Sacred Harvest Festival 2008

The Fool’s Journey

Breaking the Hermetic Seal

August 2 – 10, 2008
Extended to NINE DAYS!

With this year’s theme we explored Hermetic Magick in many aspects. Tarot was the obvious focus and national guest Donald Michael Kraig, as well asJanet Berres, and Loui Pieper helped guide us. Our first international guest, Tony Mierzwicki, brought the well-researched and resurrected practice of ancient hermetic Graeco-Egyptian ritual. We also had Pagan-bard laureate, author, poet, Blue Star High Priest Kenny Klein.

Read a Witchvox Review of SHF 2008

Artwork by Joe Jarvinen

Donald Michael Kraig

Donald is an occult author and ceremonial magician. He graduated from UCLA with a degree in philosophy and studied public speaking and music at other colleges and universities. After a decade of personal study and practice, he taught courses in Southern California on topics including Qabalah, Tarot, Magick, and Tantra. He is the author of the book Modern Magick, which is an introduction to ceremonial magic.

Kraig has given lectures and workshops all over the US, including the Starwood Festival and the WinterStar Symposium. He has been a member of several spiritual and magical groups, and is an initiated Tantric. He has been a professional musician, taught computer skills at USC, is a member of Hollywood’s Magic Castle, and is currently studying for a doctorate in clinical hypnotherapy. He’s been an editor of Fate Magazine, and in 2001, Kraig became the editor for The Llewellyn Journal, and in 2003 for Llewellyn’s New Worlds. His writing has appeared in numerous magazines, journals, and books.

Donald’s books include: The Truth About Evocation of Spirits, Modern Magick: Eleven Lessons in the High Magickal Arts, Magical Diary, Modern Sex Magick: Secrets of Erotic Spirituality, The Truth About Psychic Powers and Tarot and Magic.

For more information on Donald: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Michael_Kraig

Tony Mierzwicki accompanied by Jo-Ann Byers-Mierzwicki aka ‘Jo’

Tony has been recreating ancient magickal practices since 1990. He has been presenting public workshops and rituals in the United States and Australia, on these practices since 2000. Based on thorough research, Tony has devised a system of rituals based on actual ancient source texts, rather than depending on the work of the medieval grimoires and the Golden Dawn.

Tony is the author of “Graeco-Egyptian Magick: Everyday Empowerment” and the forthcoming “”lien Magick: Exploring the UFO Phenomenon,” as well as essays in three published anthologies. Tony has completed three degrees at the University of Sydney – Master of Arts, Bachelor of Engineering and Bachelor of Science. He lives in Sydney, Australia.

After practicing her family’s tradition as a solitary for many years, but wanting more, Jo Byers was initiated and coven trained in 2001 through The Wiccan Order of Bast. She continued her training and in 2006 received the Priesthood degree through The Hermetic Order of the Wiccan Mysteries. Both of these coven lineages are through the Druidic Craft of the Wise of America (DCWA) of Long Beach, California, which in turn came from the Druidic Craft of the Wise (DCW) in England.

Jo started practicing Graeco-Egyptian Magick (GEM) through Tony Mierzwicki’s workshops in late 2003. She has been co-facilitating all of Tony’s workshops in the United States since 2004.

For more information on Tony, see his Web site: http://hermeticmagick.com

For even more information on Tony and Jo, see their MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/themagickofalexandria

Janet Berres – High Priestess of Arcane Mysteries

Janet Berres has been reading tarot cards for over thirty years. As a tarot reader, literally thousands of clients have consulted Janet for her uncanny insights into their life’s events. Along with giving readings, she has taught tarot classes throughout the Chicagoland area and has lectured extensively at both mainstream and metaphysical events.

Ms. Berres was Founder and President of the International Tarot Society, which she incorporated in 1997 and closed in 2003. As originator and chief organizer of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd World Tarot Congresses (1997, 1999 and 2002). Janet did the groundbreaking work of uniting tarot enthusiasts and professionals together to exchange ideas, build community, and create a forum for networking during these bi-annual events.

Ten countries were represented, along with 42 states from the U.S.; out of her inspiration, many other tarot conferences have since been produced. Janet is the author of Your Guide To The Tarot, the book included in Tarot Kit For Beginners, published by Llewellyn Worldwide in 2005. She is the national Marketing Director of NCGR, the National Council for Geocosmic Research, a 2500+ member astrological organization.

Janet Berres has been active in the pagan, tarot, astrology, and Goddess communities all of her adult life (and probably past lives, too!) and maintains a large private tarot practice in the Chicagoland area, where she resides with her family.

Janet Berres – High Priestess of Arcane Mysteries

Janet Berres has been reading tarot cards for over thirty years. As a tarot reader, literally thousands of clients have consulted Janet for her uncanny insights into their life’s events. Along with giving readings, she has taught tarot classes throughout the Chicagoland area and has lectured extensively at both mainstream and metaphysical events.

Ms. Berres was Founder and President of the International Tarot Society, which she incorporated in 1997 and closed in 2003. As originator and chief organizer of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd World Tarot Congresses (1997, 1999 and 2002). Janet did the groundbreaking work of uniting tarot enthusiasts and professionals together to exchange ideas, build community, and create a forum for networking during these bi-annual events.

Ten countries were represented, along with 42 states from the U.S.; out of her inspiration, many other tarot conferences have since been produced. Janet is the author of Your Guide To The Tarot, the book included in Tarot Kit For Beginners, published by Llewellyn Worldwide in 2005. She is the national Marketing Director of NCGR, the National Council for Geocosmic Research, a 2500+ member astrological organization.

Janet Berres has been active in the pagan, tarot, astrology, and Goddess communities all of her adult life (and probably past lives, too!) and maintains a large private tarot practice in the Chicagoland area, where she resides with her family.

Loui Pieper – Tarot reader and instructor

Evenstar School of Sacred Paths

Loui has been reading tarot for 30 years; and teaching tarot and related subjects for 28 years. She founded Evenstar Bookstore in 1979. In 1980, Loui and several friends began a school for spiritual and occult studies, which later became the School of Sacred Paths, a non-profit educational institution that keeps its campus inside Evenstar.

Loui has also studied and taught classes on ritual writing, faeries and nature spirits, shamanism, and similar subjects (such as soul retrieval). Over the last two summers, she has raised 157 monarch butterflies and released them into the wild. Folks keep begging her to write a book on tarot.

Big Joe Credit – Bard, folk singer, song writer

From the artist:
I have played guitar for as long as I can remember, going back at least until the late fifties. I played rock and roll bands, as a folk singer in my native Boston and New York, worked pit bands for summer stock theater, and took a degree in music.

I never felt like I could create with it until I was inspired by the people I met in the pagan community. I started writing songs about the people and experiences I gathered with them. My son joined with me shortly afterward, and we met Beltana at Starwood in 2000.

We formed the pagan band Sona and played at festivals all over the country for the next two years. We had some artistic and personal differences, and split up in 2002. Since then, I have been writing sporadicaly and playing festivals here and there. Little Joe and I have agreed, however, to collaborate again on some new music and maybe a tour next year.

A few years back, I attended the Sacred Harvest Festival and was so impressed with the people there that I had to write a song about it. I am thrilled to be coming back this year, and look forward to seeing all of the Tribe again.

Kenny Klein – Guest & Musician

Kenny is a Folk and Country musician, a published author, and an elder and a High Priest in the Blue Star tradition of Wicca. Born in New York City in 1955, Kenny developed an interest in British Folk music at an early age, and pursued the fiddle and other stringed instruments. He studied music in New York through his college years, taking lessons from fiddle great Matt Glaser, and learning Country and Appalachian music on the streets of Greenwich Village. In the early ’80s Kenny spent time in Europe studying Gypsy violin. He returned to New York City in ’81 and settled in the Punk Rock infested East Village.

Through his interest in British music, Kenny discovered the Wiccan community. He learned a great deal about traditional Scottish Witchcraft from New York merchant Eileen Campbell Gordon, and then joined Blue Star, becoming a High Priest within that tradition in 1983.

Author of: The Flowering Rod: Men, Sex and Spirituality, March 1993, Delphi Press

More about Kenny can be found at: http://www.kennyklein.net/bio.htm

Dunn County Clerics

• Brad Murphey: vocals, guitar, bass
• Shelly Willowsong: vocals, guitar, keyboards
• Singing Bear: vocals, guitar, bass
• Teresa Frank: vocals, coffee

• maker

Four friends, all Pagan ministers, who love to sing songs with a message. If we have something to say, we can say it in our music. Whether the subject is love, war, or our relationship with the Gods. As an acoustic band, we pull songs from many genres, including folk, rock, and country.

Born in the magic of festivals, we worked hard to keep making this magic together and wrote songs. Pagan songs. Folk songs. Love songs. Even protest songs. So, after Brad publicly broke his G-string, Bear found his groove, and Shelly got new strings for her guitar, we did it. We wrote music.

By our will, so mote it be …

Nathan Rose

Nathan Rose or Siri Kirtan Singh (which means lion of courage who consistently holds God’s song with in his being) has been singing since he could talk. Born and raised outside of Minneapolis, Nathan began his music career as a death metal, thrasher guitarist for Modes of Pleasure and simultaneously practiced acoustic guitar and worked as a song writer, while he studied art at the University of Iowa. After black metal and 6 months in Italy, Nathan began to focus on his solo /project of being a folk guitarist,blending the sounds of traditional ballads with psych rock and raga jams that bring together earthly harmonies with his voice and throat singing that is out of this world.

He is a member of Harmony Tribe, an initiated Rainbow Warrior and a Kundalini Yogi.