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 takes place in a small city park, and it is usually very crowded in all the small booths, with hundreds of people attending. 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 sitting at the booth with no one around, 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 on Saturday, and two others met up with me 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 health and safety of everyone. 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.

Anti-Racism Resources

Hello, friends!

Ember (also known as Cara elsewhere on the internet) has been keeping up a list of anti-racism resources on their personal blog, so we wanted to share it here, as well.

Reclaiming -- like any group -- has work to do in terms of supporting everyone in our communities, specifically in becoming more anti-racist and trans-affirming, and in addressing all sorts of internalized prejudices we have learned from the society and systems in which we were brought up. As a tradition, Reclaiming was created with the idea of bringing together politics and spirituality. Social justice magick is no strange or rare occurrence in Reclaiming, and neither is activism. It's one of the reasons we love it so much! One of the biggest things we hear from other Pagans and Witches is "not to get too political", but Reclaiming Witches have always acknowledged our political reality. That was built in from the moment this community began, as the activists who created this movement typically met through political actions. So we do have that slight head start in that we don't have to argue with one another about whether or not we see Witchcraft as political. But that doesn't mean we don't still have even more work to do as a global community, or as individuals, or smaller community groups. We can always do even better than we have before. These are issues that are talked about continuously in Reclaiming, and those conversations won't be stopping anytime soon. Not as long as these issues still exist.

Here is a link to the blog post where Cara is collecting various resources. Some are Pagan- or Witchy-specific, while others are general anti-racism resources.

One of the specific resources from that page is actually Reclaiming-specific, so we'll link it here separately. And that is, A statement from BIPOC within the Reclaiming Tradition of Witchcraft on the subject of anti-racism practices.

A New Group Listing Site

Greetings, all!

Just a quick update to let you know, Witchvox has now officially closed its digital doors as of Dec. 31, 2019. They will still be maintaining their FB page with news, but the website itself, which allowed groups and individuals from all over the world to create listings and find other like-minded folks in their area, has been laid to rest and ended its cycle. It served our community for more than two decades!

Hail the goer!

~

In other, related news,

Today, a friend of a friend linked me to this website that their friend runs, where there is also a place to post groups and find others in our areas! Their hope is that this can serve the community as a sort of stepping-stone in Witchvox's absence, until something else comes along that might be even better and more sustainable.

It's part of the MandragoraMagika blog, under FIND A GROUP, and I've just submitted a request to add Ohio Reclaiming Witchcraft to the Ohio, USA page. =) I imagine it will be some time before it gets added, since it's just one person running the whole site, but there's a link so we can go back to it!

Happy 2020 to you all!

We should be seeing more posts on this page this year, I think. =)

Blessings~