Teaching
Team Bio's
(in alphabetical order)
Alphonsus * Asherah
* Beverly * Charles
(with Hannah) *
Crystalline Ruby Muse * Endora
* Rosemary * Sayre
Alphonsus
Alphonsus
has been an ecstatic and devoted participant in the magic making
that is VWC since its incecption (well, almost.) Each year the land
reveals new glimpses of startling beauty and the songs continue
and the conversations of the heart deepen. Passionate about teaching
and passionate about learning, he brings many years of experience
helping people feel empowered, connected and emboldened. With his
music, theater, writing, and activist background, as well as being
a close, personal friend of the 13th century mystical poet, Rumi,
Alphonsus invites, invokes, and provokes the possibility of collective
joy. Shall we?
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Asherah
Answering the
Call of the Goddess, over seventeen years ago, I found a spiritual
path that has changed my life. As my enthusiasm blossomed I found
that I touched the lives of many others. Fifteen witchcamps later,
priestessing rituals, facilitating workshops, and building spiritual
community are the major focus of my life. Retired from a 33- year
career as an elementary school teacher, I continue to love to teach.
I am a founder of Long Island Reclaiming and aim to empower others
to walk their unique path on Earth. I am grateful that the Goddess
has led me in finding ways to become more of who I know I was meant
to be, and to be on a path helping others discover how to become
who they were meant to be.
At Vermont Witch
Camp several years ago, I dedicated to being a priestess and for
me it means to continue to grow and learn so that I can better serve.
I fell in love
with Diana’s Grove in Missouri, becoming totally involved in
Mystery School and its community. I decided that it was so important
to me that I made a commitment to attend weekends there monthly
for a 3 year priestessing program studying group facilitation, ritual
arts, and community arts. Now I am part of the program staff, leading
sessions and facilitating groups, and continuing to learn more about
healthy group process, leadership, ritual and ways to heal our sacred
wounds. I am enthralled with myth and story and their potential
for magic and personal growth. I have taught classes based on the
work at Diana’s Grove – creating healthy spiritual community,
using the seven circuits of the labyrinth for personal work, and
working with the stories of Avalon, Psyche and Eros, and Tam Lin
for personal transformation.
I became a Tarot
enthusiast several years ago and have been teaching classes about
many ways to begin to find personal meaning from tarot cards, using
tarot for spellcrafting, tarot as an oracle, and reading tarot cards
for others as a priestessing art.
In addition, I
also have experienced three years of Shamanic Medicine Wheel studies
in the pre-Incan Q’ero tradition – learning tools and
techniques for personal transformation and healing. The deep respect
for Mother Earth, the ability of the earth to help us heal, the
ceremonial fires, and the underlying philosophy that we can change
ourselves and the world all are so compatible with Reclaiming Tradition.
I love to explore
the world’s natural beauty with my husband Awe. We often walk
in woods near our home on Long Island and I still am finding new
things to fill my soul with wonder. Opening a travel brochure or
world map, triggers my passion for seeing more of this earth –
and I will forever feel grateful that I have had opportunities to
visit so many places as I keep adding to my never-ending list of
“must see” locations.
Last year at Vermont
Witch Camp, I claimed my “artistic, creative self” and
have enjoyed doing collage art in a spiritual context since I returned
home last August.
I’m claiming
a new relationship with my body increasing my balance, flexibility,
and strength by taking classes in pilates, yoga, and core conditioning.
As part of my personal practice, I dedicate each year to a different
element. In March, water called me – and asked me to offer
it the gift of my learning how to swim. So I’m doing it afraid,
in a pool filled with children under the age of five, noticing my
embarrassment and fear, and determined to coordinate my breath,
my arms, my legs, my torso and to swim in deep water.
Vermont’s
magic calls to me and I eagerly anticipate becoming part of the
teaching team this summer!
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Beverly
Frederick
Beverly
has been weaving wild, heart-opening, movement and music magic and
community within the Reclaiming Family for nearly 20 years now.
Before being claimed by Pele and moving to the Big Island to found
The WisdomWay
Center of Hawaii in a beautiful old church she and her
partner Doug Orton restored in 2003, she had taught at over 20 witchcamps
in the U.S., Canada and Europe.
In
the last four years Pele has issued Beverly many challenges. The
Hawaii equivalent to her beloved California Apprenticeship Group
begun over
12 years ago is aptly named The WisdomWay Healing Group.
Beverly
looks forward to returning to Vermont Withcamp, a community
dear to her heart and her New England roots.
Her
CDâ*s of Reclaiming chants, Through the Darkness and In the
Arms
of the Wild, are still sold worldwide and can be sampled and purchased
from her website: www.beverlyfrederick.org
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Charles
The god and goddesses
have may tools of which charles is humbly one. He is a nomad wondering
the earth guided by his callings. With his backpack as his home
he traverses the continent in search of ways to serve life. This
winding path takes him deep into the wilderness and out into the
streets. Whether marching in the for justice or exploring in the
woods charles is always ready for an adventure.
As a long time
land steward of the VWC community he is excited to be serving once
again. The land on which camp is held is one of his many homes and
he love to help others unlock some of her hidden secrets.
He is doubly excited
to be working with the youth tribe this year. He have been a long
time advocate of youth at camp and am now glad to be able to support
their presence at camp. If any youth want to contact charles about
what they liked about last year, what they want to do this year
or just say hi write him at haplo9@gmail.com.
Hannah
Hannah Morgan
is a budding naturalist committed to a constant and never ending
quest for an understanding of the natural world. She grew up as
an unschooler, in rural Vermont, with goats, chickens, cats and
plenty of woods to spark her love of nature.
Hannah grew up surounded by the VWC family and spent many saturdays
at the end of camp swimming in the lake and waiting while her mom
said goodbye to her family there. She has been to VWC twice now.
Hannah completed a six month Semester program in which she skied
the length of Vermont with a fellow group of students, built a wood
and canvas canoe and traveled the Nulheagan, Clyde, Connecticut
and West rivers back to their home at basecamp. During that time
Hannah gained a love for many skills such as wood working, basket
making, carving and hide tanning. During this sacred journey she
gained a sense of belonging to the earth which she is a part of,
and began to see more clearly the paths available to share this
love and knowledge with others.
Hannah is now a student at Sterling College in Northern Vermont,
focusing on Circumpolar studies and Natural History. She lives in
a magical forest next to one of the largest white birch trees on
earth, in a canvas wall tent with her partner and two cats. They
spent the winter together, chopping wood, carrying in water, clearing
snow and playing. They are now both busy collecting wild edibles
and celebrating the change in seasons.
She will spend the summer leading trips for kids and teenagers,
in Vermont and Maine with Kroka Expeditions.
Charles has been a long time mentor to Hannah and she is thrilled
to have the oppurtunity to work with Charles in the youth path.
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Crystalline
Ruby Muse
Crystalline
Ruby Muse is a musician on multiple instruments, composer, performance
artist, poet, bodyworker, and doula. Crystalline is a student of
the Faery Faith of Ireland and of her ancestors and has been teaching
ritual arts since 1996. She is a founding member of the Reclaiming-based
Prairie Spring Teaching Circle; the Twin Cities' mystery school
The Tree and the Well Institute for Deep Cultural Studies, at which
she is the director of the Inspired and Ecstatic Arts branch; and
the annual Minneapolis Feile Brid (Festival of Brighid). Her mission
in life is to draw forth the Radiant Essence in all beings through
soulful-ecstatic expression, divine connection, cultural celebration,
and deep physical well-being. She is a Scorpio, an Appalachian-raised
girl, and a devotee of the Goddess and Sai nt Brighid and her Four
Fires.
Crystalline is blessed to share her life with two beloved partners;
five cats; and a wealth of friends, family, and community members.
In her free time she loves to experiment liberally with cooking
and food culturing, to gather and prepare medicinal herbs and wild
greens, to study and cull wisdom from the Celtic traditions, and
to sing and dance ecstatically with the spirit realm as well as
other human folk.
FFI visit treeandthewell.org
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Endora
Though
long a devotee of Uncle Arthur, image Endora’s surprise when,
sitting atop the ruins of ancient Endor, Agnes Morehead appeared
to her, a perfect pearl moon nestled between the fronds of her henna’ed
up-do. A bangled hand reached out from flowing sea-green chiffon,
and up they went to Cloud Nine where looking back down upon the
blue blue earth, she said, ‘Endora, worship Her’ –
and with a wave of her arms was gone. The things that come to Radical
Faeries when entranced! (Her Pop Chakra was too wide open!)
Endora was part
of the first years of VWC, and returns after a sad exile imposed
by his work schedule, Free at last! Free at last! Thank the Goddess,
I’m Free at last, he returns to camp to focus on ritual craft.
Living in Lincoln, Vt. with his lover Tim and his giant black poodle
Oberon, Endora teaches Contemporary Paganism, Ancient Near Eastern
Religion, and Hebrew Literature at the college level. He sure hopes,
as Starhawk has said, that ‘skeptics make the best magicians.’
A founding member of Faerie Camp Destiny, the Vermont Radical Faerie
Sanctuary, he has led beaucoup rituals in beaucoup contexts, and
believes deeply that ritual is a craft and art form. Witch Craft,
one might say. While having a personal tendency toward the hierophant
when polishing basic ritual skills, Endora has learned that at the
end of desire, it is bathing in the ecstatic love of the earth that
heals the scars of dis-enchantment.
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Rosemary
I discovered the
joys of both working with young children and creating magic
in my late teens, and the two have grown in me in collaboration
over the
last 20+ years. I have striven to bring a sense of magic to all
of the
children whom I have had the privilege of teaching and learning
from, and to
maintain the wonder and awe of childhood in myself. In addition
to my work
with children and magic, I am a mother, a gardener, an herbalist,
a cook, a
community activist, a craftswoman, and a spirit of the woods and
meadows. I
have lived with my family in Vermont for 10 years, and we are working
to
create an educational farm and possible retreat center.
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Sayre
I
live in Chicago with three cats, three bicycles, and an elm tree
named Sheela Na Gig. In the midst of the metropolis I seek for the
wild richness of the edges - the bounty of edible 'weeds' in empty
lots, the sparkling delight and generosity of urban feyfolk, conversation
with trees that have watched the city spring up around them.
My life up to this point has been a process of re/membering who
I am, and in my daily practice I journey towards integration of
my many facets of self. I work to manifest joy, mindfulness, paradox,
multiplicity, love, and compassion in what I do whether it be dreamwork,
making furniture, riding my bike, choosing, teaching, loving, singing,
sitting, stretching, landscaping, eating well, sewing, sleeping
well, or flossing. I feel that my work lies as much in how I do
things as in what I do.
I have heard many wonderful things about VT camp and am very excited
to be a part of camp this year. I am looking forward to meeting
the people and the land that make this camp what it is and to exploring
the edges of community together.
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Rights Reserved
Last update:
August 12, 2007
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