The Free Spirit Alliance (FSA) is a non-profit spiritual networking organization serving the Pagan and Pantheist communities. Founded on May 21, 1986 and based in the Mid-Atlantic area of the USA, the Alliance's focus has been on presenting regional and local events where people from diverse backgrounds can learn and share ideas. Its promotional literature and website state that the organization has striven to develop a national reputation for being willing to work with often sensitive and personal issues in a friendly and safe environment.
FSA’s main event is the Free Spirit Gathering, held in June. It has also run a retreat event in the fall but this is currently on hiatus. All of these are currently held at a private campground near Darlington, Maryland. FSA previously ran Sacred Sexuality Beltane (held over five days at Beltane in May). This festival has been transferred to Turtle Hill Events.
The Free Spirit Gathering is by far the organization's largest event, attracting people from as far away as Washington, California, Hawaii, Texas, Minnesota and Canada. It is one of the oldest Pagan festivals in the country, celebrating its 25th year in 2010, and in peak years has had an attendance of over 800 people.
The Free Spirit Alliance previously hosted the unique, adults-only Sacred Sexuality Beltane Festival, which for several years following its inception was the only festival of its type in the country. Smaller in size than FSG, Beltane attracts about 350 people each spring.
FSA also sponsors several other smaller events and rituals in the Washington, DC and Maryland areas.
Famous quotes containing the words free, spirit and/or alliance:
“If we focus mostly on how we might have been partly or wholly to blame for what might have been less than a perfect, problem- free childhood, our guilt will overwhelm their pain. It becomes a story about us, not them. . . . When we listen, accept, and acknowledge, we feel regret instead, which is simply guilt without neurosis.”
—Jane Adams (20th century)
“Let us have a fair field! This is all we ask, and we will be content with nothing less. The finger of evolution, which touches everything, is laid tenderly upon women. They have on their side all the elements of progress, and its spirit stirs within them. They are fighting, not for themselves alone, but for the future of humanity. Let them have a fair field!”
—Tennessee Claflin (1846–1923)
“Ah! how much a mother learns from her child! The constant protection of a helpless being forces us to so strict an alliance with virtue, that a woman never shows to full advantage except as a mother. Then alone can her character expand in the fulfillment of all life’s duties and the enjoyment of all its pleasures.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)