Spark Core

• Members of the core
• What the core does
  
• Joining the core

Members of the core

Current members of the Spark core are:

DJ

Deborah "DJ" Hamouris has recorded, performed, directed, and taught music in the pagan community for more than two decades. She founded Gaia's Voice, conducted the Reclaiming Spiral Dance Chorus, and now directs Women & Song. Her song "Who is the Goddess," recorded by Moonrise, was recently chosen for Reclaiming's CD Witches' Brew. With six CDs, a BA in music, three bands, and a solo performing career, DJ also teaches private voice lessons and mountain dulcimer. In her spare time, she knits. For more info go to www.djhamouris.com.

Holly

A lifelong veteran of ritual magic, Holly brings her decades of perspective to the Spark Collective. She loves the movement, the play and the mixing of voices found in circles. In addition to pragmatic perspective, Holly brings her warm welcoming presence and playful puppy spirit to each circle.

Nick

A relative newcomer to fire circles, Nick is thrilled to contribute his gusto and gratitude to the Spark Collective. He loves a good chant, and some nights he circles his room alone, happily singing the chants from that month's circle. When not attending Spark, Nick can be found creating virtual worlds, acting against war and injustice, clowning for orphans in Serbia and Laos, plotting new ventures, or just appreciating the goodness all around us.

Oliver

Oliver was introduced to the fire circle in 2006 and has been enthusiastically attending fire family events since. He is fascinated by the use of co-created spontaneous ritual as a tool for mapping internal experience and connecting with hidden personal sources. Outside of Spark, Oliver is a professional software developer and computer boffin. He manages a web-application development company in Berkeley and helped build this site.

Terence

In the muggle world, Terence provides his PR and marketing expertise to grassroots, national, and global nonprofits. After more than a decade serving environmental and health nonprofits, he returned to his first love: theater. Now he’s the director of public relations at a nationally respected theater company, which keeps sending plays to New York where his old friends can see them. When he first encountered the fire circle, Terence fell in love with its mix of motion, emotion, spontaneity, connection, magic, and song. It felt like sacred, earth-based theater games – and he knew he was home.

Tigris

Tigris is in the midst of personal transformation, fueled by her exploration of eclectic spiritual practices and the deep learning and love she experiences within the fire family. She answers the call of the drum, bringing to the circle her passion for expressing and transforming, co-creating and remaking inner and outer realities with others in community. Dance as a spiritual practice is a theme that permeates her adventures in ritual and performance and her journeys into the arts and cultures of the Middle East, Central Asia, and Bali. Her love of words, books, and design energizes her work as a freelance editor as well as her artistic interests.

Travis

Travis strives to bring life and energy to the outside world, from the Spark fire circle to his garden at home and the stitched up creations in his laboratory.  He currently resides in a little farm in the middle of the city, selling snake oil and transmuting lead into gold, attempting to repair what harm he cannot heal.  Wandering the roads narrow and crooked, loyal to the true and with love in his heart.

Venee

Venee is an  ritualist, altarist, mixed-media artist and dancer. She has a BA in Arts and Social Change with an emphasis in Interdisciplinary Arts and Education from the New College of California and is a certified Human Element facilitator. She  has been a priestess for public and private rituals at events such as Ancient Ways, Pantheacon, and the Pagan Festival and served as an altarist and altar curator for many nonprofit events such as Bioneers, Burning Man, Phoenix Fire, Singing for Your Life, and Spiral Dance.

What the core does

Members of the core are custodians of the Collective's vision. Each member of the core makes a committment to do the following:

• Be of service to the collective
• Serve a term of at least one year
• Meet six to eight times per year
• Attend an annual core retreat
• At Spark events:
  
  • Arrange a venue
  • Show up
  • Organize setup and teardown
  • Provide orientation
  • Facilitate rituals
  • Cover any shortfall on the cost of space rental
• Do long-range planning for the collective
• Handle money
• Mentor community members' participation in rituals
• Represent Spark to the wider community
• Welcome community participation

Joining the core

The core invites anyone in the community to step up to leadership. There are openings on the core annually. Joining the core requires that you've shown leadership in the community and is enacted by full consensus of the current core.

The core consists of between five and twelve people. Members are appointed for a term of one year. There is a limit of three consecutive terms. After reaching the limit core members must step down for at least one term before beginning a new term. As members step down new members of the community step onto the core. Removing a member of the core would require full consensus of the core minus the person involved.