Elements of Magick 2022

Announcing
Elements of Magick
with Irisanya, Georgie, & Ember

6 Tuesdays starting January 11, 2022

[Registration link was here, but the class is in the past!]

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Hi, all! Ember here!

I am so excited to announce my SECOND core class teaching opportunity doing Elements of Magic(k)! I know a lot of folks in our growing Ohio Reclaiming Witchcraft community are looking forward to core classes. Here we go!

Earlier in 2021, I student-taught Elements for the FIRST time. It was an online class, and the other teachers were Hemlock ShiningCoil and Pidge Fletching. So this will be my second time student-teaching or co-teaching Elements!

The other two teachers are Irisanya Moon and Georgie Craig. Irisanya was one of my Elements teachers when I first took it at camp years ago, as well as one of my teachers for Rites of Passage. Georgie and I have been in class together, both as students, but they teach quite a bit, as well! I am looking forward to getting to work with them both in another capacity than I have previously.

More information about this class will come later!

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If you can't do Tuesday evenings, Irisanya is also teaching Elements online with two other teachers (I will not be doing this one because of schedule conflicts) on Saturday afternoons Eastern time, starting Feb. 5, 2022. You can find the registration info for BOTH of these classes (Tuesdays starting Jan. 11 and Saturdays starting Feb. 5) here on the Bay Area Reclaiming classes page.

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Hopefully some of our Ohio group can take one or the other of these classes and kick off the new calendar year with Reclaiming's foundational class!

Blessings~
-Ember-

Growing Community!

Hello, all!

This past weekend was Cleveland Pagan Pride Days, the big Cleveland area gathering that usually happens in late August every year. It started in 2009, and has happened every year except, of course, 2020 (due to the pandemic). I was actually a bit surprised that it continued this year, since the organization's other event, the Cleveland Witches Ball which usually takes place in October, was already cancelled due to the continued rise in cases of the Delta variant. Cleveland Pagan Pride Days (CLE PPD for short) is an outdoor event, but it is usually very crowded in all the small booths, and hundreds of people attend. There were certainly very crowded times, but there were also some more spacious moments, thankfully. I also noticed that most vendors arranged their booths with tables on the outside edges to keep browsing to the walkways, and not have people enter the small tented areas. Many people did wear masks, or have them handy for more crowded instances. (I was working at a booth, so I didn't wear my mask while at the booth, but I put it on any time I walked out into the event itself, into the crowds, to the bathrooms, and so on.)

I have a couple blog posts in the works, saved as drafts here, but I wanted to publish this as a quick note just to say hello, we're here, and to celebrate a little milestone!

It seems like a lot of people who were at CLE PPD on Sunday when I was working were people who had never been to the event before, and some who had never been to ANY Pagan Pride event before. Similarly, several people from our own growing Ohio Reclaiming Witchcraft community also decided to come out to meet up! Because of this, over the course of the weekend I was able to meet four more people from our little online community space, in person! I will leave names out of this public-facing blog post for privacy reasons, since this is visible to anyone on the internet. But two people came to visit me at work (at the museum) on Saturday, and two others met up with me at the museum's booth at Pride on Sunday! We got to chat about future plans for this community, and possible ways to proceed with slowly getting people together, considering the continuing safety of everyone re: the virus. Online rituals and meet-ups are certainly possible, and hopefully more simple to get started with for people's varying schedules.

Reclaiming Witchcraft (Pagan Portals book) by Irisanya Moon

The new Pagan Portals book, Reclaiming Witchcraft by Irisanya Moon, was published by Moon Books in 2020. This is a short book, fewer than 100 pages! Several shorter chapters are only four pages, while the longer couple of chapters are around sixteen pages each, going into a little more detail about Reclaiming ritual, and Core Classes.

An earlier post on this blog outlined a few other books which can be thought of as Introductory Reclaiming Books. Covering three books -- The Spiral Dance, The Twelve Wild Swans, and the Elements of Magic anthology to which Irisanya also contributed -- that post was written before this book came out! 

This book, given its brevity, is definitely one anyone should pick up if they are looking for a brief introduction to Reclaiming as a tradition and community. Irisanya, who is a Reclaiming initiate, teacher, and priestexx, gives insight into how Reclaiming operates. Topics include the way consensus process is used, how tradition-wide decisions are made, how meetings are held, and how Witchcamps, cells, and working groups are organized.

There is a chapter about how we do ritual, but this is not a "how to be a Witch" book by any means! This is a look into how this tradition actually functions. If you're curious about the things that make Reclaiming different than other traditions, this book will give you a nice primer.

This book was also published before Reclaiming began the recent updates to the Principles of Unity! This is a living tradition and change can happen at any moment! So do bear in mind that the text of the POU as published in this book is now different as far as the fifth paragraph. The text of this book was, however, accurate as of the release date, which was in the summer of 2020. Discussions to update the POU did not begin until September 2020, and the changes were officially agreed upon and put into place in January 2021.

Check your local public library systems and library apps for copies of this book, too! You may want to read before buying, or borrow a friend's copy. Irisanya has also written other books in the Pagan Portals series, too, if you're interested. Visit Irisanya's website!

Blessings~
- Ember -

Principles of Unity: Updated!

The Reclaiming Tradition's Principles of Unity have been updated! Discussions began online in September 2020 as the BIRCH council met to discuss alterations to the fifth paragraph of the POU. Changes were agreed upon and then proposed to the wider community by the DARC council - Decolonizing Actions in Reclaiming Communities - which is made up of BIPOC Witches (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) from Reclaiming community around the world. Then in January, BIRCH council again met online with representatives from various communities, to make a final decision.

This is the new version of the fifth paragraph as it was agreed upon officially on 30 January 2021! This reflects the changes proposed by DARC, which all communities had a chance to discuss between September's meetings and January's.

"Our tradition honors the wild, and calls for service to the earth and the community. We work in diverse ways, including nonviolent direct action, for all forms of justice: environmental, social, political, racial, gender and economic. We are an anti-racist tradition that strives to uplift and center BIPOC voices (Black, Indigenous, People of Color). Our feminism includes a radical analysis of power, seeing all systems of oppression as interrelated, rooted in structures of domination and control."

I am also now updating the Principles of Unity as they have been on our blog's "About" page, to reflect this new version. Hopefully this is the first of several much-desired updates for our documented agreed-upon values as a tradition. ⭐ You can read Reclaiming's blog about this update here.