California Witchcamp Teachers 2024
Dominic Bodden
I am an illustrator and a witch, a creator and disciple of Mystery. I live and weave magic in Lenapehoking (Lenape homelands) known by many as New York City. I jumped into the Reclaiming cauldron at 16 and in 2014 attended my first California Witchcamp. Soon after, I cut my teeth as a priestess by joining the Ritual Planning Cell in Los Angeles where I co-created public rituals for the community.
My art is an extension of my magical practice. I set an intention for each endeavor, and I use my intuition as an ever-present influence that guides my pen and brush. I bring ideas to life through art by utilizing my unique perspective. When I speak through art, the spirits listen.
At the heart of everything I do is a deep curiosity and a devotion to art, knowledge, and magic. I want to co-create stories that become the mythology for the world to come. I want to activate, transform, and inspire. If you have a world-shaking vision, I want to help you realize it. I believe as witches, we can create the world we want to see. We are the spell.
Phoenix
I am a blue-eyed wanderer and passionate devotee of the Goddess who currently resides on the land of my daughter’s people, the Coastal Miwok, currently known as Sonoma County, California. I am a restless seeker of knowledge and magick; always yearning to learn more, dig deeper, and dive into mystery. I hope to never quench my thirst in spiritual development. My exploration of magick expresses itself through writing books, creating spells, crafting rituals, teaching, and devotion.
My spiraling path of the witch began officially in the mid-1990s when I was using a wooden handled butter knife, stolen from my mother’s kitchen, as an athame. Shortly thereafter, I attended my first public Reclaiming ritual and was immediately hooked. Now I find myself a Reclaiming initiate, teacher, and ritualist; deeply in love with the tradition. I am devoted to several deities from different pantheons, always looking to expand my relationships with the Divine.
Beyond my love of Reclaiming, I am also a 2nd degree Gardnerian Wiccan, hoodoo practitioner, and Druid initiate. I have written several books on magick, spellcrafting, and witchcraft. I have traveled all over the world exploring, making, and sharing magick.
Currently, I am blessed to work as a professional witch and tarot reader; offering readings and spell crafting support to my clients and students. I am also the owner of an esoteric Goddess shop called Milk & Honey, that is located in Sebastopol California.
Ultimately, I believe in beauty and magick. Every day I am reminded of the wonder that resides all around us. I hope to share that beauty with others, because when we can change the heart of just one person (even if that person is ourselves) we can truly change the world. The time for revolution is here, the Goddess is alive, and magick is afoot.
Fio Gede Parma
I am a settler who aspires to be a responsible guest in the stolen lands of many First Nations. Most recently I have called the sacred Country of the Gadigal, Bidjigal, Yuggerah, Jagera, Turrbal, and Wurundjeri peoples home. I am a wanderer and my heart is always longing for my beloveds - human and more-than-human - in many holy, polluted places.
I was born in the volcanic island of Bali and identify as Balinese-Australian, with Irish, Scottish, and British ancestry. I am forged of and born to tiger, volcano, crocodile, sorcery, dragon, mountain, valley, oak, horse, serpent, oracle, witchery, iron, pearl, and dance.
My magic is the magic of the broken-open-heart, of the furiously dedicated and sensuous witch who weaves with myriad mysteries and respectfully engages folklore, legend, and lineage. I am passionately wed to the Wildwood, Feri, and Reclaiming communities of witchcraft. I am an initiate and teacher in those traditions and adore the magics of these radical and revolutionary witches.
I am also an editor, author, co-weaver of seven books (soon to be eight!) including The Witch Belongs to the World, Ecstatic Witchcraft, and with Jane Meredith (and many others) Elements of Magic and Magic of the Iron Pentacle. I am devoted to the integrity, poetry, artfulness, and justice of the Craft. My website is fiogedeparma.com
Yule Danu
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 gives honor and thanks to the Band of Patwin tribes of the Wintun peoples 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. Instead, I use my understanding of energy and matter to affect change/magick. I began studying the Craft with my first teacher at 10 years old and has 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 of animist healing, priestessing community rituals, intimate deep magick, journeying to the underworld, death care, home funerals, and performing rites of passages.
Ember Blackheart
I heard Brigid’s whisper at my very first witchcamp in 1997. In the 25 years since, I have followed that whisper to who I am now: Witch, storyteller, priestess, tarot reader, potion brewer and initiate in the Reclaiming tradition. I am a mother, in love with our descendants and in healing relationship with my ancestors, once oppressors and once oppressed. I am a word witch; our stories are the spells by which we become the authors of the future in this crossroads time. I stand at one corner of Brigid’s green mantle, in mycelial connection with the green bloods, the gray bloods, the red bloods. With you. Together, we will listen to the land as we walk in the five directions and weave a new world.
I live on the land of the Duwamish people, which is also called Seattle. The Duwamish people still await the honoring of the 1855 treaty signed by the United States.
Suzanne Sterling
I am a musician, yogi, activist and ritualist and have been performing and teaching transformational workshops for over 30 years. My joy and passion is inspiring others to find their unique voice and to use self expression as a tool for social change and conscious evolution.
I have been a featured artist/teacher at hundreds of festivals and conferences such as Wanderlust, Omega, Esalen, Kripalu, Yoga Journal, Hanuman, Burning Man, Symbiosis, Ecstatic Dance, Bhaktifest, Boomfest, LIB, IONS, Earthdance and more. As a musician, I have released 5 solo albums and numerous DVD soundtracks.
Since 2007 I have been training leaders of conscious activism and social justice through my co-founded organization Off The Mat, Into the World (OTM). As director of OTM’s Seva Challenge Humanitarian Tours, I have spent time in the US, India, Cambodia, Haiti, Ecuador and Africa supporting community resilience. As a yoga teacher I have taught nationally and internationally and am part of the nationwide faculty for YogaWorks Teacher Trainings.
For the past 30 years, I have worked with the International Reclaiming Community, creating ritual, teaching classes/witchcamps and training teachers. Together with Ravyn Stanfield I created the Priestess Apprenticeship in Sacred Leadership which for the last ten years has offered year long immersions into the art of creating ritual for the modern world.
I have been teaching at Witchcamps since 1989! I love singing, dancing around fires in the woods, cats and chocolate….but not necessarily in that order! I believe in the ongoing evolution of this work and community and am dedicated to making it available and accessible to all.
Honeycomb Heart
I am a witch, priestess, teacher, mom, gardener, cook and mathemagician, continuously renewing and remembering myself in the stillness of the present moment. I am grateful to be residing on the magical land of the Wappo and Coastal Miwok people.
A devoted practitioner of the craft for over 30 years, I attended my first Reclaiming ritual on Samhain of 2011 and immediately knew I was home. I have since become a ritualist, teacher and initiate of the Reclaiming tradition.
I have been teaching Reclaiming classes since 2015, including Elements of Magic, Iron Pentacle, Pearl Pentacle, and Rites of Passage. I also helped to develop and co-teach our 5th core class, Community. I incorporate many “hands-on” activities, cooking and crafts into my magical work. (I put the “craft” in witchcraft!) My own work focuses heavily on the turning of the seasons, the Sabbats and their connection to our own cycles. I am a fiery spirit and enjoy dance, action and creation. My fire is tempered with my magical gifts of deep dreaming, psychic vision, and daring to dive into the depths and rise again (and again.)
Ravenna Samantha Shay
Ravenna Soley (she/her) also known as Samantha Shay in the muggle world, is a witch and priestess whose primary form of magic is through the practice of art and performance. She is a multidisciplinary artist, performer, director of theatre and film, and movement artist. As a creative instigator, catalyzer and master collaborator, her acclaimed body of work challenges traditional boundaries, creates new connections, and dances across the fault lines between disciplines. She is currently a Special Research Fellow in Theatre Directing at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale, and is also the Artistic Director of Source Material, an interdisciplinary production company and artist collective, which she founded in 2014. From 2021 - 2023 Ravenna was a Guest Artist & Researcher at the Pina Bausch Dance Theatre, where she began as a Fulbright Scholar in 2021. During that time she created and launched numerous projects, some of which are still in development, and she still calls Wuppertal, Germany, home.
Ravenna works in diverse and extreme environments - from Witchcamp to Ivy league institutions. She seeks to bring the power of counternormative belonging to the places it is least expected. This relates deeply to her specifically American, biracial, and disabled identity: with acute and intimate childhood experiences of privilege, marginalization, and intersectionality, her witchcraft is about leveraging her power, privilege, access, and ever growing awareness to create change not only in the art she makes, but the platforms she has access to. Her witchcraft is radical: not only emerging in the forest, but in meetings with U.S. Congress as a Fulbright Scholar, in the hallways of Yale University, and in the largest city theaters of Europe (where politicians appoint Leadership), and in direct, and sometimes, deeply challenging conversation with overt and covert sources of power.
Ravenna is also deeply passionate about lineage and artistic ancestry, and her deep research into the work of Pina Bausch. Her cross-generational, and cross-cultural collaborations with Pina’s colleagues are a sacred path of understanding artistic lineage through a magical lens. She is currently working on a new production that explores post-traumatic response in theatre, and circles around not only the lineage of Bausch, but also Jerzy Grotowski, whose work was inspired by Shamanism and the Holy as a response to genocide. Ravenna is also passionate about how cross-cultural forms of storytelling, and dismantling the linear is a form of decolonization, and interrogates white supremacy culture and patriarchy. This is the engine that drives her artistic work, and academic research as a scholar.
Ravenna first came to Reclaiming in 2014, and has been priestessing and teaching when it feels most aligned to serve the community. Dancing between underground magic in the dominant culture, and the deep and intimate magic in the forest with beloveds, she is grateful for all the ways we as witches can walk in the world and gather. She greatly looks forward to teaching again among her home community, and chosen family this year!