Thirteen Years in Reclaiming: A Love Letter

I began writing this as a provocation and it still is; I only critique what I care about. I’ve arrived at a love-letter, however.

I discovered that Reclaiming Witchcraft was a living presence in so-called Australia in December 2009 when Melbourne Reclaiming hosted all of the local and international Pagans and Witches for a hospitality night as part of the opening of the Parliament of the World’s Religions. I very briefly met witches that night who I’d become friends with later on and shared a few conversations with T. Thorn Coyle who had been deeply involved in - priestexing, organising, teaching, mentoring - Reclaiming for many years. The coven that hosted that hospitality night were instrumental in organising the inaugural Australian Reclaiming WitchCamp that I student-taught at over Easter in 2011.

But the place I affirmed - yes I am Reclaiming! - was at the 2010 Spiral Dance ritual in which over 1000 people gathered together to commune with the Beloved and Mighty Dead and trance en masse across the Sunless Sea to the Isle of Apples. This ritual has been happening at Samhain since 1979 when Starhawk and her coven put on a theatrical ritual in celebration of her first book - The Spiral Dance - being published. To dance the spiral-dance with that many people is wonderfully shocking to the system, deeply healing, and entirely invigorating. I remember seeing and feeling so many spirits and holy ones dancing with us.

Since that time I have been deeply involved in Reclaiming. That’s not unusual for me, if I am substantially drawn to something, I follow that call, I leap, I dive in, I journey… This was the same when I discovered Feri as a tradition available to me in that same week in October 2010. It was the same when I meet Lee Morgan. It was the same when I - almost 20 years ago - began to gather with the witches who would found the Coven of the Wildwood together and catalyse initiatory processes that still throb and thrum through my whole being.

Reclaiming is a complicated tradition. It has a secret initiatory process that is available to any who ask for it and yet it is perhaps one of the only contemporary Craft traditions that does not require initiation to teach, organise, or participate in the magic at all. Reclaiming began first as an offshoot of Feri Tradition and some elders of Reclaiming still hold this to be true. However Reclaiming differs from Feri in multiple ways and stands on its own as a radically rich and power-house witchcraft tradition. We work with some of the same principles and tools - the three souls, the Iron and Pearl pentacles, the Feri Creation story, the Black Heart of Innocence, and what Reclaiming calls the Companion and Double Selves - and some of us in Reclaiming are also initiates of Feri. Reclaiming is committed to justice, to liberation, and to various forms of political work that we see as a legitimate and needful expression of our magical work. Reclaiming also works with story, fairytale, and myth in ways that are sometimes unrivalled in my opinion. And as a tradition, as communities and networks, we make mess and get into conflict with one another.

Reclaiming is a white, cis and able-bodied dominant tradition that emerged in the late 70s and early 80s in the Bay Area of so-called California. Reclaiming struggles within itself over socio-political lines at times, regarding gender, race, ableism, and all manner of intersectional and accessible points. It’s also a vast network of people - activists, witches, pagans, spirit-workers, artists - who relate to one another in conversation with the Principles of Unity* and who are aspirational in our justice work. Reclaiming dwells in that precarious and dynamic threshold place of being an open-source, publicly-available tradition that also retains mystery teaching and rite, attempts attribution culture, and values sorcerous silence.

Reclaiming is immensely paradoxical. One of my greatest critiques of the tradition is the reliance on western occult language that does not - in my belief - suit the magical ethos of our tradition. There was a time that Reclaiming witches - early on - would invoke the Guardians of the Watchtowers or particular Spirits and Powers from directions. This was likely related to our roots in Feri, but over time Reclaiming evolved to praise the Elements of Life as they are and not specific intelligences or powers connected through them. Our ritual form is simple but strong.

We acknowledge Country/Land/ Traditional Peoples (I have to say that Australian Reclaiming witches inspired and guided by Traditional Indigenous wisdom and demands here have led the community on this point).

We ground and cleanse.

We cast the Circle and step between the worlds often sealing with these words,
We are between the worlds and what happens between the worlds, changes all the worlds! (I have been told by elders of the tradition that this phrasing was in direct contrast to Circle-sealings that consider our work in the Circle to be “not of this world”.)

We then praise the Elements of Life…

When Reclaimers do this well, it breaks my heart open and I cry. I have often been at Reclaiming rituals - in or out of WitchCamps and Core Classes - in which the praising of the Elements of Life (what most people in Reclaiming call “invoking the Elements”) is so intensely powerful that it allows me to viscerally immerse in the divine immanence of all things. This is one of the magical strengths of how we approach ritual and ritual space.

Rose May Dance (1948-2021) - a mother of Reclaiming and a teacher and friend to many of us - once told me that Reclaiming is an invocatory tradition. We cast the Circle - often thought of as a container for what we do - and into it we call all the presences and powers we desire to conspire and collaborate with on our work. Sometimes we invoke deities and mysterious ones for what seems no precise reason. Certainly I have heard that critique from many in Reclaiming. There are also entire contingents within Reclaiming who are not interested in named Godds (a term of gender-neutrality or gender-fulness coined perhaps by Urania, a long-time Reclaiming priestess) at all and who work with river, or wolf, or specific mountain ranges, etc. Of course, I’d argue that these are all Godds too, and that the anthopocentrism of theism ought not to take away from the animistic, embedded, sensuous relationship to all the Godds and Spirits within the web.

To “hail and welcome” or “hail and farewell” an Element of Life seems absurd to me and for some time in Reclaiming - often while teaching Elements of Magic - I have provoked that language and the underlying ideas present within that language. To suggest that we can ‘release’ a deity from a Circle is also an odd one to me. We can only humbly and hopefully powerfully invoke - meaning to call upon - the Spirits and hope they come, they might not. Usually they do. Most of the Godds seem to really enjoy coming amongst us in our covens, circles, core classes, and camps. More recently the language that arose out of a community of Reclaimers residing in stolen, unceded Darug and Gundungurra Country (Blue Mountains) has become more present in Reclaiming ritual:

Earth is sacred.
Air is sacred.
Fire is sacred.
Water is sacred.
Spirit/Centre/Mystery is sacred.

I offer that this language is more in line with our Elemental ethos and cosmology. And certainly others have offered that same provocation. I also hear it more often now in both northern and southern hemispheres and during the many innovative ways Reclaimers meet ‘online’, between continents and spanning the worlds.

I have no problems "Hail and welcoming” Godds and Spirits we ask to be present in our Circles if that’s the language we want to fall back on. But I think we need to enquire into the origin, context, and histories of our ritual forms and language.

I think we need to be clean and clear with our farewells too. Really, the Great and Mysterious Ones do whatever they want to do. We are witches working wildly with primordial powers, not ceremonial magicians (although some of us might be that as well) commanding and compelling spirits in our community rituals. At the end of our rituals some of us might say the following to honour the Spirits,

(Name/s of Spirit) we thank you for attending our working, we are deeply moved by your presence here this night… not from my heart, but from this Circle, we say hail and farewell.

In general in Reclaiming the Circle is perceived to be a container - like a cauldron - we are calling things into, so of course we want to politely farewell certain Spirits before we dismantle or return that container to the Elements, or to the Mystery. However, the Circle for some of us is not just a container, it is a compass orienting us between and through the worlds and the land, and so if this is true, then when we invoke the Great Ones or praise the Elements, really we are doing that on their terms as we journey and travel through layers of reality, through different worlds.

The Circle is also a telescope for us to perceive the Great Ones, and a lens or magnifying glass for the Godds to perceive us, as Victor Anderson - a Grandmaster of the Feri Tradition - once put forth.

I adore Reclaiming. I have worked within the tradition since 2010, it has been 13 years. Reclaiming magic is rich and potent. Some of the most powerful and skilled witches I know happen also to be Reclaiming witches. This tradition has given a cornucopia of experiences, methods, chants and songs, ideas, and inspiration to the greater witching and Pagan networks. Our work is open to all who respectfully come to engage it. You can take a Core Class and come to a WitchCamp and never identify as Reclaiming, though many do. We are also a tradition of many generations, with camps and communities devoted to children and teens and people in their 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s very much a part of the fabric. We have strong and skilled folks in leadership in their 20s and in their 70s! We are a tradition that is not afraid of having tough and emotionally-complex conversations. And when I say we I really mean the we of any in Reclaiming. Of course there is also division, complication, and all the human foibles and frailties. And though I have struggled being in Reclaiming, I have always felt that I had a voice and that it was honoured and welcome.

My love for and with Reclaiming is deep and rich. It is nurtured and inspired and kept in synergy and dynamic tension by my deep love for and with Wildwood and Feri. I bring all I am - all my identities and I-don’t-know - into the cauldron and crossroads of Reclaiming.

I am deeply honoured to be in service, play, responsibility, and pleasure in this vast and wyrd international community. What began as an angry response to the devocations and treatment of ritual on the last night of a WitchCamp has - through Brigid’s forge and tempering - transformed into a love letter. Reclaiming has been one of the great loves of my life. May I grow in that love.

*https://reclaimingcollective.wordpress.com/principles-of-unity/ (first published in 1997, amended in 2012 and in 2021).