Andras Corban Arthen
Andras Corban-Arthen is the founder and spiritual director of the EarthSpirit Community. He first became involved in paganism in 1969, and has taught and lectured publicly about the Indigenous European pagan traditions throughout the U.S. and abroad since the 1970s. Andras was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Parliament of the World’s Religions for thirteen years, serving as Vice-Chair three times. He also served for eleven years as president of the European Congress of Ethnic Religions headquartered in Vilnius, Lithuania, and sits on the advisory board of the Ecospirituality Foundation, a United Nations Consultative NGO based in Torino, Italy. Andras was chosen to represent the pagan traditions at the United Nations Interfaith Conference on Religion and Prejudice in 1991, and has been a featured presenter at numerous international events including the Parliaments of the World's Religions held in Chicago, Barcelona, Melbourne, Salt Lake City, and Toronto; the Encuentro Mundial Interreligioso and the Diálogo Cultural Universal in México; and the Religions for the Earth Conference in NYC. Originally from Galiza, Spain, he lives with his extended family in Glenwood, a 160-acre pagan sanctuary and nature preserve in the Berkshire Highlands of western Massachusetts.
Deirdre Pulgram Arthen
Deirdre Pulgram-Arthen is the Executive Director and an acknowledged Elder of the EarthSpirit Community and has been involved with the organization since 1980. Deirdre has an M.A. in Counseling Psychology from Lesley University. She is a grandmother, a trained pagan priestess, a member of Glainn Sidhr, a spiritual counselor, an educator, a writer, a community and interfaith organizer, a singer, a certified Death Midwife, and an experienced ritualist and composer of sacred chants. She creates and leads Rites of Passage for all stages of life and loves creating personal rituals that hold deep meaning and lead to transformation. Deirdre is passionate about her family and about her place in the interconnectedness of all beings. She lives at Glenwood in western Massachusetts, with her extended family - held by its hills, shrines and sacred waters.
Deirdre has offered presentations internationally for civic and religious organizations for the last 40 years, including the Parliament of the World’s Religions, the National Organization for Women, the Unitarian Universalist Women's Conference, and several universities. She served as a member of the Women’s Task Force of the Parliament of the World’s Religions, as one of the Parliament’s Ambassadors, and has been a presenter at every Parliament meeting between 1993 and 2019. Deirdre has been featured in local and nationally syndicated media and interviewed for numerous publications, notably Woman of Power magazine, the Time-Life Books series "Mysteries of the Universe", and the book “Stepping Into Ourselves: An Anthology of Writings on Priestesses.” (ed. Anne Key and Candace Kant.) Deirdre serves as the Chair of the EarthSpirit Board of Directors as well as a member of its Governance Committee.
Eric Leventhal Arthen
Eric has been involved with the EarthSpirit Community for over thirty years, and he has been on the Board of Directors for much of that time. He has participated in many EarthSpirit activities which include attending, offering workshops, and helping with various staff positions at Rites of Spring. Eric has led clans at Twilight Covening since the first one was held in 1986. These include topics such as intuition and perception, haiku as a way to connect to nature, and dreams. Eric has been part of the EarthSpirit delegation at the Parliaments of the World’s Religions in Chicago, Barcelona, Salt Lake City and Toronto. Professionally, he is a software engineering manager and has worked at a number of high tech companies in the greater Boston area. He also served for ten years on the Board of a privately owned retail apparel chain of stores. Eric lives in the Hilltowns of Western Massachusetts and can occasionally be found riding his tractor to help maintain the boundaries between the fields and the encroaching forests.
Moira Ashleigh
Moira Ashleigh is a member of the Glainn Sidhr Order, a longtime contributing clergy member, and an acknowledged Elder of the EarthSpirit Community. She has taught at Rites of Spring, Twilight Covening, A Feast of Lights, Free Spirit, Pagan Pride, and was the coordinator of the EarthSpirit's "East" events for 20 years. Moira has a Masters degree in Theater and Dance from Emerson College, and during her tenure as a member of MotherTongue, she held many creative roles including lyricist, choreographer, costumer, vocalist and CD cover designer. She is also a storyteller with her long-time partner Duncan Eagleson, and is the embodiment of the character RagRoot at the New York Faerie Festival.
Moira is passionate about clean water and wildlife. She is currently serving as Vice Chair of the Executive Committee of the Susquehanna Group of Sierra Club. Moira volunteered for 10 years for the Mystic River Watershed Association. Moira was also on on the Board of Directors for WRAM the Wildlife Rehabilitators Association of Massachusetts for two terms. She has won awards for her nature photography, which she uses along with her poetry to emotionally engage the public in the beauty and welfare of the natural world. Moira Ashleigh is a professional Web designer and consultant, who began her design work for EarthSpirit with the Web pages for Rites of Spring in 1995, and has continued to grow and build the EarthSpirit online presence for 27 years. Her current task focuses on the EarthSpirit Board are website Accessibility, the EarthSpirit media team, the restorative justice planning team, and EarthSpirit Action. (pronouns she, her)
Kaye Kittredge
Kaye Kittredge is an artist, systems thinker, and member of Glainn Sidhr. Nature and its patterns inspire her life, both creatively and in her professional work in program management, organizational transformation and alignment in the information technology sector. Kaye loves to travel and for 30+ years has been honored to represent Earthspirit at home and abroad through ritual, teaching and performing with MotherTongue. She is a long-time member of the Rites of Spring core volunteers and a regular clanleader at Twilight Covening, most recently offering a variety of clans centered around the many ways we create as individuals and as a community. For many years she has been active in creating EarthSpirit's Boston-area programming, and tends a woodland sanctuary near her home at the swamp’s edge. On the Board, she serves as a member of the Program and Interfaith Long Range Planning Committee.
Donovan Arthen
Donovan Arthen is a lifelong member of the EarthSpirit Community, and is very excited to serve as a steward of the organization that has shaped so much of his life. Donovan works as a management consultant in the mission-driven and nonprofit sector, and as a personal leadership development specialist with individuals in and out of the professional world. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Music from Wesleyan University in 2011, and was awarded a Master of Science in Managing Mission-Driven Organizations degree from Marlboro Graduate and Professional School in 2016. He served for several years as the Executive Director of PeaceJam New England, and is currently the Vice President of the Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter Public School Board of Trustees, and a member of Wolfgard Northeast’s Board of Directors. Donovan is a practitioner of Anamanta, and a devoted animist who does his best to live closely intertwined with the Earth, spirit, and community. He is a founding member of the Brotherhood of the Stag and Wolf, and has been a presenter, performer, and teacher at events and conferences all over the world, some of which include Rites of Spring, Twilight Covening, Feast of Lights, the Parliament of the World’s Religions, Spiritfire Festival, and the Romuva Camp in Lithuania. Donovan serves as the Board Treasurer and a member of the Interim Finance Committee, and is also Co-Chair of the Governance Committee and the Membership Long-Range Planning Committee.
Sarah Rosehill
Sarah Rosehill attended her first Twilight Covening in 2001 and has been hooked ever since. She began volunteering at EarthSpirit events in 2003 and since then has served in a variety of roles, from coordinating registration to organizing ritual. She served for several years on the leadership team for EarthSpirit's Boston-area events and attended the Parliament of the World's Religions in 2004 and 2019. She has studied Anamanta and Feri and taught at Rites of Spring and Twilight Covening, as well as Pagan Pride events and Pantheacon and co-chairs the Boston Pride Interfaith Coalition. Sarah works at a high tech company, helping to implement improvements in the processes around new product development, and is delighted to be the mama of two dirt-loving kids. She is also a writer, with essays published in Pagan Consent Culture (eds. Christine Hoff Kramer and Yvonne Aburrow) and Pagan, Goddess, Mother (eds. Sarah Whedon and Nané Jordan), as well as work on EarthSpirit Voices and Rebelle Society. She is passionate about developing relationships with the Earth, building community, and integrating spirituality into daily life. On the Board, she is co-chair of both the Program and Interfaith Long-Range Planning Committee and the Sexual Culture and Safety Committee.
KATE GREENOUGH RICHARDSON
Kate Greenough Richardson has been involved with the EarthSpirit Community since the early 2000s. She has served on the EarthSpirit Board since 2018, currently on the Interim Finance Committee. She served on the Long Range Planning team focused on Governance. She is pleased to be able to identify herself as an artist these days, and brings to her work on the EarthSpirit Board of Directors over 25 years of experience supporting, organizing and leading community-based cultural, educational and spiritual organizations. A regular attendee of EarthSpirit gatherings, she feels particularly attached to Twilight Covening, and has found the clan work to be instrumental in shaping her life patterns. Kate spent two years as a weekly volunteer in the EarthSpirit office, and has also been a regular guide on the Sacred Land tours at Glenwood. In other volunteer work, Kate served on the Management Team and Board of Trustees of the Hilltown Cooperative Charter School from its opening, helping to develop the governance structure and implement consensus procedures for decision-making. She also spent spent 7 years running an interfaith Sunday Services program in her home community of Laurel Park in Northampton, MA. This experience was nourished and energized by the opportunity to attend the Parliaments of the World's Religions in Melbourne, Salt Lake City, and most recently in Toronto, as part of the EarthSpirit delegation.
Arianna Knapp
Arianna Knapp began attending Rites of Spring in 2008 and EarthSpirit has remained an important part of her life ever since. Her commitment to the community was cemented by the opportunity to watch her son go through his Coming of Age, and her ongoing participation has provided a spiritual foundation throughout her daily life. In the years since she first came to Rites of Spring, Arianna began attending Twilight Covening, joined the core volunteer team for Rites of Spring, and pursued training in Anamanta before joining the Board of Directors in 2019. She led the creation and staffing of the EarthSpirit booth at A Parliament of the World's Religions in Toronto in 2018 and is currently engaged in fundraising, including the Morwen Two Feathers fund, and exploring the meaning of membership within the EarthSpirit Community. Outside of EarthSpirit, she's been involved in theater arts for her whole life and loves being surrounded by many forms of creative expression. She works as an executive for a top down production company that does broadcast, corporate, and theatrical live event production and management.
Isobel Arthen Long
Isobel Arthen-Long was born into the EarthSpirit Community. Over the years she has served in many roles including Social Media Manager, Advisor to the EarthSpirit PeaceJam youth service group, and leader of the annual invasive species pull at Rites of Spring. Isobel puts most of her energy towards event organization, ritual development, and fostering an inclusive and sustainable community culture. Dedicated to living her spirituality in the world, Isobel is an environmental scientist and activist currently pursuing a master's degree in soil biogeochemistry at the University of Massachusetts. On the board, she serves as a member of the Outward-Facing Committee and co-chair of the Sexual Culture and Safety Committee.
Christopher LaFond
Christopher LaFond has been an EarthSpirit member since the mid 1990s, and a core volunteer, presenter, and Twilight Covening clan leader for nearly as long. He holds a B. A. and M. A. in Spanish-American Literature and Culture from Boston College and served as faculty there for over 20 years. He continues to work in the related fields of language and cultural education, translation, and editorial work, now with a focus on digital resources. He also serves as a Notary Public in MA.
Chris is a pagan animist who has trained in a number of disciplines and is a practitioner of Anamanta. He is a Master Astrologer in the Society of Astrologers and a musician, having served at times as the Musical Director of MotherTongue. His community work focuses on Rites of Passage (birth, coming of age, (un)partnering, death, etc.) and interfaith collaboration at both the local and national/international levels, and he has represented EarthSpirit and presented at multiple Parliaments of the World’s Religions. Chris is a certified Death Midwife and currently serves as the Local Coordinator for Western MA Pagan Pride Day, in addition to participating in organizing the Sacred Land Walks and seasonal celebrations at Glenwood Farm. He lives on a small homestead in Western MA with his family where they raise their own meat and egg birds and do their best to live in harmony with the land.
Katie LaFond
is a musician, educator, fiber artist, homesteader, pagan animist and practitioner of Anamanta and has been involved with EarthSpirit since 2000. Katie has performed and led workshops in a variety of pagan disciplines at EarthSpirit and other events across the United States and internationally. She is passionate about interfaith work within her local community and beyond and has presented and represented EarthSpirit at A Parliament of the World's Religions. She has written, organized, and led rituals both within and outside of EarthSpirit, focusing on helping people of all ages and spiritual backgrounds to tend to transitions in their lives and to connect deeply with the Earth and their webs of community. Katie served on the organizing committee for Western MA Pagan Pride Day, is a Massachusetts Notary Public and a certified Death Midwife, tends the EarthSpirit Healing Shrine, leads Sunflower Evenings, and is a member of MotherTongue. She lives with her family in the hilltowns of Western MA.In Memoriam
Susan Curewitz Arthen
Deceased 2019Susan was associated with the EarthSpirit Community since 1981 and held the position of Treasurer on the Board of Directors. This association allowed her to develop skills as a teacher of Tarot and as a Program Coordinator for many EarthSpirit events, and to function as a legal minister for weddings and other life events. Sue also taught classes on-line about Rites of Passage. She served both nationally and locally as a Board member for Covenant of the Goddess, and also served on the Board of Cherry Hill Seminary. Susan is now buried at Glenwood, a pagan sanctuary and nature preserve in Western Massachusetts. Susan was employed as the Business Manager and Human Resource Director at the International Language Institute in Northampton, MA and was Treasurer for the Worthington Library. She attended the Parliaments of the World’s Religions in South Africa, Barcelona, and Australia as part of the EarthSpirit delegation, and discovered a love for traveling to faraway places.