Click on any of the photos here to open full-size 300dpi print-quality versions
Lady
Passion
(Dixie Deerman)
has practiced Witchcraft since 1976. Her magical name derives
from Lady, a title earned when a female Witch
attains Third
Degree, and Passion, which describes her yen for
all things
magical.
Lady Passion is a Third-degree Gardnerian Elder, and High
Priestess
of Coven Oldenwilde in Asheville, NC. Her magical specialties
are all forms of divination, herbalism, and creating elaborate
rituals for
thousands. A healer
and registered nurse
since 1988, she has done divination
for private clients since 1979.
Read
her inspirational essay Fighting
Words whenever you
feel like you can't beat the powers-that-be.View a gallery of print-quality photos of Lady Passion. 
Motto: "Let none stop you, or turn you
aside."
Aradia, 1300s
Movies: The Wickerman; Practical Magic; Sorceress
Books: Lost Country
Life; Gerard's
Herbal; The Greek Magical Papyri
including the Demotic
Translations
*Diuvei
(Steven Rasmussen) means "sky
God" in the ancient language Oscan; here's
why a star precedes his name.
*Diuvei is a Third-degree Gardnerian Elder, and High Priest
of Coven Oldenwilde. His magical specialties are astrology, music,
and wordcraft each of which he has also plied in the mundane
world as a professional astrologer, computer
musicologist, and journalist for an alt-weekly newspaper.
(Browse his articles,
commentaries, and résumé.)
Read
his essay on the Quadrivium,
the crossroads that unites math, music, astrology, & geometry.
Motto: "Words are cheap, but deeds are
dear."
Movies: The Crucible; Star Trek: Insurrection; The
Man
Who Would Be King
Books: Agrippa's
Three Books of Occult Philosophy; Robert
Fludd,
by Joscelyn Godwin; Plato's
Republic
A
formidable pair: In our
thirties and committed to the Craft, we were both still looking
for that strong, Witchy, someone special when we attended the
Covenant of the Goddess's MerryMeet '93 gathering at Lake Lure
in Black Mountain, North Carolina. Lady Passion had brought her
daughter along in an effort to branch out and meet other Witches
from all over the country. *Diuvei flew in with fellow Covenmates
from California, expressly because he'd heard tales of the prowess
of Witches from the Southern mountain area. *Diuvei fell in love
with Lady Passion when he saw how compassionately she helped someone's
feral child. But it was our shared devotion to the Goddess Hecate
that sealed our bond. We began a bi-coastal romance. A year later,
after *Diuvei traded Berkeley for Asheville, we were handfasted
in a sacred woodhenge in the rainforest of Tennessee.
We founded Coven Oldenwilde, a Traditional English Gardnerian/Italian Strega blend, on Samhain, 1994. We are both legally empowered to "marry and bury", and perform all Wiccan Rites of Passage ceremonies.
We are open, public Witches highly utilized by area folk and in high demand by film crews. As of 2004, we've held 10 annual free public Samhain Sabbats attended by untold numbers of people. We write about Witchcraft (buy our book The Goodly Spellbook: Olde Spells for Modern Problems), lecture at area colleges and for groups including everyone from police to Mensa members, and have been Wiccan clergy for Buncombe Correctional Center for 10 years as of 2005. We advocate for peace and justice, counsel and aid the needy, maintain this web site, run our 501(c)(3) religious non-profit, and help nurture the Asheville area's rapidly growing Craft community. It is hard, but goodly work.
We require no fees from our students or clients for our Craft work, but happily accept donations to our non-profit Coven, which enable us to aid others. We actively oppose religious persecution (as in our successful struggle to get our state's 50-year-old anti-divination law expunged). We often find the mundane world's ways of greed, force, and hypocrisy difficult to deal with, and frequently dangerous to accept. So we continue to be what we are: Witches -- spelling for a better time to come.
Find
out about our media experience.
Listen
to part of a chant
composed
and sung by Passion, accompanied on a Hindu recorder by *Diuvei.
196KB, .aiff format
Deep in the darkness of every human mind,
There's a magical child,
a spirit running wild --
Up from the depths
it comes a-bubbling and boiling,
Oldenwilde...
old and wild!
Return to "Meet
the Coven
Members" page.
Return
to Coven Oldenwilde's home page.
