Posts by Petra Lentz-Snow
New: Four Shield Training for Women
For the first time, we are offering an 8-day training centered exclusively on women rites and earth-based ceremonies in the modern day wilderness Rites of Passage context. Using a ceremonial immersion in the Four Shields module, this course will focus on transmitting and deepening the bare bone practices and skills involved in guiding earth-based women…
Read MoreMid-Winter Vision Fast
“It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.” ~ Wendell Berry…
Read MoreTwo Week Training for Women
This is an offering to celebrate and hold the broad, and diverse experiences of what it is to be a woman in this moment in time. Since time immemorial Rites of Passage Ceremonies have facilitated change, offering a simple but indispensable container to transition from one life stage to another, to let go of (die to) the old and step in (birth) anew, so that life can continue.
What underlies these rites is the understanding of the circular, seasonal, and regenerative nature of life and death. This knowing runs deep in the female body. Despite the patrilinear impact of the last few thousand years that imposed a culture in which the feminine was largely exiled, we are still informed by the cyclical ebbing and flowing rhythm of circular time, and an innate understanding of the evolutionary necessity of change that lives in our bones.
Read MoreLiving in a Time of Dying: The Four Shields in the Anthropocene
We are living in a time of rapid change, disintegration and emergence on planet Earth – what many call apocalyptic times. From the compounding and inequitable crises of climate change and pandemic, to the impacts of globalization and colonization, systems are falling apart all around us and it seems there is no way back to…
Read MoreYeshe Salz
yeshe ( Y ) (they/them) is a rites-of-passage guide, facilitator, storyteller and community organizer whose life and passion is dedicated to building collective resilience in times of deep change. yeshe’s work meets at the confluence of trans-local coalition-building, queer ecology and cultivating cultural resilience through ceremony and ritual. They come to this work through years…
Read MoreCA Fall Vision Fast
The twelve day immersion ceremony involves four days of preparation, four days and nights of fasting alone, and four days of incorporation in Death Valley. (Payahüünadü), at Baker Creek Campground, and the solo threshold phase of the ceremony will take place in Death Valley National Park (Tüpippüh Valley).
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CA Summer Women’s Fast
This is an offering to celebrate and hold the broad, and diverse experiences of what it is to be a woman in this moment in time. Since time immemorial Rites of Passage Ceremonies have facilitated change, offering a simple but indispensable container to transition from one life stage to another, to let go of (die to) the old and step in (birth) anew, so that life can continue.
What underlies these rites is the understanding of the circular, seasonal, and regenerative nature of life and death. This knowing runs deep in the female body. Despite the patrilinear impact of the last few thousand years that imposed a culture in which the feminine was largely exiled, we are still informed by the cyclical ebbing and flowing rhythm of circular time, and an innate understanding of the evolutionary necessity of change that lives in our bones.
Read MoreScott Davidson
Scott Davidson (he/him) is a wilderness rite of passage guide, wildlife tracker and cultural repairman who has given his life to community stewardship for more than 20 years. A son of North Sea ancestors and born on Ohlone homelands, he now stewards the sanctuary of Three Creeks in Payahuunadü, in collaboration with Nüümü Paiute peoples…
Read MoreThe Four Shields of Wholeness for Women
Patrilinear hierarchical systems have pushed life on earth to the raw edge of social and ecological sustainability. Many of us feel the global crisis reverberating acutely in our own bodies, in the rawness of our personal lives, and in the torn fabric of our communities. And, at the same time, the ancient evolutionary imperative to re-member…
Read MoreRadical Acts of Re-member-ing
Rite of Passage ceremonies have been held in near infinite forms and shapes for thousands of years, shaping and shifting according to weather, landscape, ancestral lineages and the particular needs of the community which enacted them. What sets modern rite of passages apart, is not so much the forms of ceremony we use today,…
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