Books by Our GuestsIn 2013 Paganicon will feature not one, but two authors: Brandy Williams and Orion Foxwood.  Together, these two voices bring an exquisite mix of magical backgrounds, from High Magick to Appalachian conjure, and add a wealth of scholarship, experience, authority and wit to what promises to be a year to remember. Brandy Williams brings a breadth and depth of wisdom from her diverse background as both a magician and traditional Wiccan high priestess.  Orion Foxwood comes highly recommended by local pagans who saw him at Pantheacon or have taken his Faery Seership workshop. His newest book “The Candle and the Crossroads” deals with his experience with Appalachian Conjure and Southern Root Work.

Brandy Williams

Brandy Williams has been practicing and teaching magic for over 25 years. Besides founding and serving as director of the Seattle Pagan Scholars, being involved in the Ordo Templi Orientis and the Open Source Order of the Golden Dawn, she is also a traditional Wiccan High Priestess, and thus able to view the role of magic across multiple paradigms. She has appeared at festivals and conferences such as PantheaCon, TheurgiCon, and the Esoteric Book Conference, and continues to present lectures and workshops about her work.

Her newest book, The Woman Magician, examines and challenges the Western understanding of women’s bodies, energies, and powers, articulating a new metaphysics which frees and empowers women to act authentically as women and as magicians. She lives in Washington state with two people, seven beehives, four cats, one dog, five chickens, and a rooster named Nigel.

Brandy’s appearance at Paganicon will be sponsored by Llewellyn Worldwide.

Visit brandywilliams.org for more info

Orion Foxwood

Orion FoxwoodOrion grew up with the second sight in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, an area rife with the folk practices of the southern and Appalachian tradition. He is a witch and Elder in Romano Celtic-Traditional Craft, High Priest in Alexandrian Wicca and teacher of the Faery Seership tradition. He is also the founding Elder of Foxwood Temple and a primary founder of the Alliance of the Old Religion, a national network of covens in his line that have united to preserve the ways of his Elders.

He was the co-director of Moonridge, a center for metaphysical, Craft and Faery studies in Maryland. For over 20 years, he has lectured extensively across the United States and in the United Kingdom on the Craft, Faery Seership Tradition and Southern Folk Magic and conjure. He is the author of The Faery Teachings, The Tree of Enchantment, a collaborative CD project with RJ Stewart named Faery Seership,  and his newly released book on conjure, The Candle and the Crossroads (Weiser books, 2012).

On the lecture circuit, he is best known for his teachings on traditional second sight and folkloric Faery practices originating in the ways of the Faery Doctors and Cunningmen of Britain, Ireland, Scotland and Wales and the conjurers of the American South. His teachings are based in traditional folk practices aimed at direct spirit contact for substantive personal transformation.

Visit orionfoxwood.com for more info