Facilitators ’16

Angela

Catkin

Doctor Bombay

Taurean super witch astrologer Doctor Bombay has been teaching Integral Yoga since 2001, and delights in working with astrology and earth-centered ritual skills. A key instigator of the Queer Astrology project, he’s currently developing 2016’s QA Roadshow.

Add in a degree in linguistics, some years of Alexander Technique practice, an encyclopedic jukebox of popular music … he’s full of surprises. His consulting and teaching practices include a hands-on component, foregrounding the quiet / deep of the body, alongside the verbal.

Née: Ian Waisler, 20 April 1975 in Los Angeles, at about 14:00

Fly 

I’m new to Free Camp but have been loosely involved with Reclaiming for
the last 20 years. Most recently I have taught at Redwood Magic and Teen
Earth Magic. I like ritual, drumming, and dancing with Sprit. I enjoy
reverence and connecting with the many voices of the Earth. I’m
experienced in wilderness and nonviolence, and volunteered heavily in
forest defense and other direct action during the 1990s. I live in Redwood
Valley CA where I work as a professional arborist and technical climber,
and maintained an off-grid homestead for 15 years. I have degrees in
Psychology and Early Childhood Education. I have a nine year old daughter
(not attending this camp). While at camp I seek to serve the community and
inspire youth to engage with the Magic.

Gobble

Gobble uses art, culture, magic, his voice and his body to transform space. The spell of Authority never seemed to work on him as a child, and it still doesn’t. A pursuit of freedom, self-discovery, power-with and power with-in led him to punk/DIY culture, to anarchism, to mysticism and eventually to magic. He’s read a lot of books, and done a few things. He’s on familiar terms with Chaos Magic, and learns a lot from the annoying men who write about it. He was initiated in Feri-ish magic at a popular cruising spot in San Francisco (hint: it’s near where the ravens hang out on the west end of Golden Gate Park). He’s a co-founder of the Witches of East Van (aka WOEVAN) and with them has organized dozens of private and public rituals in the Reclaiming Witchcraft tradition. He has been initiated into New Moon Magic and once paid dues to Nomenus, which kind of makes him a Radical Faery. He’s been coming to Free Camp since 2007 and has tried three times to help organize, but he hates technology and phone calls and mostly prefers to be on the ground, face to face, arm in arm. The world is messy and so are the solutions.

This year he’ll be co-facilitating A Path in Tactical Magic. He’ll be bringing years of experience organizing groups of people in mostly urban (and occasionally suburban) environments to fight against the spells of empire, poverty, police violence, racism, prisons, oil pipelines, spectacle and war… and to fight for things like housing, democratic work-places, safer spaces, cultural freedoms, social justice, peace and freedom for all living things.

Jude Elf

…lives for paradigm shifts, lightbulb moments,ecstatic transformative ritual and deep personal magic. She rejoices in sharing her passion for connecting to the divine through music, dance, and song.

A life long activist, she loves the alchemy of mixing magic with the work of the great turning, combining spell work, stewardship, egalitarian group process, non-violent action, and emancipated sexuality.

A song catcher, fire spinner, green witch and moon dancer, she teaches magic and sacred sexuality, and offers pastoral services including support with rites of passage.

She has taught at, and helped organize, Reclaiming Witchcamps throughout the U.S. for over a decade. A member of Kidsfest, she helps to facilitate large public rituals that gather the community to turn the wheel and honor the seasons. She lives at Milkweed Farm, a community in Northern Vermont where she delights in the fey and elements of nature and Mysterious Creatures Art Collective in Oakland fomenting beautiful revolution through art and community.

Moth

Moth is a firery but humble earth being who is fascinated by stars, reflections, and triple rainbows. The forests of cascadia provide a safe place and a home for Moth wherein it stories of ancient webs interlock with those of savage destruction. Moth has been working as an earth activist since 2001 being part of many direct action campaigns and beautiful time in the forests and the urban landscapes. Moth begin deepening their reclaiming practices after the 2009 free camp at Twin Lakes. They have been attending the camp ever since, expanding their knowledge of ritual experience and resistance magick. This year they are bringing their skills as a teacher to share and develop a path in tactical magick, a daunting yet longed for part of free camp.

-Mothillius the sillius

M

Made of smokesongs, woven webs, stardust and other things she doesn’t yet fully understand but nevertheless is fascinated by, M. sometimes stumbles, sometimes crawls and often sprints along a Scorpio moonlit spirit path.  She is well familiar with all the feels, and brings a calm-but-rowdy collectivizing approach to both magic and organizing.  This will be her 8th year at camp, and she hopes to chart a course through Tactical Magic with those of you who also excitedly find themselves at the intersections of magic and active resistance to empire.

Rylee

Rylee is a writer, singer, dancer, weaver, and one who aspires to hold on to hope even in the most trying of times. She feels most magical when drinking in the song of the forest and sending it’s melodies out on the winds. Coming from a background of herbalism and flower essence magic she is also a recent graduate of Blue Iris Mystery School. This will be Rylee’s 3rd time attending camp since 2012 and is the 2nd year that they have organized with camp. They are excited to be facilitating a path for the first time. She secretly wishes she could bring her dog to camp.

Teri Starnes

Greetings Free Cascadia WitchCamp! I am Teri Parsley Starnes, here to introduce myself to this community and to those who pop by the website wondering about this camp. I am curious too. This will be my first time facilitating at FCWC and I am thrilled to discover more about this camp, community, and wild land. My home camp is Winter Witch Camp in the upper Mississippi River watershed region. I live in Minneapolis. For the past few years there has been a wonderful exchange of inspiration between FCWC and WCC. I am so honored to be part of that cross-pollination this year.

I’ve been involved with Reclaiming Tradition since the mid-80s. I call myself a Hag—a witch that does what needs doing. I’ve focused my work in Reclaiming mostly in the bioregion where I live. I am passionately devoted to community in all its essential, delightful, and challenging forms. I am a student of what makes a healthy community. I learned a lot about this subject from Diana’s Grove Mystery School and continue to use that insight, as I notice how it fits and needs to adapt to Reclaiming cultures. (There is more than one Reclaiming culture.)

Co-created, community-inspired ritual is important and I really look forward to seeing what we do together at this camp.

My magic: I am a pragmatic hedge witch and an astrologer who thinks the sky is a mirror that holds the stories of the cycles and seasons of the Earth. My goal with astrology is to use this Earth intelligence to help re-center myself and others in our lives. My guiding image comes from a poem by Rilke:

If we surrendered
to earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.

For me, a Witch Camp is a revival experience co-created by those who show up—humans, Mysterious Ones, and Beings of the Earth. It is where I get strengthened in my core beliefs and expand into new possibilities.

This year’s camp excites me. I am devoted to Water as a student and priestess of this precious and powerful being. I look forward to strengthening this relationship and getting information about what I need to do next in service to Water.

My growing edge: as a 61 year-old who hasn’t tent camped for about 20 years, I am excited and a little scared about a week in the woods. I expect this week will be a transformative experience. It is good to push edges.

Wren

Zay Eleanor Watersong

Zay Eleanor Watersong is a water witch, activist, and dedicant of the Lady of the Lake since the time she found herself visiting the Chalice Well in Glastonbury on a full moon.  She became part of the flow of the Living River in Miami in December 2003 while skipping the last week of her senior year of college.  She credits the Pagan Cluster, Earth Activist Training, and Reclaiming Tradition as experiences that have been profoundly educational and influential, launching and supporting a career of water activism.  She works closely with the indigenous peoples of her area to fight for the health of local waterways, from banning fracking in NY to remediation of the Onondaga Lake superfund site.  Her first witchcamp was Free Cascadia Camp in 2006, then known as Free Activist Witchcamp. Her east coast community is Vermont Witchcamp, Reclaiming Teachers in Training and Service, and Reclaiming the Radiant Wild, a Reclaiming community based in Syracuse, NY.  She teaches magical activism and Reclaiming core courses and looks forward to sharing and exploring the magic of water and activism at Cascadia. She lives in a collective of two houses, 11 adults, one baby, two dogs, and 20 tomato plants.