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About Gail

Gail has been writing something for many years starting with a story in first grade about a monkey named Jo-Jo.  It got five flower stickers and posted on the board for everyone to read.  She is the author of Rituals of the Dark Moon:  13 Rites for a Magical Path (Llewellyn, 2001), and the forthcoming book, The Wild God:  Adventures with the Sacred Masculine, which will be available from Spilled Candy in 2005.  She contributed a chapter entitled, “Sweet Dreams,” to Cakes and Ale for the Pagan Soul edited by Patricia Telesco (Crossing, 2005).   Her short writings have appeared in Sagewoman and Llewellyn’s Witches Calendar (the wall version).  More writing will appear 2006 in Llewellyn’s A Spell-A-Day Almanac and the Witch’s Calendar. 

Gail attended college at the University of Maryland.  Over the years, she earned a B.A. in library science education, a Master’s Degree in Library Science, (MLS), and a M.A. in English.  She also has a 30 year career as an academic librarian and college library director.  Her academic writing has appeared in The Journal of Academic Librarianship, The Pomegranate:  the International Journal of Pagan Studies, and Library Journal.  She contributed three chapters on early American women writers to The Age of Milton:  An Encyclopedia of Major Seventeenth-Century British and American Authors edited by Alan Hager.  Her contributions were highlighted by a reviewer in the (London) Times Literary Supplement by saying, “Gail Wood’s entries on pioneering Anglo-American women writers….are uniformly engaging, succinct and stimulating.”

Gail discovered Witchcraft and the Goddess in the mid-1980s after an intense period as a fundamental Christian.  She has been a Witch and Wiccan priestess for more than 20 years; she is also a Reiki Master, Tarot reader, and teacher of a variety of alternative spiritual practices.  Her path emphasizes shamanic journeying, the Dark Moon, and ecstatic, compassionate discovery of magic.  She has a strong solitary practice which is enhanced and augmented by group practice.  She has been a founder and member of an open circle in Central New York, and most recently joined The RavenMyst Circle where she is a member and second degree High Priestess of the Coven of the Redtail Hawks. 

She is also active in a local spiritual center, The Foundation of Light, where she teaches a monthly Tarot class, co-facilitates a shamanic drumming circle with her partner, and is the editor of the newsletter.

Gail has a teaching and counseling prison ministry, corresponding with many men and women prisoners in twenty-one states.  She teaches classes through correspondence and produces a newsletter eight times a year.  In 2005, she formed the group into a coven, called The Coven of the Barbed Pentacle.  That coven is closed and Gail is not taking new students.

Gail lives in a 100+ year old house near Ithaca, NY with her partner, Mike, and their two dogs.  Mike shares her spiritual interests and is an exceptionally fine priest and teacher, following a path of Gaia.