Yesterday we (the Wiccan circle at San Quentin State Prison) did a combination Midsummer and Fathers’ Day celebration, after the noisy Juneteenth celebration in the main prison yard. We have to meet when and where permitted, and with limited access to such things as water for bathing or bonfires. (There is water for drinking.)
Most times we meet in a little storage room off the breezeway where the Roman Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and Islamic chapels are. It is literally a storeroom, with stacks of folding chairs and tables and old file cabinets. Since I’ve been going there the file cabinets were moved. At this point, it’s been cleaned out enough that we only have two tables and a bunch of stacked chairs. It’s considered to be the Minority Faiths Chapel.
Some More Ways in Which Inmate Circles Differ from Civilian Circles
In previous blogs I’ve mentioned various differences and restrictions that affect how we can work and what we can and cannot do. We can burn candles and incense, and we have created a temporary temple space.
Be advised that I will have no photos to illustrate anything that goes on inside the prison walls unless I happen to come across them on the Web.Needless to say, we volunteers are not permitted to bring cameras inside.
Neither will I be revealing any names or personal descriptions that might indicate the identity of anyone other than our supervising chaplain and myself.
Some non-witchen Pagans have criticized Witches and Wiccans who do interfaith work and in other ways represent the Pagan movement and Pagan religions in secular situations for what they consider to be witchen-centrism, for want of a better term.In the next few blogs I’ll attempt to describe the reality of the situation, and why I, ostensibly serving a Wiccan circle, in reality am about as eclectic as one can be.First, the setting…
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