ONLINE COURSE

Practical Animism

Cultivating Belonging through Earth-honoring Practices

with Dr. Daniel Foor

Begins May 20 | Live calls each Monday

Animism is the practice of loving and respecting our greater family—mountains and rivers, plants and animals, stones and stars, the living and the dead. Animism is about ethics and community, and it’s one way to talk about humans being our intrinsically relational selves.

As we deepen into human-driven change, a time of mass extinctions, and the spiraling impacts of human supremacy, it’s more critical than ever to rekindle our relationships with our extended kin. We endeavor to return to conscious connection because it’s good for us, because this supports our work for systemic change and cultural repair, and because it’s more honest. We’ve never been and will never be truly alone.

If you’re seeking a more profound and embodied relationship with the rest of life, consider this foundational Ancestral Medicine offering in support of reconnection and Earth-honoring ways of life. Participants will learn a lasting framework for animist ethics and ritual that is culturally mindful, psychologically grounded, and rooted in cross-cultural wisdom, teachings, and practices.

Practical Animism is one of three foundational courses at Ancestral Medicine. Access to all materials is life-long and registration also includes access to a peer connection space where you’ll have the opportunity to ask questions about course material.

In this course, you will

Teachings will be rooted in an ethic of love and inclusivity and will reference global traditions of sacred story, psychology, and practical magic. Each lesson will include live Q&A, multiple opportunities for guided practice, and a supportive learning environment.

*The timing of live calls for this course should be accessible to participants from Honolulu to Helsinki, Auckland to Cape Town, and anywhere in the Western Hemisphere. Thanks to our community of learners in regions like South Asia and much of Australia for your understanding on varying our times for international inclusivity. All who register still get lifetime access to recordings. You’re also welcome to send in questions ahead of time for Daniel to answer during live calls, or later in written form.

Price

Accessibility is a core value at Ancestral Medicine. We offer several pricing tiers, and we leave it to you to select the most appropriate tier. The ranges in pricing aims to take into consideration global economic disparities, historical injustices, and personal circumstances. The system is designed for those with more to register in ways that support those with less.

Early Registration (Take 35% off thru March 21 or till early-bird seats are sold)
$ 310
USD
  •  
Standard Rate
$ 485
USD
  • Our standard rate allows us to sustain our work. This applies if you’re employed in the Global North, you come from generational land ownership, and/or you’re able to provide for your needs in a consistent way.
Supporter
$ 530
USD
  • This rate helps us to make our work accessible to those with modest means. This rate applies if you have investments, a retirement plan, and/or access to economic abundance or generational wealth.

Other Pricing Options

Community
$ 410
USD
  • This rate applies if you’re relatively less economically advantaged in the ways listed under “standard rate” or that cost is simply out of reach for you financially.
Economic Hardship
$ 335
USD
  • This rate applies if other options are not within reach. Ideally for historically marginalized populations, and anyone who may experience economic hardship. *Spaces limited
Scholarship Application
  • If none of these rates are accessible to you, we offer a limited number of scholarships. Click below to apply for approval. Applications will close on May 10. Replies may take time due to high volume, but all replies will be sent by May 13.

What’s Included

Curriculum

Lessons emphasize psychological, cultural, and energetic safety and explore various aspects of Earth-honoring ethics and relationships. Each weekly theme emphasizes skills for developing meaningful relationships and connections with both human and other-than-human kin. 

Live calls, held each week, are followed by small group breakouts with practitioners. The 12 live calls complement the material of the pre-recorded lessons, and each includes time for Q&A, live practice, and small-group sharing.

1 One
2 Two
3 Three
4 Four
5 Five
6 Six
7 Seven
8 Eight
9 Nine
10 Ten
11 Eleven
12 Twelve
One

Lesson 1: Kinship, Intimacy, and Animist Lifeways

• Affirm a participant ethic of humility, heart, and self-responsibility
• Contextualize learning amidst injustice and ecological catastrophe
• Consider impacts of colonialism and ancestral wounding
• Invite new pathways of direct connection with other-than-human kin
• Enjoy resources from “new animists” in a wider cultural context

Topic of the live call in week one: Cultivating Gratitude

SIGN UP
Lesson 1: Kinship, Intimacy, and Animist Lifeways
Two

Lesson 2: Eating, Killing, and Giving Thanks

• Explore ethical implications of food plants, and animals as people
• Bring kind attention to the intimate killing that sustains our lives
• Ask the powers for ways to weave authentic gratitude into eating
• Dialogue with the spirit of at least one personal food, plant or animal
• Enjoy resources on domestication and rituals of food and harvest

Topic of the live call in week two: Embracing Interdependence

SIGN UP
Lesson 2: Eating, Killing, and Giving Thanks
Three

Lesson 3: Boundaries, Traditions, and the Dead

• Explore the importance of boundaries, consent, and limitation
• Learn ways to establish sacred space and encourage ritual safety
• Consider different types of ancestors, lineages, and living traditions
• Invite connection with wise and kind ancestral support from your lineages
• Enjoy resources on ancestor reverence and spirited eco-activism

Topic of the live call in week three: Honoring and Asserting Boundaries

SIGN UP
Lesson 3: Boundaries, Traditions, and the Dead
Four

Lesson 4: Celebrating Diverse Bodies and Wisdoms

• Engage with older, more generous views of other-than-human kin
• Expand your vocabulary for sacred diversity and difference
• Foreground friendship as foundational to deeper modes of relating
• Seek to connect with a local wild plant, fungus, or animal relation
• Enjoy resources on the wisdom and complexity of our Earth kin

Topic of the live call in week four: Valuing Diversity and Difference

SIGN UP
Lesson 4: Celebrating Diverse Bodies and Wisdoms
Five

Lesson 5: Sorrow, Extinction, and Honoring the Waters

• Explore water-related themes like grieving, cleansing, and healing
• Learn ritual skills for embracing potent sorrow, loss, and heartache
• Engage traditional teachings and lore on relating with the spirits of water
• Invite direct engagement with the specific waters near to your home
• Enjoy resources on grief rituals and ritual work with watery kin

Topic of the live call in week five: Grieving While in Connection

SIGN UP
Lesson 5: Sorrow, Extinction, and Honoring the Waters
Six

Lesson 6: Living the Blessings and Burdens of Place

• Consider complex human histories of places in light of belonging
• Learn ways to think about and be invited into the qualities of places
• Explore outdoor solitude practices and relevant adaptations
• Apply etiquette and intuition to locate a ‘sit spot’ near to your home
• Enjoy resources on place-focused teachings and ritual traditions

Topic of the live call in week six: Living Your Specific Medicine

SIGN UP
Lesson 6: Living the Blessings and Burdens of Place
Seven

Lesson 7: Stone, Memory, and Earth as Deity

• Identify projection of personal pain and gender norms on the Earth
• Learn foundational practices of making offerings and tending an altar
• Invite help from the stones for remembering destiny and purpose
• Ritually greet, thank, and feed the divinity who is this Earth
• Enjoy resources on ways of relating with the Earth as an elder deity

Topic of the live call in week seven: Reparenting and Deep Healing

SIGN UP
Lesson 7: Stone, Memory, and Earth as Deity
Eight

Lesson 8: Fire, Plasma, and Bridging the Worlds

• Explore diverse approaches to the elements in theory and practice
• Deepen with elemental fire as magma, flame, lightning, and stars
• Uproot problematic human/nature and nature/culture dichotomies
• Invite direct communion with helpful expressions of elemental fire
• Enjoy resources on elemental ritual and deities of fire and transformation

Topic of the live call in week eight: Embodying Cultural Authenticity

SIGN UP
Lesson 8: Fire, Plasma, and Bridging the Worlds
Nine

Lesson 9: Climate, Cosmos, and the Empty Center

• Extend animist perspectives to wind, weather, and celestial bodies
• Further interrupt extreme individualism and inner/outer binaries
• Reflect on Earth as an open system and our place in wider context
• Invite direct perspective from the elders powers on climate change
• Enjoy resources on wind, weather, astronomy, and great sci-fi

Topic of the live call in week nine: Becoming a Home for the Sacred

SIGN UP
Lesson 9: Climate, Cosmos, and the Empty Center
Ten

Lesson 10: Microorganisms, Agency, and Cultural Healing

• Consider the personhood and potent influence of microorganisms
• Explore agency, causation, and who tells the stories we’re made of
• Reflect on language and culture as sentient and more-than-human
• Greet and thank the trillions of others in, on, and around your body
• Enjoy resources on animist storytelling and microanimism

Topic of the live call in week ten: Accepting Greater Responsibility

SIGN UP
Lesson 10: Microorganisms, Agency, and Cultural Healing
Eleven

Lesson 11: Spirits, Deities, and Incarnation

• Expand animist and ecological frames to include the gods and the unseen
• Reflect on what we’re doing here and why on Earth we keep coming back
• Learn practical etiquette for relating with deities, spirits, and elder forces
• Consider ways the land and the others already shape and guide our lives
• Enjoy resources on spirit possession and the curious state of incarnation

Topic of the live call in week eleven: When Two Worlds Become One

SIGN UP
Lesson 11: Spirits, Deities, and Incarnation
Twelve

Lesson 12: Animist Ethics and the Life of Objects

• Extend animist sensibilities to objects, things, and those forgotten
• Ground coursework in animist ethics, science, law, and education
• Assess for congruence of personal values with identity and choices
• Invite integration of teachings with personal practice and path
• Enjoy resources on animist trends and policies in diverse disciplines

Topic of the live call in week twelve: Deepening Commitment to Self and Others

SIGN UP
Lesson 12: Animist Ethics and the Life of Objects
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12

Lesson 1: Kinship, Intimacy, and Animist Lifeways

• Affirm a participant ethic of humility, heart, and self-responsibility
• Contextualize learning amidst injustice and ecological catastrophe
• Consider impacts of colonialism and ancestral wounding
• Invite new pathways of direct connection with other-than-human kin
• Enjoy resources from “new animists” in a wider cultural context

Topic of the live call in week one: Cultivating Gratitude

Sign Up
Lesson 1: Kinship, Intimacy, and Animist Lifeways

Lesson 2: Eating, Killing, and Giving Thanks

• Explore ethical implications of food plants and animals as people
• Bring kind attention to the intimate killing that sustains our lives
• Ask the powers for ways to weave authentic gratitude into eating
• Dialogue with the spirit of at least one personal food plant or animal
• Enjoy resources on domestication and rituals of food and harvest

Topic of the live call in week two: Embracing Interdependence

Sign Up
Lesson 2: Eating, Killing, and Giving Thanks

Lesson 3: Boundaries, Traditions, and the Dead

• Explore the importance of boundaries, consent, and limitation
• Learn ways to establish sacred space and encourage ritual safety
• Consider different types of ancestors, lineages, and living traditions
• Invite connection with wise and kind ancestral support from your lineages
• Enjoy resources on ancestor reverence and spirited eco-activism

Topic of the live call in week three: Honoring and Asserting Boundaries

Sign Up
Lesson 3: Boundaries, Traditions, and the Dead

Lesson 4: Celebrating Diverse Bodies and Wisdoms

• Engage with older, more generous views of other-than-human kin
• Expand your vocabulary for sacred diversity and difference
• Foreground friendship as foundational to deeper modes of relating
• Seek to connect with a local wild plant, fungus, or animal relation
• Enjoy resources on the wisdom and complexity of our Earth kin

Topic of the live call in week four: Valuing Diversity and Difference

Sign Up
Lesson 4: Celebrating Diverse Bodies and Wisdoms

Lesson 5: Sorrow, Extinction, and Honoring the Waters

• Explore water-related themes like grieving, cleansing, and healing
• Learn ritual skills for embracing potent sorrow, loss, and heartache
• Engage traditional teachings and lore on relating with the spirits of water
• Invite direct engagement with the specific waters near to your home
• Enjoy resources on grief rituals and ritual work with watery kin

Topic of the live call in week five: Grieving While in Connection

Sign Up
Lesson 5: Sorrow, Extinction, and Honoring the Waters

Lesson 6: Living the Blessings and Burdens of Place

• Consider complex human histories of places in light of belonging
• Learn ways to think about and be invited into the qualities of places
• Explore outdoor solitude practices and relevant adaptations
• Apply etiquette and intuition to locate a ‘sit spot’ near to your home
• Enjoy resources on place-focused teachings and ritual traditions

Topic of the live call in week six: Living Your Specific Medicine

Sign Up
Lesson 6: Living the Blessings and Burdens of Place

Lesson 7: Stone, Memory, and Earth as Deity

• Identify projection of personal pain and gender norms on the Earth
• Learn foundational practices of making offerings and tending an altar
• Invite help from the stones for remembering destiny and purpose
• Ritually greet, thank, and feed the divinity who is this Earth
• Enjoy resources on ways of relating with the Earth as an elder deity

Topic of the live call in week seven: Reparenting and Deep Healing

Sign Up
Lesson 7: Stone, Memory, and Earth as Deity

Lesson 8: Fire, Plasma, and Bridging the Worlds

• Explore diverse approaches to the elements in theory and practice
• Deepen with elemental fire as magma, flame, lightning, and stars
• Uproot problematic human/nature and nature/culture dichotomies
• Invite direct communion with helpful expressions of elemental fire
• Enjoy resources on elemental ritual and deities of fire and transformation

Topic of the live call in week eight: Embodying Cultural Authenticity

Sign Up
Lesson 8: Fire, Plasma, and Bridging the Worlds

Lesson 9: Climate, Cosmos, and the Empty Center

• Extend animist perspectives to wind, weather, and celestial bodies
• Further interrupt extreme individualism and inner/outer binaries
• Reflect on Earth as an open system and our place in wider context
• Invite direct perspective from the elders powers on climate change
• Enjoy resources on wind, weather, astronomy, and great sci-fi

Topic of the live call in week nine: Becoming a Home for the Sacred

Sign Up
Lesson 9: Climate, Cosmos, and the Empty Center

Lesson 10: Microorganisms, Agency, and Cultural Healing

• Consider the personhood and potent influence of microorganisms
• Explore agency, causation, and who tells the stories we’re made of
• Reflect on language and culture as sentient and more-than-human
• Greet and thank the trillions of others in, on, and around your body
• Enjoy resources on animist storytelling and microanimism

Topic of the live call in week ten: Accepting Greater Responsibility

Sign Up
Lesson 10: Microorganisms, Agency, and Cultural Healing

Lesson 11: Spirits, Deities, and Incarnation

• Expand animist and ecological frames to include the gods and the unseen
• Reflect on what we’re doing here and why on Earth we keep coming back
• Learn practical etiquette for relating with deities, spirits, and elder forces
• Consider ways the land and the others already shape and guide our lives
• Enjoy resources on spirit possession and the curious state of incarnation

Topic of the live call in week eleven: When Two Worlds Become One

Sign Up
Lesson 11: Spirits, Deities, and Incarnation

Lesson 12: Animist Ethics and the Life of Objects

• Extend animist sensibilities to objects, things, and those forgotten
• Ground coursework in animist ethics, science, law, and education
• Assess for congruence of personal values with identity and choices
• Invite integration of teachings with personal practice and path
• Enjoy resources on animist trends and policies in diverse disciplines

Topic of the live call in week twelve: Deepening Commitment to Self and Others

Sign Up
Lesson 12: Animist Ethics and the Life of Objects

About the Instructor

daniel morocco 2024

Daniel Foor

Daniel is a doctor of psychology, experienced ritualist, and the author of Ancestral Medicine: Rituals for Personal and Family Healing. He is an initiate in the Òrìṣà tradition of Yoruba-speaking West Africa and has learned from teachers of Mahayana Buddhism, Islamic Sufism, and the older ways of his English and German ancestors. Daniel is passionate about training aspiring leaders and change makers in the intersections of cultural healing, animist ethics, and applied ritual arts. He lives with his wife and two daughters near Granada, Spain in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Learn More

Frequently Asked Questions

Pre-recorded lessons are released each Saturday for 12 weeks beginning May 18, accessible in your course dashboard.

Live teaching calls are held each Monday for 12 weeks, beginning May 20. All calls are recorded and are typically accessible 48 hours after the call.

Live Teaching Calls | Mondays at 3:00pm New York / 12:00pm Vancouver / 21:00 Berlin

Monday, May 20, 27
Monday, June 3, 10, 17, 24
Monday, July 1, 8, 15, 22, 29
Monday, August 5

All live teaching calls will be recorded and will be made available in your course dashboard to watch and listen to at your leisure, with access in perpetuity. These calls aim to complement (not repeat) the core content of the course from the pre-recorded lessons, and they include time for different guided practices, questions, etc. The additional 30-minute supporter-led small breakout groups that occur at the end of these weekly 60-minute teaching calls by Daniel are not recorded.

This is a 12-week course. Each pre-recorded lesson requires approximately 90 minutes per week and live weekly teaching calls are an additional 60-90 minutes. The emphasis of this course is ritual skill building to support your daily life and practice well beyond these 12 weeks, so don’t let the feeling of “falling behind” keep you from joining the calls or enjoying the community, course material, and additional resources. There aren’t goals to hit within this course, and there’s no test; the process simply needs space and time to unfold.

You’ll have access to course materials indefinitely, and all live calls will be recorded and placed into your course dashboard in the days following each call. So every moment of every teaching can be returned to later.

It depends. If you took the course from 2018 until mid-2021, nearly all aspects of the course will be new as the pre-recorded lessons were all recreated in a fresh and different way in mid-2021. If you took the course starting in November of 2021 or later (including Being the Earth and Loving the Earth in 2023), then this course will only differ in that the live calls with Daniel and course supporters are, well, always live.

Yes! We are inviting past course participants (of any previous version of the course) to rejoin at $180. If you took an older version of the course (pre November 2021), this will include 18 hours of new recordings as well as 12 live calls with Daniel (60min each) and course supporters (30min each). If you took the course anytime after November 2021, enrolling again will grant you access to the 12 live calls, as the course recordings remain the same. If you have not received an email with a past-participant invitation, email info@ancestralmedicine.org to request the direct link to this rate.

This course directly addresses vulnerable topics related to ongoing violence and harm in the world. The material may stir complicated emotions for some participants. Support outside of the lessons may be helpful as the course is not a replacement for personal therapy or spiritual care.

Enrollment includes access to our Community Forum – an online discussion group of students past and present, including supportive members from Ancestral Medicine’s Practitioner Network and Ancestral Medicine staff. Sharing experiences, reflecting on practices, and making connections in this private online community can provide one form of support.

Please also consider reaching out to someone in the Ancestral Medicine Practitioner Network for one-on-one support and guidance. Most are available for private individualized sessions, and many are willing to provide low-cost sessions to support financial accessibility needs.

To the very best of our ability, yes. All Ancestral Medicine offerings seek to embody an anti-racist, feminist, LGBTQ-celebrating, decolonizing and Earth-honoring ethic. They are also class-aware and internationally conscious. We offer a heartfelt, non-dogmatic approach that seeks to honor each participant’s unique life experiences and ancestral storylines. Resources included with each lesson favor ancestrally and geographically diverse voices, and the online Community Forum includes BIPOC and LGBTQ-only discussion spaces.

All of our lesson videos have closed captioning, as well as a full transcript and additional downloadable audio-only versions. If you have needs not met here, please feel free to reach out to us with suggestions at info@ancestralmedicine.org.

For full-length online courses (8 weeks or more), we offer a 30-day money back guarantee starting when the first lesson is released, no questions asked. For shorter courses, we offer full refunds before the first lesson begins and partial refunds if requested before the second lesson begins. See our Terms & Conditions.

We’d be happy to help with additional questions. Reach out to info@ancestralmedicine.org and someone from our team will be in touch, usually within one or two business days.

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