Refugia Village Mystery School Programs

WitchWays + Calling Ourselves Home, the introductory courses in the Foundations Program, are for when

you feel the call.

The Continuing Program of four intermediate courses throughout the year are to nourish your

connection

to the workings and your own magic.

The Cohort Program is to

conjure deep-time magic.

It is to take a

leap of faith

and dive deeper into a community of practitioners.

Foundations Program: The Call

Container

Meta: Hearing the Call

Emphases: Views Learning & Skills Training

Methodologies: Popular Education & Traditional Wisdomshare

Culture: Liberatory & Curious

Values: Consent & Reciprocity

Courses: WitchWays & Calling Ourselves Home

The Foundations Program focuses on learning and cultivating foundational understandings and energetic and spiritual relationships. This foundation supports deeper dives into enduring questions and provocative content offered in the Continuing Program.

WitchWays and Calling Ourselves Home are two separate courses considered a combined introductory prerequisite program* to further study in the Continuing and the Cohort Programs. These support the necessary skills required to navigate the content of the Continuing Program including the ability to ground oneself, to call on an ancestor helper, to work in a study group in order to process intense feelings, etc.

Foundations Program Courses

WitchWays: Elementally Magical

Foundations Course Part One: Basics of Animist Magical Practices

Calling Ourselves Home: Ancestral Relationships

Foundations Course Part Two: Connecting With Ancestors

Continuing Program: The Connection

Container

Meta: Holographic Connection

Emphases: Views Learning & Skills Training

Methodologies: Popular Education & Traditional Wisdomshare

Culture: Adventure & Care

Values: Honesty & Faith

Courses: The Burning Times Never Ended, Longing to Belong, T.A.C.T (Trauma Aware Conflict Transformation), & The Wylder Edge

The Continuing Program moves the participant through an arc of mythopoetic and actual story: from some histories of disempowerment and disenchantment, through presencing the complexity of privilege and marginalization as it relates to home and belonging, through engaging human and ancestral conflict transformation to grow collective power, and into re-enchantment by way of non-appropriative animist frameworks for living in the matrix of the world.

Each course works the whole cloth of the program arc while focusing on a particular bundle of fibers of that cloth. The witch hunts, capitalism, christian settler colonization, white body supremacism, and speciesism-all are part of a legacy of entitlement, estrangement and enslavement.

Putting traumatic events into some chronology helps the participant to engage grief, shame, desire, and longing. This commitment to understanding one’s location in history, memory and action help allow for the movements toward accompliceship in the collective efforts for justice and healing.

It is strongly recommended that each course be taken in a self-organized group of 2-7 people.

Groups may be affinity, collegial, coven, collective or some other form. The recommendation comes from years of observation that taking these courses in groups creates all forms of support throughout the study, strengthens the likelihood of practice (as individuals or as groups), and that learning and self-reflection are enhanced and amplified within a group journey.

There will be a certificate of completion for everyone who has completed this Continuing Program.

This certificate demonstrates completion and may allow the holder to use the Continuing Program body of work for continuing education credits at colleges/universities/other programs which support that. Pursuit of this is entirely the participant’s responsibility.

Continuing Program Courses

The Burning Times Never Ended: A Story of Disenchantment

The Wylder Edge: Re-enchanting Ourselves to A World Song

Longing to Belong: An Unsettling Journey

T.A.C.T. Trauma Aware Conflict Transformation

Energy Exchange/Pricing

Cost, tuition, and compensation are all adequate words to describe a transaction. 

However, I’m not interested in transactions. I’m interested in relationships of exchange.

Whether you are working for wages, asking for a gift/trade from friends, or sourcing money-power in some other way, you are expending energy- vital life force.

My energy input comes from decades of study and training, conceiving of and curating the materials, and producing the courses and services you want or need.

Therefore we come to a relationship of exchange. Ideally this relationship considers both accessibility for you and generative livelihood for me.

For many years the RVMS has done its best to subsidize almost all the needs of those interested in the coursework and personal services. This is no longer possible if the schooltemple is to be sustainable and to continue. 

For another pathway to accessing the programming see the Mutual Aid Support Template Letter* below this energy exchange section.

Mutual Aid Template Letter

This is a template letter, meant to be customized for your truth and audience.

Included in parentheses are options for you to choose from, or places to add your own language.

The letter is meant to be a starting point for you to find your own voice as you give the gift of asking for support, and you may use as much or all of this copy with no attribution needed.

While it can feel scary or uncomfortable to ask for support, specifically money, two things are true: 

RVMS & DT cannot subsidize the amount of need which is asked of and still be a sustainable endeavor.

In preparation for collapse and breaking capitalism’s grip on us, we must learn to ask for help and to find ways to offer help when asked of us.

It can be helpful to make a list of people and organizations to send this letter to. Some examples would be family members, close friends, affinity or study groups, communities of faith, the groups you may choose to register with, and/or to share online in your social media networks. 

Mutual Aid Letter of Support

Greetings, 

Dear (individual name/ friends/ family/ community),

I’m writing today to share that I’ve found a spiritual-educational (course/ program/ training that aligns with my (interest/ desire/ need) in growing my learning and skills. (You can see more here. The topics which have lit me up/ feel necessary/ relevant are ____).

OR

I’m writing today to share that I’ve found a (consultant/ counselor) who can support me in my (interest/ desire/ need) (to further my healing journey/ help with the difficulties I’m experiencing for myself/ my organization). Her website is here.

I’m feeling excited to (register/ book a session), however I am currently under-resourced to participate even though the (energy exchange/ tuition/ cost) has been structured at below average in comparison to other similar (courses/ programs/ personal sessions).

I want to do two things: support the (teacher and school/ counselor/ consultant) by bringing a fair energy exchange, and to practice reaching out to create networks of mutual aid.

In short, mutual aid is an organizational model where voluntary, collaborative exchanges of resources and services for common benefit take place amongst community members, and networks of relationships to overcome social, economic, and political barriers. 

Currently, I have an economic barrier and I’m asking for help. 

(Even though mutual aid, at its heart, is not designed as an exchange system, but rather a gifting system, I would like to offer a give-back for your help.

I would like to:

Host a potluck and give a report-back on my learning

Or, find a time to share a skill I’ve learned

Or, use this initial act of mutual aid participation to help organize a broader mutual aid network among interested parties)

As we collectively figure out how to extricate ourselves from toxic capitalism, with those who have and those who have not, this act of reaching for support and hopefully receiving support, is one way we can bring equity into our relationships and embody forms of reciprocity based on care and shared interests.

My hope is that you receive this in the spirit in which it is intended, an opportunity to grow interdependence and move away from hyper-individualism and the myth of economic meritocracy.

Sending this letter does feel (challenging/ hard/ scary/ interesting/ ?), yet I want to help create the world I want to live in. A world where needs and disadvantages aren’t stigmatized or considered weakness or failings of character is the one that I hold in my heart.

The amount I am hoping to raise is _____. Please let me know if you are able and willing to support me by helping me to (participate in/ attend/ access) what I know will be a beneficial experience for myself, and ideally for you too. The best way to contact me or donate is _____.

Thank you so very much for considering.

With every blessing,

(Your name here)

“rain crowe’s courses opened my eyes to a new world…of magic, communication, and healing, appreciation, wonder, growth and connection to my ancestors. I remember feeling completely overcome by some of the startling truths of our existence that I hadn’t heard aloud before. We worked magic through games and spells and I became more acclimated to the world around me. The learnings from the Burning Times Never Ended completely altered my life’s path.” – H. Summer


“rain crowe’s classes are a perfect blend of intellectual curiosity and experiential practice that bring me closer to the re-enchantment I’ve been looking for.” – Pepper Pepper