Welcome Summer Festival
A one-day gathering for the pagans of mid-Michigan, with vendors, workshops, a community meal, and a main ritual led by Oberon Zell.
We started this festival to rebuild connection after the pandemic. Four years later, it's become one of the ways we remember we're not alone.
We built this because we missed each other.
Welcome Summer Festival started as a community rebuild. After the pandemic, a lot of us were disconnected—from our friends, our circles, our chosen family, and the simple feeling of being seen.
So we made a day for it.
A day where you can wander, learn something, bump into people you know, and meet people you don't yet. The kind of day that reminds you that the world is bigger than it feels when you're isolated.
Pride Month. Chosen family.
Same thing, honestly.
We hold Welcome Summer Festival at the start of Pride Month on purpose.
Because we're here. Because we take care of our own. And because in this community, we choose who our family is—with love, with consent, and with our whole heart.
If you're an "involuntary solitary"—someone who believes in community but hasn't found it yet—this is one of the doors in.
When & Where
Lake Lansing Park South
1621 Pike Street
Haslett, MI 48840
10am - 6pm
Bring a chair, bring water, bring your people—or come and find them.
What you'll find at the Festival
Vendors
Local makers, readers, artists, and community businesses. Come browse, ask questions, and support the people building the culture alongside you.
Workshops
Short classes and discussions through the day—practical, mythic, weird, AND helpful! (The good kind of weird.)
Main Ritual with Oberon Zell
This year's main ritual will be presented by Oberon Zell, a chance to come together in shared work, not just shared attendance.
Mythic Images
Altar statuary, jewelry & books by Oberon Zell
My Penny Jar
Tourmaline's Addiction
Bringing the shiny to you!
Grand Rapids Pagan Pride
Come out for a day of Education, Ritual, Merchants, and Fellowship
Two Broomsticks
Step into the Magic - Discover what the cards reveal.
Angelus Grid Art
Healing services and art that heals
Great Lakes Fashion Boutique
The Mercury Collective
Your Mom
It's like 211 but built for and by the community!
Pagans In Need
May You Never Hunger
Dancing Mare Studio
Hummingbird Hawkmoth
Mystic Flow Massage
Intuitive & individualized care
Groundations Drums of Africa
Eclectic Treasures Spiritual Readings
Fusion Method + Creative Inspirations = One-of-a-kind Treasures
This Year's Main Ritual
Led by Oberon Zell — Wizard, Elder, one of the builders of modern Paganism
If you're a Pagan today, you've been touched by the work of this man, whether you've heard of him or not. (But we bet you have!)
Oberon Zell was the first person to publicly use the word "Pagan" to describe the emerging nature-based spiritual movement that we are celebrating today, and he spent the next six decades helping to build the meaning behind that word. He co-founded the Church of All Worlds in 1968 and published Green Egg magazine, which for years did what the internet does today to connect a scattered and isolated community. In 1970, he articulated the Gaea Thesis — the premise that all life on Earth is a single interconnected living being — two years before the scientific community arrived at the same idea.
For Welcome Summer Festival 2026, Oberon will lead the main ritual alongside his wife Lady Rhiannon, working elders in our community who continue to show up.
This year's ritual is a community weaving.
Even as the Earth brings forth Her abundance and the creatures of the world multiply, so many of us still feel isolated — cut off from each other and from the larger web we're part of. Together, we'll build that web back.
Each participant will have the chance to weave their hopes, intentions, and connections into a Dreamcatcher web the size of the ritual space itself. Bring drums, rattles, or noisemakers to call the spirits of our ancestors into the work.
The web will remain standing through the gathering — a living structure you can return to, add to, feel throughout the day. At the close of the festival, its energy will be released in the fire, sent out to spread through the broader pagan community.
Come ready to be a thread in something larger than yourself.
The Community Meal
For the last two years, we've added something simple and powerful: a community meal.
Not a potluck. Not "bring your own and hope for the best."
A meal provided for the community, so we can share the space of eating together like humans are meant to.
Sometimes the most magical thing we do is sit down at the same table.
(Details and RSVP info will be available on the registration page.)
Come back into the web.
Whether you come for the vendors, the learning, the ritual, or just to remember what it feels like to be around your people...
You're welcome here.
Stay for Sunday.
The day after the festival, we're sitting down with Oberon Zell for an intimate afternoon of stories, conversation, and book signing. Free to attend, with VIP seating available.
