2025 Paths

We have four great paths this year!

  • Encountering the Crone in Folk- and Fairytale (by Baz, Forrestwoman, and Ostara Hollyoak). This path is a gateway into story. Each day we’ll hear, explore, and do magic around a different fairytale or folktale featuring a powerful crone figure.
  • Dancing with the Land: Ritual Arts & Energetics (by Diana Love, Ember, and Sparrow). The Witches gather in ritual, weaving energy to shape and change the worlds. Those who gather here are Witches, and also Priestexes and ritualists, world-weavers and change-makers. You are all this, and more. We all are, so none of us need to do it alone.
  • Elements of Magic: Survival and Resistance through Spellcraft. (Jon and Yarrow). Try out daily practices! Learn a spell of survival and resistance for each Element! Plan and carry out a ritual! Keep our connection alive after camp!
  • Embodied Practices of the Justice Witch (by Juniper and Tere) Embodied Practices of the Justice Witch invites us to lean in. To deepen our collective capacity to not only imagine, but to make magic from what is unfathomable. To deepen our collective capacity to navigate the chaos of change. To discern, temper, and condition our collective bodymind. To find our edge and practice in that place.

 

Encountering The Crone

Encountering The Crone in Folk- and Fairytale (by Baz, Forrestwoman, and Ostara Hollyoak).
This path is a gateway into story. Each day we’ll hear, explore, and do magic around a different fairytale or folktale featuring a powerful crone figure. Throughout the week, we’ll sample a variety of tools for entering a story, engaging its characters, and inviting response from our deeper selves. Practices we’ll play with in the course of the week include journaling and automatic writing, conversation, trance, divination, aspecting, spellwork, and opening ourselves to messages from the natural world around us. We’ll delve into each tale with curiosity, asking questions like:

  • What does the Old One in the story do that scares you?
  • What messages does she carry?
  • Does the Crone —or the story— carry a message from the Land?
  • What does she ask of us?
  • What do we ask of her?
  • What tests does she bring?
  • Is there something she’s defending? Preserving?
  • Is there something the story asks us to resist?
  • What does the tale’s protagonist gain from passing through the story’s journey? And what does the character need to accomplish to gain it?
  • How does the young character need to grow? What stands in their way? What might they be avoiding? What do they need to move forward?
  • Is there something the Old One needs to let go of? What stands in her way? What does she need?

Our aim is to integrate the stories into our bodies and spirits, come into relationship with each of the crones, and receive the wisdom the tales and the Old Ones have to offer.

 

Dancing with the Land

Dancing with the Land: Ritual Arts & Energetics (by Diana Love, Ember, and Sparrow).
The Witches gather in ritual, weaving energy to shape and change the worlds. Those who gather here are Witches, and also Priestexes and ritualists, world-weavers and change-makers. You are all this, and more. We all are, so none of us need to do it alone.

In this Path, we co-create magic with the Land and with each other to discover, acknowledge, and develop our personal and collaborative power. Building on the foundation of skills learned in Elements of Magic, this Path takes us deeper into the landscape of ritual arts and energetics. As Witches and Priestexes doing our work in and between the worlds, we know that we have a variety of tools and techniques available to us. Our tools include Grounding, Trance, Aspecting, Impromptu/organic ritual, being with the Land, building relationships with spirits of the land, theatre skills for ritual (presence, movement, direction of focus and energy, vocal projection, sacred silliness), and working with our edges.

We will develop skills for leading group magic and ritual, such as energy raising, leading trances, tuning in to the group mind, and weaving in various forms of accessibility and inclusion so that as many as possible can be empowered in the work and in community. On this Path, we will trust our knowledge, our voices, and our bodies. We know that the magic that comes through is the magic that is needed. We know that Priestexing is participatory, everyone is a Priestex whether they are facilitating or not, and we can build the skills to feel more confident taking the center and facilitating.

Our work needs all of us. The Land is calling. Join us in the forest.

 

Elements of Magic

Elements of Magic: Survival and Resistance through Spellcraft (by Jon and Yarrow).
Each day we will experiment with a daily practice — something that we can do every day to anchor us to the current of magic that is the life’s blood of the Universe. For each Element — Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and Spirit — we will learn a spell of survival and resistance. We’ll end with a ritual that you plan yourselves, and with an ongoing spell to keep us connected and active.

 

Embodied Practices of the Justice Witch

Embodied Practices of the Justice Witch (by Juniper and Tere).
Embodied Practices of the Justice Witch invites us to lean in. To deepen our collective capacity to not only imagine, but to make magic from what is unfathomable. To deepen our collective capacity to navigate the chaos of change. To discern, temper, and condition our collective bodymind. To find our edge and practice in that place.

In this path, we will walk toward what is unimaginable. Towards unimaginable violence, injustice, and threats to the Earth. Towards unimaginable connection, beauty, and collective power. As Witches, we will hone our tools of magic to shift outcomes and to defend our sacred relationships. The path will include experiences of somatic regulation, visionary trance, and personal and collective energy work.

In alignment with the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond (PISAB) principle of developing leadership, this path will deepen our capacity as anti-racist facilitators and teachers. We will also draw on the somatic work of Resmaa Menakem, the curriculum developed by DARC (Decolonizing Actions in Reclaiming Communities), and the Pentacle of the Justice Witch to build our practices and to meet the world as Justice Witches.