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Healer, Teacher, Pastoral Counselor, Storyteller

Few of our cultural elders in America ever reach the status of "Living Legend" but 80-year-old Grandmother Elspeth has most certainly done so. Her reputation for honest advice and earth-based "mountain wisdom" draws throngs of people, young and old, male and female, to gather in her teaching circles, as she travels around the country, weaves tales, startles us with her homespun humor and heals us with her journeys of the spirit.

Author of the beloved poem "The Challenge," and creator of the long-awaited double CD "Out of the Forest," Elspeth Odbert has been conducting workshops on spiritual growth and enrichment since 1991. Opinionated and outspoken in everything she does, she is a great-grandmother, environmentalist, healer, teacher, pastoral counselor, shamanic practitioner, "wild woman," and storyteller. An honored Elder in the Pagan community and co-founder of The Haven Way, an eco-spiritual path of personal and planetary transformation, Elspeth is a living example of the timeless truths that she teaches.

Elspeth, who travels so much she is sometimes called "The Crone on the Road," is best known for her mesmerizing "fireside voice," which seems to come from a distant time and place, as much as for what she has to say. Her teaching takes place in workshops, events, and speeches at many events and on her CD "Out of the Forest."

Her contributions to personal development include "Resonating with the Crone," a workshop for pre-and menopausal women, which is now in its seventh year; and "Personal Evolution," a workshop for adults of all genders. She has been a motivational speaker for many types of groups of all ages.

The famed Brushwood Folklore Center in Western New York, which hosts many of the top names in the pagan/new age media circuit, has recently opened The Storytellers Pavilion, a beautiful open-air temple to the wisdom of this Crone, and each year, celebrities as well as less well known people, make the pilgrimage to consult with her. Amid the confusion and haste of the talk circuit, such actions speak louder than words.

When she is not on the road in "Harvey the RV", Elspeth is at home in West Virginia with her beloved Nybor (an artist best known for his illustrations for science fiction and pagan publications) and two fur persons, Maggie and Max.

• 80 years life experience, as daughter, wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and more
• 20+ years teaching experience
• Certificate of Shamanic Practitioner from the Church of Earth Healing
• Ordained by Pete Pathfinder of the Aquarian Tabernacle
• Minister in Ecumenicon Fellowship in Maryland
• Appearances at the following festivals: Heartland, Rites of Spring, MAPA Beltane, Dragon Hills Rowan Festival, Gathering of the Tribes, Sirius Rising, Starwood, Craftwise, Sacred Space Conference, Free Spirit Gathering, and Florida Pagan Gathering. She is a co-founder of Teach at the Beach, the Life Springs Festival and the Stones Rising Festival.