Path Offerings

Sacred Pageantry:
Exploring Personal Mythology and Archetype through Art, Costume and Story
Taught ByBlessed & Casey
In this path we will delve deeply into various archetypes to explore the ways these universal energies shape and tell our personal stories. Using ritual theatre techniques and games, and ritual art creation we will explore our relationships with each other and the various roles we play in our lives. We will learn about and work with the skill of aspecting- from how wearing a mask or a costume can influence the way we interact with the world to the deeper levels of channeling deity. We will explore some of the history of theatre as political and social activism- puppetry, satire, street performance, installation art, etc. Together we will create a sacred stage for stepping into our own chosen portrayal of archetype. We will craft our own myths and tell our personal narratives. Exploring the art of “make believe” we will seek deeper truths about ourselves and our relationships. Masks, story cloaks, costume, art journals and performance spaces are some of the many ways we will dance with deity and story.

Teacher Bios:
Casey (Casendra) is a fabric artist (addict!), performer, dancer, ritual witch, massage therapist, wife and mother living on an island out to sea. She has worked in theatre both on stage and behind the scenes for many years, and is currently the resident costumer for her local professional theatre. A core thread woven through her life is the sacred art of make believe and many of her wearable creations and endeavors reflect this whimsical fantasy element. She hosts and priestesses most of the Wheel of the Year Sabbaths in her beautiful home and back yard with her husband and tribe and has performed weddings, blessing ways, funeral services and other personal rituals. She especially loves magick that involves art and story, and costume is always encouraged! Her collage art and performance background is a large part of her personal magical practice: sacred dance as movement meditation, art spells, herbal magic, singing, immersive ritual (as well as an excessive collection of tarot and lots of reading). She came to VWC for the first time in 2007 with her two wee witchlets and has returned every year since to the land and community that resonates deeply with her soul and her magick. She has taught path at VWC twice before and also had the privilege of serving on the RFT the last time Starhawk attended.

Blessed has been a magickal practitioner ever since being turned loose in the Vermont wilderness as a feral child. Their  practice continued years later, when they trained as a priestess/guide intent on supporting  folks in wilderness rites of passage journeys. This sparked in them a deep desire to continue engaging in magickal practice and rituals with and for their  wider community, so they did, creating rituals for family and friends on a purely intuitive basis.  Later, when  they found Vermont Reclaiming Witchcamp, they overlaid the structures of core Reclaiming classes offered at camp, as well as several years as a member of “Reclaiming Teachers in Training and Support” into their magickal tool box.  Blessed has engaged in camp for more than 20 years, starting as a babywitchcamper, and then moving into the roles of  both ritual facilitator and path teacher at camp, and continues to offer magick to community outside of camp, including Rites of Passage Wilderness quest journeys for queer and nonbinary folks, trauma informed ritual tattooing at Shady Lady Tattoo Parlour, and supporting rituals by and for community in the Montpelier area. Blessed is a mixed media artist who also does tattoos and illustration design. Her primary artistic focus for the path proposed will be mask making and mixed media puppets and props. Also whatever else hops of of the magickal hat. Who knows?

Pentacle of Pearl/Time Magic:
Taught by Claudia Manifest & Chelidon
This path will be grounded in the core curriculum of the Pearl Pentacle, weaving its teachings directly into this year’s camp theme. Given the pressing realities within our local, national, and global communities, we will place a strong emphasis on the Pearl's deep ties to activism. Alongside this core work, we will explore Time Magic. Drawn from Claudia's personal practice and relationship with Time Deities, this aspect of the path will help us partner with the entity of Time, transforming it from a source of stress into a powerful magickal ally for our daily lives and our collective work.

Teacher Bios:
Claudia Manifest is a NH Witch, Reclaiming Initiate, who loves gardens and kitchens, healing circles and Tarot, working the magics of the Elements, Iron and Pearl Pentacles in my daily life, Time Magic, and above all teaching others to do and live in this wonderful work. Lots of life and teaching experience but always wanting to come to the work fresh and excited and with beginner mind energy so I can facilitate learning and growth in others as well as myself.

Chelidon is a passionate lover of the bardic arts, including the skills of word, rhythm, story and song, and he holds deeply sacred the creation of time and space for the infinite diversity of truths to be shared. He believes that we each carry and live unique tales -- in sharing our stories through drum, voice, ritual, music, or other Art, we listen and learn from our ancestors, and add our delicious richness to the Great Tale of which we are all a part. There is no audience in life... He is a sometime heretical trickster, and an acolyte of the power of paradox and the wisdom of cunning foolishness, and his other loves include history and mythology, herbalism, brewing and alchemy, and art crafted with trees, cameras, metal, stone, words, chocolate or pixels. He will often be found geeking enthusiastically about most anything across the range of myth and magic, science and technology. Much of his creative inspiration comes from the ferocious, delicious and lascivious beauty of nature, especially the wild woods of New Hampshire, where he lives in intentional community with much-beloved family, on deeply magical land they delight in sharing with others for workshops, classes and camps. Chelidon has been teaching magic in the Reclaiming tradition at Witchcamps and many other events for more than twenty years, and pulls his own spiritual and magical craft from a long living chain of heritage, study and practice. Among his personal truths are that it’s all made of love (and crafted in Art), there is plenty of time, this is not a metaphor, and we are never alone in this mirthfully reverent seeking and yearning. God Herself invites us to "sing, feast, dance, make music and love" — and live in the ecstasy of spirit, and joy on earth. So mote it be.

Re-wilding: Regenerating the Elemental Self
Taught By Amy, Beth, Betsy, Cyd, Tim & Wendi
With trance, music making, somatic movement and explorations, sacred mudding rites, and an exploration of the forest around us we discover our Wild Selves and grow our connection to the Sacred Grove. In this path, we will explore, experience and play with Elemental Self, using the sacred rites of decomposition, decay, re-generation and re-birth. As Robin Hood and their merry co-conspirators left their old lives behind, we shed that which no longer serves and re-member our Wild Self. We will awaken our own elemental knowing and move into community with fuller expression. We will rekindle what it is to be embodied and part of the sacred tapestry of life.

Teacher Bios:
Amy first attended VWC in 2001 and then faithfully for many years, both as an organizer and a camper. In the last decade, life circumstances meant fewer years at VWC, yet some of her deepest beloveds are from this adventure and have kept her connected to this community. Amy loves movement-based learning, neuroscience lover, recognizing the miracle and magic of our human bodies and of our natural world. She prays best when dancing.

Beth (Virgo/Pisces Moon/Capricorn rising) began as a solitary witch in her teens, joined the Reclaiming tradition 46 years ago after recognizing herself within the pages of The Spiral Dance. A lifelong political and environmental activist, her undergraduate work was in botany, forestry and environmental sustainability. Beth’s continuing passion is ensuring a future where the earth and all beings thrive. She has been part of the Vermont WitchCamp community since 1995. She lives at the forest edges.

Betsy: Growing up immersed in nature, I learned to love the outdoors from my father, a beekeeper, and my grandparents, subsistence farmers. In my early twenties, I worked at Wise Ways Herbals under Mariam Massaro, where I honed my skills in plant medicine and trained others in herbal practices. My journey with Reclaiming began around the same time. Attending a workshop by Starhawk led me to Vermont Witchcamp, where I have been active for over 20 years, helping to create a community rooted in empathy. Astrologically, I am an Aquarian Virgo, deeply committed to social change with the skills to bring ideas to life.

Cyd (she/they) is a creator of art and song, and a woods wanderer…primarily on horseback. Cyd started attending Vermont Witchcamp in 2000 and has been in relationship with VWC ever since. In addition, Cyd is affiliated with the Earthspirit Community and New Moon in the Valley of Western MA. She/they have studied Faery Seership with Orion Foxwood as well as Peruvian spiritual practices with Curandero Viejo Rivas and Julie Hannon of the Four Winds Society.

Tim (he/him) has been a drummer from a young age. A participant at VWC’s first year and most years since, he has contributed to ritual music at camp and other rituals in his home community. He was one of the leaders of Trance Dance path at VWC multiple times and organizer of VWC for many years.

Wendi lives in a place that brings her into the forest daily - she is a lover and observer of all wild critters. Since 1989, she has a hands-on healing practice in the Connecticut River Valley. Wendi has been attending Vermont Witch Camp for decades, which has greatly informed the community rituals she's designed and facilitated for over 20 years.

Sherwood Bootcamp: A Magickal Toolkit for Activists
Taught by Murphy & Claire
How do we forge a Merry Band of Sherwood that will carry our activism to a joyful victory? Our path will help participants develop skills and frameworks for activism, utilizing the Robin Hood story, the embodied practice of archery, forest sneaking games, folk songs, activist spellwork, and ancestor magic to help participants discover their strengths, heal their blocks, and claim their power and agency as change-workers. You’ll leave this path with many new tools you can use in all your activist endeavors.

Teacher Bios:
Murphy Robinson is a queer and trans activist, street medic, and wilderness witch. His magical specialties include trance, divination, rune magic, aspecting, the sacred hunt, and building community. Murphy trained as a Level 2 Archery Coach in 2013, and taught archery professionally for the subsequent decade. He teaches magical skills throughout the year at the Way of the Weaver program: www.wayoftheweaver.com.

Tall Girl is an intuitive healer and energy reader who found her magical baseline in Reclaiming spaces (and radical puppet places) before spending a decade working as a train attendant on The Canadian (a transcontinental overnight train). The remote wilderness, and the pressure cooker of long shifts in close quarters, became an unexpected training ground in energetic self-protection, clearing, and working with whatever is present in a room (seen or unseen). A theatre-maker and puppeteer by training, Claire brings playfulness and deep presence to her teaching. She facilitates transformative energetic clearing work with clients through her practice Clairity Time. She has been an archer since childhood (she took bronze at the 2007 Canadian Field Archery Championships). Tall Girl is returning to VWC after a decade away, bringing everything she learned out there back home to share.

Pixie Path! 
Taught by Ponyboy
Magickal playtime ritual experience for our wee witchlets! Community building and magick designed to be accessible to our youngest witchlets, but meaningful for all ages.  Path will include stories, songs/music, movement, other creative arts and learning, and connection with the surrounding natural environment.

Teacher Bio:
Ponyboy (they/them) comes to Pixie path with 15 years of experience as an educator and care worker. Their practice is rooted in the power of relationships and focused on building a more just future for our youngest ones. They hold a master’s degree in Early Childhood Education from Goddard College in Plainfield, VT, with a focus in anti-oppression curriculum. Pony has worked with young children in a variety of educational settings including nature-based learning, Montessori-inspired environments, early intervention special education, and trauma-informed, therapeutic settings for teens. Their most favorite educational project has been their own program, The Gay Pony School for babies (aka Pony School), which touts one proud witch camp Pixie as an alumnus! Pony loves to spend time with children exploring the wild world, practicing conflict transformation, building social-emotional skills, weaving community, baking challah, talking about justice, making art, singing, and being silly. Pony is especially passionate about building learning environments that are welcoming for BIPOC, queer and trans children and families. They believe that the spaces we create for children are part of building olam haba—the world to come. Outside of education settings you can find Pony parenting their young babe, cooking, tending plants in the garden, getting nerdy about earth-based Jewish ritual and supporting local community organizing groups with conflict transformation work.