Personal: Reflections from the Red Dragon Feast
Over the weekend I was able to attend my first DC Red Dragon Feast and it was such an incredible experience. This is a queer magical ritual which began on the West Coast in the 1980s. This ongoing spell was first brought into being as a way to bring hope during the early days of the HIV/AIDS pandemic with the goal of focusing this energy towards finding a cure. It has since been expanded to include all blood-borne diseases. According to Reclaiming Witch and Radical Faerie Donald Engstrom-Reese, one of the originators of the Red Dragon Feast, the Red Dragon:
“…is essential to the cures for all blood disorders. It holds all living red blood sacred. It delights in the pure clean flow of healthy blood. The Red Dragon celebrates all aspects of Life as it swims through our veins and vessels. It celebrates the sprouting, the blossoming, the fruiting, and the rotting, the never-ending spiral of life, death, and rebirth.”
The symbol of the dragon is a powerful one. In addition to the Red Dragon having made itself known in a vision to Donald Engstrom-Reese, the mythology associated with the dragon carries significant weight for this ongoing spell. The dragon is a symbol of power, liberation, and guarding that which is sacred. The color red associates this dragon with living blood turning the Red Dragon into a a figure particularly symbolic of the liberation and protection of those with blood-borne diseases.
In 1998 Katrina Messenger brought the Red Dragon Feast to Washington, DC. This is the ongoing feast which I was able to participate in. Katrina Messenger is a Wiccan mystic, radical feminist, and founder of the Reflections Mystery School. The first co-sponsors of the DC Red Dragon Feast were the Dark Flame Coven and the Sojourners Truth Congregation of Unitarian Universalists. This community associated the feast with Valentine’s Day to also recognize the gift of life and prayer for a cure as a gift of love. In 1999 the DC Radical Faeries began sponsoring the fest, and it has now transitioned being organized by Stone Circle Wicca.
The DC Radical Faeries helped to turn the Red Dragon Feast into a community fundraising event. Over the years the feast has raised money for a number of organizations. This year there was an auction in support of Baltimore Safe Haven, an organization largely led by trans POC that provides services for underserved LGBTQ+ residents of Baltimore.
Given the centrality of queerness, Queer Ancestors, and queer history to my own practice it seems a bit odd that it took me so long to encounter the Red Dragon or attend a feast. I’d actually been invited to an in-person feast in 2019 but was unable to make it, and then COVID turned the world upside down. I’m so glad I was able to attend this year, even it was still a virtual event.
I can’t quite describe what it was like to participate in this ritual. As a gay man it was just an incredible experience to be in a community with a range of folks, from queer elders to younger attendees, in which the lives and traumas of the LGBTQ+ community were centered in a way that was equal parts memorial and optimism. Some of the older folks in in the group have been attending the Red Dragon Feast since it’s inception in the DC area in 1998 - and some even participated in earlier events on the West Coast. As part of an opening event some of these folks talked about the shared history of the Red Dragon Feast and the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and interspersed were deeply personal stories about experiencing the early days of the pandemic first hand.
There were also parts of the ceremony where we named those who had passed and those for who we were asking the Red Dragon to provide comfort and a cure. In similar ritual spaces I’ve been in those leading the group would have us go around one-by-one so each person could say whichever names they wanted to share. In this ritual, however, space was held and participants were invited to speak when and if they chose to. The result was a deeply moving chorus of names, the sound of folks talking ebbing and flowing. It felt organic and alive. I was shocked by how powerful it felt to hear, and also to experience energetically within the ritual space.
The ritual also lead us through a guided journey to the Red Dragon to see what message or gift they might have for us. Journeying is a routine part of my craft and something I engage in regularly to commune with the Queer Ancestors and become closer to the land I live on so I thought I was prepared for this. I underestimated what it would be like to be tied into a spell that has been fed yearly in the DC area for 24 years, itself part of a larger spell that has been being worked for about as long as I’ve been alive. My journeys very rarely have a visual component to them, they tend to be more sensory, auditory, and engage in some degree of claircognizance. When they do have a visual component it tends to be in brief flashes.
This was one of the most vivid journeys I have engaged in. From the outset it was a very visual experience, crisp and clear in a way I’m not entirely used to. My sense of smell was also engaged which is not something that has happened before. It was an intense, visceral experience. It was also a serene and energizing encounter, too. And, as usually happens because I’m incredibly stubborn, the message I received called me on my shit.
Over the last several years I’ve stepped out of my shell and engaged in more public and group rituals, and the Red Dragon Feast is by far one of my favorite. There were moments of deep sadness and reflection balanced by laughing so hard my sides hurt. There was an honest acknowledgement of the queer experience in this world and the pain or trauma that comes with it while also holding central the vibrancy, celebration, and radical liberation of what it means to be LGBTQ+. I can’t wait for next year - hopefully in person!
