Next committee meeting: 21st February 2015

The February committee meeting will be taking place on the 21st at the Magpie Cafe, in Upwey. The cafe is very pagan-friendly and is close to public transport. 🙂

All members of the PCV are welcome to attend, and to have a say in the direction of the collective.

If you have an item you’d like to add to the agenda, please send it to pagancollectivevic@gmail.com by the 16th of February. We’ll print the agenda shortly after this date.

Committee members, If you are unable to attend, please let us know via email for planning purposes. Committee members have also been emailed out some information this week. If you are planning on attending, could you please take a look at this information before you come to the meeting in February. 🙂

A Facebook event for the meeting has been set up here. You can read more about the Magpie Cafe here.

Thanks, and we hope to see you there. 🙂

Spokes of the Wheel – Lammas 2015 edition coming soon

Spokes of the Wheel is our members only newsletter, produced 8 times a year, around the time of each sabbat. Memberships to the PCV are free in 2015. Sign up now to start receiving your issues of Spokes. 🙂

Members can also request back issues by emailing pagancollectivevic@gmail.com

Our First Meetup

Attendees of our inaugural Hills Coffee Meetup relaxing in the sunny courtyard of the Magpie Cafe.

The PCV’s first coffee meetup took place in the Dandenong Ranges yesterday, and was a great success! Thanks to committee member Sarah for organising such a relaxed and inclusive event, and to the good folks at The Magpie Cafe Upwey for having us!

These will be an ongoing gathering on the second Sunday of each month, and we’re already having so much fun that we’re discussing special events as well.

The Hills is a haven for pagans, with its beautiful old-growth forest and flourishing alternative and artistic demographic, but there hasn’t been much in the way of organised social events for Hills pagans in recent times. Magpie Cafe is a perfect venue; it has a large outdoor courtyard, shaded by a big eucalypt, with a herb garden and little waterfall fountain, and the owners are absolutely gorgeous people – and speak fluent ‘pagan’, as well as providing a menu that caters for vegetarians, vegans, low-carb folk and omnivores alike. And they do make very good (fair trade, organic) coffee.

The first meet turned out to be a small affair, due to a few last-minute cancellations, but the people who turned up were absolutely lovely, and everyone commented on what a welcoming, relaxed and inclusive atmosphere it was. And it really was! It was lovely to meet new people and share our experiences in different paths and techniques, learn from each other (we ended up bringing out a pile of scrap paper, because there was so much sharing going on; everyone went home with links and lists and book and group recommendations), and just enjoy being in the company of like-minded folk. Plans were hatched for even more upcoming special events, and we all left looking forward to the next meet.

Even if you’re not in the Hills area, please consider coming along to a future meet (we already had attendees coming from the other side of the city); we’d be thrilled to see you, and hope that this grows to become a great resource for local and not-so-local pagans.

Magpie Cafe is located at 48 Main Street, Upwey, and is car and PT-friendly; it’s just opposite Upwey train station, near the bus stops, and there’s a large car park behind it.

The next meetup will be on Sunday, the 8th of February at the Magpie Cafe from 12pm. A Facebook event has been set up for this here. We are also in the midst of organising a Ballarat meetup… stay tuned! 🙂

A January Update

Happy new year! 2015 has started with a bang here at the PCV. Here are the details of what we have going on at the moment:

Coffee Meetup: PCV committee member Sarah has been a busy bee over the New Years period organising our very first coffee meet! Thanks, Sarah! This will be taking place on Sunday, the 11th of January at the Magpie Cafe in Upwey (see the Facebook event for details). Newbies and any/all branches of Paganism welcome – this will be a friendly, inclusive meet-up, and a chance to connect and chat with other Pagan folk on a variety of paths. We hope to see you there!

Spokes of the Wheel: The Summer edition of Spokes of the Wheel has been sent out to members earlier this week. Let us know what you think! Thanks to Joy Seashell for her Midsummer article this edition. If you would like to contribute articles, artwork etc for the Lammas edition of Spokes, please send it to pagancollectivevic@gmail.com no later than Tuesday, the 27th of January 2015. We would especially love photos/brief paragraphs of what you’ve been up to in Victoria’s pagan scene. 🙂

Next Committee Meeting: The next committee meeting will be taking place on Sunday, the 21st of February in Melbourne. All PCV members are welcome to attend and have their say as to the direction of the Collective. We will confirm the time and venue shortly. You can read minutes of the last meeting here.

AGM: Our AGM will be taking place in June. Details of the exact date will be organised at February’s committee meeting.

Yule Dinner: Planning is already underway for our Pagan Community Yule Dinner, which will be taking place in June. We are hoping to finalise a venue by the February committee meeting, so that we can start selling tickets.

Membership: Membership to the PCV is FREE in 2015. In 2016, we will be introducing a small fee for members who join or renew after the 1st of January 2016. It is our intention to keep these fees low: enough to cover the cost of our website upkeep and admin. We will be discussing the details of these fees at the February committee meeting.
We are currently experiencing issues with the supplier of the stickers we use for our membership packs. As such, we have a large backlog of membership packs to post out! If you have recently joined the PCV and have not yet received your pack, don’t panic! We are hoping to have the situation rectified shortly and will keep our members posted (geddit?) on the situation.
Please note that we have added a clause on the membership page that applies to applicants outside Australia. As we are a non-profit organisation and do not currently charge for membership, we are unable to post the membership packs overseas at this time. People from outside Australia are still very welcome to join up to receive their copies of Spokes of the Wheel, however.

Website: Some changes have been made to the website. We now have a much more comprehensive links section. Please let us know if you find any broken links. 🙂

Phew! That’s all from us for now. Time for an icy pole and a nap in the shade!

The sun sets on the windfarm at Mount Mercer, Western Victoria after a long, scorching day. Photo courtesy of Josie H.