Paths ’17

Hearth Path

with Mauve and Heather

What is your relationship to nourishing yourself?  To nourishing others?  Hearth path is about nourishment magick.  And it is also about agency and change.  We’ll practice sacred eating and altar making. We’ll anchor camp through preparing five all-camp meals during path time. We’ll sit with Real Compost and with our bodies’ deep knowing.  We’ll share–recipes and poetry and knife sharpening skills.  We’ll invite our spirited younger self; maybe yours was one who delighted in food, maybe not.  We’ll sit with both.  We’ll notice the water our body needs to sustain us and invite its healing powers.  All the while feeding, feeding, feeding each other.

What are the ingredients of camp for you?  Do you come to camp to hold camp with other campers, de-centralizing the work of food and dishes and compost so it can be easily held by all?   Is there a part of you that wants simply to be a consumer?  Challenge yourself to find out.  What path can we find together through the dissonance?

Whether or not you join hearth path, please bring a written recipe to join the rich brew of food knowledge and wisdom that exists in the free camp community.  While this is a path requiring some physical labor, we are enthusiastic about welcoming campers of all abilities and neurologies. If you are a responsible younger pixie camper interested in being in hearth path, please ask your grown-up to check in with hearth path facilitators Heather or Mauvelous. We’ll also be going on an optional field trip that includes a short car-ride, hike, and naked people swimming. The first 19 people to join Hearth Path get a ceramic spoon made by Hearth organizer Jaz!

New Moon

with Catkin and Michaela

new moon culture is a co-created magical space in which layers of interaction and reception unfold…ancient magic alive in new forms, this wisdom has been inside you since the beginning……you have always known it, you have felt this interconnection woven throughout your dreams and thoughts and body, bodies of your ancestors. body of the earth…reconnection with the natural world…what does it mean to listen, to follow your intuition, go where you feel pulled…there is no prescription, no one way, no right or wrong…this is an experiment in the decolonization of magic…all of you is welcome…what you’re bringing is needed…whatever you bring builds the song

the wisdom of your blood flows inside.

the whispers on the wind point the path.

seek nothing. open unto all.

listen. breathe.

remember you have all you need to see.

listen. breathe.

return to the body.

remember your roots sinking deeply in.

trust. open.

listen. breathe.

give thanks. give praise.

pray with hands, hearts, legs.

the body awaits remembering.

she calls. she speaks.

listen. breathe.

Pixie Path

with Aleph Ayin and Alea Milo

This year the Pixie path will be discovering the what’s, why’s and how’s of oil. What is it made of? How is it made? Why is it being abused and used in the ways it is? How do we honor oil? How do we honor the earth while using oil? What things can we Pixies do to help bring more awareness to our family and friends about oil and the earth? Also this year the Pixies will be interacting and intersecting with the POC Healing path. We’re especially exited to see more witches and pixies of color this year and explore the beauty, intricacy and necessity of intergenerational work in respects to racial justice, dismantling white supremacy and magickally tending the earth. AND… lots of stories, games, swimming, spells and arts& crafts. All campers of all ages are welcome on the Pixie path. Bring an open heart, a curious imagination and your own special magick! See you soon!

Rooted in Love: Magic and BIPOC Self-Care

with Hard Eyes and Indomela

This path is by and for Black, Indigenous, People of Color only. Mixed folks are welcomed in this space. In an intimate collaboration we will explore where magic meets healing. Our settings and activity level will be determined by what feels accessible to the group and likely outdoors in a shaded area. Participants are invited to engage in movement, body and energy work, ritual creation, magic sharing, boundary work and more. This path is open to folks of all levels of magical experience who are 18 years or older. There will be one day of collaboration with the Pixie Path. We acknowledge BIPOC folks who may choose a different path this year but want to engage with members of this path will still have that opportunity during affinity group time.

Iron Pentacle

with Moss and Rose May Dance

The Iron Pentacle is both a meditation and a way of running energy through our bodies.  The Iron Pentacle is a powerful tool of personal transformation found in the Reclaiming and Feri traditions of witchcraft. The purpose of this tool is to help us claim our birthrights of sex, self, passion, pride, and power, and to come into  healthy balance with these energies in our own life.

The Iron Pentacle is some of the deepest mystery and most fierce work offered in Reclaiming.  Prerequisite: The Elements of Magic.   The content of this class builds on each session, therefore students must commit to coming to class every day.

Oy Oil

Creating A JeWitch Revolutionary Responsa

with Devin Pastika, Jude Elf, and Susala Kay

This path brings a JeWitchy perspective to the focus of this year’s camp. What does JeWitch mean to you? How might it light our way in this time of transformation? Your voices and experiences, no matter what your lineage is or how you identify, are welcomed fully as we build community together. Join us as we discover a Jewish feminist pagan past that has been there all along. Come explore the many places in Hebraic history where Jewish is actually JeWitch.

This path will utilize word witchery and friendly scholarly debate. We’ll delve deeply into earth-based spirituality and explore a diversity of meaningful practices that sustain community. Using words, our bodies, music, and art, we will wrestle with divinity and work with the story of oil to come closer to truth, to the heart of it all, to spirit. We will find common ground in Judaism and Reclaiming: challenging white supremacy, celebrating the goddess, marking the flow of the seasons, mixing the witchy pagan roots and influences of and within Judaism, unearthing feminist and queer resistance to patriarchy, heteronormativity, and the gender binary, as well as cherishing the earth and her rich fertile soil. Join us as we deconstruct, analyze, and imagine.

What does it mean to have a relationship with oil? How might we draw on the ner tamid (eternal light) as a beacon in these confusing times? Instead of petroleum oil that fuels a devouring capitalist machine, we’ll celebrate the sacred oil at the base of the ner tamid. This will light our way, every day, through this path, symbolizing the brilliant divine presence within ourselves, much like Reclaiming honors the beautiful spirituality within each of us.

We will learn from the wisdom of our past where Jews and Witches have been faced with oppression, fear, terror, and injustice. From this past, we have cultivated courage, vision, strength, resilience and a defining commitment to freedom. Being sensitive to concerns about cultural appropriation, we’ll ask what resources of love and resilience can be found from the lives and writings of our ancestors, role-models, ourselves, and peers.

Valuing diversity and diverse voices, we welcome ALL who are called to this path. We’ll create a rich brew that can provide guidance for the story of oil. Join us in unearthing and creating a dynamic practice of earth-based Magical Judaism that activates the revolutionary heart.

Antiracist Holy War

with Heathen Chinese and Marjorie Ní Chobhthaigh

We’re in a war: a war between despair and hope, between white supremacy on one side and black and brown ancestors and descendants on the other, between empire and insurgent, uncontrollable communities. By recognizing the truth of this story and accordingly cultivating right relationship with the Land, the Dead and Ancestors, and our Gods and Powers, we can better protect all that we love. Oil is chthonic black fire that has historically been used to build up leviathan, but the time has come for that same black flame to purify, cleanse, and sweep the colonizer from the face of the earth.

This path will be a mix of teaching and learning spirit-work techniques, focused discussion, and ritual. It will engage with individual and collective cleansing, Sovereignty, race treason, the destruction of Whiteness, curses, group ritual warding, personal spirit teams, Ancestor elevation and veneration (especially the warrior and anarchist Ancestors), opening up to the guidance of Gods and Powers, spiritual preparations for going into battle, protocols for re-integrating after battle, and the role of warriors within resilient communities.

First time campers are welcome, as are children accompanied by a responsible adult. This path involves movement but is open to people of all physical abilities. It is open to those on a warrior trajectory, and to those who are not but are interested in exploring how warriorship can operate as an integrated part of community.