Alphecca is the bright starry gem in the Northern Crown known as the Corona Borealis constellation. Like the seven stars of the Pleiades, the seven stars of Corona Borealis bear immense importance across ancient cultures. More than a gem bedazzling a crown, Alphecca is the living presence of Ariadne, the Mistress of the Labyrinth. Some say Ariadne is the granddaughter of Helios and Zeus. Others that she is an ancient great goddess of Crete. All agree she entered a sacred marriage with Dionysus, and that she is the protomystes of the Dionysian Mystery cults. Come to hear stories of dauntless Ariadne of the lovely tresses, her thread that guides through labyrinth paths of descent and ascent, her possession and transmission of the Dionysian current, and the liberation she offers our soul.
Genie Raftopoulos is a talismanic jeweler, multidisciplinary artist, and founder of Tides of Tethys. Her work bridges ancient metalsmithing traditions with astrological and magical practices, creating handcrafted talismans guided by celestial timing and inspired by esoteric wisdom. Drawing on a decade of experience, Genie specializes in the ancient techniques of wax carving, sand casting, and lost wax casting, creating limited collections from the finest earth-grown gemstones and metals. Her practice is deeply influenced by astrological texts such as the Picatrix, Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy and Ficino’s Three Books on Life. Genie holds a BFA from Queensland College of Arts and an MFA with Distinction from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, and she continues to explore the intersections of art, astrology, and spirit relationship through her arts practise and writings.
Gray Crawford is a professional natal and horary astrologer using techniques drawn from ancient and modern sources, synthesizing influences from Hellenistic, magical, mythic-archetypal, and psychological astrology. Gray has taught at UAC, NORWAC, and ISAR astrology conferences, and various astrology associations around the USA. Gray is a member of the faculty at Kepler College and is the coordinator for their Hellenistic Natal Astrology and Hellenistic Timing Technique certificates. Gray’s astrological writing has been published on Astrology.com, in WellBeing Astrology, and by Ignota Press. Gray can be contacted on his site graycrawford.net.
This is a workshop on taking omens from the body with known-omen-guy hawk grubb. Hawk is known for their work as an omen seer and diviner who specializes in deity communication. Their most frequently-used technology for spirit communication in their personal life is reading the answers to yes or no questions from the sensations that arise in their body.
Yes/no questions are deceptively tricky in divination, and require a clear mind and solid spiritual foundation to thrive, with access to the knowledge divination can bring us. This is an S-tier download on the omen nature of reality, wrapped into an accessible, practical package.
You'll learn multiple approaches to using your somatic senses to get divinatory information, absorb some of hawk’s extensive omen-interpretation framework, and get some playtime to practice. By the end, you'll be on your way to answering yes/no questions or multiple choice questions using your hands, and be set up to develop your own unique system of embodied divination.
"I'm a pro astrologer, a prodigious tarot reader, and a person for whom magic is integrated into daily life. My most-used tool for divination is my hands."
Hawk Grubb is a diarist, omen seer, astrologer & magical mentor living in the Pacific Northwest.
Their magical interests include the holy guardian angel & abramelin operation, wresting ceremonial magic from the hands of stodgy misogynists, doing life alongside diverse deities, the four elements, and natural omen seeing as a foundational spiritual practice/ lifelong navigation tool.
They’re focused on placemaking, firetending, and third housing with their friends, neighbors and spirits.
Prajwal is bringing to North Star his decades of experience training to embody wisdom through the somatic connection between body, mind, and nature. He will be teaching about Mudra: the practice of embodying the presence and wisdom of the divine through the conscious positioning of the body.
Mudra goes beyond the arrangement of the hands, stretching beyond the body, showing us how dance is a path to enlightenment and awakening.
Prajwal will also teach foundational exercises for the practice of Charya Nritya.
Prajwal is a priest of one of the Vajrayana Buddhist lineages of Nepal and a ritual master both of the Charya Nritya dance tradition and other ritual forms performed by the Newar Vajracharya lineage. Prajwal began his training in Charya Nritya, Newar buddhism from at eight years old, receiving formal instruction mainly from his father, the Buddhist scholar and ritual master Ratna Kaji Vajracharya. Prajwal Vajracharya is now the premier teacher, practitioner, and performer of the tradition and is a veteran of several world tours with beginning and advanced students around the globe.
At North Star, Josh is bringing a living encounter with the goddess Saraswati through the traditional practice of Nad Yoga, The Yoga of Sound & Mantra.
This practice makes us more sensitive to the vibrations of time and space, allowing us to ignite the blessings and remediate the obstacles present in the Natal Horoscope.
Participants with be led through voice cultivation exercises and Josh will demonstrate this using the Hindustani Classical Raga Tilang, which invokes the presence of the Goddess of music and learning Sarasvati.
Josh Proto is an astrologer, astrological magician, and ordained Lama in the Rimé tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. Since 2019, he has trained and performed as a Charya singer and dancer within the Newar Vajrayāna tradition and has crafted more than 500 Picatrix-style astrological talismans for clients and practitioners worldwide.
His studies include Medieval and Renaissance astrological magic, Tibetan astrology, and Jyotiṣa, including initiation into the lineage of Achyutānanda Dāsa. Joshua is especially interested in demonstrating how astrology and astrological magic can produce tangible results in the real world, from spiritual development to business, career, and life outcomes.
Using ancient Nakshatra teachings, we'll explore the relationships among stars, planets, people, and even trees. While this workshop offers astrologers and stellar magicians practical tools and perspectives that are rarely discussed, its deeper purpose is to invite anyone, regardless of experience or background, to contemplate our place within the living ecosystem of the galaxy.
From 10-11AM on Saturn’s Day, on the cusp between Leo and Virgo Seasons; as the Sun conjoins the South Node; and Venus rises with the asteroids Bachus and Dionysus in Libra, we’ll gather to collectively release restrictions and inhibitions that keep us from accessing and expressing our authentic movements and bodily truths. Engaging the archetypes of sacred fools, divine clowns, shapeshifting weirdos and corporeal tricksters, we’ll dance on the edges of vulnerability, visibility, discomfort and drama. Invoking solar force, we’ll channel the unapologetic ferocity of fire into healing for our bodies, hearts, minds, and the land. Welcoming the spirits of ecstatic surrender into our somatic intelligences, we’ll dance like it doesn’t matter who watches or doesn’t because we’re lit from inside and feeling ourselves fully.
Later on that night, after a full day of ritual and learning, we’ll return to music and dance as agents of integration and cathartic devotion.
Both of these events invite costumes! Dress (or undress) in ways that connect you with your birthright essence and childlike intelligence of not-giving-a-fuck-you’re-gonna-be-you-and-you-are-magic.
Renee Sills is a second generation astrologer, intuitive, somatic educator, and founder of Embodied Astrology – a podcast and emergent collective learning space that centers embodied, intersectional approaches to astrology, intuition, and divination. The throughlines of her work are investigations of interrelatedness, spirituality, mindfulness, creative agency, and adaptive processes of human bodies and consciousness in times of apocalypse. Renee’s work weaves together and between realms of mysticism, bodywork, healing ritual, and participatory art.
Renee is a certified Somatic Movement Educator, a SomaSource™ provider, and a registered yoga therapist. She has taught and facilitated movement for over two decades, and has completed over 1000 hours of certification and training in yoga, rehabilitative movement re-patterning, Body-Mind Centering™, dance therapy, and biodynamic cranial sacral therapy.
A conversation with Robert Fitzgerald, Hawk Grubb and Joshua Proto, on Elemental Animism
Robert will set the stage by discussing how the elements formed at the beginning of creation, permeating our universe with a teeming array of living spirits. Drawing from Paracelsus’ work, Robert will also dive into the various classes of elemental spirits like sylphs, gnomes, and salamanders, providing a framework to understand their temperament and suggest practical ways of working with them.
Hawk will discuss the elements as a schema for information, and how this weaves into structuring occult ritual, and touch on the way these things have been incorporated into the magic we’ve woven at North Star itself.
Joshua will discuss the role the elements, or Tattvas, play in the formation of Buddhist Mandalas.Joshua dicusses the role the elements, or Tattvas, play in the formation of Buddhist Mandalas.
Robert Fitzgerald is your favorite witch's favorite witch. Humble and down-to-earth, he's in fact been a major player behind the scenes of some of the most influential movements in magic in the english speaking world. Robert is a practitioner of the angelic evocation of John Dee and Edward Kelley, and is an initiate of Cultus Sabbati, a magical order of traditional witchcraft in Britain and North America. He has also served for many years in the field wildlife rehabilitation, in Vermont and California. Robert has several books out with Three Hands Press, including A Gathering of Masks and Arcanum Bestiarum (illustrated by Liv Rainey Smith).
Shuly and Chloe, the authors of A Sirius Grimoire, have developed a threefold framework for interacting with The Big Dog Star through each of its planetary lenses. Here, they will share the entry point of Sothis, the facet of Sirius of the nature of Isis-Aphrodite. Through intimacy, pleasure, and the body, Sothis shows us the nexus face of Sirius. She teaches the magic of connection: to the stars above, the earth below, and the other living things around us. She opens the portal of the body which is the root of love.
Their own initiations into this cultus have included their textual research however, more than anything, they’ve been built on their their prayers and divinatory, spirit-led experimentation. As individuals, as a pair, and as members of a 10-person coven, they focus on the revival and renewal of ancient magics and systems of divination.
They will also share their research into The Stele of Aphrodite, an obscure amulet from a 3rd century Greek magical manual that they have discovered to be a tool for entering into relationship with this star. Through their stories and the help of some covenmates, they will share what they have learned about living a magical life in the pattern of Sirius-Aphrodite.
Shuly Rose is a linguist and witch coming in from New Mexico. She’s interested in bringing life to old magic by reading about it—but also by getting her hands dirty.
Chloe Margherita is a writer, astrologer and artist living in Portland, OR. Her book, Stellar Magic, will be out this fall with Weiser/Red Wheel.
Shuly and a coven of volunteers will lead the group in a unique spell of protection against fear from Late Antiquity. To banish fear, participants will align themself with the most fearless goddess of all: Hekate-Ereshkigal.
In a fireside ritual after sunset, practitioners will contemplate 7 evil-averting symbols of the Queen of the Underworld. By speaking this ancient ritual formula, they will adorn their energy bodies with each apotropaic symbol in turn. This charm requires no other tools but the voice—once it has been learned it may be employed at any time with great effect.
After casting the charm together, volunteers will build an altar of trash for Hekate-Borborophorba, Hekate Who Eats Filth. Ritual participants will have the opportunity to cast off any object or symbol of affliction trapping them in fear on the goddess’s altar. What can be burned will be put on the fire and what cannot will be disposed of properly.
Participants should bring an open-heart, comfortable clothing and objects of affliction they wish to be liberated from.
Shuly Rose is a linguist and witch coming in from New Mexico. She’s interested in bringing life to old magic by reading about it—but also by getting her hands dirty.
devotion becomes creation when we allow love to express through our hands. less workshop, more making a place for making, diana will be curating a context for doing & discussing handcrafting & rendering tangible the fruits of devotion.
already a crafter? bring along your portable WIPs, materials to share, insights to dispense. new to crafting? bring your curiosity and willingness to make beautifully ugly first things. possibilities include pocket altars, mini baskets, devotional embroideries, sacred shawls, & Fates-pilled yarn spinning while spinning stories of fate & folly.
The coffee industry, says Colly, is all alchemy- alchemy of community, alchemy of conversation, alchemy of caffeine. Colly is bringing her alembic to North Star, with a simple but solid menu of single origin coffee, handmade or local syrups, and drinks made with intention and presence.
Don't be intimidated by the hyper-focused Capricorn rising face — make conversation and your drink will taste even better 💝 Tip your barista in trinkets.🌀
Expect service to be slow and intentional, and quantities to be fairly limited. So if you meet the coffee fairy in the forest, 🧚 lucky you 🧚️
Colly Athey (baristarwitch) is Capricorn Sun and rising, Sagittarius Moon and Mercury, in a 5th house Venus year and expecting their second Sagittarius this fall. She's been a barista off and on since 2015, studying Hellenistic astrology since 2019, working with tarot since 2021, and practicing magic since 2024. They manage Carrier Roasting Co., a cafe and roaster in Northfield, Vermont — where their ethos includes sourcing coffee beans with equity, transparency, and collaboration with farmers. She believes you can taste and feel that when she makes your drinks.
Sphere & Sundry brings a treasure chest of materia to North Star, for you to explore for your ritual enhancement and experiential amusement. At the foot of the mother maple, you'll be able to sample their planetary and stellar magics. What magics? Herbally infused organic and wildcrafted goods on remedial-grade astrological elections, which carry the charge of Planets and Stars at their best and brightest. It's the brainchld of stellar astromage Kaitlin Coppock, in collaboration with her husband, Austin.
