Presenter Biography:

Catherine Starr is an Elder in several different traditions, including Gardnerian and NROOGD. As a NROOGD Red Cord, she helped bring the tradition to the Seattle area and is now bringing it to Toronto. She is a former First Officer of Covenant of the Goddess, and is the Canadian representative to the CoG Board. She represented CoG at the Parliament of World Religions Conference in Cape Town, South Africa. She continues interfaith work through membership in URI CCs. As a Founding Member of Magical Acts Ritual Theatre, her play, "Oracles from the Living Tarot" has been performed annually since 1998, with the current production scheduled for March 2006 in Oakland, California. She currently lives in Toronto.

URLs: www.cog.org, http://www.uri.org/, http://www.cpwr.org/, http://www.magicalacts.org/, http://www.nroogd.org/

Speaker Topic:

NROOGD: How a class project became a 40 (almost) year-old tradition

The NROOGD tradition of the Craft originated with a group of friends, including Aiden Kelly and Glenn Turner, who were students at San Francisco State College in 1967. One of them, e.l.f. Silverlocke was taking a class which gave her the assignment of creating and performing ritual. She came up with the idea of recreating a witches' sabbath. The rituals grew and NROOGD has been celebrating public sabbat rituals ever since. During the mid-90s, the tradition started to spread from its traditional roots to other areas, including New York, Seattle, Michigan and now Toronto. Learn more about this tradition, its history, and rituals.