A Special League of Spillian Revelers
Weekend Co-Created Adventure for Women
Facilitated by Leigh Melander, PhD, Spillian Founder

Note: Spillian is sharing in the cost of this gathering as an act of faith in women’s fire, and as a gift to help make it accessible to as many women as possible. (We also comp our female crew to honor our shared growth. And because we love them.)

What’s Included

• $295: All programming, materials, food, and non-alcoholic beverages
• $245: Lodging Friday & Saturday in one of our eight rooms for those staying onsite
• Friday dinner; Saturday breakfast, lunch, and feast; Sunday breakfast
• Refreshments with house-made Spillian treats as we play
• Wine, local beers, and Spillian cocktails available for purchase
• Reveling with weyrd sisters in the League of Spillian Revelers

When

• Arrive at 5 PM or so on Friday for dinner and our first programming
• Saturday we’ll be playing with fire all day and evening
• We’ll say farewell at 11 AM on Sunday

A quest awaits before you arrive. Details when you book.
League registration available through the Secret Door.

What We’ll Do Together

Stories of Fire and Form
We’ll begin with the oldest stories—the ones where women and dragon circle each other, fight, merge, transform. From the serpents of Eden to the drakainas of Greece to the Red Dragon of Wales, we’ll trace how cultures have seen the feminine fire, feared it, and forgotten it, and we’ll listen for what still rings true in our own bones.

Unmaking the Triad
Maiden. Mother. Crone. These archetypes have shaped how women are seen and how we have learned to see ourselves. They too often reflect a culture that measures women by what we give, nurture, or relinquish. In this work, we turn our gaze elsewhere. We turn toward dragon, a way of understanding power and self that has always been there, waiting outside the walls. Dragon does not live in response to the world’s expectations. She writes her own.

Dancing with Dragon
Through movement, writing, conversation, and art-making, we’ll explore what it means to live with power that both creates and destroys. We’ll play with the fire—riding it, shaping it, knowing when to let it rest. There will be laughter, silence, and moments when the air hums with recognition.

The Weyrd of Dragons
Each year, our gathering becomes what its dragons bring. One year, a jeweler taught us to craft gemstone mala-style necklaces, each bead threaded with intention. Another year, a fire breather lit the night. Others have offered movement, shared stories, journaling, and other dragon-worthy makings.

You are invited to bring something of your own fire to share and shape with others—a practice, a bit of craft, a piece of wisdom, a question that burns. This isn’t show and tell; it’s co-creation. Together we strengthen each other’s flame, letting the sparks weave through the circle until the whole room glows.

The Feast and the Embers
We’ll come to table for food that glows with winter warmth, celebrating what we’ve kindled together. As night deepens, we’ll gather around the hearth, trade tales, and dream with the dragons that keep company in this house.

Dreams in the House of Stories
Sleep in one of Spillian’s eight splendidly whimsical rooms, still carrying the scent of smoke and myth. Let your dreams unfurl their wings.

A Breakfast for Return
On Sunday morning, our house-made bagels and apple turnovers (of course!), before we step back into the world, dragons awake.

Why We Gather

Because something in you still burns.
You may have tried to quiet it, to fit yourself into the shape that is easiest for others to bear. You may have been told to be kind, to be small, to be safe. Yet somewhere under all that ash, the ember still glows. Every woman carries a small sun inside her ribs, waiting for air.

Because power has long been seen as danger.
The old stories warned of women who burned too brightly, who spoke to serpents, who would not kneel. Their names became curses, their light called ruin. You have felt that judgment in your own bones—the room cooling when you speak too fiercely, the quiet correction to dim yourself for comfort’s sake. Still, part of you wonders what would happen if you didn’t.

Because exile is a lonely country.
Powerful women have been scattered on purpose, told we devour each other, told we cannot be trusted together. But we know that is another trick. The fire has always sought itself, finding kin by scent and spark. Here, we call the scattered embers home. Here, we learn what it means to be seen in our full magnitude and loved for it.

Because the fire is both blessing and peril.
You’ve burned the wrong thing now and then. You’ve scorched what you loved and carried the guilt of it. You’ve gone cold out of fear. You want to learn to tend the flame instead of fearing it—to ride it, to shape it, to know when to let it rest. To live fierce and merciful, at once.

Because dragon is older than fear.
Dragon is the name of power that stands outside the walls. She is the one who remembers what it is to create and to destroy, to see clearly, to love fiercely, to belong only to herself. To remember yourself as dragon is to return to that largeness, that clarity, that impossible joy of being uncontained.

And because no one should burn alone.
We gather to remember in one another’s light. To meet the fierce and the tender without flinching. To find the wild company of women who will not ask us to be smaller. Together we learn what it means to live in the blaze and call it love.

About Leigh Melander

Leigh has a doctorate in cultural mythology and psychology, and wrote her doctoral dissertation on frivolity and play as a way into imagination. She has a background in the arts, strategic planning, and strengthening communities nationally and internationally, and is Spillian’s co-founder of Spillian. Leigh has served as a board member for multiple organizations, including the Joseph Campbell Foundation. As a presenter, Leigh offers workshops on imagination, myth, and personal development. She has been featured on the on the History Channel as an expert on myth and story, and hosts the Myth America podcast. She was the founding editor of the MythBlast essay series for the Joseph Campbell Foundation, and has been published various academic publications, including Spring Journal and the award-winning Routledge International Handbook of Jungian Film Studies. She is the author of Psyche’s Choice: The Frivolous Revolution, and the upcoming book Just This Side of Crazy: Questing Your Wild Idea to Life.