The goal of the first part of this training will be to familiarize ourselves with a Holy Helper who can act as guide and intermediary between ourselves and our Beloved Dead, to deepen our communication with our Beloved Dead, and to plumb the depths of our inheritances – ethnic, cultural, financial, relational, spiritual, and health-wise to sort the wheat from the chaff and establish a strong foundation held fast by our Beloved Dead from which we can call in and dream up the Future.

Ancestor honoring is a two-way street.

Our Beloved Dead make themselves available to offer insight, blessings, and protection but they also ask something in return from us, and that is that we care as best we can for our Descendants, for the ones who come after us, and after we are gone.

The first essential step in this process is dreaming into and calling up a vision of the future for our Beloved Ones to Come that is grounded in the principles of Wholeness, Health, and Holiness. The challenge we face in doing this is that all too often the visions of a “good” future that are fed to us by dominant cultural forces and society at large are fattened up on sugar-spun fantasy and lack true nourishment – no meat, no honey, no solid root vegetables.

With a solid foundation built of the love for and from our Ancestors we are able to liberate Innocence – that is, true and essential self – from the Sugar House and begin calling forth into creation a deep and meaningful vision of what is to come. The story of Hansel and Gretel is the perfect illustration of how we go about setting ourselves free.

The goal of the second part of this training will be to familiarize ourselves with the Challengers who seek to devour and deplete our visions of the future, learn both practical and magical ways to recognize and protect ourselves from these Challengers, and discover a clear-cut process with accompanying rites and ceremonies that aid us in liberating our innocent and essential selves and restoring the vision of the future we carry within us to its central place in our lives and stories.

In a time when so much has been dismantled, taken apart, demolished, and destroyed it is especially important to hold a strong and fast vision of what is possible, good, needed, and desired as we move forward. Traditionally it has always been those touched by magic…the dreamers, artists, witches, magicians, poets, and storytellers. This training calls upon sacred arts and the stories those arts spring from to support seekers in doing exactly that.