it's funny, but...

[kyrene]

People are apparently preferring to raise a stink over the ULC thing versus my new name.

I love it!

When I get home I'm going to look into Cherry Hill Seminary for priesthood training. I've heard of them and seen their stuff for years but haven't been able to do anything with them--and they seem to be pretty reputable. If I wait for Hellenic training like everyone else is (and I did) it'll be ages before I can accomplish anything worthwhile.

So, fuck it. Doing it all on my own and bulldozing through.

Comments

[ravendreamer.livejournal.com]

Ours is a program of learning via doing. Everyone goes through the first year (seedling) and then a two year program after that (Liana). The liana program can be fasttracked to one year though. Those two levels you probably know most of the stuff already. By that point you hope to have enough people to form a local group (at least 3). If you do, you can be doing your 'root anticipant' (clergy training) at the time your group is forming. And you learn by actually doing in that capacity.

[kyrene-myste.livejournal.com]

Learning by doing is typically the best way, IMHO. Much of what I've learned I learned "on the job", so to speak.

The sort of program that I'd be looking for is really specific, and I think that the pagan pastoral counseling prog is the closest I've seen yet. If it came with classes on oracular trance I'd be golden.

[ravendreamer.livejournal.com]

We dont teach pastoral counseling. You learn a bit of that by working with your own group in that capacity, but its not somethign we teach outright. Basically the rest of the roots (our clergy) are there as support and to ask questions on how they handle things, but generally its a jump in with both feet type of thing for that. We do teach a bit of Oracular Trance in the liana year. Its a type of divine channelling for us and we have used it before. I have done it many a time channelling Apollo. Often, the real art is in deciphering the message. Like in times gone by, I am sure that was the challenge as well :)

[kyrene-myste.livejournal.com]

I've done what has been described as "full on invocations" before, but I think it'd be great to swap notes and get training with people who can help me to improve those skills and teach me things I haven't heard of before.

I've learned quite a bit working in groups and I agree that you can learn a lot in that regard, but you can't possibly run into every scenario within a small group. Some, yes, but not all. Hence why I want to get more formal training.

[ravendreamer.livejournal.com]

I agree. In a small group you dont really cover all the bases and scenarios. Its worked ok for us in Spira as in the entire organization we run into alot of scenarios (although we still run into some new stuff here and there :) ).

We should totally compare notes sometime. We do what you would call "full on invocations" throughout the year. At this point I have probably done about 45 of them....I stopped counting a few years ago. Each month is a different deity combination. I used to do this with Apollo in the summer months and Dionysos in the winter. Now we have someone else that does the Dionysos ones. I have also "invoked" Artemis, Selene, and Hekate. We have had alot of other ones in our grove though that have been done: Hermes, Eos, Isis, etc. We call it a "drawing down" although I do believe its different from what the Wiccans call this. I have seen the wiccan ones where it is scripted. I find that weird....but thats me. If you ask about drawing down (spiric style) on the spiracanada yahoo group you will get alot of info there...