Your Foolish Facilitators…
About Us
“According to Q-Jo, the whole tarot deck, or at least the twenty-two trump cards of the Major Arcana, may be read as the Fool’s journey. “On one important level,” she explained, “the major cards are chapters in the story of a quest. I’m talking the universal human quest for understanding and divine reunion. And it doesn’t matter whether the quest starts with the Fool or ends with him, because it’s a loop anyhow, a cycle endlessly repeated. When the naive young Fool finally tumbles over the precipice, he falls into the world of experience. Now his journey has really begun. Along the way, he’ll meet all the teachers and tempters - the tempters are teachers, too - and challenging situations that a person is likely to meet in the task of his or her growing. The Fool is potentially everybody, but not everybody has the wisdom or the guts to play the fool. A lot of folks don’t know what’s in that bag they’re carrying. And they’re all too willing to trade it for cash. Inside the bag, they have every tool they need to facilitate their life’s journey, but they won’t even open it up and glance inside. Subconsciously, the goal of all of us out-of-control primates is essentially the same, but let me assure you of this: the only ones who’ll ever reach that goal are the ones who have the courage to make fools of themselves along the way.”
— Tom Robbins, Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas
After years of teaching spiritual intensives, we became curious about what it would be like to teach magic with the intent of deepening our practice within the spirit of restoration. Finding Four Springs, with its library, art house, meditation room, meadow, woodlands, and swimming pool, we knew we had found a place where restoration and reflection could occur. A magical intent we have is for participants to take that spirit back out into a world that desperately needs less human intensity and more restoration, reflection and balance.
Deborah Oak Cooper
Deborah Oak Cooper is one of the founders of A Fool’s Journey. . She is a psychotherapist, artist, activist aromancer, and co-creator of the Reclaiming Tradition, a tradition of earth-based spirituality. She spent many years on the board of Gaylesta, the LGBT therapy association. As co-president she helped spearhead the first outlawing of conversion therapy for LGBT youth. She has taught around the country and internationally, and has over four decades of spiritual practice to draw on. She is dedicated to helping others interested in building deep and abiding earth-based spiritual practices that transcend allegiance to traditions while also honoring them. Her artist website is: wavegoodbyetothepatriarchy.com Her website as a therapist is: deborahcoopermft.com
Rose Jayada Bekker
Rose is a Feri witch and Tantrika, initiated in the Golden Thread/Dustbunnies and Sharanya Sha'can traditions respectively. She is crazy in love with the tarot, and has been since her mother introduced her to the RWS deck as a teenager. She has been a reader and teacher for many years. Several years ago, she discovered playing card cartomancy and was not surprised to learn that her great grandmother also read playing cards, and began reading and teaching them as well. She lives in San Francisco with her family.
Robin LaSirena
Robin is one of the original Fools of this wondrous Journey. She is on sabbatical for 2024. She is a theatre artist & administrator, singer, and choir director with a passion for tarot, myth, fairy tales & magic. Robin has studied and practiced many styles of magic and self awareness, and teaches classes with Reclaiming in the SF/Bay Area, and at intensives throughout the US. She is a priestess of the Temple of Aphrodite in Oakland, and a Dionysian reveler.
Robin can be heard on the Reclaiming cd's Second Chants and Let It Begin Now, and the Moonrise cd Songs of Love, Magic, & Other Mysteries.
Bread (Erin Poh)
Bread has been priestessing and making magic for decades in both the Reclaiming and Feri traditions. She’s raised cones of power, 3 children, and all sorts of heck in the Bay Area. She’s worked as everything from a waitress, bartender to union organizer and negotiator, and now as a labor and delivery nurse who occasionally flies in a helicopter. She is a priestess of the threshold and is also a poet.
Kim is a long-time witch, organizer and priestess, primarily in the Reclaiming tradition. Having attended all but one of the Fool’s Journey retreats, she is honored to be a new Foolish Facilitator this year. In the rest of her life she is, among other things, a therapist, an activist, nature lover and amateur photographer. Some of her thoughts and experiences in magical activism appear in the anthology “Honoring the Wild: Reclaiming Witchcraft and Environmental Activism” published by Earth Spirit 2023.
Norelyn is a Clinical Sexologist and poet who lives in Sacramento with her partner and dog, Scribble. When Norelyn isn't in front of the computer as General Manager of Sex Coach U or seeing clients, you might find her in a field of cannabis plants! Her journey with medicinal cannabis began when she sought out the healing properties for personal use which led to her desire to become a Certified Cannabis Coach.
Her interest in magic and ritual has evolved from her love and practice of poetry craft, her experiences as a participant of this retreat, tarot, and from her personal relationship with Medusa, one of the original founders of A Fool's Journey. Norelyn also finds magic while exploring the hinterland of the somatic via bodywork, on Blues Fusion dance floors, and playing the ukulele.