Cerridwen Fallingstar (born Cheri Lesh, November 15, 1952), is an American Wiccan priestess, shamanic witch, and author. Since the late 1970s she has written, taught, and lectured about magic, ritual, and metaphysics, and is considered a leading authority on pagan witchcraft.
She is the author of three historical novels, which she refers to as "posthumous autobiographies" – memories from previous lives. In 2020, she published a memoir, Broth from the Cauldron.
Early life and education
Cerridwen Fallingstar was born Cheri A. Lesh, in 1952 in Southern California. Her father was an aerospace engineer for Aerospace Corporation, and her mother was a librarian. According to Fallingstar, "As a tiny kid, I was always remembering adventures from other lives, trying to remind my parents of various other places we had lived. ... I also spoke constantly, as soon as I could talk, about Witches, herbs and spells, a development which made my agnostic parents slightly uneasy."
She attended Beloit College from 1970 to 1974, receiving a degree in English literature and English composition. She obtained a master's degree in English literature from UCLA in 1976.
Career
Journalism and early Wiccanism
In the mid to late 1970s, Fallingstar pursued a career as a journalist in Los Angeles, writing mainly for the alternative press. Still using her birth name, she wrote often on feminism, feminist sexuality, and related matters.
In early 1975, she was writing for a feminist newsletter at the time Wiccan pioneer Zsuzsanna Budapest was arrested in Los Angeles for fortune-telling from reading tarot cards. Budapest asserted that this was an arrest for witchcraft, and that it violated her right to freedom of religion. Fallingstar did a lengthy interview with Budapest, and subsequently studied extensively with her, joining Budapest's all-women Susan B. Anthony coven. Fallingstar founded her own first coven, Kallisti, in 1975; and she began publishing poetry and literature under her Craft name, Cerridwen Fallingstar – from Cerridwen, the Celtic goddess of rebirth and transformation. Her journalism also began reflecting her involvement in feminist spirituality and paganism.
She studied also with noted Wiccan teacher and author Starhawk, and in 1980 was a founding member of a coven called the Holy Terrors, along with fellow Starhawk students Bone Blossom, Sophia Sparks, and M. Macha NightMare. She worked closely with Starhawk on the Reclaiming Collective, a ritual and teaching organization in the San Francisco Bay Area, from 1980 to 1986. She was also an early member, Minister, and Elder of the Wiccan fellowship Covenant of the Goddess.
In an academic paper in the early 1980s, she wrote:
Women within this religion [Wicca] have a positive feminine principle to relate to, a mirror in which to find validation, self-worth and self-love. The Goddess possesses all the best aspects and attributes of femaleness. ... Wicca is the most Goddess-oriented of the pagan faiths, and places the most emphasis on developing the intuitional psychic side of the personality – the side that has to do with the craft of magic. Wicca emphasizes the power of the individual, and in a society where women have been denied access to power, this is a crucial concept indeed.
In the 1980s, living in Marin County in Northern California, Fallingstar continued her professional work in the areas of shamanism, witchcraft, trancework, healing, and psychic work. She also studied with spiritual teachers from various other traditions, including Native American, West African, Tantra, Reiki, Zen, Kundalini Yoga, and New Age teachings.
First book
Following the publication of her 1990 book, The Heart of the Fire, seen as an authentic look at 16th-century Celtic paganism, Fallingstar became an established voice for Wicca, witchcraft, and paganism. In 1991 she founded an organization called EarthRite, which offered public rituals in Northern California for 12 years, and that year she also founded her third coven, Eye of the Crescent. She was interviewed for the 1995 compendium book, People of the Earth: The New Pagans Speak Out.
In 2009, she was one of the 14 authorities on Goddess culture who expound on the subject in the feature-length documentary film, Dancing with Gaia. She has also been featured on and in numerous media outlets, which range from Time magazine to CNN, the Oxygen Channel, Pacific Sun, and FoxNews.com, and in various alternative magazines such as New Dawn.