PORTAL

Portland Oregon Teachers Alliance

PORTAL is a teaching cell of Portland Reclaiming. We are Reclaiming Witches and Priestesses, dedicated to co-creating transformative learning environments within which we nourish our relationships with mystery, spirit and earth. We teach pathways to knowing the divine within ourselves and throughout the multiverse. We teach the Reclaiming Traditions’ core classes, the magical foundation unique to each of us yet common to our beloved magical community. We teach ways to access magic, self and transformation. We know that what happens between the worlds changes all the worlds.

PORTAL members call ourselves Reclaiming Tradition teachers based on experience teaching Reclaiming classes and a deep personal and spiritual commitment to the Principles of Unity. We are dedicated to our own personal and spiritual growth, are committed to developing our priestessing/teaching skills and enthusiastically endeavor to build skill and competency in Reclaiming-style teaching.  

For information on how to become a member of PORTAL, please see the bottom of this page.

PORTAL Members/Bios

Dawn Isidora I first became involved with Reclaiming in San Francisco (my home town) in the early eighties.  My early magical training was with Rose May Dance, Arachne (aka Rocky) and Robin, members of the original Reclaiming collective.  Other strong influences upon my magical training have been Deborah Oak, T. Thorn Coyle, Anne Hill and Reya as well as the members of my Feri coven.  I began teaching Reclaiming Tradition Magic in 1993 and these days, I teach weekend workshops and weeklong intensives both nationally and internationally.  My teaching interests include the Reclaiming Core classes (Elements of Magic, Rites of Passage, Iron Pentacle and Pearl Pentacle), Sacred Sex Magic (A series of workshops developed with Ravyn) Reclaiming Leadership (developed with Lilith), as well as working with the Feri tools of Triple Soul Alignment and the Black Heart of Innocence.

Over the past twenty-five years I have spiraled towards the center of Reclaiming communities and wound my way back out to the edge, only to be drawn in again.  I believe it is this constantly shifting perspective that keeps the love affair alive.  Along the winding path “to know myself and all my parts“, I have explored many landscapes: sacred sexuality, right sized-ness and authentic edges (boundaries), community building and service, teaching and mentorship and more recently, teacher training.  I am a Reclaiming and Feri initiate and work closely with Isis, Mary Magdalene, Ganesha,  the Peacock Angel and “The Old Man” (as he prefers me to call him).  I live in SE Portland's Mt. Tabor neighborhood, work as a spiritual counselor and hypnotherapist and am the proud mother of two grown sons.  My days often include making soup and semi-precious stone necklaces, gardening, writing or just sitting on the front porch.

Eva Blake is a witchy activist and educator, whose first Rites of Passage class brought her face to face with her life’s work: exploring the mysterious powers of ecstatic sexuality. Fusing ancient spiritual teachings with emerging science, Eva’s sex and relationship coaching invites her students through the gateway of profound ecstasy and healing by restoring the sacred relationship with the body and becoming fully alive in the present moment. She’s been an integral part of Free Cascadia Witchcamp since 2006 as an organizer and path facilitator. To see more: www.liberatingdesire.com or Eva@liberatingdesire.com

horizon is a queer, fat, joy-evoking seeker of connection, embodiment, justice and magic. A teacher and priestess of self-love, culture shifting and identity claiming, she spins threads of healing through the tools of intentionality, sacred witnessing, liberatory wellness and radical transformation. A lifetime student of earth-centered healing and anti-oppressive practice, she works locally as a Resiliency Coach and Wellness-Centered Therapist, supporting herself and others  in becoming their fullest, brightest selves: http://www.joyfulawakeningpractice.com/.

Kristen Rawson

 

Miles Sledd  

Rain Crowe I am a creature of the living world, a spell-telling priestess, writer, and community process facilitator and healer. I started practicing within Reclaiming as a solitary witch in the Midwest in 1994 and have been calling ritual circles since 1996. After traveling for many years and working magic in the streets and the woods, living in the Midwest and in California, I've been nesting into Portland for the last two and half years at an intentional community.

I aspire to consciously embody resiliency, imagination, and intimacy, in all my workings, as a bridge between the ancestors of Path and the descendants of Life. I especially enjoy teaching about magic and ritual, praise, prayer and offerings to feed the Holy in nature, personal and cultural decolonizing, regenerative interdependence, the community arts, and empowered organizing. The stars of possibility guide me along a path spirit has lain forth for me, which is rooted in the quest for an all-encompassing, uncompromising, collective liberation from the legacy of Empire consciousness, and the simultaneous regeneration of a multiplicity of earth cultures. I work with a spectrum of intersecting and distinctive magical, political, permacultural and rewilding/skills communities. I have been organizing for Free Cascadia Witch Camp for six years and have taught a path there for five years.

Ravyn Stanfield I am an innovative acupuncturist, an inventive author and international educator dedicated to liberating the sacred leadership abilities and super powers within each of us. I practice acupuncture and herbal medicine in Portland, Oregon with a focus on helping people survive cancer, chronic pain and traumatic experiences.  I work with Acupuncturists Without Borders to build world healing exchange programs in Nepal, Haiti, Mexico and Israel.  I use my background in the realms of social justice, traditional medicines, neurobiology, Jungian psychology, writing, theatre and many forms of creative expression to coax more of the extraordinary into the world through the cracks in Western civilization.

I am an aspiring cultural alchemist, seeking to transform the heartbreak of living in our industrialized modern world, revealing the gold in all that may seem worthless.  In and outside of Reclaiming, I create ceremony and ritual art, weaving poetry, music and performance into contemporary offerings of the human imagination.  I design workshops and apprenticeship trainings, both in person and online, for emerging leaders and healers in the US, Canada, Europe, Asia and Australia.  For more information: www.gerriravynstanfield.com or https://www.facebook.com/GerriRavynStanfield/.  

 

 

PORTAL Community

You may have read our bios above, and we’d like to talk about some of our common values and shared agreements.

In addition to many (some decades) years of experience in the Reclaiming community, most of us have day jobs. We are also parents, students, activists, artists -- as well as priest/esses and teachers. We donate our time and money to a variety of community and global concerns, besides Reclaiming. We keep daily spiritual practice and often work in covens or other groups. We take virtually every class available to us, sometimes traveling to distant communities to receive training. Often we'll do the organizational work to bring a teacher here so that the larger community can benefit from additional training and teachers as well. We open our homes for meetings and classes, often displacing family and loved ones for the duration. We tithe 10% of our earnings back to the community, frequently in support of scholarships which make our classes more accessible. We have all formally committed to solicit feedback from our students, and give and receive feedback from our peers on a regular basis. We do our best to balance the needs of the community with our own interests and limitations in time and resources, and we attempt to make the core Reclaiming classes available on a regular basis. Consistent with Reclaiming’s Principles of Unity, we try to balance the need to be justly compensated for our labor with our commitment to make our work available to people of all economic levels.

Becoming a member of PORTAL

The following is the Portal entry process. What it does not and cannot address, is the importance of taking time to digest the work. Spiritual training is not like college course work -- where you get through, get your degree, then get the job. Spiritual training is more like your garden or a vineyard -- it takes time to mature before it bears fruit. This process of digesting and maturing is personal and dependent upon the individual. We have come up with no way to legislate it; it falls under the code of personal responsibility.

To become a PORTAL member, we ask that you:

· Adhere to the Principles of Unity and identify yourself as Reclaiming

· Have taken Elements of Magic, Iron Pentacle, and either Rites of Passage or a course on trance techniques. (If finances are an obstacle to taking these classes, please contact us.)

· Have co-taught a Reclaiming-style class 2x within the last 3 years, from which you bring written feedback from your students and your co-teacher. (A Reclaiming style class adheres to the Principles of Unity, is participatory, co-taught  and teaches Reclaiming magical or cultural content.)

· Tithe 10% of your class profits to PORTAL for scholarship and continuing education

·Attend ¾ of the PORTAL meetings each year, including our annual feedback meeting

· Take an active, visual role in at least one community ritual a year

· Agree with community values of skill-development, self-cultivation & continuing ed.

We warmly invite you to contact us when you know that joining PORTAL is your goal, so we can mentor you through the process.  We encourage you to meet the membership requirement by co-teaching with a PORTAL member. No PORTAL member is ever required to teach with someone with whom they feel uncomfortable.

Love,

Dawn, Eva, horizon, Kristen, Miles,  rain, Ravyn