Emberglow is Almost Here - One Week Until Ticket Sales End

The days are shortening. The air is turning crisp, windy and cool... all signs that the veil is thinning. In less than two weeks, we’ll gather beneath the pines for Emberglow 2026, the Gulf Pagan Resiliency Project’s Samhain festival. Here’s everything you need to know before you come.

Three Days, Two Nights, One Sacred Descent

(full schedule here)

Friday begins with our communal gathering: dinner, then our opening ritual in the campground yurt.

Saturday is the heart of the weekend. Expect classes, workshops, communal meals, a grief circle, death cafe, and community conversations, along with our Samhain rite (a dance with death). We’ll stay up late circling the bonfire, drumming out the spirits, and dancing in celebration of the thinning of the veil and our connection to the spirits and ancestors. You’re invited to bring a potluck dish for Saturday’s dinner, and we especially encourage dishes inspired by your departed loved ones.

Sunday closes the weekend with Making Jack’s Bed, where we lay our Beltane Oak King

(Georgi Gardiner), the spirit of summer vitality, to rest.

Our 2026 offerings include:

• Admiring Decay, the Composting Way with Jordan Bantuelle, founder of the All You Need Institute

• Death Cafe with Helen H., a funeral service professional

• Grief Circle with Kezia Vida, a dreamwork practitioner and mental health counselor, and Sable M., a Certified Grief Educator.

• Eat the Season with Bahia Nightengale, on local seasonal foods and attuning to the harvest

• Broom Renewal: The Making of a Samhain Broom with Ty Siddiqui, where we’ll re-dress an old wedding broom for the community and make it our official communal Samhain broom

Your registration also includes all your meals (except Saturday's potluck and any kinship meal you'd like to offer), love offerings, swimming in the gigantic all-natural pond (full moon weekend y'all), and access to DeSoto National Forest.

Last Minute Admission is the final pricing window, and it closes on October 19. No tickets will be sold after that date, and none will be sold onsite. If you’ve been waiting, this is your last call.

The Gulf Pagan Resiliency Project prices tickets on a sliding scale rooted in mutual aid. The goal is to keep the festival accessible while fairly supporting organizers, facilitators, artists, and event costs. There are three levels:

• Solidarity: For community members who struggle to meet basic living expenses, lack reliable family or financial support, find that paying for events creates stress, or face systemic economic or social barriers. If several of those feel true for you, this level is for you.

• Reciprocity: The standard shared cost of the event. Choose this if you can afford to attend, even if it takes some planning or sacrifice.

• Abundance: For those who are financially comfortable and can give beyond their own attendance. Your contribution subsidizes access for others.

These levels are about honesty and care, not judgment. Your ticket helps keep events accessible, pay facilitators and organizers fairly, maintain gathering spaces and supplies, cover operating and insurance costs, and build toward a permanent public Pagan space for retreat, ritual, and hurricane evacuation. Emberglow is a rain-or-shine event, and attendees must be 21 or older.

Every cabin and indoor sleeping space has been reserved. Everyone attending needs to bring their own tent and camping supplies. Plan for a real camping weekend: shelter, bedding, lighting, weather gear, and anything else you need to be comfortable in the woods in late October. Our Leave No Trace camping guide, written by our friend Traci V.W. (Pocket), will help you pack and prepare.

Emberglow runs on community. Volunteers get in for only $45 aand help fund a cause that benefits all of us. We still need:

• Check-in and parking (2)

• Fire stewards (2)

• Safety stewards (2)

• Land steward (1)

• Setup managers (2)

• 
  

Volunteers agree to arrive by Thursday at noon and stay through cleanup on Sunday. Visit wyldfirehunt.com/volunteer to sign up.

Preparing nourishment for others is sacred work, and we’re looking for cooks to help with this year’s kinship meals. When you register, let us know you’re willing to prepare a meal for the community, or reach out through the Food & Beverage page at wyldfirehunt.com/fnb.

Emberglow takes place at the Burrow Nature Center at the All You Need Institute, a nature-based experiential learning, living, and reflection center in the heart of the Gulf South. The Institute stewards 111 acres of pristine gopher tortoise and lichen habitat, including upland xeric forests and bottomland hardwoods, on ancestral Chahta (Choctaw) land.

This land is cared for. Founder Jordan Bantuelle, a biologist, has spent years restoring the uplands to pine savannah through prescribed burning and sustainable forestry, plus he helps sustain the gopher tortoise population and the gorgeous otherworldly lichen that permeates the forest floor. The result is towering pines, a crystal-clear natural pond, quiet trails, and a stillness that is hard to find so close to the city. The Burrow also runs a Forest School that has nurtured children’s connection with nature since 2020, along with programs in permaculture, foraging, and land stewardship. It is exactly the kind of place where a weekend about death, decay, and renewal belongs.

If you fall in love with it, and you will, you can book your own stay, attend a program, volunteer, or become a member at allyouneedinstitute.com.

Get your ticket before October 19, pack your tent, and come sit with us at the fire.

Ty Siddiqui

The Gulf Pagan Resiliency Project

Questions? wyldfirebeltanehunt@gmail.com