My great Pagan spiritual awakening happened at a Frankie Goes to Hollywood concert at the age of 14.
Yes, I really just said that.
It was 1985, and Frankie was ALL THE RAGE, the Justin Bieber of the 80s, only even more gay and with better hair. I was a Teenage Fag Hag, so Frankie was huge part of my world. I was in Catholic school, and for reasons I can’t recall, I ended up with plans to go to the concert with a group of girls I was not particularly friends with (many of the kids came from well-to-do families up in the hills of the town where I grew up. I lived down by the docks and was almost feral. Draw your own conclusions). We made plans to spend the day before at a local waterpark, spend the night at one girl’s house watching horror movies, then get up early the next day and get in line for festival seating so we would be close to the stage. The concert was in early June, and as happens to so many Northwesterners delirious with sun intoxication at the first fading of Winter’s gloom, we all ended up severely sunburned at the waterpark. We sat out in the heat the entire day, no food or water, sleep deprived and burnt. By the time the doors opened at 8pm our physical exhaustion had robbed us of our senses.
We stood just feet from the stage, packed tightly with thousands of tense, hormonal teenage girls, waiting for the show to begin. As the stage fog started to roll out and the band of androgynes launched into the first of many homo-sado-erotic tinged songs, the crowd of girls began to shriek with a unified banshee wail of the naive, pubescent sexual frustration of the human female. The audience began to rock and surge, unstoppable and terrifying. Our bodies collided and and jostled, rubbing my sunburned skin raw. One misstep could send you to the floor to be trampled to pulp. The entire event became a strange ecstatic dance of primal sexual energy and survival. At one point, one of the band members tossed a towel into the audience. I was one of the girls who caught it, and a ferocious tug-of-war began. Every girl within arms reach seized hold of the towel, and we began to tear at it like dogs. The towel disintegrated into shreds in seconds. I remember letting loose with a guttural howl as I yanked and clawed trying to retain my corner of the towel, only to lose my grip when I almost dislocated a finger. I became very aware of presence in the concert hall, something huge and driving, something that our energies had created and in turn had created us. I was overflowing with wants and drives, things I couldn’t define, things I couldn’t understand, things that terrified and enthralled me. I wanted to sexually devour something, incorporate it into the core of my being. It was as if I was filled with an undeniable urge to have someone or something inside me, and I didn’t care which route it took to get there, and the absolute frustration of not being able to ever fully satisfy that urge with any physical means was literally driving me mad.
I don’t remember much else about that night, but it haunted me for years. I was in my late teens when I first learned of Dionysus and the maenadic rites. The full emotional memory of this event came flooding back to me like water breaking over a dam. Like many peak experiences, the full spectrum of the occurrence is impossible to depict in any meaningful way. When I try to describe this moment to people, it comes out sounding absurd. Much like when I try to describe my near-death experience (which we will get to later). To tell people I saw a golden light and a choir of heavenly voices sounds so trite and simplistic, but the moment itself was beyond words, beyond description, and beyond anything I could possibly communicate using any human apparatus. The fact that Frankie Goes to Hollywood lead me to my spiritual path is the best explanation I have to offer you. Suffice it to say, I still can’t hear the song “Relax” without getting a creepy Kubrick-esque smile on my face.
Amusing side note: At Yule, I proceeded to get quite drunk, something I actually do rarely and haven’t done in a very long time (my husband had never seen me drunk before, that’s how long it has been). My co-priest informed me that he likes Maenad Sigrun, “she’s like opera: you, only bigger and more dangerous” (I’m paraphrasing, since all I can remember from that moment is leaning against the kitchen counter and luridly leering at my ex in a rather predatory fashion).
Ravens and Ivy 
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