This classic photo-history, edited by Terri Compost and published by in 2009 Slingshot Collective, is now available from Reclaiming Quarterly as a free downloadable PDF!
People’s Park: Still Blooming shows how a good cause can lead to good rallies, riots, concerts, and lasting friendships. This book reminds us not only to recount our stories and struggles, but to celebrate them too!
People’s Park: Still Blooming is our family heirloom, memories, scrapbook, the story of the courage and hope that freed and tended this sacred piece of earth. It is for us to remember, but mostly it is for the next to come. This book is an attempt to capture the spirit and story of the Park.
It was published with the hope that, like seeds, copies will find fertile ground in the hearts of young people and encourage them to try again. We are connected. The land wants to live. Let a thousand Parks bloom.
Numerous Reclaiming folks including editor Terri Compost were deeply involved in People’s Park over the years – we’re very glad to add this book to our website!
This summer I decided to try an experiment—writing a new book on building regenerative movements, and posting it chapter by chapter online on my Substack: https://starhawk.substack.com/
Along with the chapters, I’ll be posting a podcast episode each week, mostly related to the writing, but occasionally digressing into other political/spiritual/permacultural topics.
Like the first one—responding to the great energy shift in the current elections this past week with Biden dropping out and Harris stepping up. I talk about our short-term strategy: Elect Harris and Democrats up and down the ticket! (Yes, I’’m coconut-pilled!).
Long-term strategy, (and this is where the writing comes in and where most of the podcasts will focus) build an even stronger, far more broad-based progressive movement than we’ve ever had, that can be regenerative to our environment and spirit!
I invite you all to join me. At the moment, there’s no paywalls—it’s all free!
The Movement We Need – Podcasts on Apple and Spotify:
Get A Life shares Reclaiming activist dress wedding’s journey of engaging in subversive actions and taking chances to build a life of freedom and meaning. The colorful narrative traces his evolution from drug-dealing Grateful Deadhead with self-esteem issues to becoming a nonviolent activist confronting injustice and police over decades in many different facets of the peace movement.
In early activist life, dress became a self-proclaimed witch, embracing the Reclaiming Tradition. And eventually moved to a very different form of action, becoming co-founder of Oakland’s Harborside Health Center in 2006, one of the largest and most respected cannabis retailers in the world.
In 1983 dress was arrested while wearing a wedding dress at an anti-nuclear action at Lawrence Livermore Labs in Berkeley, California. He has been wearing dresses ever since as a personal action against patriarchy, challenging people to think about what it means to “be a man” in our world. Dress writes in depth about how this personal action has impacted others in his life, especially his children and their mother. Also its impact on the Harborside marijuana business as he helped transform the new world of medical cannabis. The book offers a brief critique of the state of cannabis regulation, before outlining hopes for a new venture providing legitimate payments to the industry.
Throughout the manuscript dress notes how imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy has benefitted him and those around him. He explores how depression has affected him as a male in a society that suppresses this possibility. His motivation has always been to improve the human condition and relieve suffering, and his hope for the book is to inspire others to join in this effort.
The earth is crying out for healing, and we can answer her call most skillfully when we develop our own intimate relationship to the natural world. And that deep earth connection is also the foundation for our personal resilience.
Join Starhawk to learn spiritual and hands-on practices from five accomplished earth healers of varied traditions, including Charles Williams of Earth Activist training and three of our rising young indigenous teachers and allies: Mariah Masters, Sunshine Claymore and Kanyon Sayers-Rood.
Come away with new tools for your own earth healing practice, with inspiration and renewed energy for the struggles and the joys of the great work of our time – the regeneration of land and community.
Click the link above to register and to find out about the many exciting events we have planned for this special week.
Reclaiming Witchcraft is deeply rooted in activism, including environmental activism, as an answer and an action to drive change. From political actions to personal calls, “Honoring the Wild” compiles stories and lessons from Reclaiming Witches from around the world.
This book seeks to inspire as much as it does to inform, knowing that creativity and purpose are often better motivators for lasting change. With a timeline of activism in Reclaiming, these pages contain facts and fears, confessions and collaborations, and (perhaps) a call to the reader who wants to learn more and do more.
Publisher’s Weekly Review
Irisanya Moon (Practically Pagan) collects meditations on the Reclaiming Witchcraft tradition in this brief, inspiring anthology.
Founded in the late 1970s, the Reclaiming tradition is based in “deep, spiritual commitment to the earth, to healing and to linking of magic with political action,” Moon writes.
Short accounts from Reclaiming witches weave a “tapestry of many different threads,” including tried-and-true advice for being environmentally conscious (buying secondhand clothes, using public transportation), discussions of “magical activism” (which takes the form of writing, storytelling, and organizing protests), and accounts of individuals’ experiences (using directed energy to help protect the California redwood forests during protests).
Suggested rituals include an “Extinction Rebellion Ritual” (which involves speaking one’s demands into being in a group setting), while an annotated timeline highlights major moments in Reclaiming history, from anti-nuclear demonstrations in 1976 to 2017’s Dakota Access Pipeline protests.
Though the takes on activism will be familiar, the personal narratives evoke a raw earnestness and urgency that will encourage readers to do their part to protect the earth. Reclaiming witches and those curious about the tradition will find value here.’
This is the dark time of year, when winter closes in and sometimes it’s hard to keep the warm flames of hope alive. But the cold, dark ground is where seeds gestate and prepare to grow again. Some seeds can only sprout after enough coldness, roughness, fire, or other disturbance.
In these times when the great disturbance of climate meltdown impacts all of us, we come together to prepare for new growth in both practical and spiritual ways.
Join us for both spiritual and practical inspiration. In ritual, we’ll find our own deep sources of renewal, and we’ll ground our hope with actual examples of projects from our students and teachers, that regenerate ecosystems and put into practice the skills of earth healing.
Admission is by donation, proceeds go to support our diversity scholarship fund. Learn more and register here:
Our main focus is to work with the Sunflower sigil. Below that are other suggestions our group came up with that might interest you.
:: SUNFLOWER ::
~ Our Sunflower has a pentacle and spiral in the center. There are others around the world also working with the Sunflower for magical purposes to support Ukraine (both seeds and full bloom).
~ The flower sigil can be printed and placed on your altar at home, drawn onto your hand, circulated via social media, visualized throughout the day, etc.. You are also encourage to create your own!
~ Here is the image created by Shel (hand model Sharon Pink) – see end of article for larger image.
WORKING WITH THE SUNFLOWER
=> SPIRALS
~ Imagine or visualize spirals spinning out of the sunflower, like the Fibonacci frequency, fractals of spirals shining and moving through space and time.
~ Spiraling out and spiraling away the desire to conquer and for conquest.
~ You might work with a double spiral, drawing forth the power of the earth itself – remember the fertile soil of Ukraine, the breadbasket that has fed multitudes for centuries.
~ Call out to those desiring peace and an end to war everywhere, especially in Ukraine as well as those working for peace inside Russia who are putting themselves deeply at risk.
~ We call to the spiral of change – the unexpected turns of events. The unpredictable, the beneficent, El Mundo Bueno.
=> PETALS
~ See the petals and ray of the sunflowers extending outwards. This sunflower wrapping around the world. Holding it in those rays of protection.
=> ROOTS & STEM
~ Feel the roots of the sunflower going deep into the earth, expand the roots to catch all the politicians doing terrible things and bind them all who would pursue war and oppression in Ukraine and other places around the world in turmoil.
~ The virus of aggression is caught by the roots, and Putin and others are sucked up by the roots and bound up, just like lead and other heavy metals are bound into forms that can do no harm.
~ Swaddled tightly in the roots, like a baby in a blanket. Held in the stem of the sunflower. Swaddled and held and prevented from doing harm.
=> SPIDER WEB
~ Forming a web of protection over Ukraine. Visualize pentacle around the country, holding Ukraine, anchoring the web of protection and spinning off little fractal pentacles to protected all who call for justice.
~ Creating protection. Any forces – any energies that enter with malevolent intent – will spiral and spiral away. Spiraling into directions that are unexpected and unplanned for.
:: OTHER ACTS OF MAGIC & MANIFESTATION ::
=> ANCESTORS
~ Call upon the ancestors of Ukraine for help and assistance. To help the people of Ukraine with food, shelter, warmth, basic human needs, and courage.
~ Give speak with Putin so he will have a change of heart and mind
=> GODDESSES
Ukraine Mother Goddess Invocation, by Madame Pamita
I call upon the ancient Ukrainian goddess Berehynia
I call upon the Forest Grandmother Baba Yaha
I call upon the mother goddess Mokosh
I call upon the mother bear who protects her cubs
I call upon Maty Zemlya Mother Earth, mother of all
I call upon all spirit mothers
Peace and protection for the land of Ukraine
Peace and protection for the people of Ukraine
=> #HEXPUTIN
~ March 2nd, 7:33 pm EST (3:33 am in Moscow), by the dark of the new moon witches around the world will #HexPutin You will need: Light blue candle, Yellow candle, Handful of sunflower seeds.
Are you a Reclaiming witch? Are you disabled, differently abled, and/or neurodivergent?
Consider joining the Ableism Impacted Reclaiming Alliance (AIRA)!
We seek to increase accessibility in Reclaiming spaces for the 25% of the population who are disabled, and thus further the work of decolonisation of capitalistic values within Reclaiming.
We hope to discuss, process, heal, and try to help bring our diverse perspectives to making Reclaiming spaces more adaptive and accessible. Your input and participation are valuable whether it’s joining meetings, discussions in the online group, sharing personal stories, witnessing the stories of others, joining rituals, or simply watching it all unfold. We encourage a level of participation that works for you and your needs.
Join the Ableism Impacted Reclaiming Alliance (AIRA) if this work calls to you!
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