Yule Danu (she/her), Continuity Teacher
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. www.yuledanu.com
BrightFlame (she/they) writes, teaches, and makes magic for all forms of justice and a regenerative world. Part of and teaching in Reclaiming since the 1990s, she loves co-weaving the web of our evolving tradition. She has co-founded Reclaiming communities, offered core classes, taught and priestexed at many WitchCamps, and offered workshops with her own blend of magic. She’s thrilled that her debut novel The Working, which embeds our kind of magic and activism, launched July 2024. Her growing body of solarpunk stories are featured in award-winning magazines and anthologies, most recently in Solarpunk Creatures. She’s a member of the Climate Fiction Writers League and co-founded the Center for Sustainable Futures at Columbia University that features her workshops and nonfiction. She lives on unceded Lenape land, Turtle Island with a human, a forest, a labyrinth, the Fey, bees, turtles, fungi, rocks, and many other nonhumans. https://brightflame.com
Tere Parsley Starnes (they/them) – I live on Dakota land near Haha Wakpa also known as the Mississippi River. I honor the Dakota people and the Ojibway people who are rooted in this land. My ancestors arrived here on Turtle Island as settlers and colonizers and I recognize the debt I owe for the consequences of that history. I am grateful for Winter Witchcamp . The roots of this sacred community have made me the Witch I am today—a seeker, a teacher, a justice witch, and a weaver of magic. It has been my pleasure to have attended most of the wintercamps since the first one held in 2003 and to have served in many roles during those years. I am a Star Witch. I teach astrology through Starsdance Mystery School. I have been teaching a Priestexing class through Anam Cara in Minneapolis for the past year. Co-creating rituals is magic and I can’t wait to see the magic that comes through our co-creation this year. More about me at: www.starsdanceastrology.com
Walken Schweigert (he/him) is a queer/transgender actor, musician, composer and director from St. Paul, MN. A 2019 Jerome Foundation Fellow, he was mentored by the internationally renowned Double Edge Theatre in Ashfield, MA. He is the Founder/Co-Artistic Director of Open Flame Theatre, which produced his newest opera, The Garden, at The Southern Theater in Minneapolis thanks in part to a JFund Award from the American Composers Forum. Walken is currently a Collective Member at Philadelphia Community Farm and a student at United Theological Seminary, studying paganism, theology in the arts and Queer and Trans Theologies. He is also a member of the Occult-inspired, baroque-horror, Detroit-based band CRUNE.
Karin (she/her) is a queer/bi 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 and is a Reclaiming initiate. 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.
Irisanya Moon (she/they) is an author, witch, international teacher, poet, and Reclaiming initiate who has practiced magick for 20+ years. She has taught in the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia, bringing her blend of grounded, graceful, and radically authentic facilitation to inspire transformation and liberation at the personal and collective levels.
She has written, edited, and contributed to 15+ books on Reclaiming, magick, Greek godds, poetry, activism, and devotional practices. They are devoted to Aphrodite, Iris, Hecate, and the Norns.
Irisanya cultivates spaces of self-care/devotion, divine relationship (whatever that means to you), and community service as part of her heart magick and activism.
She is happy to be returning to Winter Witchcamp’s hearth and home.
You can find out more at www.irisanyamoon.com
Diana Love (they/them) is a non-binary queer witch creating magic and spinning new worlds into being through teaching, writing, playing, and living. They live on Turtle Island in Ho-Chunk land, named DeJope, land of the four lakes. DeJope holds space for bountiful water, creating lakes, rivers, and creeks as the glaciers retreated, leaving lavish landscapes where the wild can thrive. Diana has been a Reclaiming and Feri witch for over 25 years, with deep ties to magic that brings them back to life, love, and beauty, over and over again. Their magic tunes to theirs and others bodies, including the body of the earth, the bodies of the beings that hold them, especially Spider and Crow, and the direct divinity of each alive thing, the rocks, the trees, the waters, the bees, the fae, the mycelium, and the roots of all alive things. This land, this magic, and these relationships are crucial to finding their way in such precarious times. Reminding them to let flow or build containers, to rage with fierceness or to be as gentle as tears running down cheeks, and to soften or hold as needed. Magic is our birthright, and Diana is excited to help our community to tend our sacred roots together.
Sparrow (It/They) was raised by the Blue Ridge Mountains in Appalachia on Cherokee Land and currently lives on Piscataway Conoy and Nacotchtank Land in so-called Silver Spring. A non binary queer witch, Sparrow’s magic centers the body, connection with beings both seen and unseen, and the power of a cackle. They are currently surviving capitalism as a bodyworker and spend their free time on trails with their pup. Sparrow came to Reclaiming in 2016 and has assisted in organizing in Spiralheart Witchcamp for 7 years. They are excited to explore and be in relationship to the elements with you!
Riyana (she/her) is a plantwitch, writer, and deep lover of the earth and all of her children– her world revolves around a constellation of mystical magic making, gardening, motherhood, writing, and finding ways to deepen into living authentically with the seasons and the cycles of the earth She has been working with Reclaiming for over twenty years, and finds herself drawn again and again to magic that focuses on devotional, experiential, direct connection to the divine– such as aspecting, oracle work, sacred sound, and embodiment.
During the day, Riyana works as an herbalist and writer. She teaches both internationally and in her local community in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her heart belongs to the redwoods, the oaks, elder and hawthorn, her daughter Brighid, her partner, and the sea.