animist and shamanic practices, story, and ceremony; to awaken to and remember ancestral protocols for being human;

offered as an oral culture-style transmission;

to move us out of our heads and modern ways of being and into contact with the Otherworld- a place of Spirit, relationship, memory, and initiatory forces.

These gatherings offer us a chance to bring our questions, messiness, and struggles to the wisdom of the Otherworld; the wisdom of animist culture, of ancestors, and beyond-human elders;

to see what new ways of being and perceiving become available to us through the tending of relationship with them.

We do this as an antidote to epidemics of burnout, loneliness, disconnect, and purpose anxiety.

We do this as a way of becoming more vibrantly alive and rooted in our connection to our own humanity; and as a way of practicing our belonging to the World.

Our deep-time ancestors were likely wiser than we think…

Generally, we've internalized the idea that humans and human culture evolve in linear and increasingly complex ways, and that what came before us was primitive and unsophisticated.

But there's actually plenty of evidence (some of it dating from at least 40-50,000 years ago) that points to our ancient ancestors having cultural protocols and practices - technologies, crafts, and, likely, ceremonies - which were passed down consistently over tens of thousands of years.

And if it was resilient and relevant enough to be valued over tens of thousands of years, through periods of climatic upheaval and all the changes that must have unfolded over that time span... it must have been successful in supporting humans in their relationships and their lives.

Which points to a deep-time knowing that modern scientific methods are beginning to prove as well:

ceremony (and the art, craft, story, and spirituality that go alongside it) is not a frivolous thing for us to participate in when we have the time and energy.

Ceremony is a necessity for our wellness and longevity, as individuals and communities.

When we did lose connection, it wasn’t because it wasn’t important…

We also know ceremony is vital for the wellness of individuals and communities because whenever and wherever a people have come into dominate and subjugate another people, to de-animate Land and claim it as resource for themselves, one of the first things they attack are cultural storehouses like ceremony.

Which is why we arrive in modern times and most of us have lost our connection to ceremony as a vital life-regenerating practice (with the rare and noteworthy exception of pockets of Indigenous people who managed to maintain more uninterrupted lineages of ancestral cultural ways in spite of colonization and genocide).

Undermining ceremony is part of how you turn humans from creatures into machines.

So part of why you're struggling under the super-human, savior-complex pressure to hold everyone and everything all the time, to make sure people are cared for and don't fall through the cracks, is the relational breakdown to community, Land, and elemental beings which ceremony reinforces.

Part of why you feel broken when you can't keep up with hustle-and-grind "culture" and your body responds to seasonal changes and needs rest, is a breakdown in your sense of interrelationship with the natural world which ceremony maintains.

Part of why your soul is sobbing, “when do I get to just be?!?” is because we’re not taking time to honor the sacredness around us and within us, which ceremony helps us do.

But our need for ceremony doesn’t change and we can remember…

Ceremony can take many forms, but at its heart, it's about our ongoing participation in and re-membering of the web of life.

Through ceremony we hold that we're one part of an animate, conscious, sacred world.

And that our individual wellness, collective wellness, and the world's wellness are interdependent.

Ceremony reminds us that it matters that we're here.

It's a technology for maintaining our health and humanity through practicing respect, resilience, reciprocity, and relationship.

Now, for those of us whose ancestors lost connection with ceremony, or whose ceremonies have become twisted to serve something other than Aliveness and Oneness, we can only guess at what the exact protocols and ceremonies were in our deep ancestral lines.

And there's grief and hunger there.

Because the practice of ceremony is a human birthright and necessity.

It's food of a different kind.

But we aren’t entitled to specific ceremonies or even all ceremonies. We don't need to wield that hunger like a weapon to take cultural practices that belong to different places, people, and times than our own. In fact, we shouldn't. In ceremony, as in life, the effects of what we do, tell us what we did. And ceremony should regenerate, not exploit. It should always bring us deeper into relationship, and specifically with the places and beings where we live.

Bringing it back in our places and times…

Wherever in the world your ancestors came from, there are probably some common through threads which we can return to to help us remember, regenerate, and root ceremony in our places and times. Threads like: presence, humility, gratitude, and sacredness.

And we can weave those threads into things we may already be doing or may want to do more of.

Which means ceremony could look like:

• elevating an everyday routine into a ritual by investing it with more presence and intention;

• celebrating milestones with your family and friends;

• gathering in small, trusted groups for support, solidarity, or reinforcement of values and identity;

• gathering as a community in response to need, tragedy, or to celebrate and share resources;

• honoring seedings, harvests, seasonal markers, elemental forces, and Life-Giving Beings (like the sun, rain, etc);

• embarking on individual or group pilgrimages or fasts, either in one location to seek guidance and reconnection, or moving across the land to inspire change;

  ...and much more.

What’s most important are the threads.

Presence - we show up with open hearts and minds. we show up with what we’ve got.

Humility - we can’t force ceremony to happen and it likely won’t if we center ourselves and our humanness. ceremony’s about remembering that we owe our lives to Life-Giving Forces and both our hardships and wins can help us stay in relationship and reciprocity with Aliveness and Mystery.

Gratitude - it’s not about what we get from ceremony. it’s about what we can give, about paying into our indebtedness to Aliveness (although it’s also true that the more we offer to ceremony, the more likely we are to feel rich in our lives and relationships. but that’s because by operating in a ceremonial way, we become a more beautiful human, a human more capable of stewarding beauty).

Sacredness - we are not separate from the sacredness of Aliveness, the sacredness that surrounds us. so ceremony is a way of honoring the meaningfulness of self, relationships, Land, etc. it’s a way to make beauty from and in the lives we have.

The ceremonies I offer here…

The ceremonies you'll find here are mostly in service to reconnecting us with our creature selves by remembering our connection to Land, ancestors, elemental Beings, and each other - body, heart, and soul.

I also hold the intention that these ceremonies feed whatever fragments of animist cultural memory still live on through myths and fairy tales (particularly European ones, since those are my ancestral lineages). So, if you come to ceremony with me... there will likely be story time.

These are not workshops in that there are no promised outcomes. They're not following proscribed agendas. They're not even so much about what we get from them, and in fact, the more we give to them, the more likely we are to get something from them. And because of that, they’re not guaranteed - it’s up to us to show up as creatures, not machines, as best we can. And ask ceremony to help us do the rest.

The ceremonies I facilitate are places to bring where we feel broken, alone, unloveable, overwhelmed and also beautiful. To offer all of what we are and all that we feel over to Mystery. And then we listen. And we stay open. Often we laugh, cry, sing, tell stories, contemplate and share, and feed the fire with offerings. But it’s not a simple human-to-human sharing circle, though those may have their time and place, too. To shift beyond that, we open ourselves to the experience of being held and witnessed by the Land and by the Holy, by the trees and stones and sun and moon and stars and waters and plant and animal life... by ancestors who have been and who will be and all our human and beyond-human kin across time and space. And something happens then. Perhaps.

At the very least, we start to remember what it is to experience ourselves as connected, alive, nourished, grateful.

And that's a start.

** Please note: Animist practices do not need to supersede or supplant other religious beliefs or lineages you ascribe to or practice. And at our gatherings, there might be drumming; chanting; breath work; movement; altars with flowers, bones, feathers, stones, etc. If those sorts of things will leave you too uncomfortable to keep an open and curious mind and heart, this might not be a good fit for you, at least at this time.

Upcoming Ceremonies:

** a quick note on my use of the term “shamanism”: as a term it’s a tricky one - it’s both erasive and appropriative and either comes with a lot of preconceived notions, or, what it means or is so vague it’s almost meaningless. It’s a term indigenous to Siberian indigenous wisdom practitioners and used by western anthropologists to invoke any indigenous or ancestral wisdom tradition practitioner and medicine person, regardless of the land they live on and what those people would’ve called themselves in their own language. I acknowledge the harm within that. Now, it’s often used as a pan-tradition, new-agey catch-all for almost anything mystical and akin to “indigenous”. There’s potential for harm in that, too. I’ve gone back and forth on whether to use it or not and you’ll see me often say “animist” and “ancestral” more than, or alongside, “shamanic”. When and where I do use it, I use it to invoke the role and practices of bridging this world with the Others which run parallel to this one; standing for greater harmony and aliveness within and between individuals, communities, and between us and our beyond-human kin, including those whose souls live in the Otherworld. For me, “shamanic” also implies a marrying of the journey of being human and spirit - not to transcend, but to be more deeply human and here. Shamanic practices come from and operate on behalf of the land, as much as anything else.

Shamanic practices do not need to supersede or supplant other religious beliefs or lineages you ascribe to or practice, however, you will feel more comfortable with my work if your beliefs allow for a sense that all life (including the natural world) is sacred kin and conscious elder, and that to be here and engage with the pains and ecstasies of being human is one of the greatest responsibilities and most precious gifts we could ever receive.

About Kate: