The House of Danu was a featured presenter at the extraordinary gathering of pagans known as PantheaCon that took place at the San Jose Double Tree Hotel over President's Day weekend, February 12th through the 15th, 2010, located on the web at http://www.pantheacon.com/09/index.php.  This year's theme was back to the basics.  Over 3,000 participants attended for a weekend of seminars on pagan traditions, hospitality suites, live music, a grand costume ball, and numerous demonstration rituals.

We had the largest contingent of Dance Macabre ever, including a harpist, violin, costumed dancers, 3 flutes and drums.
 
Sacramento Grove of the Oak, Michael Gorman, the Taliesin, Grand Yew Grove, and Croi na Gleann, pulled together a wonderful ritual.  The theme was 'Back to Basics.'  Participants were anointed and assigned a direction as they entered.  We had almost 200 participants.  SGOTO set-up directional tables where participants decorated headbands to the music of Danse Macabre, and came with magnificent directional  banners for the procession.  The procession was loud and boistress and stretched out along the entire hotel main floor which is about 2 blocks long.  The ritual again had no script, just an outline that enabled us to proceed with a brisk pace. We created a central working where they ritually focused on their 'Awareness' of the natural order where they live and their personal relationship with it: forming their intention to investigate how they live over the course of a year (see attached). Once they fixed their personal intentions, they collected a scroll from the central cauldron containing the Taliesin Quest, the Charter of Compassion (see in Forum), and a tattoo,  Michael Gorman led our spiral dancing with everyone singing the chant created by Evelie Delfino Såles Posch at our Gorsedd 2009, accompanied by Danse Macabre.  After doing our standard releasing and closing, we ended with Merry Meet as a song and dance as our ending exit processional.
 
The special ritual expert for Cherry Hill Seminary, Steve Posch, who has attended hundreds of rituals, tends to be very critical of everything he sees, but loved our ritual.  We didn't waste time explaining things, and we didn't drone on about all manner things people already knew.  We spoke from our hearts and not from a script (less was more), and our central working was focused and uniquely personal to each participant (see attached).  He loved being able to dance and sing.  It was the most fun he had all weekend.
 
The Vodou convened an interfaith ritual on Sunday focused on healing the Earth and the people of Haiti.  James represented the House of Danu, and with Karen Ehrenfeldt's suggestions, was able to make a beautiful contribution to the ritual itself.