Francesca De Grandis's Biography (Books) (Photos)
Francesca De Grandis - craft elder in the Faerie tradition, writes and teaches on Celtic Shamanism. Francesca De Grandis is daughter of a Sicilian witch, completed a rare seven-year training to become a Celtic Shaman in the Faerie tradition. She runs her own school, The Third Road, where lawyers and bike messengers alike come to learn and be enchanted by the magic and mysticism of Goddess Spirituality. She lives in San Francisco.
Francesca De Grandis is, according to Thom Fowler, "one of those multi-hyphenated types." Peter Coyote wrote, "Like all good humorists, Francesca De Grandis has a radical and subversive agenda in her new book, 'The Modern Goddess' Guide to Life.'" The book is women's humor, shelved in stores with the self-help texts. Francesca is also a pagan - - small "p," not Neo-Pagan, large "P" - - and channeled a shamanic Goddess tradition now practiced throughout the world. Her more serious books, "Be A Goddess!" (HarperSanFrancisco), "Goddess Initiation" (HarperSanFrancisco), and "Be a Teen Goddess!" (Citadel), represent this work.
She is also the creator of Another Step, a curriculum of interfaith experiential-mysticism. Regarding Another Step: Outlaw Bunny thinks that she and others in the alternative community have done an amazing job with revolutionary change, but that we need to grow yet more: We can move forward in our lives, but then need to take another step, and another, and always another, if we're to fully achieve our dreams, our peace, our potential. No statis! Keep moving on. And alternative modalities, though they've brought us miles and miles, don't provide those steps. This rabbit is devoted to creating them, one after another, and hence the Another Step curriculum.
After a quarter of a century in San Francisco, De Grandis was kidnapped by Faeries - - again! - - and relocated to rural Northwestern Pennsylvania where she lives with trees and sylphs, tries unsuccessfully to avoid deep thoughts - - a typical shaman! - - and juggles a large number of projects, some solitary, some international.
With twenty years experience as a grass-roots interfaith minister and spiritual healer, Francesca helps people of all faiths - - and those who are just fine without one - - through spiritual counseling, classes, workshops, and books, all geared toward both personal fulfillment and empowering people to make a difference in the world. She practices Goddess Spirituality and Chi Gung, is a long-time student of philosophical Taoism, and enjoys a relationship with Christ. She's also been told she's somewhat of a Buddhist.
The first kidnapping by Faeries occurred when she was working in clubs as a musician and comedian. The next thing she knew, she had completed a rigorous seven-year training to become a traditional spiritual healer. Her thesis at New College of California included the creation of The Third Road. Third Road and Another Step are curriculums of transformative and sanity-sustaining spiritual exercises. Between the two bodies of work, Francesca's material is practiced in the U.S., Great Britain, Australia, Germany, Canada, Poland, China, and other parts of the world.
But, then, Outlaw Bunny has a habit of (often unintentionally) starting impossible and international underground movements. In 2006, she founded Faerie Nation - - a global village of mystics, faeries, wolves, dragons, poets, clowns, and other healthily mad folk. Faerie Nation, like Another Step, is an interdisciplinary, interfaith, intertwining of newly-evolving DNA.
De Grandis teaches international teleseminars - - classes through group phone calls. In addition, clients living everywhere from Boston to Canada to France to Arabia to the Czech Republic call her for professional pastoral counseling by phone.
Outlaw Bunny started playing folk music in Boston clubs at age fourteen. She's toured the U.S. performing. When Multiple Sclerosis (to be clear: MS is as close as we've gotten to a diagnosis) made holding a guitar too difficult, she took up mandolin, and plays pieces not in its usual repertoire. Her focus also shifted to painting and freeform three-dimensional bead-weaving. After leaving the music business for a contemplative life as a shaman, she discovered that music was part of her spirituality. Her award winning music album, Pick the Apple from the Tree, represents this connection. She has also taught creative process to newbies and pros in a variety of artistic fields, for over two decades. She believes we're all skilled artists, given the right genre and right support. She also believes multifaceted people are common but often not given the chance to develop all their talents, or even recognized for their many abilities.
First as a priestess-poet who passed on her work orally, then as a published author, De Grandis has been a pivotal influence in the literary and spiritual culture of both earth and alternative spirituality. Many poems that De Grandis developed for The Third Road and Another Step--in the form of prayers, rituals, liturgy, chants, meditations, and lectures, and therefore often presented as prose--have anonymously entered the oral and written literature of earth-centered and "new" spirituality. So have her innovative techniques.
De Grandis avoids formulaic approaches. Her groundbreaking material--in different mediums and genres--repeatedly draws imitators and starts trends. But that is not her intent--she herself moves on to her next innovation. This site continues her forward-thinking work, but a lot of it happens solely within oral tradition. (text used with permission, text is taken from Francesca De Grandis's site http://outlawbunny.com/bio/ )
