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 and aromancer. As co-president of Gaylesta, the LGBTQ therapy association, she was instrumental in spearheading the first outlawing of conversion therapy for LGBTQ youth. She has taught nationally and internationally, and has over 4 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.
Fern Vuchinich
Fern co-founded A Fool’s Journey restorative retreat and has cycled in and out of the organizing team over the years. She is happy to be back for the year of Temperance! Fern has been a practicing counseling astrologer and teacher since 2003. She has published widely, including in Mountain Astrology and for Llewelyn Books. Fern has also received advanced training and degrees in many modalities of healing and has advanced herbalist certification fro the California School of Herbal Studies. She has worked as a teacher for people of all ages and holds an M.A. from Sonoma State University and a teaching credential from San Francisco State University. As a Virgo Sun, Libra Rising with Venus in Cancer, she enjoys gardening, making herbal remedies, and nesting. She resides with her partner and dog family in the mountains of Northern New Mexico. Check out her fantastic website at www.wisestarsastrology.com
Bread aka 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 good trouble in the Bay Area. She’s worked as everything from a waitress, bartender to union organizer and negotiator, labor Doula and Reiki Master, and now as a labor and delivery nurse who is circling back to her roots in organized labor and is on her union’s negotiating committee. She is a priestess of the threshold and is also an artist and poet.
Kim Chilvers
Kim is a long-time witch, organizer and priestess, primarily in the Reclaiming tradition. 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.