Pagan Community Retreat is a family-friendly Pagan camping event in Southern California built around community, learning, spiritual practice, and time together in nature. Each campout brings together Pagans from many different paths for workshops, rituals, conversations, creative activities, shared experiences, and the simple pleasure of spending a few days among people who understand that Pagan community can take many forms.
PCR is not a conference, resort, or performance festival. This Pagan campout is a temporary community that we create together.
A Community, Not an Audience
PCR is community first. At our Pagan campout, the people leading workshops, sharing skills, vending their creations, volunteering, organizing activities, and sitting beside you around the fire are all part of the same community. Our presenters are attendees. Our vendors are attendees. They register for PCR just like everyone else and spend the weekend as members of the community, not as a separate class of performers or experts brought in to entertain an audience. That is intentional.
PCR was created as a place where Pagans could come together, share what they know, learn from one another, build relationships, and experience community in nature. Everyone who attends brings something to the campout, whether that is a workshop, a handmade creation, a helping hand, a good conversation, a song around the fire, or simply their presence. You do not need to present, vend, or volunteer to belong here. Participation can be as simple as showing up with curiosity and respect for the people around you.
What Happens at PCR?
No two campouts are exactly alike because much of the experience comes from the people who attend. Programming may include workshops, rituals, discussions, divination, folklore, crafts, movement, spiritual practice, hands-on demonstrations, community activities, and opportunities to simply spend time together. Some activities are structured. Others happen because a conversation starts at a campsite and suddenly six people are sitting around talking about herbs, gods, books, magic, or the best way to keep a tent from trying to become airborne.
There is time to learn and participate, but there is also time to rest, wander, talk, make friends, sit quietly, or simply enjoy being outside. PCR is not about trying to fill every minute of your weekend. It is about creating enough space for community to happen.
This Is Rustic Camping
PCR is, first and foremost, a rustic Pagan campout. There are no hotel rooms, cabins, prepared meals, room service, or resort-style amenities. Attendees are responsible for bringing their own shelter, bedding, food, water, medications, first-aid supplies, and whatever else they need to remain safe and comfortable for the duration of the campout. The specific facilities available may vary by location and year.
In other words, you are camping. That might mean a tent and sleeping bag. It might mean an elaborate campsite with rugs, chairs, lanterns, a comfortable cot, and enough pillows to concern your neighbors. We are not grading anyone on wilderness purity. Bring what you need. What matters is understanding that PCR provides the place and the community experience. Campers provide their own accommodations and day-to-day necessities.
Come Prepared for the Outdoors
An outdoor campout also means dealing with the realities of being outside. Temperatures change. Wind happens. Ground is rarely perfectly level. Dirt remains stubbornly committed to being dirt. You should be prepared for the conditions expected during the campout and consider your own mobility, health, comfort, medications, dietary needs, and camping experience when deciding what to bring.
If you are new to camping, that does not mean PCR is not for you. It simply means a little preparation will make your experience considerably better. Our Pagan Camping resources can help you think through shelter, sleep, food, clothing, comfort, and those little things experienced campers know to bring because they learned the hard way.
Food and Daily Life
PCR does not provide prepared meals as part of registration. Campers bring and prepare their own food and should plan for their own dietary needs for the entire campout. For some people, meals become another part of community life. Friends may cook together, camps may share food, and conversations often seem to appear wherever someone has started making coffee. But shared meals are something campers choose to create together, not a service provided by PCR. The same principle applies throughout the campout: come prepared to care for yourself while remaining open to the ways community naturally develops around you.
Many Paths, One Campout
There is no single Pagan tradition represented at PCR. People come from different religious traditions, magical practices, spiritual paths, and levels of experience. Some have practiced for decades. Others are newly exploring Paganism. Some belong to established traditions or groups, while others practice entirely on their own. You do not need to believe exactly what the person sitting beside you believes. In fact, that is part of the point.
PCR creates opportunities to encounter practices, traditions, ideas, and people you may never meet in your everyday life. We ask attendees to approach those differences with curiosity, consent, respect, and the understanding that no one tradition speaks for Paganism as a whole.
Families Are Welcome
PCR is a family-friendly Pagan campout, and programming may include activities appropriate for children as well as adults. Families should remember, however, that this remains a rustic camping environment. Parents and guardians are responsible for assessing what their children need to camp safely and comfortably and for supervising them throughout the campout. Becasue PCR is a family-friendly event, it is not clothing-optional.
Help Build the Community
There are many ways to participate in PCR. You might lead a workshop, share a skill, offer something you have created as a vendor, volunteer to help with the campout, participate in ritual, join a conversation, welcome someone attending for the first time, or simply help create a campsite where people feel comfortable stopping by.
Community does not require everyone to contribute in the same way. It does require all of us to remember that the campout belongs to the people creating it together.
Is PCR for You?
PCR is a good fit for people who enjoy spending time outdoors, are comfortable with rustic camping, and are interested in meeting Pagans whose paths may be very different from their own. It is for people who value workshops, ritual, learning, creativity, conversation, and a campout where presenters, vendors, volunteers, organizers, and attendees share the same community space.
If you need hotel-style accommodations, provided meals, or a highly structured resort or conference experience, PCR may not be the right kind of event for you. We would much rather you understand what PCR is before you arrive than discover halfway through setting up your tent that this is not the weekend you imagined.
The Temporary Village
For a few days, a collection of campsites becomes something more. People arrive carrying tents, food, ritual tools, books, artwork, instruments, knowledge, stories, curiosity, and pieces of their own Pagan practice.
They build camps, teach one another, attend rituals, make things, sit around fires, and talk far later than they intended. They encounter people and ideas they might never have crossed paths with anywhere else.
Then, at the end of the campout, everyone packs it all away and carries some small piece of that community home with them.
That temporary village is the heart of Pagan Community Retreat.
Want to See What PCR Is Like?
Explore our past campouts to see the workshops, presenters, activities, and experiences our community has created over the years. When registration for the next campout opens, current dates, location information, registration, programming, and other event-specific details will be available here.
Learn more about our policies to determine if PCR is a good fit for you.