About the Reclaiming Tradition

Please also visit the Reclaiming Principles of Unity page

The Reclaiming Tradition springs from the Reclaiming Collective, a San Francisco based group of women and men who actively work to unite spirit and politics. The Reclaiming Collective and one of its better known members, Starhawk, began offering "Witchcamp Summer Intensives" around North America over fifteen years ago. At these intensives, witches from the region would meet, study with a group of experienced priestesses and priests, create ritual together, and take what they learned back to their home communities. Partially through these Witchcamps, which have prospered and multiplied, there are now clusters of Reclaiming Tradition witches working throughout North America, the United Kingdom, Germany and beyond.

Many others know something of the tradition through reading Starhawk's books, which include The Spiral Dance, Truth or Dare, Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex and Politics, and Starhawk's fiction, The Fifth Sacred Thing, and Walking to Mercury. Some members of the Reclaiming Community have jointly authored the Pagan Book of Living and Dying, which is a fine guide to creating ritual around death for both the dying and loved ones of the dying. Be sure to see the book by Starhawk and Hillary Valentine entitled The Twelve Wild Swans, and Circle Round: Raising Children in Goddess Traditions. This summer, Starhawk's new book entitled Webs of Power will be published, and will discuss the role of Reclaiming witches in anti-globalization and magical activist work around the world.

For more information on witchcamps, please visit our Witchcamps info. page (see link at left).

We practice an ecstatic form of feminist witchcraft with a set of core values:

-we are an ecstatic, rather than a fertility-based tradition
-we are committed to serious self-transformation
-we believe in the intelligence present in nature
-we have a commitment to spiritual ethics and nonviolence
-we have women role models
-we respect the dark side / shadow self
-we use our bodies and the elements as our tools
-we are vigorously engaged in making social change
-we are non-hierarchical
-we maintain links with our spiritual and/or biological ancestors
-we work with consensus process
-we raise a lot of power to help us in our work
-we find magical ways in mundane, everyday activities
-we know that religion should be fun!
-we practice what we preach
-we know that one can only teach what we know, and how we live
-we understand our lives are microcosms of the universe
-we believe in being living examples
-we bring the sacred into the political realm
-we are analytic of power and its various structures and forms
-we do not abuse drugs or alcohol, and support sobriety
-we focus on perception, not belief
-we support individual experience of the divine

Please also visit the Reclaiming Home page

We hope to meet you at one of our public rituals, through the activities of our activist cluster, or in one of the many classes we offer.