The Pagan Purge, Day I

What started as a dinner conversation became something incredible. You may recall from a previous post that our friend Tim has this amazing ability to turn ideas into reality. This New Year's Eve was no exception. Scratch that; it was, in fact, quite exceptional.

A few months ago we were having dinner with the Burleys (possibly a few martinis were involved as well) and the subject of the New Year party came up. I thought it would be a cool idea to host our own version of Burning Man. A scaled down version of course with a lot less in the way of mind altering substances. :)

Over the few weeks leading up to New Year's Eve, Tim would briefly mention "the fire" and not much more would be said.  Little did I know that his creative and engineering juices were flowing (although I should have known, since this is how he operates).  Two days before NYE, Tim calls to tell us that he is coming over with "some materials" for the fire.  Sure enough, he shows up with McKay (fabulous son #2) and they proceed to empty his truck of wood, plastic, debris, etc.  Piles of stuff from Tim's barn.  It was a lot of material. What was this man planning?!

The next morning, he and McKay returned to begin the work.  Tim explained the concept that he had fashioned using a combination of myths, ideas and conversations, including a Latin tradition called 'Año Viejo' that his daughter, Stevie, had learned about while in Ecuador.  This, and our previous dinner conversation about Burning Man, led us to the idea that our ceremony should be an homage to the Earth Goddess (I believe that was Tim's idea, 'cause well, women are awesome!)  The plan was as follows:

The physical concept would be modeled after this form.

The spiritual concept was a marvelous blend of Pagan rituals. He landed on the following: The fire would burn in two stages.  During the first stage, the exterior of the skirt, which would represent all of the negativity, would be burned (i.e., purged) away with the end of the old year.  Once all of the bad juju on the outside burned, the interior, which would contain positive symbols carved from wood (peace signs, doves, hearts and yin/yang symbols), would be revealed. These signs, which would be interspersed with sparklers, would slowly burn (they would be carved from hard woods, so slower to burn) and the fire would gradually make its way up the base to the Earth Goddess herself at top – eventually consuming the entire structure. People would also be welcome to toss anything they wanted to purge into the fire as it raged. 

Pretty damn cool right? This all had to happen in about 36 hours in temperatures that never rose above 10 degrees. So the work began.

The skirt was constructed first. This served as the frame/structure of the entire piece. It had to be strong, yet light enough to be carried out 500 feet to her podium (a fire pit in our field), and partially comprised of material that would ignite and burn quickly to serve as stage one.

Cardboard, since it would burn quickly, was selected as material for the outer shell.  An opening was created to allow entry to hang the carved, wooden signs, as well to toss any items folks wanted to purge.

Once the skirt was covered, McKay and Tim started work on the Earth Goddess.  The torso and head needed to be created.  Tim ended up sculpting her body using scraps of wire fencing and chicken wire -- a brilliant sculpting job of which he was quite proud (we admit the photos don't do it justice).

She also ended up with a rather impressive wing span (the wings were a surprise -- Nora thought she was a little reminiscent of "Winged Victory").  

McKay was largely responsible for the elegant design work using the burlap (notice the asymmetrical line around both the bodice and the skirt); who knew the kid could sew like that?!

While Tim and McKay worked on drawing and carving the wooden signs that would hang inside...

we started to paint words on the cardboard that represented the negative energy we intended to purge.  In between carving, Tim and McKay would toss out a word and eventually took up the brushes as well to add their own.  When we had covered every square of cardboard with at least one negative word, and hung all of the wooden signs within the skirt, we called it a night.  Tomorrow, New Year's Eve, we would add the head and carry her out to her place of honor over the burn pit.  

** Note - because of the length of this process, we're dividing the post into two parts (Day 1 and Day 2).  Also, Nora and I have both contributed to the writing of this post, so you'll probably notice a blend in tone and style.