Margi Ravenhawk, (Margaret Curtis, MCA, Grad Dip TB, Dip. LIS. Reiki II)
Margi is a witch, teacher, healer, artist, poet, musician, Tarot reader, Breathwork practitioner and Emotional Release Counsellor. She has been a leader in the Pagan community for over twenty-five years and is a co-founder of the Reclaiming community in Australia.
At the age of seven, Margi knew she wanted to be a Priest. She found schooling hard until she was diagnosed as dyslexic. With help she learned to read by the age of 10, skipping children's books and starting with young adult novels. Margi also began singing sacred music at that age, and during her teens and twenties, she led many diverse groups, singing and playing guitar for folk hymns in the Catholic Church in Australia. She attended her first action at the age of 15, defending Animal Rights, and the rights of the environment. She has been a consistent campaigner and activist in the Anti-Nuclear movement and an eco-feminist, actively standing up for the rights of women and the environment all her adult life.
In the 1980s, Margi co-founded a community theatre, Nexus, based in the southwest of Sydney. It ran on a consensus model and promoted and performed contemporary Australian plays and premiered original works supporting local playwrights, actors and theatre technicians.
In her late twenties, she began to publish her poetry and writing and joined the Movement for the Ordination of Women, and Women Church, feminist organisations based in Sydney that promoted the rights of women and religion. She discovered the teachings of Starhawk, and with the influence of other women in sacred leadership – Glenys Livingstone, Thea Gaia, Marie Tulip, Erin White, Vicki Noble, Rachel Pollack, Morning Glory Zell, Anodea Judith, Karen Daniel, to name a few – she left the mainstream, monotheistic religions behind.
After the death of her father, a World War II veteran, Margi took on the care of her mother who was legally blind from birth. Margi owes much of her creative and imaginative powers to being raised by her mum, a woman from the land who loved poetry, singing and gardening. She owes much of her sense of loyalty and tenacity to her father, a World War II veteran who also found great solace in the land. Margi graduated with a Bachelor of Creative Arts in Writing and Theatre, and a Masters of Creative Arts in Fantasy and Performance Poetry. She also gave birth to her son, Rohan, at this time. Her poem Voice of the Goddess was chosen to lead the statements of “Australian Women Authoring Theology” and was published amongst the conference papers in 1991.
After briefly delving into Creation Spirituality with Mathew Fox, Margi immersed herself in a transformative weekend ritualising “The Descent to the Goddess”, embodying (aspecting) the Sumerian Goddess Inanna in her descent into the underworld to meet her dark sister, Ereshkigal. Margi’s spiritual course was profoundly altered by this experience. In her quest for better health, she discovered Alternative Health and trained for several years in Transpersonal Breathwork, Rebirthing and Emotional Release Counselling. This training involved a profound appreciation for working with energy, a holistic approach to personal growth and a thorough grounding in the shamanic practices and psychic realms best articulated by the Czech psychiatrist Dr. Stanislav Grof. Margi also trained with Stephanie Yatra Hurst in Psychodrama and Creativity Psychotherapy, and with Murri Psychic, Kim Gadd, in Psychic Development. She saw clients in her private practice, The Breathing Space.
Together with Andrea Gawthorne, she co-facilitated WomenSpirit workshops in the Illawarra, bringing women’s spirituality to life for dozens of women during the late 1990s. In 1995 they co-founded Womens Web, a Goddess-centred feminist circle, meeting monthly in Wollongong ever since - for twenty-five years in 2020. The Web is, arguably, the longest-running circle of its kind in Australia. WomenSpirit taught an appreciation of the Goddess in Her many aspects, Motherpeace Tarot workshops, the fundamentals of co-creating ritual, explorations of Women, Healing and Power, with much singing, dancing, creative expression, healing and reclaiming of women’s self-worth and women’s wisdom.
Together with Graham Wykes, Margi joined Church of All Worlds for a few years and helped steer CAW into new waters, lifting that organisation out of debt. She helped organise Pagan Summer Gatherings 1998, 1999 and 2000. Margi’s love of involving people in ritual theatre became evident in the founding of the Elemental Tribes that still feature as a central element of the Summer Rite of the PSG.
Margi first “came out of the broom closet” as a Witch, in the later 1990s, on a radio program hosted by Glenys Livingstone, discussing the dilemma of translating a Northern Hemisphere Agrarian mythos to the Australian context. There have been many Festivals of the Wheel of the Year, Full Moon rituals and other Pagan events held in Margi’s backyard, and elsewhere in the Illawarra, over the last twenty-five years.
Margi and Graham ran a magic circle, MoonSkin, for a few years, but Margi yearned for the founding of a Reclaiming collective in Australia. For a few years, she also took part in an online community of Australian activists called Act Elemental and ran three “Green Witch Gatherings” at Minto Bush Camp. She heard of Reclaiming witches attending the WTO protests in Seattle in 1999 and began to devise a way to build such a community in Australia. It was around this time that she met Jane Meredith and Karin Raven Steininger, though their mutual love of Reclaiming was not to blossom for some years. Margi had developed Fibromyalgia and her health became a constant focus.
In the early 2000s, Margi taught a series of solo workshops exploring Priestesses of the Tarot, and the powers of the Iron Pentacle embodied in Goddess Archetypes. She joined the Greens political party after 9/11 and worked on the campaign that saw Michael Organ elected as the first Australian Greens politician in the House of Representatives. She also joined the Refugee Action collective and was active in the Stop the War campaigns at that time. She met Starhawk on her first visit to Australia and realised there were others in Melbourne and elsewhere who were passionate about the Reclaiming Tradition of the Craft. Due to Margi's mother's increasing poor health she had no opportunity at this time to meet up with other's who were also passionate about the Craft.
In 2004 she began to work as a professional Tarot reader for Lotus Health and Wellbeing Centre in Wollongong. She also met Leigh Blackmore, Frater Lvxnox, a Thelemic Magician, and expanded her studies of occult practices. They took the family name of Ravenhawk. When Margi's mother finally dies, and with Leigh and Graham's help, she revived MoonSkin Magic Circle which ran continuously in Wollongong from 2006 to 2013. This evolved into Black Swans which studied the Starhawk and Valentine book, The Twelve Wild Swans up until 2016. Margi gained her Diploma in Library and Information Services in 2008 but found she was not well enough to undertake a career in that field. She continued to study at TAFE, attending the local Art School and developing her art, selling regularly at local Art Shows.
Also, during the “Naughties” Margi met up with BrightFlame and Pat Hogan, both Reclaiming witches from North America who encouraged the RavenHawks to found a WitchCamp in Australia. It wasn’t till Margi came across River Rhonda King on Facebook and learned of SheOaks Coven in Melbourne that she began to think a community might be possible. In 2009, spurred on by Jane Meredith, who had become a Teacher in Training by applying to teach at WitchCamps in America, eight brave witches and one magician met near Melbourne and began the serious labor to found a Reclaiming community in Australia. The first camp was held in 2011, and the first EarthSong (Victoria) and first CloudCatcher (Queensland) camps were held in 2012. A third camp, WildKin, will be founded in New South Wales in 2020. She has taught Core Classes, Elements of Magic twice, and several introductions to the Iron Pentacle.
Since 2012, Margi has counted herself amongst the Reclaiming Teachers in Training, undertaking many study groups, courses and Core Classes. She has attended all but one WitchCamp since 2011, (counting 15 camps to date.) She also undertook a Charge Activation Training with world-renowned Chakra expert, Anodea Judith, and most recently took a six months course in Sacred Leadership with world-renowned Reclaiming Teachers Ravyn Stanfield and Susanne Stirling. She is also a breast cancer survivor, has fibromyalgia and holds great sympathy for others with chronic illness, and hidden disabilities.
In 2017 Margi began to investigate her ancestral links to the 1816 Appin Massacre, undertaking ongoing ancestral and reconciliation business with the people of the Dharawal Nation. In February 2018, Margi attended an Aboriginal Women’s Business Gathering and was initiated as a woman by Tjanara Goreng Goreng, traditional Murri Songwoman.
Despite Margi’s ideal credentials as a Reclaiming Teacher, you will not find her teaching at WitchCamp. There are many wonderful, young, enthusiastic Australian Reclaiming Teachers in Training who are well capable of that challenge. These days, Margi sees herself more as a Crone, available to pass on her experience and wisdom around Priestessing, sacred ritual and theatre, healing, teaching and facilitation as she grows into her mentoring role.
Climate Crisis has propelled her to establish Growing Edges Sacred Services, and “Priestessing the Revolution” Training. She has a profound sense that it will only get harder for everyone to find time and energy for the sacred, as planetary forces shift and our society becomes more stressed.
Margi’s unquenchable creative, inventive and adventurous spirit drives her to forge new paths where others might hesitate. She has claimed her right to Witchcraft and is now stepping up to claim a fundamental right to Priestesshood, and to Priestessing the Revolution at this time of crisis.
TAROT
Margi has been reading Tarot since the 1990s. She read at Lotus Health and Wellbeing Centre in Wollongong from 2004 – 2014. Margi has studied with Internationally renowned Tarot designers and masters Rachel Pollack and Vicki Noble.
Margi has been teaching others to read Tarot cards since the 1990s. Most recently she has taught two workshop series with Michelle Claire White – “Embodying the Tarot” guided movement and ritual theatre experience, journeying through the entire Tarot deck of 78 cards, and “Priestesses of the Tarot”, a series focusing upon the four Minor Arcana Queen cards, in company with the High Priestess and other potent Major Arcana cards of the Sacred Feminine.