Here is a separate page with the descriptions of our Paths at Camp. See Teacher and Ritual Arts Team bios and photos below.
Intention
We are the filaments
spinning mycelial healing
in the fungal fabric
of life, death and resilience.
Being a hybrid camp means there will be live streaming and connection between some onsite and online camp activities. We will have tech witches working both onsite and online to make this the best experience possible, and work on connecting us together.
Rituals will be hybrid with active involvement of campers online and those onsite. There will also be activities centering our online campers.
Here is a separate page with the descriptions of our Paths at Camp.
Teacher and Ritual Arts Team
Jynx – ONSITE (Path: Elements of Magic). My name is Jynx (she/her), and I live in the rightful lands of the Haudenosaunee, Osage, Shawnee, Hopewell, Seneca, and Monongahela peoples – what is now known as Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in Turtle Island/U.S.A. As an active member within the local Reclaiming community and Spiralheart Witchcamp, I strive to live each aspect of my life with radical authenticity in this anarcho-feminist social justice tradition as it grows in love and accountability. I have served as Spiralheart’s BIPOC Mentor and lead bower priestess for 3 years.
As a passionate writer, poet, storyteller, and ritual dramatist, I absolutely love crafting language as a spiritual offering and as a means of better coming to know Spirit and Self. The foundation of my witchcraft is the importance of Story and Myth in understanding not only who we are and who we’ve been, but also who we have the potential to be. My practice is rooted in devotional poetry, dreamwork, bibliomancy, and rhapsodomancy as personal daily practice. I’ve stepped onto the paths of sex magic and deathwork (don’t they so often go hand-in-hand?).
An avid researcher, full-spectrum doula, and activist for comprehensive sex education and reproductive rights, I work primarily with Persephone and Inanna. Having entered my Saturn Return in 2023 and begun Initiation, I am working to heal my individual and generational trauma by connecting more with ancestral traditions, which for me, means exploring relationships with ancestors of blood and entities from my heritages, currently including Anansi and Brigid.
Rae – ONSITE (Path: Elements of Magic). Rae Eden (she/they) is an eclectic witch who finds her home dancing amongst the trees, meditating along the water’s edge, and getting her hands in the dirt – either tending to houseplants or creating native/pollinator gardens. This is currently being done on Dakota and Anishinaabeg land now known as Minnesota in the Upper Mississippi River region.
A longtime member of Upper Mississippi River Reclaiming, and a reclaiming initiate, Rae is influenced by Jewish heritage, study of the Kabbalah, Unitarian Universalist upbringing, Buddhism, mindfulness and the Feri tradition. As a social activist and person in long term recovery, they were drawn to reclaiming for its commitment to justice through spiritual practice and providing a drug and alcohol-free space for ecstatic ritual.
Rae’s passion for dance and love of nature has manifested into site specific dance, such as solstice river dance and global water dances, as a way to invite humans to connect more deeply with ourselves, each other and the natural world. She uses creative placemaking to reinvent public spaces such as through the flowering dance project where she hands out flowers to strangers while dancing in order to spread joy and beauty.
Rae believes in supporting the gifting economy and is an avid giver and receiver of free and reused stuff and is enthusiastic about rescuing food. They are a self proclaimed recycling goddess and are blessed to make a living in environmental and public health.
Rae has an intuitive relationship with green bloods, loves walking her dog in the nature reserve by her home and has recently been introduced to forest bathing. Rae ascribes to the principles of harm reduction focused on shifting power and resources to people most vulnerable to structural oppressions. All of this and more inform her teaching and facilitation style and offerings to community.
Yule – ONSITE (Hybrid Path: Feeding the Mycelium of Camp: Ecstatic Ritual and Priestxing). Yule Danu (she/her) I am a Mexican American Indian (Aztec, Apache, Cherokee) and Irish woman. My ancestors lived in California and New Mexico before it was part of the United States. I give honor and thanks to the Patwin Band of the Wintun peoples tribes who have remained committed to the stewardship of the land I reside on. I am blessed to share in their sacred circles.
I am an animist witch who is guided by allies, ancestors, intuition, and communion with the Divine. I find no conflicts in being a scientist and a witch. The study of chemistry and magick both require an understanding of how matter and energy interact to manifest an outcome. Therefore, I use my understanding to affect healing, access intuition and prophesy, and manifest change. I began studying the Craft with my first teacher at 10 years old and have identified as a witch for 30+ years. Led to Reclaiming in 2005, I found my community of inclusion, openness, ecstatic rituals, and learning that was the yearning of my soul. My sacred fires include animist healing, priestessing, community rituals, intimate deep magick, journeying to the underworld, death care, home funerals, and performing rites of passages.
Walken – ONSITE (Hybrid Path: Feeding the Mycelium of Camp: Ecstatic Ritual and Priestxing). Walken Schweigert is a queer/trans actor, musician, composer and director from St. Paul, Minnesota. A 2019 Jerome Foundation Fellow, he is a 2009 graduate of the Dell’ Arte International School for Physical Theatre, and a 2006 graduate of the Perpich Center for Arts Education (Theatre Major). He has worked with the Taller Xuchialt and Ronda de Barro in Leon, Nicaragua (2005-2007); toured with and been mentored by Stacy Klein and Carlos Uriona of the internationally renowned Double Edge Theatre in Ashfield, MA (2012-2016); and has busked on the streets of 11 countries. He has facilitated Theatre of the Oppressed workshops across the Americas, and co-founded the all-transgender theatrical/dance/circus ensemble entitled the Gay Unicorn Triplettes (2010-2012). A classically trained violinist, he has been part of over a dozen musical ensembles of varying genres, from klezmer to string metal. Currently, he performs with the poetic-folk band Buffalo Weavers (Saint Paul, MN) and the occult-inspired, baroque-horror, Detroit-based band CRUNE. Walken has performed across the country, from the streets of Portland, OR, to the Appalachian Mountains, to the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. In 2008 he founded the Unseen Ghost Brigade, an ensemble that toured an original piece of street theatre down the Mississippi River in 2010 on a raft they built themselves. In its next incarnation, the ensemble was renamed Children of the Wild to produce Schweigert’s first opera The Wastelands, which premiered in 2016 and toured across the country for three years. In 2017 Children of the Wild became Open Flame Theatre, and moved to Philadelphia Community Farm, in Osceola WI, where the theatre and Schweigert are in residence indefinitely. Walken was also recently a recipient of a JFund Award from the American Composer’s Forum for the composition of his second opera, The Garden, which was scored by CRUNE and produced by Open Flame Theatre and Philadelphia Community Farm, where it premiered in September, 2021. Walken is currently a student at United Theological Seminary, studying paganism, theology in the arts and Queer and Trans Theologies. His most recent opera was commissioned by the Washington National Opera and premiered at the Kennedy Center in January 2023.
Karin – ONLINE (Hybrid Path: Feeding the Mycelium of Camp: Ecstatic Ritual and Priestxing). Karin Levitski is a queer witch currently living on the lands of the Dakota people in Bdeóta Othúŋwe, also known as Minneapolis, Minnesota. She uses she/her pronouns. Karin has been involved with Reclaiming for over 15 years. Her practice is strongly rooted in ancestral connection and developing a living relationship with her Nordic and Lithuanian roots. Relationships with Freya, the Norns, Sunna, Bridget and Bear among others are a large part of her devotional practice. She is a ritualist, artist and reader of runes.
Winter Witchcamp (WWC) and Upper Mississippi River Reclaiming (UMRR) are her home communities. She has served WWC as a spinner and Weaver. She has also been a ritual planner and teacher in the UMRR community. A large part of her ongoing work with both Winter Witchcamp and Upper Mississippi River Reclaiming is centered around anti-racism and anti-ableism, in particular bringing awareness to ableism and advocating for better accessibility at camp and other gatherings. Karin also brings this activism to her job where she is active in the Disability Resource, Allyship Resource and LGBTQIA+ Affinity Groups. She is very much excited to be of service to WWC this year as part of the organizing team and the Ritual Arts path team. Focusing on bringing more magic and participation to the online aspects of camp through the lens of Mycelium feels like potent magic to be working with for the 2024 camp.
Joan – ONLINE (Path: Welcome Home to Your Sacred Body). Joan Brooks. At my core, I am a practical witch who sees what needs to be done and gets ‘her done! I look at the pain of the world and individuals with unflinching eyes and hear their cries with unflinching ears. I say “HELL NO!” to patriarchy and white supremacy. With the support, encouragement and guidance of My Wise Council, I help heal the world, one heart at a time. I train others to heal the world, one heart at a time. I work to undo racism and dismantle white oppression. I bring all of me to whatever I do. This year, as a Path co-facilitator, I bring my experience, skills, and deep commitment to the work ahead of us – at camp and beyond.
Pippin – ONLINE (Welcome Home to Your Sacred Body). Pippin (they/them), a courageous fool in love with the magic in all things. I am a queer, trans, and disabled witch. I’ve dabbled in magic for most of my life and in 2021, started doing it both purposely and imperfectly when I found the Reclaiming tradition and the Spiralheart community. There I have contributed to the work of the tending team, the ritual arc team, and the amazing group of Bower preistexxes. My magic centers ancestor work as a growing edge, plants, somatic healing, astrology, divination, and sex magic. My practice is rooted in an anti-racist commitment of working through the discomfort and violence of white supremacy with my fellow white comrades while honoring and uplifting the voices of our BIPOC community members and teachers. This is my imperfect approach to the messy, ecstatic, and necessary work of changing and decolonizing the world. As a co-facilitator for Welcome Home to your Sacred Body, I am honored and excited to practice this deep healing work in community.
Juniper – ONSITE (Path: The Embodied Practice of a Justice Witch). Juniper (she/they) is a witch, a writer, an organizer, a dreamer, a drummer, a switch, and a Reclaiming Witchcamp priestex since 1994. She is a core trainer with the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, a Black-led organization in New Orleans, and a founder and organizer with Undoing White Supremacy Austin. She teaches facilitation, consensus, and anti-racism through the lens of whiteness. Her magic has been forged in witch camps, in ritual, and in personal practice. But also in the streets of Quebec, Manhattan, and Cairo. In the Texas Capital. In tear gas. On a cot in the Travis County jail. Her ancestors call to her from wild islands of the North Atlantic. She remembers and acknowledges her obligations to those who tended the land she nests upon: Tonkawa, Comanche, and Coahuiltecan people, and to mothers, fathers, and children enslaved on the Goodrich Plantation.
Jaguar – ONSITE (Path: The Embodied Practice of a Justice Witch). Jaguar (he/him) is a gentle human. He walks gently (and gayly) upon the land, inquiring and seeking right relationship with Earth’s beings. He is a folk herbalist and medium. In 2000, he attended the Berkeley Psychic Institute, in 2003 he spent 3 months with ISM (The International Solidarity Movement) in Jenin. In 2004, he first attended witchcamp in Vermont, and has been active in Reclaiming since. He is an organizer for Tejas Witchcamp.
An anarchist and an activist before he rediscovered his witchy roots, he feels most potent in the confluence of magic and justice. He has been an organizer with UWSA (Undoing White Supremacy Austin) for 5 years, and more recently with UWSINKC (Undoing White Supremacy in Kink Communities). His home is on the lands of the Piro/Manso/Tiwa Tribe, and the Mescalero Apache, in what is now known as southern New Mexico.