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Starhawk
(June 17, 1951 - living) U.S.A.

Starhawk

Witch, pagan priestess, drummer, author, lecturer, and activist

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Born Miriam Simos in New York, she is perhaps the most famous and visible person in the Earth religion of Wicca, and her books, particularly The Spiral Dance, have had a major influence on the growth and expansion of that faith.

Since high school, when she participated in various protests and demonstrations against the war in Vietnam, she has been an ardent activist on behalf of world peace, the environment, feminism, human rights, antiglobalization, and other issues, and has gone to jail many times for her beliefs.

Raised in the Jewish faith, she was initiated into Wicca at 17, attracted to the religion's treatment of sex and nature as sacred and its high regard for the status of women. Receiving her MA in Psychology from Antioch University, she became involved in the Wiccan and NeoPagan communties in San Francisco and was one of the founders of "Reclaiming", an ecofeminist collective, of which she and her partner are still members.

In 1979 her book, The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess, a guidebook to the practice of Wicca detailing matters of thealogy, philosophy, meditations, spells, rituals, and practical life issues, was published. The book sold over 50,000 copies by 1985 and sparked an explosion in the growth of Wicca, as thousands in the US, Canada, Australia, and South Africe began forming covens and Goddess groups based around the system she presented.

In 1982 Starhawk wrote Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Politics, and Sex, which merged insights of Wiccan magick and ritual with the issues surrounding anarchic, feminist, and environmental activism. These issues were further examined in Truth or Dare: Encounters with Power, Authority and Mystery, in 1987. Truth or Dare won the Media Alliance Meritorius Achievement Reward for nonfiction the following year.

Starhawk's first novel, The Fifth Sacred Thing, was published in 1993. The novel won the 1994 Lambda Gay and Lesbian Science Fiction Award. A prequel, Walking to Mercury, was published in 1997. Starhawk was a consultant for the documentary films Goddess Remembered and The Burning Times, and wrote the commentary for the documentary Full Circle.

She is a veteran of progressive movements and deeply committed to bringing the techniques and creative power of spirituality to political activism. She travels internationally teaching magic, the tools of ritual, and the skills of activism. A collection of her recent political writings, with new commentary, was published in late 2002: Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising.

Starhawk's activism has included anti-nuclear demonstrations at Diablo Canyon, Livermore Weapons Lab, Vandenberg Air Force Base, and the Nevada Test Site, among others, a 1984 trip with Witness for Peace to Nicaragua, volunteer work for sustainability programs in El Salvador, and participation in the protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle and the International Money Fund and World Bank in Washington, DC.

She continues to be a witness for peace on the front lines of the Palestine/Israel war, working with Palestinian and Israeli peace activists, as well as teaching nonviolence workshops in the region. She is now active in the revived American peace movement. Starhawk works on countless environmental and land use issues, and is a founder and active member of the Cazadero Hills Land Use Council in western Sonoma County.

Starhawk also organized an AIDS-prevention needle exchange program in San Francisco. Finally, she protested the censure of Father Matthew Fox by the Catholic Church, which objected to his inclusion of Starhawk and other Wiccan and Pagan leaders in his Creation Spirituality Institute.

At this writing, Starhawk is continuing her efforts against globalization and is also working on behalf of efforts to protect the redwoods. She is also collaborating with film producer Donna Read on a documentary about archaeologist Marija Gimbutas, produced by the company they have co-founded Bellini Productions. She continues to lecture throughout North America and Europe, and to give workshops on effective activism and civil disobedience.

Her works have been translated into German, Danish, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Japanese. Her essays are reprinted across the world, and have been included in numerous anthologies.

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Website: http://www.starhawk.org/starhawk/

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