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Pantheacon: Yoga, Vodou, and Orisha
Feb. 21st, 2007 12:17 amI'm sitting here with my cat on my lap, wanting to get my 31 pages of handwritten notes before writing this up. However, he seems so happy, I can't bear to disturb him to fetch them.
Saturday, 9 a.m., Yoga
I've been doing yoga for a little over a year. When I started, I couldn't put my right ankle on my left knee (while sitting) and keep it there without some support -- kind of hard to do the impromptu laptop stand.
While Dorie led us through a lot of the usual yoga postures, one thing missing (especially for Pantheacon) is any sort of lead-in about why one does yoga. This exact sort of thing remained my frustration throughout the convention.
( Cut for Iyengar neepery. )
The 11 a.m. panel I went to was about Vodou, specifically as practiced in Haiti, and was a summoning of the Lwa Danbala-Wedo and his wife Ayida-Wedo, which are the more benificent (and therefore less frequently dramatized in Hollywood) spirits.
( Cut for Vodou discussion. )
At 1 p.m., I went to Orisha 101. Orisha is the religion of the Yorùbá and primarily found in Nigeria and Benin. The Orisha are not deities; Orisha is a monotheistic religion, with Oldumare as the deity and the Orishas as the emissaries. That said, one serves a specific Orisha primarily. One does not get to choose which one, either, just that it'll be one of the 401 of them.
Despite the difference in my own theology from this, I found myself very drawn to the people, especially Luisah Teish (who was not the main speaker, but who had some very good points to make during the question and answer). I sat next to a woman who'd been following the Orisha for a couple of years, who seemed like a real joy.
Thalassa's panel on Tarot will get her own entry.
Saturday, 9 a.m., Yoga
I've been doing yoga for a little over a year. When I started, I couldn't put my right ankle on my left knee (while sitting) and keep it there without some support -- kind of hard to do the impromptu laptop stand.
While Dorie led us through a lot of the usual yoga postures, one thing missing (especially for Pantheacon) is any sort of lead-in about why one does yoga. This exact sort of thing remained my frustration throughout the convention.
( Cut for Iyengar neepery. )
The 11 a.m. panel I went to was about Vodou, specifically as practiced in Haiti, and was a summoning of the Lwa Danbala-Wedo and his wife Ayida-Wedo, which are the more benificent (and therefore less frequently dramatized in Hollywood) spirits.
( Cut for Vodou discussion. )
At 1 p.m., I went to Orisha 101. Orisha is the religion of the Yorùbá and primarily found in Nigeria and Benin. The Orisha are not deities; Orisha is a monotheistic religion, with Oldumare as the deity and the Orishas as the emissaries. That said, one serves a specific Orisha primarily. One does not get to choose which one, either, just that it'll be one of the 401 of them.
Despite the difference in my own theology from this, I found myself very drawn to the people, especially Luisah Teish (who was not the main speaker, but who had some very good points to make during the question and answer). I sat next to a woman who'd been following the Orisha for a couple of years, who seemed like a real joy.
Thalassa's panel on Tarot will get her own entry.
