realization of Hekate’s habit of being a protector through liminal times, even being a harbinger of the changes needed to end up in those liminal times. Personally in life, I’ve always found myself being someone who is there as a protector for people who are going through transitional phases. Sometimes I come into people’s lives to be just that and then they move on, like I was a necessary force needed for them to progress. Sometimes it’s a temporary force, sometimes it’s a lasting force. But it feels like a destined calling and undertone to whatever I can live with myself doing in life. I’ll have to write more about this another day.After the Hekate workshop was dinner break. I went home to get ready for the party afterwards so the Hekate workshop was the last class offering for me for the weekend. I didn’t see a whole lot of the programming all weekend, but what I saw was amazing and I’m thankful for the experiences.
The Dance of the Witches
The afterparty was a riot.
This is when I finally took the opportunity to introduce myself to more people and ask for pictures while my social bravery was allowing me to ๐
I was embarrassingly earlyAF aka the first person sitting at one of the tables in the banquet hall. I do not care though I got to pick a seat and chilled.
and have a Glamour moment.โจ
But then I took advantage of being early to get a picture with Irene ๐
Irene has immaculate energy. She’s like a ray of sunshine energetically until you give her a reason to turn the “don’t fuck with me” on, which I did see once and was like ๐ oh okay! She has no hesitation going full on at a moments notice though. Dances with her heart, belts a tune with her whole soul in an instant. It was a beautiful thing to see and be in the presence of.
Irene & Gang have the band Kindred Crow and they’re super fun. It’s kinda like Wardruna meets Ren Faire. I danced, got stompy in the big goth stompy boots. It was a good time.
I didn’t take any crowd pictures to be respectful of everyone’s ability to consent to be posted, but it was a few hundred witches all having a marvelous time and the ambient feed in the room was impeccable. 10/10 recommend. You’re able to just go to the dance if you really wanted to or if you can’t afford to do the whole thing and tbh if you’re close enough for that to be an option, you should do it.
During the dance I ran around a lot. Talked to a handful of people. Made some new friends.
I got a photo with Mat Auryn, author of Psychic Witch
and Storm Fearywolf author of Betwixt & Between
and of course like the dirty little goth kids that we are, Coby and I hung outside in the smoking section for a chunk of the party ๐
The party was a wonderful end to a beautiful weekend. I left feeling recharged and reinspired at a time where I really needed it. Iโm hopeful that I can continue on this journey of traveling, learning, and meeting new people. Iโm re-excited to see what the future holds and Iโm hoping to bring some of the love and energy shared in this witch community to the VC somehow.
Maybe some of us can all try to make it to next years Sacred Space//Between Worlds conference?
Until Next time,
โฐ๏ธ๐ฆโค๏ธ
xx
๐๐ช๐ญ๐ช๐ถ๐ฎ ๐๐ธ๐ป๐ฟ๐ฒ๐ญ๐ช๐ฎ
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