Katrina Messenger (Hopkins):
Poet, Priestess, Warrior and Witch
My mission is . . .
- To share my gifts.
- To actively participate in my own evolution.
- To acknowledge divine mystery.
- To experience the joy, sweetness and beauty of life.
- To be willing to touch and be touched by the journeys of my loved ones.
- To be grounded in the present moment with an open heart and mind.
- To engage in radical self care.
Katrina Messenger, a radical feminist of African, Cherokee & Irish descent, is a refugee from the communist, labor, feminist, and black nationalist movements of old. She now busies herself with revolutions of a more immediate nature - changing herself. A founding member of Dark Flame Coven, she finds inner peace and solace by sharing her hard won lessons with others who care to listen.
Katrina, a Wiccan mystic, is the founder of the Reflections Mystery School. Reflections is a contacted mystery school based in Washington DC. Reflections offers two full time programs including a long distance option plus classes for the general public.
Katrina works extensively with mythology, dreamwork, ritual and trance as a means of self exploration, self healing and self evolution. She believes that any attempt to change the external world must be paired with the inner work of a personal spiritual practice.
Katrina uses myth, magick and mystery to lead her students to greater well being and greater awareness of their unique gifts, abilities and talents. As a healer, teacher and priestess, she believes that everyone has a unique purpose and can walk the path of sacred vocation.
Katrina is a DC native with over forty year's experience as a grassroots activist and community leader. She has taken on leadership roles in almost every group she has joined, including her election to the state presidency of Maryland NOW and later when she served eighteen months as the acting minister for the Sojourner Truth Congregation of Unitarian Universalists.
Katrina is also a poet, singer/songwriter, author, teacher, speaker and priestess. She has studied mythology, esoteric sciences and human development for over twenty five years. Katrina is the author of Descent: A Journey for Women and Dark Beauty. She has published articles in the Reclaiming Quarterly, contributed to the highly successful Twelve Wild Swans, and taught at Reclaiming witch camps from 1997 to 2003. She is an elder in her community and a recognized leader and teacher worldwide.
In 1998, Katrina organized the first DC Red Dragon Feast. Over the years the feast has grown, under the leadership of the DC Radical Fairies, into a major fundraiser toward providing support and finding a cure for all blood borne illness.
In 1999 she inaugurated a magical working called Connect DC, to reconnect and heal the city of Washington, DC. Connect DC is committed to healing the city with magic, mystery and celebration, by publicly celebrating the equinoxes and solstices.
In 2001, Katrina successfully launched her own business, Amber Eyes by producing the first DC Samhain Spiral Dance. After producing the second DC Samhain Spiral Dance in 2002, Katrina became too ill to continue the event in 2003. So Katrina publicly celebrated the holy day as a simpler Connect DC ritual in 2003. And annually since then, the names of the dead and the newborns are read as part of the Connect DC Samhain ritual.
In December of 2002, Katrina retired after 25 years from a career focused on Telecommunications Engineering, Software Development, Applied Research and Internet Architecture. She holds a Master of Science degree in Computer Science from John Hopkins University , and a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland.
In 2004, Katrina opened the Reflections Mystery School. With Reflections, Katrina could finally offer a structured apprenticeship program plus continue to offer quality magickal instruction to the Washington Metro area and to the entire MidAtlantic region.
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Wish I could be there. Very well spoken.
Katrina,
I wish you all the blessings and power you need on your journey. Thank you for these words. It is good to remember that returning to work (and thus returning to grace) bring a chance for us all to rest and have joy.
Wishing you joy in the Work.
David
Dear Katrina- Thorn reposted your blog and happy am I. Your passion, always so immense, comes blowing out in these words. So akin to my own heart and soul that it makes me have a bittersweet smile.
The Storm is only now coming to the edges of our universe and yet it will sweep and consume all that is. In the end, our beautiful universe will be so much...more? Different? Complete? Who knows?
All I do know is my soul came here to witness and be part in this period. I cannot shrink from the work. I am here with you, fae sister!
Thought-provoking piece, Katrina. Thanks.
I don't know what to call myself either. In Pagandom, I've taken to referring to myself as a Witch at Large. In the interfaith world where I'm active, I call myself a Pagan. Sometimes I call myself an uppity woman or a Second Wave Feminist. I've never really thought to publicly identify myself by my sexuality, het woman, which is very "white bread" and old-fashioned. Not only het, but serially monogamous for the most part. It seems almost a liability these days to say you're het, but I am proudly and happily so. I tend towards intellectualism but only have a BA, which doesn't carry much weight, at least in public and professional worlds, no matter how much you've studied, trained, and can articulate, even teach.
My biological heritage is Irish, Dutch, French Huguenot, Euro-mongrel. My social heritage is Roman Catholic on one side and conservative Methodist, temperance-crusading, women's rights and education on the other, with distinct East Coast sensibilities, now mellowed by more than half a century living on the Left Coast. My maternal political heritage is conservative Republican (altho what my relatives might think of current trends in the GOP I cannot imagine, since they did have brains and they did think and they did have a social conscience), yet I am much farther left in my outlook than any elected official I know. My paternal political heritage is blue collar Democratic, except that my dad broke with his family on politics and allied with my mother's family's conservatism.
I'm a former hippie, a home-birth advocate, a home death and green burial advocate, an opponent of capital punishment and resorting to warfare to resolve humankind's differences. I support the right to conscious self-deliverance. I rejoice in any and all consensual expressions of love and eros. I'm a lover and a mom.
I have never missed voting in an election and I disrespect those who don't avail themselves of this hard-won right. (I have ancestors who fought the Brits in the American Revolution.) I support workers' rights. I recognize our interdependence on this planet, so could be called a greenie. I'm a committed environmentalist in my day-to-day life (in terms of eating locally grown food, expanding public transit, recycling, preserving open space and wildlife, opposing exploitation of natural resources [strip mining, oil-drilling, nuclear facilities, agribusiness, monocultures, clear-cutting timber, overuse of pesticides, genetic modification, etc.]) I want to make the city streets "safe for dancing," as my old friend Tony Serra said when he ran for mayor of SF on the Platypus Party ticket.
Well, you got me going there, my friend. Thought-provoking read, as I said. ;-)
xo,
Macha
Lovely azaleas!
[cough][gag][snort][sneeze]
Just lovely...
I know what you mean.
I feel you. There is too much bs- particularly when people decide that their temperament is tantamount to truthful and ignore everyone else.
I get irked by immature extroverts or closet introverts who ignore you REPEATEDLY and then pretend you're out of line for being upset by the time they can't pretend you didn't say anything anymore. I find that the same people will ignore you if you blow up right away, too, and that it's because they just don't think that honoring what you value is important to maintaining a relationship, or even worse: that you don't know what you value at all and that it's all a mind game for their pleasure or annoyance. Then they call you passive-aggressive, aggressive, moody, touchy and temperamental. I call them "not listening".