Episode Eighty-Three: The Byte - Diana Paxson

Diana is: a founding member of the Society for Creative Anachronism, a prolific author, and was also at the forefront of paganism in California as it developed in the 60s & 70s. Listen in on how the Oakland firestorm of 1991 was no match for the magic her community created.

Transcript

Welcome to episode 83 of Bite-Sized Blessings.

I missed an episode last weekend.

I was traveling and I thought,

You know,

I'm gonna skip this week.

I have a little too much on my plate so I'm gonna take a weekend off.

So I hope you all can forgive me.

But I'm telling you right now,

This episode,

Episode 83,

And my guest,

Diana Paxson,

It's so worth the wait.

She is an extraordinary and fabulously dynamic human being.

For one thing,

She's a prolific,

Prolific writer.

She has written pretty much everything you can conceive of.

Novels,

Non-fiction,

Articles that have appeared in so many different publications.

Her novels include Lady of Light,

Lady of Darkness,

The Earth Stone,

The Paradise,

The Wind Crystal,

And so many more.

To find out more about her writing and about her creations,

Go to her website at diana-paxson.

Com.

There you can find out so much more about this fabulous,

Fabulous human being.

Another thing,

She was one of the founding members who created the Society for Creative Anachronism.

And this is what that group's all about.

And I'm reading from their website.

The SCA is an immersive history group where you,

Dressed in clothing of the period,

Can experience tournaments,

Royal courts,

Feasts,

And dancing,

And learn how to recreate crafts and skills of the pre-17th century world.

And just to give you kind of an idea,

The SCA is famous and well-known worldwide.

So Diana was one of the founding members of this group.

And I'm just so beside myself that I get to interview her for my podcast.

Also in this episode,

We talk about the Oakland Firestorm of 1991.

And to give you more of an idea of just what we're talking about,

It was a relatively small fire.

It burned a little over 1,

500 acres.

But it was so destructive and so out of control.

It killed 25 people and injured 150 others and destroyed almost 2,

900 homes,

As well as hundreds of apartment buildings.

And the economic loss was estimated to be around $1.

5 billion.

So when we talk about it later in this episode,

In regards to one of the miracles that's happened in our life,

You kind of get an idea of what we're talking about.

And finally in this episode,

Near the end,

We talk about a subject that I'm pretty sure most of my listeners haven't heard of.

Irracular safe.

And what Wikipedia says,

Because they're so much better at explaining what this means,

Wiki says,

So now you know.

When we're talking about it later in this episode,

You know what we're talking about.

And so now,

Without further ado,

My interview with Diana Paxson.

When I was at Mills,

There was a Mills chaplain who was also a sociology professor.

And he had been raised by missionaries in China and been ordained as a Methodist minister.

But his views rose,

So to speak,

And he got an additional ordination as an Episcopal minister.

And he was the first priest I had ever seen who worked with energy.

You could tell.

And he also,

In his sermons,

He explained the symbolism,

And I love symbolism.

And then he would do the mass,

Basically,

And you could feel something was going on there.

And I went,

Oh,

Right,

That's where it's at.

Well,

I would love to hear any stories of magic or miracles that you want to share.

It can be one,

It can be several,

Whatever you feel comfortable sharing.

Actually,

I can talk about how we got our house.

Among all these pagans that I ran into,

Remember it was the 60s,

My husband and this other guy had read Stranger in a Strange Land at an impressionable age,

And were blood brothers.

People who started the SCA,

There was this whole group of us,

And everybody started pairing off.

And so when my husband and I got together and his blood brothers,

The writer Paul Edwin Zimmer,

And we formed a household,

Which included Paul's mother,

Which was good when the babies started coming along.

And we had been renting a house,

And we needed,

The landlady wanted it back.

And we were looking for a place that would be big enough for two couples and two children and one older person,

And I think there were two other people who were living with us at that point.

One day my sister-in-law comes down,

Comes home and says,

There's this house for sale.

I said,

We cannot buy a house,

We have no money.

I was working at the YMCA,

She was working as a clerk,

Don and Paul were both trying to sell stories,

And she said,

Well,

Let's go look at it.

And it was an estate sale,

Which meant you had to put in a bid.

We saw it and it was big enough,

And the living room was huge enough to waltz in,

Which is how we tested houses in those days.

And we told the community,

Well,

There's this house,

But you need a down payment.

And people started turning up and saying,

Well,

I have a spare thousand,

I'll loan it to you.

So the community kind of came up with the money and we put in the bid,

And you're supposed to put in a sealed bid to the judge.

This was 1971.

The house was listed at 40,

000.

This was 1971,

When I think by that point gasoline was about 35 cents a gallon.

So just put it in perspective.

So there was still a lot of money.

The process was you were supposed to work with a real estate agent and then submit the bid.

Well,

The real estate agent's mother was the secretary of the judge,

And she told him somebody else went directly to the judge,

And their bid is higher than the people you're working with.

So he went and took out a loan for a second mortgage for us.

And so we put in a revised bid and outbid the other guys.

So we ended up with this 15-room house,

Which was many things did not work,

Because the owner,

Previous owner,

Had been an antiques dealer who lived here with his wife,

And then his wife died and he just lived here and then something broke,

He just didn't use that room anymore.

So some of the ceilings were falling in and as we discovered the first winter,

The heater did not work.

And within about 10 years,

We were paying less on the monthly mortgage than most people were paying for apartments.

And so we have been able to support a large family ever since then and become like the community center,

Because 30,

40 people fit easily into the living room.

And for memorial services,

We've occasionally crammed about 100 people,

Hanging them from the chandeliers,

But still.

I feel that we have this kind of obligation to be here and maintain it,

And just about every kind of pagan tradition has had rituals here at some point.

In just about every room in the house,

There is at least one God statue.

And when the Oakland firestorm happened,

And I think that was in 1991,

We actually had to evacuate.

And one of our friends managed to sneak up into the evacuated area and redid the tape on the answering machine,

Because it would completely fill with people calling from all over the world,

Wanting to know if Greyhaven was still there.

And in fact,

Although down in the next block,

Three houses caught on fire and burned,

Our neighborhood did not burn.

I consider having and keeping Greyhaven a miracle.

I was going to say with that story about the firestorm,

It almost seemed like the house was protected.

Oh,

Yeah.

Yeah.

And well,

We had people from all over the world trying to protect it.

And earlier on,

At one point,

Somebody was trying to be positive energy and called us up and said,

Look,

Can you adjust your wording?

Because everything is bouncing off.

And we went,

Oh,

Right.

OK.

Yeah.

So let us restate this as we are open to all blessings.

Yes.

Just for that stuff gets bounced.

That's really fascinating.

Your stories are so interesting.

And I think it's also really intriguing,

At least it is for me,

Just to hear the stories about what was happening in the 60s and 70s.

And just to you were asking about miraculous things in a regular safe.

And I have trained a lot of people over the years and everyone I know who practices as a serious.

I has had at least one answer in which she or he used information that they could not have gotten by any normal means.

So I don't know about prophecy,

Because my experience is that,

OK,

You have the three norms.

There's words,

Which is everything that was laid down when you were born.

Things you're stuck with time,

The place,

The genetics.

There is verdandi,

Which is the present participle.

And we live in verdandi.

But that's the I.

N.

G.

We are being schooled is not what has to happen.

It's what will probably happen as the base on the as the result of all the choices that everybody is constantly making.

What we don't get in safe is this is the future.

The best we can do is this is the most probable future that I can see.

Or sometimes I see three paths.

If you go down,

This one is likely this and so forth and so on.

However,

In terms of imagery and facts,

In many cases,

Telepathy,

Absolutely.

And possibly reading,

Reading history,

Reading the past.

And one one friend had somebody wanted to talk to their dead father.

And she had information about the father that the son did not know,

But that his mother confirmed when he talked to her.

Even when it's just very superficial.

A woman asked,

I'm considering buying a house and I'm considering several properties.

Which one should I choose?

This does not give the seer very much to work with.

This isn't priming the pump in any way.

The seer,

After a rather long pause,

Says orange.

And clearly the seer doesn't know what that means.

Everybody else is going,

What?

It turned out that the woman had color coded her choices.

So everybody has at least one story like that.

That I find very,

Very interesting.

Thank you so much for listening to Episode 83 of Bite-Sized Blessings.

And to learn more about my fabulous and creative guest,

Diana Paxson,

Please visit her web page at diana-paxson.

Com.

There will be a link to her website on my website under the episode's show notes.

I need to thank the creators of the music used in this episode.

Frank Schroeder,

Music L.

Files,

Alexander Nakarata,

Chilled Music,

Brian Holtz Music,

And Sasha End.

For complete attribution,

Please see the Bite-Sized Blessings website at bite-sized-blessings.

Com.

On the website,

You'll find links to all sorts of goodies to Diana's website.

On the treasurers page,

You can find a couple of her books and a few other items that we talk about.

I try to keep that updated as much as possible.

But you'll find all sorts of good stuff on the website.

So be sure to check it out.

Thank you for listening.

And here is my one request.

Be like Diana.

Live your life to its fullest.

Be ever open,

Be ever creative,

And be ever open to the mystery.

.