Guest Contributor: Rick de Yampert
Oberon Zell – metaphysician, shaman, author, wizard and Pagan elder – says the massive Starwood Festival (massive in attendance, physical space and alternative cultural-spiritual offerings) “started off as a gathering of psychonauts.”
Zell, speaking at his vendor booth during the 45th Starwood held July 2025 at Wisteria Campground, a cooperatively owned Pagan site in Southeast Ohio, should know: He has attended every Starwood except the first two. Yes, Starwood 2025 marked his 43rd straight year at the event, which was held at Brushwood Folklore Center in New York and various sites in Pennsylvania and Ohio before settling in at Wisteria in 2010.
What Zell sees as Starwood’s psychonaut origins is telling. (I define psychonaut, by the way, as one who explores non-ordinary states of consciousness through various techniques such as meditation, shamanic drumming, ritual, etc., and-or through mind-altering substances such as psychedelics, entheogens, hallucinogenic plants, etc., all with the goal of discovering deeper, hidden realms of reality and spirituality.)
Oberon Zell, right, and Rhiannon Martin Zell. Photo provided by Oberon Zell
Ensconced in the fae-drenched hills of Wisteria, an 80-acre site of meadowlands and woodlands in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, somewhere between Ohio’s Serpent Mound and Point Pleasant, West Virginia’s Mothman territory, Starwood is one of the largest, most renowned Pagan – OK, Pagan-ish – gatherings in the U.S.
Yes, “Pagan-ish” may be the most appropriate description of Starwood, given that the event doesn’t bill itself as a Pagan gathering.
Over those four decades at Starwood, Zell says, “We had lots of Pagan friends and people who may have been Pagan themselves attend, and they reached out so we had people like Tim Leary and Robert Anton Wilson, and major musicians from major bands came here – Stevie Nicks, you know, performed. That kind of stuff.”
As numerous Pagan and non-Pagan folks have noted, Starwood is “Pagan-ish,” “Pagan friendly,” and “Pagan-adjacent,” but it isn’t officially a “Pagan” festival. Starwood’s promos and website use the “T” word to describe the event – “transformation.”
Starwood’s website says it is “America’s longest running transformational festival” . . . a nonprofit festival hosted by Rosencomet Project (the event’s organizing body). It’s a seven-day camping event in the woods, featuring music, workshops, rituals, community, and creative expression. It’s a blend of alternative spirituality, learnin,g and celebration where connection and transformation take center stage.”
Starwood’s 2026 festival, to be held July 14-20, is being billed as “It’s Transformagical.”
Logo for the next Starwood Festival in 2026
Put another way, Starwood evokes echoes of Burning Man, old-time hippie communes, the concept of TAZ (Temporary Autonomous Zones) championed by writer and self-proclaimed “ontological anarchist” Hakim Bey (aka Peter Lamborn Wilson), and even a small-scale Woodstock, given Starwood’s prevalent music offerings.
The 2025 event showcased the Florida-based sci-fi metal/world fusion band Didges Christ SuperDrum, the Cleveland-based Americana/rock ’n’-soul band Cowboy Princess Brigade (which features guitar, ukulele, fiddle, trombone, banjo, bass and drums), contemporary electronic dance music (EDM) raves in the appropriately named Pufferdome (so called for its inflatable dome apparatus, and not any overt cannabis worship), and the East-West fusion duo Wandering Spiral, helmed by yours truly on sitar and Native American flutes, and Michelle Davidson on tongue drums and crystal bowls. (Starwood music coordinator and guitarist extraordinaire Brian Henke informed us that we were the first sitar-based music act to ever play the festival.)
Among the myriad communities that peopled Starwood this past gathering, whether expressed through workshops, performances, rituals or personal “vibes,” were: psychonauts and the psychedelics-inclined (among them PhD-credentialed presenters), an even more prevalent cannabis community, drummers, shamanic practitioners, flow artists, polyamory folks, LGBTQ folks and, yes, Pagans, Witches and Wizards including Zell and his wife Rhiannon Martin Zell (who was attending her second Starwood after coordinating grassroots gatherings for Serpent Stone for 25 years), Witch and writer Byron Ballard, Gardnerian High Priestex Mortellus and Zen Pagan Tom Swiss.
And that’s just some of the tribes that found a home in Starwood’s TAZ.
The 100-plus workshops and rituals led by dozens of presenters at Starwood 2025 included: Zell’s Water-Sharing Ritual, Ballard’s “The Tip of the Spear – A Feral Church and the Return of the Primal Mothers,” plus such offerings as “Toltec Dreaming & Breathwork: Oneirogens – Drugs of the Dreaming.” “Mothman, Sasquatch & Frogman, Oh My! Crypids We Love and Fear,” “Intro to Eco-Eroticism,” “Necromancy in the Ages of Fascism,” and many, many more.
Various vendors peddled exquisitely handcrafted wooden staffs and wands, a cannabis-based game, “shamanic tools,” “superfood cacao,” witchy/Paganish/hippie-ish clothing, indigenous jewelry, and the always expected and welcomed incense, crystals, candles, tapestries, and more. One neo-hippie vendor dude was demonstrating his handmade bong – a sizable Rube Goldberg-type beastie.
Think of the typical “bizarre bazaar” scene from one of those mid-20th century sword-and-sorcery flicks – or the bar scene from “Star Wars” – and you have an idea of the vibe if you strolled through the several miles of Starwood’s serpentine, dirt-and-gravel main road.
As for Starwood’s legendary, festival-concluding, Saturday night bonfire: “Oh my God!” says Vicki Scotti, a Witch, Third Degree Gardnerian Priestess in the Mystic Ash Coven, a Priestess in the Mount Shasta Goddess Temple, a retired RN and singer-songwriter-guitarist from Palm Bay, Florida.
“They told us that it took the volunteers all week to build the bonfire structure,” says Scotti, who attended her first and only Starwood several years ago. “It was very wickerman-esque – made-up word – minus the sacrifice and person-like structure. It was reportedly close to four stories tall. I’m not a good judge of visual height, but will say it was enormous! They had a huge procession into the fire area, and I’ve never seen a fire burn like that!”
“The interesting thing is once everybody’s here at Starwood, it just feels like we’re all Pagans together,” Zell says. “More than that, it gets beyond what Pagan specifically means. Pagan originally was a term used to distinguish the country people from the city people – it essentially was picked up by the Romans as a term of dismissal of all those hicks, you know. The Christians picked it up the same way.
“But it has since become adopted as a religious concept to reference to all the non-Abrahamic religions. The Abrahamic is Christianity, Judaism and Islam – that’s it. But the rest of the world – Hindus and Buddhists and indigenous people and animists and whatever – we’re all Pagans. That’s the word that applies to all the rest of us.”
- Byron Ballard, a Witch and author of such books as A Feral Church: A Guided Journey to Find Magic, Kinship, and the Goddess and Small Magics: Practical Secrets from an Appalachian Village Witch, has attended all but one Starwood since 2017.
“I hasten to tell people it is not a Pagan festival, though there are a lot of Pagan elements,” she says. “There’s certainly space to do your Pagan thing, but if you just wanted to be there and meet people of like mind and maybe have not only ritual experiences but other kind of transformational experiences, it’s certainly a place for that.”
Byron Ballard photographed at Summer Magick Fest in Orlando, Florida – June 2025. Photo Credit: Rick de Yampert
For Ballard, Starwood’s enchantments run from the techno to the tribal and even further back in time, to the primordial.
“There’s the Pufferdome – oh my gosh, the lights and sound, it’s extraordinary,” she says. “It’s almost like a stereotype of that ’60s and ’70s counterculture. An amazing vibe. There’s also the incredible drums at Paw Paw” (Starwood’s drumming space, ensconced in a slightly hidden, woodsy grotto just a hundred yards or so from the Pufferdome and its deejayed modern techno music).
“I go to a lot of festivals and the drummers at Starwood and Paw Paw are some of the best,” Ballard says.
Along with the tribal energy of the drumming, Ballard also feels communion with the mystical primordial spirit of the land itself.
“You know, Starwood hasn’t always been at Wisteria,” she says. “For a long time that site was a strip mine. It was bought by a bunch of – I’m just gonna say it – hippies about 30 years ago, by people who really wanted to be stewards of that land. The camp (80 acres) is a pretty minimal amount of the land that is Wisteria (about 600 acres), and most of it is just left wild so that there are all kinds of critters and all kinds of amazing botanicals that you can find.
“Being on that particular land, I imagine, is different than when Starwood was at Brushwood because that land is different. I just may be crazy like a June bug, but I think when I am on that land at Wisteria for Starwood and for other events, that I can feel the land healing itself and I can partake of that healing too. That always feels so hopeful to me.”
Ruby Guillette – singer, songwriter, ukulele player and “captain of the ship” with Cowboy Princess Brigade – attended her first Starwood in July 2025.
“The grounds are breathtaking,” she says. “You can walk all of these unbeaten paths and have this solitude, and then you can join the masses, go into a large throng of humans and emotions. I really like that. That’s true with any festival, but Starwood really seems conducive to that. It’s like moving into these different little realms.”
First-time Starwood attendee Nate Pazzo Bocchicchi, a violinist, mandolin player, and guitarist with Cowboy Princess Brigade, has attended Burning Man, that annual, massive alterna-culture gathering in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert that typically draws some 70,000 attendees.
“I think Starwood has the vibe that Burning Man might have had at its inception,” Bocchicchi says. “Burning Man has art and all this amazing, indescribable experiential stuff, but it’s also like being in a place like Manhattan or Los Angeles. You don’t really have the type of human interface that you do at Starwood (whose annual attendance has hovered around 1,500 people for years). Here you have an intimacy in a smaller group of focused, concentrated souls who are here for the nature and here for the community, and that to me makes a big difference. Starwood is just curated in a way that really is impacting.
“The infrastructure is what I’m most impressed with. Starwood has been going a half-century and it shows. You walk into this experience and the first thing you see is sober elders and children’s daycare and first aid and organization – all of the things that make for a good time for the family, and that made me feel at home immediately. I had no preconceived notions and I walked in and was home.”
The idea of gatherings as a “coming home” for Pagans resonates deeply with Oberon Zell.
“Starwood has brought people in from all these adjacent communities in a way that no other festival has done,” Zell says. “Most of them have been gatherings of our people.”
Listening to Zell, it’s clear that by “our people” he means not only initiated Wiccans or card-carrying Pagans, but also a multitude of Pagan-spirited folks.
“Anyone can become our people – just come along,” he says. “Margo Adler noted in her survey for (her groundbreaking book) Drawing Down the Moon that the strongest thing that comes from Pagans getting involved is not that they got converted. We’re not here because we’re converts. All of us have had the feeling that we belong somewhere else and we’re searching for our people and our home. When people come to their first Pagan gathering, they always say, ‘I feel like I’ve finally come home.’ And then we get to say those most beautiful words: ‘Welcome home.’ ”
For more information on Starwood, go online at starwoodfestival.com. Attending Starwood is mostly a rustic experience, with only one indoor shower house and no cabins available. Wi-fi can be purchased as an add-on with your ticket or separately at the gate. Anyone planning to attend is advised to check out the Starwood FAQ section of the website.
Rick de Yampert is a freelance writer and musician who has been on the Pagan path since the early 1990s.
He plays sitar, Native American flutes, guitar, djembe (African hand drum), and other percussion. Previously, he was a daily newspaper journalist, including 23 years as the arts and entertainment writer at The Daytona Beach News-Journal in Florida, and 2½ years as the rock/pop/hip-hop writer at The Tennessean in Nashville.
During his daily newspaper career, he covered everything from rap music to monster truck shows, from classical musicians to circus clowns. He also profiled local Pagans and Witches, wrote about Pagan Pride Days, and reported on such Pagan luminaries as Phyllis Curott, and Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone.
Rick has interviewed such musicians, writers and creators as Janet Jackson, Kurt Vonnegut, Yoko Ono, Nikki Giovanni, Alice Cooper, Shirley MacLaine, Tori Amos, Harlan Ellison, and many others. He estimates he attended more than 3,000 music and theatrical performances during his 30-year career at daily newspapers. He has reviewed concerts by U2, Paul McCartney, Neil Young, Tina Turner, Prince, Marilyn Manson, Tool, Jay-Z, Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam, Robert Plant and others.
Rick describes his sitar and flute music as East-West fusion – a blend of Indian raga, ambient New Age, Buddha lounge and British rock (his sets include his arrangements of the Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows,” “Within You Without You” and “Norwegian Wood,” plus Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir”).
Rick also presents numerous lectures on sacred music at Pagan gatherings and Unitarian-Universalist churches throughout Central Florida. His talks, such as “Going Om: Nada Brahma – Sound Is God” and “Sacred Drumming: Riding the Shaman’s Horse,” feature instrumental demonstrations and field recordings, and explore the many ways that cultures around the world have used music to alter consciousness and access the divine.
He lives in the Daytona Beach, Florida area. His website is rickdeyampert.com.