Celebrate Wildness: Magic, Mirth and Love on the Feraferia Path

Jo Carson graduated from the UCLA School of Film with an MFA in Film Production. She worked for 25 years in the film industry as a camera person, during which time she also served as president of "Behind the Lens," an L.A. based association of professional camera women. Her camera work may be seen in "Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas," "James and the Giant Peach," "Honey I Shrunk the Kids," "Back to the Future," "Ghostbusters," and various installments of "The Matrix," "Star Wars," "Indiana Jones," and "Star Trek," Two Clio Awards were given for her lighting and camera work in commercials. In addition to "Dancing With Gaia," Jo's directing work includes two documentaries, "A Dance for the Goddess," and the award winning "Himalayan Pilgrimage." She lives with her husband in Marin County, California. She follows an earth and Goddess-based spiritual path called Feraferia, of which she is currently the leader. Artist and visionary Fred Adams was born on February 4, 1928, in Los Angeles and grew up in Altadena, California. He studied psychiatry at Stanford University for two years, then switched to USC where he graduated with an honors degree in Cinema. He then undertook two years of graduate work in Anthropology. In late spring of 1956 he was wandering on the college campus and when he had a sudden feeling of ecstacy in the pit of his stomach. It was a feeling of certainty that God was female.About 1962 he met and handfasted his soul mate Svetlana Butyrin who was then working as a Russian translator at University of California. Svetlana was to become the co-creator of Feraferia.The idea of Feraferia began to take form and on August 2, 1967 it was incorporated as a non-profit California corporation. In 1967 the first issue of the Feraferia magazine, "Korythalia," was published as Fred and Svetlana were preparing to visit ancient holy sites in the areas around Greece and the Mediterranean. His letters home from Europe were full of messianic energy; once the ideas in Feraferia are disseminated the world will be transformed!In 1969, with Oberon Zell of the Church of All Worlds, Fred convened the Council of Themis which attained a membership of many of the then current Neo-Pagan groups, communicating by means of CAW's Green Egg magazine. Feraferia was also featured in books such as Drawing Down the Moon by Margot Adler and The New Pagans by Hans Holzer.In the early 1990's Svetlana bought a beautiful home surrounded by woods in Nevada City, California, which she set up as a temple, and Fred joined her there. By 1996 they built a large labyrinth and were holding Feraferia celebrations, including a Themis II reunion of the former membership of the Council of Themis, further affirming Feraferia's fellowship with the greater Neo-Pagan movement.Svetlana's continuing poor health drew critically on Fred's strength as he cared for her, and he died of melanoma on Saturday, August 9th, 2008 at the age of 80.