“A fire is burning in Bird Spirit Land. My bones smoulder. I must journey there.”
(Lavondyss, Robert Holdstock)

Sarah Kate Istra Winter, aka Dver, was raised in the haunted woods of New England, where she has returned after a long interlude amidst the lichen-draped trees and mist-heavy hills of the Pacific Northwest. She has felt the warm moss under her bare feet at a geyser in Iceland, spent the night in a holy cave above the temple of Delphi in Greece, and sung to the spectral hounds of Dartmoor, England. She now makes her home at the edge of a swamp in a landscape rife with precious minerals below the ground, and enormous glacial stones above it. 

She has studied extensively and holds a degree in Comparative Myth and Ritual, which culminated in a ritual theatre performance where she reveled in the blood of a dismembered child-god. 

Dver has dedicated her life to the spirits, who she serves in part by creating tangible artefacts which function as doors between the worlds: the mask which can invite the Other inside the wearer, the puppet whose movements bring the uncanny to life, the skull painted with a map of another world, the message woven into a tangle of sticks and leaves left to be found by the right person at the right time. But her most important sacred tools and offerings are also the most fundamental and archaic: blood, pure water, breath, song, smoke, and rich, dark earth.

She worships many ancient deities, but belongs foremost to the god “of ecstasy and terror, of wildness and of the most blessed deliverance.”

Dver is most likely to be found looking for entrances to fairyland, talking to crows, exploring the borders of consciousness, or carrying too many books out of the library. You can recognize her by the spells and vows she has permanently inked into her skin. She knows a little bit of a lot of languages, and has played six musical instruments without getting good at any of them. Patience is not one of her virtues, although she has happily spent a year cleaning the entire skeleton of a stag. She can make incense and tinctures, read Tarot and runes, and knows just how many poisonous mushrooms are enough to see the gods. 

You can reach her at: dver at birdspiritland dot com.