We claim the identity of Priestess as a revolutionary act!
Margi aims to pass on everything that she has gathered in her thirty years of Priestessing and Sacred Leadership. The Training is structured around these four lines of chant, an old chant sung throughout the Pagan community since the 1980s.
Cauldron of Changes
Blossom of Bone
Arc of Eternity
Hole in the Stone
Chant by Holy Terror coven/Morning Glory Zell
Each of these lines stands as a gateway to each stage of the Training, enticing and challenging us to consider what might lie within and beyond. The path ahead might lead us down ways both weirdly strange and strangely familiar.
- Blossom of Bone: One Day Workshop, Introduction to “Priestessing the Revolution” Training. Workshop by donation.
- Arc of Eternity: We circle together, grounded and expanded in the company of the Sacred Feminine. We hone skills, enhance strengths and nurture growing edges.
- Cauldron of Changes: We deepen our connections with Revolution and Leadership. We test our co-creation skills in group ritual, service to community and what it takes to "become the change we want to see in the world."
- Hole in the Stone: What changes between the Worlds changes all the Worlds. "See with clear sight and know the Mystery of the unbroken circle." Options for training to train others.
For more details on each year of Training please go to: “Training Content Details”
For more details on the Introductory Workshop go to: “Blossom of Bone”
This is an eclectic contemporary Training
- for those from all walks of life, though will require some literacy and digital skills
- for adults, 18 or over
- for all genders with a Feminist leaning
- taught in keeping with the Principles of Unity in the Reclaiming Tradition of the Craft
- with monthly face-to-face one-day workshops and monthly online ritual check-ins
- with each year culminating in a Ceremony of initiation, celebration and achievement
Loss, belonging and what it means to be Eclectic
We acknowledge that much wisdom and many spiritual practices connecting us to the Natural World, and particularly to this land, have been lost. This Training focuses upon skills, enabling you to choose and direct your own particular relationship with divinities, spirits, entities, allies and powers that you wish to Priestess.
In keeping with the Principles of Unity, “Each of us embodies the divine. Our ultimate spiritual authority is within, and we need no other person to interpret the sacred to us”. - PoU. Your training will not entitle you to interpret the Divine to another person.
Despite Margi's Reclaiming background, the Training will not be taught from a particular Tradition. It will be strongly influenced by Reclaiming Witchcraft, and other contemporary western sources. Margi will commonly use terms like Goddess and Witch as default terms.
Throughout our time together, we will strive to remain conscious of inappropriate appropriation and theft of indigenous cultures and teachings (particularly rife through the New Age Movement) and we will be guided by compassion and goodwill. Margi will only pass on those skills and teachings she has been given explicit permission to share.
We will be drawing from a wide range of sources and resources, including our own ancestral roots, our intuitive connections with human and non-human realms, stories, myths, histories and Herstory.
“We foster the questioning attitude, and honour intellectual, spiritual and creative freedom.” - PoU.
We will critique our sources and resources in light of the impact of systems of domination, always acknowledging or seeking permission with respect where necessary.
Paganism, the Mystical, the Occult and Reclaiming Witchcraft
“Priestessing the Revolution” Training draws upon many Reclaiming approaches and practices, as well as other wisdoms, processes, and practices from Margi’s extensive Priestessing experience.
Witch: You do not need to identify as a witch to do this Training, though it will be assumed that you are comfortable with others in the circle who do.
Pagan: The term Pagan is commonly used in Australia as an umbrella term to describe people with a Nature-based Spiritual or Religious Practice.
Occult: The term Occult is commonly used in Australia to describe a wide variety of spiritual practices in mysticism, magic and the supernatural realms.
Mystical: Some in the circle may experience the divine realms in a literal sense, some may experience them in a metaphoric or poetic sense, some may do both at times – all ways are welcome. It will be expected that you respect each individual’s particular take on the Mystical, and that you will hold space for a diversity of views.
Reclaiming Witchcraft is a community of people working to unify spirit and politics through a vision rooted in the religion and magic of the Goddess, by training voices, bodies, energy, intuition, and minds.
Reclaiming Tradition honours the Goddess as tangible and accessible through the Wheel of Life, the Cycles of Nature, the Elements and the Body as well as the Spirit. It is ecstatic, evolving, experiential, organic, inspirational and eclectic. The Principles of Unity were compiled in 1997 and updated in 2012. They are a statement of the core values of the Reclaiming Witchcraft community. https://reclaiming.org/principles-of-unity/
Sacred Leadership, Shared Power
Today, when we stand in a sacred non-hierarchical circle, we are all Priestessing to one another. Despite an emerging Pagan community, Priestessing is still a Revolutionary act. When we share power with one another we are all Sacred Leaders participating in the mystery of acknowledging, honouring and celebrating something precious about life. Some of us may feel called to step deep into the centre, to hone skills and tools to enhance the collective experience, to expand empowerment and sovereignty in ourselves, our circles and our community. Some of us may feel the call to empower others to step further and deeper into the centre. In this spirit, all are welcome to this Training.
2020 feels auspicious
This is a contemporary Training with a focus upon what is coming down the pipeline! We step into the third decade of the 21st century, thirsty to drink deep of new and healing ways of being together, and of the sacred leadership to which these healing ways call us.
Climate Crisis and Revolution
Margi was compelled by her divine guide, the Morrighan, to offer this Training after realising that we are witnessing imminent global catastrophe and, for the foreseeable future, every resource must be focused upon change if we are to survive.
While she is still able to lend energy and resources to this work, it is Margi’s choice to support you into your own unique version of a Sacred Leadership role and empower you to embrace your Priestessing as a revolutionary act. Some of us feel it in our bones that Revolution is coming. Our values mold that Revolution.
It will become even more important, as the Climate Crisis escalates over the next ten years, for those of us who love the Earth to avoid burnout – to stand strong, ground, cast circles and provide opportunities for others to connect with the Natural World, with the Mystery, with the magic in each other and within themselves.
Spiritual resilience
Even after thirty years of advocacy for Nature-based spirituality and eco-feminism, witches, pagans, shamans, magicians, wizards, people of the Fae, weird and wild folk, readers and healers and so many solitary and wandering spiritual folk, still struggle to be taken seriously. People have, through our love of nature, often been forced to the margins of this materialistic and damaged culture. Most of us have no magical heritage or lineage: we are eclectic by circumstance. We have practiced and reclaimed our intuitive, creative spirits. We survive and often thrive. Our spiritual resilience will be tested in the years to come. Bring your practice, whatever works for you, to this Training. We will enhance it!
Cultural appropriation, colonisation and the Ancestors
The dynamics of racism demand our attention. We sharpen our sensitivity to lost spiritual roots of each other’s ancestry. We will stay respectful of established practices arising from our peculiar Australian context. We challenge current spiritual expressions and test new ways as we learn from each other in the circle. Some of the core practices in the Training, like Circle Casting, arise from 19th and 20th-century Western magical traditions such as Wicca. Some, like the use of the Chakra system, arise from Eastern mystical roots. Others will be passed on from the Reclaiming Tradition of the Craft, and others from Margi’s extensive experience of Shamanism, Energy Work and Breathwork.
Healing our Wounded Earth
Often, we are wounded healers, with big hearts full of compassion for our fellow travellers; what Clarissa Pinkola Estes calls “Scar Clan”.
Sometimes we begin a new circle with our hearts well shielded from diverse issues, cautious to be vulnerable in the company of others. We can walk strong, magical, solitary paths, and yet, when Revolution is called for, to heal our wounded Earth, we can also find great reservoirs of strength together.
We co-create. We share some common “technologies” of creating magic, crafting a shared intention, co-creating ritual, honouring the spirit realms, the Goddess, the Godds, ancestors and liminal beings of realms of energy and existence well beyond our common or ordinary states of consciousness. As we lend energy to these dimensions they swell and grow hale once more.
Breakthrough
There are many issues that will arise while we build momentum for this Revolution. As we bring back and center the Sacred Feminine at the heart we stir up, conjure and provoke. In the Training, we acquire a toolbox to aid us and to aid others in making that stand. One key approach, commonly found amongst Reclaiming teachings, will be to work with the three legs of the cauldron: the Inner Path of personal growth, self-reflection, human potential, the Elements Path of connecting with the Natural World, charging and activating our ritual magic, and the Path of Action, walking our talk, modeling some ways that inspire, accepting our failures and learning from our mistakes. This is not Therapy, though maybe of therapeutic benefit. It is wise to ensure that you have adequate support around you as you undertake this adventure... as any well-prepared bushwalker knows, take precautions - both physical and psychic - as you head out along this half-remembered path.
Resources, gifts, strengths and vulnerabilities
This Training promises to offer and build upon some common resources, as well as plumb our inner resourcefulness and spiritual depths. One of Margi’s strengths is her affinity with divination, and with the Tarot as a divination tool. We explore what might be required of us as we build relationships with some of our familiar sacred tools – water and cups, fire and wands, air and blades, earth and stones, discs and pentacles. And that fifth Sacred Thing, Spirit found in the grand archetypes of the Major Arcana.
Connection to Spirit as Source
We explore what our Priestessing might look like with self, with others, with the divine when all our tools are set aside. We celebrate adornment, the outer trappings of “veiling”, how mystery is served by the arcane. And we also honour nakedness, what it might truly mean to be “skyclad”. We honour the power of authenticity when we stand unadorned, vulnerable and radiant with love for self, others and the mystery “that goes beyond form”. (Reclaiming Principles of Unity). We define strong boundaries and nurture our growing edges.
Power and Energy
We explore dimensions of power, the nature of power and the nature of energy, how being able to recognise differing expressions of power might aid our Revolution, how power in the world might relate to our magical energy or spiritual power. We explore how to recognise energy, ground it, raise it, direct it, release it, and how best to aid others to do the same. We hone our powers of discrimination, those Powers of the Sphinx: to know, to will, to dare, and keep silent. We practice stepping up – with courage, holy risk, open heart, healthy ego. We practice stepping back – with humility, deep gratitude, acceptance, joy in a circle of others’ shining gifts.
Lifeforce, Sexuality, Boundaries and Consent
Our familiarity with the Lifeforce, the Kundalini, will be at the heart of all we do, along with the Sacred Feminine. We will work in constant relationship with that energy, with blocks, flows, stagnation and explosion. We will become well familiar with each other’s boundaries.
There will be consensual touch, affection will be encouraged and bonds will form. Margi commits to not forming sexual relationships with anyone registered for the Training. This Training will not focus upon Sacred Sexuality, though it might be part of your Priestessing which you could explore elsewhere.
Knowledge and Intuition
We strip back the trappings of outer show and find how to Priestess most intuitively and effectively using breath, stillness, silence, listening, rhythm, movement, voice, chant, trance. We will develop potent ways where all the senses are engaged in sacred leadership of ritual, in ceremony, rites of passage and other moments in life where we are called to sacred leadership: to hold sacred space, healing space, teaching, sharing of knowledge and wisdom and mentorship.
Magic: Authority, Responsibility and Creative Doubt
We will become adept at crafting Intentions for raising energy - an appreciation that to put words around what our heart desires requires self-awareness, clarity of perception and an appreciation of the bigger picture. We will challenge ourselves with the notions of spells by consensus, and spells without compromise, and where a healthy ego might benefit the magic and where surrendering to divine will(s) might lead to a better outcome. Sometimes, despite our best intentions, we step back from a spellcasting with creative doubt, allowing the outcome to be what needs to happen which may well be beyond our perceptions.
Feminism, Identity and Naming the Sacred
The 2/3-year Training is designed to be feminist and will challenge our preconceptions of identity. At a time when sexual and gender identities are becoming more liberated and liberating, at a time when decolonisation is arising, at a time when People of Colour are finding strong voices, we journey with questioning minds and open hearts to deepen our appreciation and connection with the Sacred Feminine. We fall in love with and share our own personal magical languages, try out new ones, call out to and feel ourselves called by Name. We may well leave nameless some of those sacred energies and entities, acknowledging that some forms require no names. We might let go of old names and take a new name as part of our initiation along our road to Revolution.
The Sacred Feminine
We walk with some working definitions of the Sacred Feminine. For example, consider these passages from the Reclaiming Principles of Unity: “… that the earth is alive and all of life is sacred and interconnected. We see the Goddess as immanent in the earth’s cycles of birth, growth, death, decay and regeneration.” And explore and share where our “…experiences of the divine weave a tapestry of many different threads.” We leave the door open for the darkness and the light, acknowledging that one might not exist without the other. “We include those who honour Mysterious Ones, Goddesses, and Gods of myriad expressions, genders, and states of being…” And we remain in a place of creative doubt, knowing that “the mystery goes beyond form.”
You may bring male-identified divinities, and entities that are trans or non-binary or gender-fluid guides or allies to this Training as long as the essence you work with holds the Sacred Feminine at the heart.
Margi commonly uses the terms “The Goddess”, “The Star Goddess”, “The Universe”, “the Divine”, “the Weaver”, the “Creator/Creatrix, “the Mystery” and other terms to refer to the universal sense of a greater conscious that both is and presides over the interconnection of all forces, matter and entities. She uses the terms “Mother Earth”, “Gaia”, “the Planet”, “the Ecosphere” to refer to the planetary sense of consciousness that both presides over and is the interconnection of the entire Earth.
Margi welcomes other perspectives and terms for these Mysteries, in keeping with the aims of the Training.
The Sacred Masculine, Duality and Gender fluidity
The Sacred Feminine is at the heart of this Training. In lived experience, the concept of feminine and masculine are dualistic ways of thinking. This concept is not reflective at all of Nature’s diversity, or of the interconnection of that diversity. While many still may relate strongly to one colour of the spectrum, this Training also welcomes those who are neither one thing nor the other, or move between chosen identities.
Any Nature-based practitioner devoted to the Sacred Masculine through allies and deities and ancestral connections but who also places the Sacred Feminine at the heart of their practice is welcome. The Green Man, the Sun King and the Dark Lord, from the Wiccan Tradition, for example, while coupled as they are with The Maiden, The Mother and the Crone, are examples of dualistic manifestations of deity, and yet are not disembodied from Nature or the Goddess. Even Dionysus has his Maenads.
Androcentrists, monotheists, followers of transcendent male deities disconnected from the dynamics of Nature, of sex and sexual expression, or who would seek to limit and control diversity, will not find a place in this Training.
Centering and Circling
In a Sacred Circle, to lead we often step into the center. What does it mean to center ourselves? We will critique how this noun is now commonly used as a verb. How “centering” can foster a hierarchy just as easily as a “top-down” organisation. We explore structures and group dynamics and alternatives that foster shared power.
Story, Fairy tale, Legend, Myth, Poetry and Song
We develop our appreciation of the power of story, including history and Herstory. We create ritual and ceremony with consciousness around language and a fundamental appreciation of the mystery that just about everything, even Science, is a metaphor.
Creative, Sensual, Experiential, Spontaneous
The Training will, above all, be creative and experiential. We will gently engage all the senses, through the arts: writing & journaling, poetry, drawing, crafting, voice, chant and song, chant writing, rhythm, drumming and percussion, movement and expression. There may even be some Circle Dancing and guidance on how to lead a Spiral Dance. You might find a strength of expression for new and renewed facets of self and become inspired by others as we share our gifts and progress through the Training.
Structures, Consensus and Ethics
The Training will be in a Sacred Circle - non-hierarchical, promoting an appreciation of diverse paths and leadership qualities and styles. We critique structures, including the structure of the Training, ensuring that those who progress to second and third years see that as deepening, not rising over others. Where possible and if required, we will move forward together using (and learning) consensus decision-making processes.
We will become familiar with the ethics of working with people in altered states, and other ethical guidelines of sacred leadership.
We will look into resources to assist each other to create and maintain sustainable sacred circles, guidelines for ritual creation and how to organise community rituals and events in a non-hierarchical manner. We will discuss practical aspects of Priestessing like fees and charges, when to offer services as a gift, and other Base Chakra aspects of leadership. We will critique and develop our personal services and fee structures in keeping with the Revolutionary spirit and in solidarity with others of similar calling.
We will be guided by the Safer Spaces policy, often found as guidelines for WitchCamps.
Co-creation, group work, projection and transference
The art of co-creation is another Revolutionary act. It may be easier for some than others. We examine the dynamics of co-creation - of group work, of listening, of trusting the intuitive process, of consensus process decision-making and other processes that aid our ability to compromise, to step up and step back, when to lead with a healthy ego and when to check our egos at the door.
Feedback
Positive Feedback will always be offered with the aim of supporting you to further improve your growing edges. (See Ravyn Stanfield’s Revolution of the Spirit)
Revolution and Conscious Evolution
There is no question that we live in challenging times of fast change. Many activists are engaging on so many fronts. Burnout is rampant. In Australia alone, there are more and more sites of destruction of the environment, exploitation of non-human beings on a mind-boggling scale, continued denial of Indigenous rights, violence against women, children, the aged, the disabled, issues of addiction and poor health with Big Pharma both treating and fostering disease. We have a legal system skewed in the interests of the establishment, and a reactionary, materialistic culture, driven up by greed and selfishness. The absence of earth-based spirituality certainly adds to, dare I say underpins, the conditions for a society on the verge of collapse.
Changing Self, Changing World
In How to Face the Mess We’re in Without Going Crazy, Joanna Macey says we take part in Revolution, or The Great Turning, when we pay attention to the “… frontier of change, to the personal and spiritual development that enhances our capacity and desire to act for our world. By strengthening our compassion, we give fuel to our courage and determination. By refreshing our sense of belonging in the world, we widen the web of relationships that nourishes us and protects us from burnout. In the past, changing the self and changing the world were often regarded as separate endeavours and viewed in either-or terms. But in the story of the Great Turning, they are recognised as mutually reinforcing and essential to one another.”
Spiritual Commons
This is itself, Revolutionary, investing resources and energy into reclaiming and reinvigorating our Spiritual Commons. Nourishment, rest for the spirit and soul, healing, rites that reconnect us to energy sources, honing skills of drawing up and drawing down energy, reminding us it is not all up to us to make the changes necessary – to take our Priestessing up to the frontline, from activist camps to demonstrations, to local community events, to small groups. This enables activists to recharge, share power and know, in a deeply experiential way, that they are not alone, that they are deeply supported.
Take Heart and “Refresh your sense of Belonging”
This Training is guaranteed to deepen your calling in a nature-based spiritual practice. If nature is not yet a strong focus for you, and yet you feel called to this Training, take heart. Most of us are woefully disconnected from the Natural World and it might be a life-long practice to rebuild those connections. This is even more challenging with climate change, mass extinction and global upheaval. Yet, Mother Nature is from where all life arises … and to where we must return… and might yet reveal to us as Priestesses, a guide for how to bring about a life-affirming Revolution with the Sacred Feminine at the heart.