Raven Kaldera
Raven Kaldera is a Northern Tradition shaman, herbalist, astrologer, polyamorous transgendered intersexual, homesteader, and founding member of the First Kingdom Church of Asphodel. He has been a practicing shaman for almost two decades now, and is an activist for everything he believes in.
He is the author of 45 books, including the Northern-Tradition Shamanism series, Myth Astrology, Pagan Astrology, Dealing With Deities: Practical Polytheistic Theology, and Hermaphrodeities: The Transgender Spirituality Workbook.
‘Tis an ill wind that blows no minds.
Sara Mastros
Sara Mastros, author of Orphic Hymns Grimoire and Big Book of Magical Incense, is Pittsburgh’s leading Witch for Hire. She teaches tarot, witchcraft, Greek and Near Eastern mythology, Pan-Levantine folk magic, and practical sorcery online and at festivals all over the east coast. Additionally, she’s a co-owner of The Fool’s Dog Tarot, a leading tarot app for Apple and Android devices. You can download a free sampler app at www.FoolsDog.com, check out courses and lessons at www.WitchLessons.com, sign up for her newsletter at www.MastrosZealot.com, or follow all her witchy shenanigans on facebook at Facebook.com/Sara.Mastros
Badger/Sophie Schultz
Born and raised in the Philadelphia suburbs, Sophia Kelly Shultz grew up in house where art was like breathing; creation could occur at any hour of the day or night, and the medium in which it manifested was never predetermined.
As a child, she was introduced to sketching, pen and ink drawing, colored pencils, and various types of paint; later, her best friend’s mother, who also happened to be her 9th grade Home Economics teacher, taught her her first embroidery stitches. While a student at the University of Pennsylvania, she discovered a niche doing portraits of science fiction conference attendees in fantastic settings. Her almost simultaneous discovery of science fiction costuming and 1980s bridal beadwork, combined with inspiration from her needleworker college friend has inspired award-winning beadwork and embroidery, including her accidental crazy quilted robe, My History’s Embrace, which was based on one of her paintings.
Art is also part of Sophia’s spirituality, and she feels that empowering people to do art is among her callings. She also has a working relationship with chaos, via the Egyptian god Seth, who is in fact not the Devil (that’s what they say on the all-knowing, all-seeing internet!)
She is the author and illustrator of three publications: The Stone Circle Oracle, The Promethean Oracle, and Seeking the Spirits of Palo Kimbisa (all published by Schiffer Publishing in Atglen, PA.)
Cheered on by David, the most tolerant husband in the world, she works in her attic studio, on the second floor, or in the living room of their 140-year-old house located in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, shared with an enormous rock collection,a young and enthusiastic English Springer Spaniel whose best friend is a spirit dog,, and a very small, very bad cat.
Rev. Gretchen A.L. Schork OCL:AL
Rev. Gretchen A.L. Schork, OCL:AL is an international speaker on ceremonial magic and creator of the Abcedrian System, a planetary approach to the magics of the American alphabet. Drawing on 40 years of experience in esoterica, she has worked beside the Aurum Solis, Golden Dawn, OTO, Correllian and runic traditions.
Raised on Roman Catholic ceremony, she found her own practice through the 20th century explosion of hermetic literature. She is supported by academic degrees in education, adult training, and a Masters in Organizational Leadership. Her writing is characterized by targeted exercises that assure all activities are purposeful, achievable, and yield measurable progress. This encourages students through a methodical approach to the learning process.
Jane Sibley
Jane T. Sibley, one of the founders of CTCW, also created the New England Conference on Mithraic Studies (Mithracon). Jane and Tchipakkan met in the Society for Creative Anachronism, a medieval recreation group, where Jane’s persona is that of a Norsewoman from the pre-Viking period, Arwen Evaine ferch Rhys ap Gwynedd. That was where Jane created Auntie Arwen’s Spices, where she sells herbs and herb mixes both culinary and healing. If you can’t wait until the conference check them out on-line.
In the SCA she worked with Lois Fitzpatrick in the Soothsayer’s Guild,
being awarded the Order of the Laurel for historical divination. Among
the techniques she shared in this medievalist group were reading
runes, casting seeds, and her work in utiseta (oracular seidhr).
She was taught a lot of this by her Norwegian grandmother, and, being
an historian, is hesitant to claim that these techniques go back
farther than can be documented; however, these are traditional
techniques, and really work. Jane passes them along outside the family
because they shouldn’t be lost, and none of the next generation has
shown interest. Among these techniques is the very intense Norseworking healing ritual, which she’s done for a few years. (If you come, be sure you know how to ground your energy!)
Jane earned her doctoral degree in History/Comparative Religion, focusing on the Indo-European thunder/lightning god from antiquity into modern times. As with much of CTCW, she combines mind and spirit, history and science (She has even worked with an electron microscope!), healing, divination, myth and humor, each informing our understanding of the others.
Her books are: “Norse Mythology…According to Uncle Einar”, “The Hammer of the Smith”, “The Divine Thunderbolt: Missile of the Gods”, “A Different Dragon” and The Way of the Wise (Traditional Norse Folk Medicine and Magic.)
Patricia Robin Woodruff
Patricia Robin Woodruff (she/her) is an artist and writer, polymath and Priestess. Her Slavic Lemko heritage is from the Carpathian mountains and she is following a spirit-initiated path of a Lemko Bosorka (shamanic witch.) She is also training to become a żerca (Slavic clergy) and was given the name of Boyana.
Woodruff has a PhD in Metaphysical Theology. Her broad knowledge base combined with in-depth cultural studies are providing groundbreaking new insights on the roots of Slavic Magic. She is the author of the Roots of Slavic Magic Book 1: Slavic Deities & Their Worship (2024)
and other books on Slavic beliefs. Follow her at amazon.com/author/patriciarobinwoodruff or https://patriciarobinwoodruff.comPatriciaRobinWoodruff.com
Terence P. Ward
Terence P Ward is the author of Empty Cauldrons: Navigating Depression through Magic and Ritual (Llewellyn, 2022). Ward has been a journalist and practicing Pagan for more than thirty years, has been bound to a Wiccan coven and communed with the earth as a backpacking Pagan, or Gaiaped. A member of the order of the occult hand, Ward is also a hiereus—temple priest— of Poseidon through Temenos Oikidios in Rhode Island, and holds ministerial credentials from the Vermont-based Church of the Sacred Earth: a Union of Pagan Congregations. More information can be found at truepaganwarrior.com.
Velahtar
Velahtar grew up on a horse farm just outside Elk Neck State Park (Maryland) and spent most of his childhood wandering through the woods and exploring nature. The inherent balance of nature is what inspired him to seek out a spirituality that matched his observations of the wilderness. In 1996 he began exploring the Wiccan religion as a solitary practitioner. Velahtar is currently initiated and an active participant in Light Havens’ Magickal Lodge. He was a 2nd degree acting high-priest in the Assembly of the Sacred Wheel and coven member of Fellowship of the Ancient White Stag coven in the Silver Spring, MD area. Velahtar graduated from the inaugural class of Gryphons Grove School of Shamanism (located in Silver Spring, MD) in 2012. Velahtar has been a board member of the Sacred Space Foundation, a Mid-Atlantic esoteric conference, for over 15 years. Velahtar’s extensive education in the sciences of math, physics, and animal husbandry continually inform and expand his innate spirituality. His experience leads him to no longer see a line between spirit and science; they are intertwined. Velahtar’s specialization in energy work and creation of sacred space is from combining numerous geometric and physical theories with energy/chi work. This work is useful during his shamanic work as the Guardian/Ward for Gryphons Grove. Velahtar also uses these skills professionally when working on house clearings\warding.
Lailani
FOUNDER/OWNER @ THE MAGICKAL SOLUTION
Lailani is a reconnecting Taino, born and raised in New York to an Afro-Caribbean family of Borikua descent.
Lailani’s gifts of spirit communication, prophecy and healing began when she was around two years old. By the time she was 12, her family and friends had been witness to numerous instances of her gift
and encouraged her to quietly pursue these talents. By the age of 17, Lailani had become proficient in Divination, Alchemy, Hermetics, Dream Working and Magick. She then went on to build relationships with various Elders and Teachers in the spiritual community and when she was just 19, she was recognized by her community as a professional Spiritist, Diviner, Educator and Healer. Lailani has spent a lifetime as a self-taught researcher and scholar of spirituality, philosophy, and metaphysics.
Lailani currently lives in NY working as an advocate for children and adults with mental and physical disabilities, living in low income areas. She also works in her local community to assist women’s shelters, elderly veterans, and high-risk BIPOC youth.
Seán Pádraig O’Donoghue
Seán Pádraig O’Donoghue is an herbalist, teacher, and Earth poet living in western Maine. He is an initiated priest of the Feri and Crossroads traditions, and the author of Courting the Wild Queen and The Forest Reminds Us Who We Are. As an animist, he experiences plants and fungi as our ancestors and our kin, living beings with their own intelligence, who exist with us, not for us. His work with plants and fungi weaves together insights gleaned traditional western herbalism, contemporary science, Irish and Nordic animism, and his own lived experience.
Starwolf
As a shaman, Witch, professional psychic, Reiki Master and metaphysical engineer and soldier of fortune, Starwolf brings a broad range of knowledge and experience to the fields of magick, metaphysics and spirituality. His practical approach to adapting traditional metaphysical elements to modern lifestyles pulls magick into the twenty-first century. You can find him and his wife Catherine online as Foresight (the Information you need for the Adventure of Life) at www.ForesightYourPsychic.com or www.ForesightYourCtPsychic.wordpress.com
At CTCW, Starwolf is often found on panels, as his knowledge base seems to know no limits.
Taylor Ellwood and Joanna Brook
Joanna Brook is the priestess. She began professional Tarot consultations in 2007 and mediumship, to contact your beloved dead, in 2012. She is an ordained minister in the Seven Sisters Circle, where she studied eclectic modern paganism, ceremony, astrology, path working, divination, and spiritual counseling. Joanna has a gift of creating sacred space by connecting with the seven directions. She is available to officiate hand-fastings, funerals and customized ceremonies for you. She facilitates a New Moon ritual open to all at the Alluvium in Eugene, Oregon each month. Joanna teaches classes on magic and the pagan path, both solo and with Taylor. Joanna is also an accomplished poet.
Taylor Ellwood is the magician. He’s been practicing and experimenting with magic for over 30 years, designing innovative and original systems of magic that help people get results and transform their lives. Taylor has been reading Oracle and Tarot cards professionally since 2004. Taylor has been writing books on magic and teaching classes on a variety of spiritual topics including spirit communication, manifestation practices and inner alchemy since 2003. At Brightheart Alchemy Guides Taylor offers a variety of spiritual services designed to help you manifest results as well as provide answers around the issues you are dealing with. He also teaches classes both solo and with Joanna on spiritual topics. Taylor is also a sacred masculinity coach who helps men do shadow work and heal the inner wounds that’s keeping them from the relationships they want to create.
Tchipakkan
Tchipakkan is an artist, writer, healer, and eclectic pagan-heathen-rustic, worshipping openly since my teens. I live in NH with 3 of my children, assorted cats, and occasional farm animals). I’ve written many cookie cook books including Divine Cookies, the Rune article series in the Blessed Bee Pagan Family Magazine. With Jane Sibley I started the Changing Times-Changing Worlds Conference and did the podcast The New Normal for 6 years.
My skills are autodidactic, although I studied at BU in the theater, English, History, & Psychology departments. I practice and teach RunValdr, Reiki, Huna healing, herbalism, soothsaying with runes, palmistry, tarot, numerology, and other systems. Over 40 years in the Society for Creative Anachronism have brought me many friends, and many historically based skills, as well as more knowledge of early Anglo-Saxon culture than is conceivably useful. I love to teach useful skills from cooking, sewing, and herb use to divination and other more esoteric activities to participating in endless discussions of everything from healing to folklore.
The LoonWitch
Internationally recognized Psychic, Holistic Healer, and Teacher Sha Blackburn, known as The LoonWitch, has been empowering individuals to transform their lives using magickal principles and her intuitive gifts since 1997. Since childhood Sha has been drawn to the mystery schools and walks that path today. She is a High Priestess (Order of Blended Wisdom Coven), Ordained Minister, Reiki Master Teacher, Certified Neuro-Linguistic Practitioner, QHHT Practitioner and certified in Acupressure, Reflexology and Chinese Herbology and is certified in Shamanic Healing from the Foundation of Shamanic Studies.
She offers a variety of in person and virtual workshops on the topics of divination, healing, and metaphysics and offers Tarot readings, Rune readings and Aura photography. She has been a popular radio and media guest for over 20 years and is invited to return again and again.
She was named Woman of the Year by The National Association of Professional Women (2012), and Inspirational Woman of the Year by The Women’s Radio Network.
Learn more about Sha’s offerings and events at www.LoonWitch.com.
YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@LoonWitch
Website:
Social Media:
Alacias Enger
Alacias Enger is a personal finance writer and coach that infuses traditional personal finance with Law of Attraction. She is the author of the personal finance blog Sense with Cents, which she founded in 2015 in order to help people to enhance their relationship with money through spirituality all while learning the personal finance strategies needed to build a financial life they love. Her writing at Sense with Cents has been featured on Motley Fool’s All-Star Money, and the popular podcast Optimal Finance Daily. Alacias worked in the banking industry for many years and is certified as a tax preparer in the state of New York. She served as the personal finance columnist for A&U: America’s AIDS Magazine from 2018-2022 and is co-host of the YouTube show, Gossip Finance. Alacias is also a teacher and theatre artist. When she is not working with her coaching clients, she can be found on stage, meditating, or planning her next adventure.
Ariel Malachi Sirocco
Ariel Malachi Sirocco is an Integrative Hermeticist following the Corpus Hermetica and related writings; as such, he is a hardcore Panentheist. He frequently teaches ancient Hermetic history and traditions and has taught at several esoteric conventions along the Northeast and at countless private gatherings. Ariel has an academic background in biology (Queens College, NY) and 15 years with the American Museum of Natural History. To this day, he weaves his scientific knowledge with his ritual.
Ariel has been a practicing occultist since 1983 and was initiated as a High Priest of the Minoan Temple, Inc. of New York in 1998. During this time, he realized that the scientific and the esoteric were two sides of a coin named “Ritual” and thus began his true pursuit and calling: Hermetics.
He moved to Connecticut for several years where he started Coven Quiddity (2006). It grew into the Akashic Temple (2009) and ran monthly meetings and a few major events during the year. In 2007, he joined the Masonic fraternity and his attentiveness quickly raised him through the ranks reaching Master Mason in 2008. In 2012, he became a 32nd-Degree Mason of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry
and Washington Council Princes of Jerusalem, and was appointed Master of Ceremonies (2012-2013) of the Scottish Rite, Valley of Bridgeport, CT. In 2015, Ariel was granted an encampment charter from the Ordo Templi Astartes (OTA) for the New York City area. In 2017, Ariel became the Worshipful Master of
Union Lodge No.5 in Stamford, CT.
During this time, his passion with Hermetics led him to reach out across the United States and abroad to Amsterdam, NE in search of Elders. In Amsterdam, he reached out to and visited the world-renowned University of Hermetics (University of Amsterdam). To this day, he keeps academic, fraternal, and magical ties with like-minded occultists in Amsterdam and the UK.
It is Ariel’s belief that this “New Age of Esotericism” deserves academic exploration without sacrosanct or circular defenses. If this does not happen, the entire family of “pagan and esoteric traditions” will fall into disrepair, ill repute, and eventually be dismissed as merely fanciful.
Contact at: arielsirocco@yahoo.com
Badger/Tarren Renn
Tarren Renn (they/them) has been pagan for over 30 years. While most of their study was as a solitary practitioner, they studied at various schools and have earned 1st Degree in two different Wiccan Traditions. Both of these Wiccan Traditions said they were very open to people who were transgender, but their experience in working with them showed that the Wiccan Traditions were too focused on the binary of male and female.
As someone who is transmasculine and nonbinary, it has been easier to identify as pagan than Wiccan. They are currently studying Northern Tradition Shamanism in the Northern Tradition Shamanism Guild.
Brandon E. Hardy
Brandon is a queer fish who took some vows years ago and spends most of his time in transit. He swims along with Jesus as much as he is able through a polytheistic river of puns and madness.
Sometimes he even writes about it here: http://hispanfriar.org/
Or shares his devotional artwork here: http://littlemonkfish.deviantart.com//
Catherine Kane
Catherine Kane is a professional psychic, a Reiki Master, a bard, a metaphysical Christian, a New Age chick and a delighted student of the Universe (amongst other things). She brings creativity, an eclectic body of knowledge, and an attitude of fun to empowering people to find and live their best and brightest dreams. Her writing has been seen in magazines such as Thorn, the Door Opener, and Helix; and she is the author of “Adventures in Palmistry” “The Practical Empath”, “Manifesting Something Better“, “The Lands That Lie Between“, “Magick for Pennies“, “Living in Interesting Times”, and “The Psychic Power of Your Dreams“, “The Swans of War” and “The Song of Dreams and Shadows”, She has just published her 13th book. “A Cool Little Book of Meditation.”
Find Catherine at https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=catherine%20kane%20writes and at her Amazon page https://www.amazon.com/kindle-dbs/entity/author/B00BKPLSZK?_encoding=UTF8&node=283155&offset=0&pageSize=12&searchAlias=stripbooks&sort=author-sidecar-rank&page=1&langFilter=default#formatSelectorHeader
Visit her and husband Starwolf online as Foresight (the Information you need for the Adventure of Life) at www.ForesightYourPsychic.com and www.ForesightYourCtPsychic.wordpress.com
you can also find Foresight on Facebook ( https://www.facebook.com/Foresight-172408108291 )
Diana L. Paxson
Diana Paxson is a prolific author of fiction and of seminal magical, Pagan, and
Heathen works, and a frequent speaker at Pagan conferences and festivals. She is an elder in the Troth, where she runs the Clergy Training Program and edits the journal, Idunna, and the founder of Hrafnar kindred, and is noted for her work in recovering the ancient oracular practice of Seidhr. Her books include Taking up the Runes, Essential Asatru, Trance-Portation, The Way of the Oracle, Possession, Depossession, and Divine Relationships, and Odin . She is currently working on a book about the goddess Freyja.
Lisa McSherry
I’m an Author, Priestess, and world traveler. In late 2021, after living in the Pacific Northwest for more than 25 years, I retired from the workforce and moved to Portugal along with my husband to create a new life. It was the fulfillment of a dream long held — to travel Europe, experiencing the culture, history, art, and food(!) in a slow, deeper fashion.
I am the author of many books: CyberCoven.Org (self-published, 2004 [oop]), The Virtual Pagan (Red Wheel/Weiser, 2002 [oop]), and Magickal Connections: Creating a Healthy and Lasting Spiritual Group (New Page, 2007). In early 2021 I re-published The Virtual Pagan 2.0 after a massive revision. My newest book, A Witches’ Guide to Crafting Your Practice, is due out from Llewellyn Worldwide in October 2022.
Over the years I have contributed articles to several magazines, including Witches & Pagans, SageWoman, PanGaia, newWitch, and The Blessed Bee. I have contributed to several Llewellyn annuals and several anthologies, including Magic on the Edge (Immanion Press, 2006), the Pop Culture Grimoire (Immanion Press, 2008), and The Pagan Leadership Anthology (Immanion Press, 2016).
After coordinating the Review Circle for The Beltane Papers magazine for seven years, I used that as a model to create Facing North: A Community Resource, in 2006. There I and my Review Circle have published hundreds of reviews of items we think the Pagan/New Age/Spiritual community would find interesting.
Since 2000 I have led JaguarMoon coven. Together we teach the Art of Ritual class, a year long course of “witchcraft 101”. Together we celebrate the seasons, work magick, and share the Mysteries in a unique, mentor-based setting.
Oberon Zell
,” incorporating the first Pagan church—the Church of All Worlds—in 1968. Publishing Green Egg magazine over more than 50 years (currently online), he was instrumental in the coalescence of the modern Pagan movement. In 1970, he published the earliest version of “The Gaea Thesis.” In the 1980s, Oberon and his wife Morning Glory resurrected authentic living Unicorns. In 1990, they coined the term “polyamory,” thus launching another movement. Oberon is an award-winning artist, illustrating many books and creating altar figurines and jewelry. His most famous sculpture is “The Millennial Gaia.” He is the author of Grimoire for the Apprentice Wizard and more than a dozen other books of which the latest is GaeaGenesis: Conception & Birth of the Living Earth (2022). Oberon is also Founder of the online Grey School of Wizardry (founded 2004), and served as Headmaster until 2022.
Sidney Eileen
Sidney Eileen is a trans nonbinary, asexual, animistic, polytheist witch, and an artist, blogger, writer, and teacher. Ze acknowledges divinity and unique natures in not just deities, but in all manner of ephemeral and supernatural beings, spirits, living beings, and the souls that embody the physical objects and spaces around us. Zir practice is lifelong and of an intuitive nature, seeking fulfillment through mutable asymmetrical balance. Zir perspective as a witch and an artist influences everything they do.
