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Starhawk

Ground-breaking author/novelist, Activist, Earth-based spirituality pioneer.

Course:

Earthly Delights

March 2 - April 26

 

Starhawk is one of the most respected voices in modern earth-based spirituality. She is also well-known as a global justice activist and organizer, whose work and writings have inspired many to action. She is the author or coauthor of ten books, including The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess, long considered the essential text for the Neo-Pagan movement, and the now-classic ecotopian novel The Fifth Sacred Thing. Starhawk's newest book is The Earth Path: Grounding Your Spirit in the Rhythms of Nature.

Her works have been translated into Spanish, French, German, Danish, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Greek, Japanese, and Burmese. Her essays are reprinted across the world, and have been included in numerous anthologies. Starhawk's writing is influential and has been quoted by hundreds of other authors, turning up in magazines, trade and academic press, and even inspirational calendars. Her books are often found in college curriculums. The Spiral Dance has been continuously in-print for over twenty-five years and revised twice; in 1999 HarperSanFrancisco published the Twentieth Anniversary Edition. Truth or Dare: Encounters with Power, Authority, and Mystery won the Media Alliance Meritorious Achievement Award for nonfiction in 1988. Starhawk's first novel, The Fifth Sacred Thing, won the Lambda award for best Gay and Lesbian Science Fiction in 1994. Many of Starhawk's best political essays--credited with helping the global justice movement find and define itself--were collected into her book Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising. At the Book Expo America, Webs of Power won a 2003 Nautilus Award from the trade association NAPRA.

 

Starhawk is perhaps best known as an articulate pioneer in the revival of earth-based spirituality and Goddess religion. She is a cofounder of Reclaiming, an activist branch of modern Pagan religion, and continues to work closely with the Reclaiming community (www.reclaiming.org). She consulted on and contributed to the popular trio of films known as the Women's Spirituality series, directed by Donna Read for the National Film Board of Canada: Goddess Remembered, The Burning Times, and Full Circle. Starhawk and Donna Read recently formed their own film company, Belili Productions (www.belili.org). Their first release is Signs Out of Time (2004), a documentary on the life of archaeologist Marija Gimbutas, the scholar made major discoveries about the Goddess cultures of Old Europe. Starhawk and Donna are at work on their next film, an introduction to permaculture.

Starhawk is a veteran of progressive movements, from anti-war to anti-nukes, and is deeply committed to bringing the techniques and creative power of spirituality to political activism. Together with Penny Livingston-Stark and Erik Ohlsen, she coteaches EAT, Earth Activist Trainings, intensive seminars that combine permaculture design, political organizing, and earth-based spirituality (www.earthactivisttraining.org).

Starhawk has also recorded several tapes and CDs; most recently "Wicca for Beginners" (2002), "Wiccan Rituals and Blessings" (2003), and a four-CD set "Earth Magic" (2006), all produced by Sounds True. A songwriter on occasion, quite a few of her songs and chants turn up in rituals across the globe; they are included in songbooks and hymnals, covered by other artists, and recorded by the Reclaiming musical community.

Starhawk travels internationally teaching magic, the tools of ritual, and the skills of activism. She lives part-time San Francisco, in a collective house with her partner and friends, and part-time in a little hut in the woods in western Sonoma County, California, where she practices permaculture in her extensive gardens, and writes.

 

 

 

 

 

T. Thorn Cayle

Author and teacher of the mystic, pagan and magic arts.

Course:

Align Your Life

October 27 - December 01

 T. Thorn Coyle is a Magic Worker, Mystic, and Pagan. An internationally respected teacher and author, her work focuses on the alchemy that occurs when we open ourselves fully to our humanity in our quest for Divine knowledge.  In combining art and science, magic and mystery, body and soul, practice and ecstasy, she has created a unique body of work that has touched the lives of many seekers, artists, activists, parents and other change-makers.

 

A student of the Craft for more than 25 years, she is an initiate of the Feri Tradition (her religious home),

Reclaiming, and the Mevlevi Order of America. Thorn combines her esoteric studies, work with her Gods and Guides, and years of practice, to form a teaching that honors the fertile dark and the limitless light. Citing her primary influences as G. I. Gurdjieff and Victor and Cora Anderson, she continues her spiritual studies in many traditions.

Through individual spiritual direction, weekend workshops, tele-classes, and group study as well as her webblog and podcasts, Thorn provides insights on the multi-facets of our lives, from spiritual practice, mystic revelation, and personal awareness to politics, religious observance, and celebration.

Musician, dancer, activist, poet, and author of Evolutionary Witchcraft, she makes her home near the San Francisco Bay.

 

 

 

Don Webb

Author and teacher of the mystic, pagan and magic arts.

Course:

Cthulhu as your Writing Partner

March 16 - April 12

 Don Webb has been a practicing magician for 25 years.  He has been the Herald of the Order of the Trapezoid, and High Priest of the Temple of Set, the most sophisticated Left Hand Path group in the West.  In addition to this his fiction has been translated into 11 languages and has appeared in Year's Best Horror, Year's Best Science Fiction, Year's Best Fantasy and a Norton's Anthology.  Don's work has appeared in venues  ranging from Trucker's USA and Gnosis magazine.  Don has taught on-line creative writing courses for UCLA since 2002.
 

 

Dr. Art Rosengarten

author, psychologist, poet, buddhist practitioner, artist, and internationally-respected teacher of the modern tarot

Course:

Tarot and Psychology

February 16

 Dr. Art Rosengarten is a Jungian-based psychologist in private practice in California for over 30 years.  His book Tarot and Psychology: Spectrums of Possibility (Paragon House, 2000), is the primary text of this course and has been hailed “the third major book on Tarot from a Jungian perspective.” 


A former English major during the late 1960s, Art earned both Masters and Doctoral degrees in Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies (in San Francisco). His landmark dissertation: Accessing The Unconscious: A Comparative Study of Dreams, TAT, and Tarot is the first accredited doctoral study of tarot divination (1985). Art has presented at all three World Tarot Congresses in Chicago (sponsored by the International Tarot Society), joining with many leading teachers of this era, including Mary K. Greer, Rachel Pollack, Angeles Arrien, Lon Milo DuQuete, Cynthia Giles, James Wanless, Ralph Metzner, Stuart Kaplan, and others, to espouse the wonders and versatility of tarot work.

Art is Owner/Moderator of the Yahoo Group TAROTPSYCH, a discussion and consciousness forum with a talented, growing, international membership of serious “tarotpsych” students and practitioners. Art's blog—FarSeeingArt-- is a playful archives of original Ideas, Musings, and CyberExperiments all with a timeless, spiritual flavor that can be viewed at: artrosengarten.wordpress.com. Art has taught The Los Angeles Tarot Circle since 1994, and has taught as Adjunct Psychology Instructor at several graduate schools in Southern California. As a poet, Art won The Consciousness Poetry Slam at Tucson 2 (1997): An International Science of Consciousness Mega-Conference,  Sponsored by The University of Arizona.

TNP—Art’s own controversial, unpublished deck (Tarot Of The Nine Paths) was digitally-crafted from Jungian sandplay miniatures to visually capture and illustrate Art's vision of an expanded Major Arcana based on the magical properties of the number 9, which he calls “The Hermit Effect.” TNP will be on permanent exhibit in New Orleans at the ‘Paraplex’ (A Paranormal Laboratory and Museum) within the ghost expedition extravaganza, The Haunted Mortuary (opening 2009). In late December, Art will also be presenting a special all day seminar in New Delhi, India, sponsored by the Tarot India Network, and commemorating the immanent printing and distribution of Tarot And Psychology, in India. Namaste.

 

 

 

Taylor Ellwood

Author and teacher of the magic arts.

Course:

The Magical Power of Language

March 2 - April 12

 Taylor Ellwood is the author of Pop Culture Magick, Space/Time Magic, Inner Alchemy, Multi-Media Magic, and Co-Author of Creating Magical Entities and Kink Magic. He is the editor of the Magick on the Edge, Manifesting Prosperity, and The Pop Culture Grimoire anthologies. He is also the managing non-fiction editor of Megalithica Books, an imprint of Immanion Press. Taylor is currently working on two book projects, one a co-written book with Bill Whitcomb, and the other his next solo work Neuro-Space/Time Magic.

When Taylor isn’t busy experimenting with magic or working on one of his many businesses, he’s busy gaming or hiking in the wilds of Oregon