The Sacred Space Conference: Full Schedule

The premier annual esoteric conference on the East Coast for intermediate to advanced practitioners

4:00pm EDT

Between Worlds: Understanding Liminal Spaces

Thursday March 27, 2025 4:00pm - 5:30pm EDT

It’s the in-between. Liminal space is the focus of many practices, from witchcraft to paranormal investigations to history to geography. Almost everyone touches liminal space and steps into its otherworldly connection. Join experienced ghost tour guide and lifelong practitioner, Rissa Miller, for this multifaceted journey to the threshold. From spirits and entities to gemstones and waterways; from crossroads to rituals and prayers, she will guide you through the veil to the edge of perception. These gateways have been a part of the earth experience since before written history. Learn how and why the liminal matters, and the healthiest ways to interact with the blurs where our ordinary reality fades.

Speakers

Rissa Miller

Rissa Miller is an editor, author, herbalist, seer, and storyteller. Her storytelling expertise stems from extensive research into the area of esoteric history; including ghosts, witchcraft, cryptids, and folklore. Rissa believes the most enduring stories teach us not only about humanity’s pa... Read More →

Thursday March 27, 2025 4:00pm - 5:30pm EDT
Duncan

Workshop

7:30pm EDT

Trauma Awareness in Modern Polytheism

Thursday March 27, 2025 7:30pm - 9:00pm EDT

Duncan

Ninety percent of people will experience at least one traumatic event in their lifetime. It is likely that one-third of US adults have experienced religious trauma at some point in their lifetime. People seek out spiritual community for connection, safety, and support. Instead, many have traumatic experiences that have lasting impacts on their well-being. This presentation will examine the prevalence of trauma and the ways that it shows up in modern polytheist communities. It will include guidance on how to create trauma-conscious devotional practices, rituals, and community spaces.

Speakers

Izzy Swanson

Founder/Owner, Transformation Reiki & Liminal Crossings

Izzy Swanson is a healer, teacher, and mentor specializing in the intersection of addiction, trauma recovery, and spiritual practice.

Resources Trauma Awareness pdf

Thursday March 27, 2025 7:30pm - 9:00pm EDT
Duncan

Workshop

9:15pm EDT

Procuring the Dead Sleeps: The Witch’s Ointment

Thursday March 27, 2025 9:15pm - 10:45pm EDT

Duncan

In this presentation Coby will discuss the history of the witch’s flying ointment, including the contributing factors to how it is understood today. Through an analysis of recipes from the medieval period we will uncover the importance of key ingredients in these formulations, and how to create safe and effective formulas for modern usage. Attendees will learn how to extract and prepare these formulas using plants from the nightshade family for both medicinal and magical purposes.

Speakers

Coby Michael

Coby Michael is an occult herbalist and magical practitioner specializing in the ritual use of poisonous and psychoactive plants. He studied religion at Arizona State University and has been a folk herbalist since a young age. He owns and operates The Poisoner’s Apothecary, an online shop and edu... Read More →

Thursday March 27, 2025 9:15pm - 10:45pm EDT
Duncan

Workshop

10:00am EDT

The Magic of Embodiment

Friday March 28, 2025 10:00am - 11:30am EDT

Duncan

We are embodied beings, and all of our experiences, thoughts, and feelings are understood through our physical bodies. When we’re at peace with our bodies we can bring that peace to our whole lives – including our magic. Let’s talk about how our bodies inform our magic, how to improve our relationship with our body while living in a culture that tells us our bodies are wrong, and then share a meditation to become more fully embodied in our whole anatomy.

Speakers

Mara

Mara (they/them) is a witch and devotional polytheist with a primarily Irish pagan practice. Their approach includes a deep appreciation for historical sources and cultural contexts combined with listening to spirits active today, and using knowledge from the body sciences to enhance... Read More →

Friday March 28, 2025 10:00am - 11:30am EDT
Duncan

Workshop

1:30pm EDT

Doing Tarot Justice: Truth-Telling and Power Dynamics in Tarot History and Practice

Friday March 28, 2025 1:30pm - 3:15pm EDT

Duncan

We will discuss our role as truth-tellers when we read Tarot, starting with acknowledging the truth about the race and class dynamics in Tarot history (presented from research included in the history chapter of my book, 78 Acts of Liberation: Tarot to Transform Our World). We’ll look at the ways social power dynamics impact both client and personal Tarot readings today, and discuss some strategies that Tarot artists, readers, and enthusiasts can use to empower themselves and each other to create change. Finally, we will break the reader-client binary by participating in collaborative readings in small groups, where everyone is both the reader and the querent, formulating a question and deciphering the message in conversation together.

Speakers

Lane Smith

Lane Smith is the author of 78 Acts of Liberation: Tarot to Transform Our World, published by Sounds True (August 2024). They are a transmasculine nonbinary writer with over twenty years of experience as an activist, organizer, and Tarot reader. Lane has presented their work at Salem Witch Fes... Read More →

Friday March 28, 2025 1:30pm - 3:15pm EDT
Duncan

Workshop

3:30pm EDT

Reading Tarot in the Round: Learn to Use Circular Cards

Friday March 28, 2025 3:30pm - 5:00pm EDT

Duncan

Experienced tarot readers and Diviners can offer great readings with rectangular shaped cards. But circular decks offer a whole new world of possibilities! Round cards incorporate 8 different expressions, as opposed to the standard upright and reversal. Circular decks can also distinguish between a querent’s inner world and their outward actions—critical information for Diviners who coach their querents. Using the circular RWS Tarot Original 1909 deck, this workshop will introduce attendees to what round decks can offer. Intermediate and advanced tarot readers and Diviners will learn to apply this model in their own tarot practice, and resources for further study and practice will be shared.

Speakers

Sabrina Mari

Sabrina Mari is a teacher, Diviner, and writer with forty four years of tarot practice. She’s an Elder in the Blue Star tradition of Wicca who also practices Buddhism, and a graduate of the Gryphon’s Grove School of Shamanism. Sabrina loved being a medical anthropologist and academic, and she sti... Read More →

Friday March 28, 2025 3:30pm - 5:00pm EDT
Duncan

Workshop

7:00pm EDT

Magi Card Science: Cards of Your Destiny

Friday March 28, 2025 7:00pm - 8:30pm EDT

Duncan

Learn the ancient secrets of the suits, numbers and royal ranks hidden in a pack of playing cards that show the hand you have been dealt in the game of Life. The common deck of cards have been called different names when operating in divination and prediction: Cards of the Magi, Kismet, Chaldean, Destiny, and The Book of Life. This venerable practice popularized by Olney Richmond, Grand Master of the Inner Temple, Ancient Order of the Magi, became known as Cardology from its affiliation with Astrology, Numerology and Cartomancy. Learn your personal cards of Destiny: Your Birth Card, and how to calculate your Astrological Planetary Ruling Card, the Cards of your Life Spread and Planetary Periods that represent your Fortune.

Speakers

Maria Wander

Maria Wander is the NYC-based High Priestess to the coven Order of the World Tree and an initiate within the Assembly of the Sacred Wheel, Gardnerian, and Cabot Traditions. A practicing astro-mage, ritualist and herbalist, she creates talismanic remedies, herbal/gem tinctures, and flower esse... Read More →

Friday March 28, 2025 7:00pm - 8:30pm EDT
Duncan

Workshop

8:45pm EDT

Global Spirits Service for Spirits of Autonomy

Friday March 28, 2025 8:45pm - 10:15pm EDT

Duncan

In this open circle, The Universal Temple of Spirits presents a service for the Spirits, honoring them in their manifestations through drumming, dance, song, possession trance, and art. Please bring: Your Spirit of Autonomy (as you define this); a song for them, if you have one; a design for them; altar objects, if you have them, and drums, if you drum. You may wish to dress in the colors of the Spirit you’ll be honoring. The Universal Temple of Spirits is a celebratory group practicing in the Global Spirits tradition. The celebrations welcome Spirits from around the globe in harmony. Rituals are theme-based, rather than pantheon-based, and incorporate what we have in common as humans: dance, song, drumming, art, and possession trance.

Speakers

Firesong

Firesong (Eshu Akoni) is a priestess and Pathway initiate at the Universal Temple of Spirits, a Global Spirits pantheistic trance possession temple. She is a versatile, operatic soprano, as well as a professional teacher, artist, herbalist, and experienced gardener. For years she’s... Read More →

Friday March 28, 2025 8:45pm - 10:15pm EDT
Duncan

Ritual

10:00am EDT

Generational Trauma and Spiritual Hunger

Saturday March 29, 2025 10:00am - 11:30am EDT

Duncan

So much of the hunger that is taken advantage of in capitalism and consumerism is built on spiritual hunger — out of the actual hunger of the Great Depression and the World Wars of the 20th century. Modern western culture is an offspring of widespread hunger — both literal and spiritual. How does this hunger influence our culture and our spiritual pursuits?

Speakers

Katrina Messenger

Katrina Messenger is a poet, priestess, warrior, and witch. She is also a full-time Wiccan mystic and an ordained minister. For over thirty five years, she has studied mythology, esoteric sciences, and human development. She is the founder of Connect DC (1999) and Reflections Mystery School (2004) in... Read More →

Saturday March 29, 2025 10:00am - 11:30am EDT
Duncan

Workshop

1:30pm EDT

Building Resilient Pagan Communities

Saturday March 29, 2025 1:30pm - 3:15pm EDT

Duncan

Along with providing spiritual union, opportunities for magical development, and social connections, Pagan and metaphysical groups, covens, groves, and chapters face challenges from the outside. Our communities are targeted by extremist organizations seeking to recruit members and by antisocial individuals seeking power over others. Additionally, some Pagan groups use holdover practices that are inaccessible or unwelcoming to the very people we are most hoping to help. Explore tools and techniques for increasing accessibility, identifying red flags, building policies that make predation more challenging for those who seek to do harm, conflict resolution, and more.

Speakers

Irene Glasse

Irene Glasse is a Heathen witch based in Western Maryland. She is a longtime teacher of witchcraft, meditation, and magic in the mid-Atlantic area. She is the co-author of Blackfeather Mystery School: The Magpie Training (Dragon Alchemy, 2022), a contributing writer of Gemini Witch: Unlock... Read More →

Saturday March 29, 2025 1:30pm - 3:15pm EDT
Duncan

Workshop

3:30pm EDT

Animism in a Heathen Context: The Zusaagpflicht

Saturday March 29, 2025 3:30pm - 5:00pm EDT

Duncan

Something often glossed over about modern Heathenry is a core belief in animism. Our forebears lived much closer to the land than we generally do. The belief that plants, animals, minerals, and humans all contain Spirit (animism) seems to have always been present in their world. In this class we explore how the Zusaagpflicht can help us get back to balance between the non-human and human peoples that inhabit this realm. This Urglaawisch “Sacred Promise” is easier to fulfill (regardless of spiritual belief) if we expand the 3 R’s beyond “Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle” by adding “Re-Think, and Reject”. Then we can begin to truly re-work our position and become better neighbours to our plant, animal, mineral, and aethereal neighbours.

Speakers

Ralph Victoria Young

Ralph Victoria Young has been practicing some form of magic since the late 1990s, and fell into Heathenry in 2015. A lineaged Hex in the Oley Freindschaft and the Blobarrick Freindschaft, Ralph is clergy in the Urglaawe religion and a certified Death Midwife. Intermittently, they host the Holle’s Ha... Read More →

Saturday March 29, 2025 3:30pm - 5:00pm EDT
Duncan

Workshop

7:00pm EDT

Skillful Aspecting: Safety, Consent, and Integrity When Embodying Deity

Saturday March 29, 2025 7:00pm - 8:30pm EDT

Duncan

Aspecting is the art of inviting a deity to use you as a vessel for direct interaction with participants. Running this kind of spiritual voltage through your body and mind can be risky without proper preparation. We’ll present our organized system for six weeks of thorough preparation for safe and productive aspecting: preparing your energetic body, researching the deity’s lore, trance journey negotiations and contracts, inviting deity to co-create the structure of the ritual, garb and props, feeding and watering your godly guest, tenders for the aspector, coming down from the deity-high after aspecting, and how to respond productively to questions and feedback people have for you after the ritual.

Speakers

Murphy Robinson

Murphy Robinson (he/they) is a magic-weaver, wilderness guide, animist, and activist. He specializes in trance journeying, the Norse runes, archery magic, and the sacred hunt. As a queer transmasculine priestx, he explores healthy and healing ways to reclaim the sacred masculine. Jamie Waggoner and... Read More →

Jamie Waggoner

Priestess & Author

Jamie Waggoner (she/her) is an author, Pagan priestess, and a practicing witch for more than twenty five years. Jamie is the author of Hades: Myth, Magic and Modern Devotion (Llewellyn, 2024), and contributor to Witchology Magazine, Haunted Magazine, and The Feminine Macabre, among others. Connec... Read More →

2025 Sacred Space Skillful Aspecting pdf

Saturday March 29, 2025 7:00pm - 8:30pm EDT
Duncan

Workshop

10:00am EDT

The Concept of the Self in the Pre-Christian North

Sunday March 30, 2025 10:00am - 11:30am EDT

Duncan

Literary and archaeological evidence suggests that Heathens in the pre-Christian era understood themselves and their world in ways quite different from that of most modern Westerners. Specifically, the boundaries between many categories – male and female, human and nonhuman, body and mind, self and not-self – were perceived as far more fluid and porous than is the case in mainstream Western thought. Drawing on both historical evidence and modern anthropology, this class will explore this approach to understanding personal identity and its implications for ritual and magical practice.

Speakers

Ann Sheffield (Gróa)

Ann Sheffield (“Gróa”) has been Heathen for thirty years and currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Troth, an international organization promoting and supporting inclusive Heathenry. She is also a member of Whispering Lake Grove, Ár nDraíocht Féin (ADF Druidry). Author of two books, Frey, Go... Read More →

Sunday March 30, 2025 10:00am - 11:30am EDT
Duncan

Workshop

1:00pm EDT

Austin Spare’s Alphabet of Desire

Sunday March 30, 2025 1:00pm - 2:30pm EDT

Duncan

This class will take a brief look at the life of Austin Spare and a much closer look at his blending of art and magic, culminating in an exploration of The Alphabet of Desire as a practical method of both divination and enchantment using the world around the practitioner with no tools or rituals necessary beyond force of will and imagination. The class with learn about how Spare’s life influenced his philosophies, how those philosophies grew into the development of sigils, and how that eventually became his work on the Alphabet as a mystic “internal language” unique to each of us that creates the subconscious system of symbols we respond to in dreams, tarot cards, and even ritual performance.

Speakers

Damien Bowers

Damien Bowers As a scholar and explorer at the intersection of philosophy, spirituality, and practical life, Damien has been an explorer of many different traditions and approaches to the practice and integration of magic into one’s life and spiritual pursuit. He has been involved... Read More →

Sunday March 30, 2025 1:00pm - 2:30pm EDT
Duncan

Workshop

2:45pm EDT

The Archetype of The Navigator in Magick and Ritual

Sunday March 30, 2025 2:45pm - 4:15pm EDT

Duncan

As we continue living in “unprecedented times” how do we find our way and help others along their paths? Journey together into charted and uncharted waters as we engage with the Archetype of The Navigator to enrich and support our personal and group spiritual practice, magick, and ritual. This workshop will familiarize participants with the Archetype of The Navigator and its associated symbols and imagery, as well as the myriad ways it can guide workings of all types. A guided meditation will provide participants with an experience of working with this powerful archetype.

Speakers

Orelia

Orelia has been learning and working in Pagan and Wiccan circles in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic since 1997. She is a student of Katrina Messenger, an Initiate of the Order of the Elemental Mysteries and the Co-Convener of the Connect DC public ritual group. Orelia is a certified... Read More →

Sunday March 30, 2025 2:45pm - 4:15pm EDT
Duncan

Workshop