Spiralheart Witchcamp

Spiralheart is a regional community within the Reclaiming tradition of earth-centered spirituality. Our members cover the Atlantic seaboard from New York south to Florida, and the bordering states to the west. We gather annually for a week long WitchCamp, and many more times a year for local workshops, core classes that teach Reclaiming Tradition principles, community rituals, organizing meetings, and others community-building events. Many local Reclaiming communities within our region also hold their own events and rituals.

Structure 

Philosophically, the Reclaiming Tradition is committed to organizing in an non-hierarchical manner that fosters shared power and widespread skill-building. We practice and teach the consensus process for running organizational meetings.

We are a group of volunteers who occasionally receive scholarships or a stipend for the events we help organize or teach. We usually meet four times a year to plan events and work on organizational matters: in September, January, March, and June. Our organization is based on “cells”, where small groups of people work on specific issues. Each cell is headed up by one or more cell chairs, for whom ultimate responsibility for the group’s work resides. Each individual cell is also encouraged to use the consensus process amongst its members, but not every action requires it.

The organizers’ main focus is on making sure our various retreats and workshops happen each year, and to aid Spiralhearter’s who wish to conduct specialized workshops. Organizational meetings are open to any Spiralheart community member who wishes to attend. Issues for proposal are called for and circulated at least two weeks before a meeting in several places, and meeting minutes are published via the same methods afterwards. As of Samhain 2011, the organizational cell structure is as follows:

• Anchor – One chairperson and, sometimes, one apprentice, who perform administrative tasks to aid in meetings, such as formulating the agenda, arranging facilitation, and keeping and distributing the meeting minutes. The chairperson also holds the legally required role of Secretary of SpiralHeart, Inc (since we are a 501c(3)).
• Camp Operations – Three co-chairpersons and other members who take care of issues regarding the venues at which our retreats are hosted, food, accommodations, registration, vending, transportation, and teacher needs. Under this cell resides the Registrar.
• Media – Two co-chairpersons, one who represents Media concerns to the meetings, and the other who takes the lead on coordinating cell responsibilities. This cell is responsible for this website, the Spiralheart Facebook page, the Spiralheart Twitter account, press releases, print advertising, brochures, and (cooperatively with the Camp Operations cell) instructions for attending camp. This cell also serves the greater Reclaiming community by maintaining the witchcamp.org site, which lists dates, locations, and descriptions for all Reclaiming WitchCamps on three continents.

In addition, there are two specialized roles not associated with a cell:

• the Treasurer, who maintains the budget and is authorized to pay the bills and receive payments for camp and the like; and
• the Representative to the Witch Camp Council, who represents the Spiralheart organizer team to the council hub for Reclaiming WitchCamps.

Temporary or ad-hoc cells are sometimes created for specific issues, which are dissolved once the issue is resolved.