ONLINE COURSE
Initiations: A Life of Ritual
Summer Season with Dr. Daniel Foor
Live Teachings on Tuesdays
June 27, Jul 4, 11, 18
3:30pm NY | 21:30 Berlin | 12:30pm LA
Through embracing life as an initiatory journey, we can mature into wise and kind elders and, in time, vibrant ancestors.
This four-session course weaves teachings and practices from ancient and contemporary ritual arts, developmental psychology, and global rites of passage to guide you toward a life steeped in kindness and presence.
This course will cover accessing guidance from Source, cultivating passion and devotion, working with grief and loss, and rites of passage surrounding adolescence and early adulthood.
From our birth until our return to the ancestors, the world will provide abundant opportunities to cultivate good character and authenticity. A life steeped in ritual supports the transformation of life experience into wisdom and character.
This course is offered four times annually, once for each season. You’re welcome to join just for a season or for all four! Learn more below.
In this course, you will
- Learn how ritual arts can serve as essential life skills to effectively resolve developmental challenges as we mature.
- Experience how to navigate rites of passage and transitions over the course of your life through a framework built on spiritually and psychologically centered teachings.
- Set clear boundaries for consistent ritual and psychological safety, including for troubled family or cultural circumstances.
- Strengthen your practice by honoring natural cycles. We'll get your started by offering guided ritual on the full moon.
- Engage this framework within an intentional online community, where you’ll enjoy support from experienced course supporters and affinity group spaces.
Price
Accessibility is a core value of our organization, and all price levels also include monthly payment options.
Standard Cost for Initiations: A Life of Ritual | Summer
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This is the cost for access to the Summer Season of Initiations: A Life of Ritual, which is offered 4x annually. If you'd like Spring's recordings + access to the live Summer teachings, save 30% below. Different themes are covered in each season's teachings.
Summer & Spring Bundle
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This course is offered 4x annually. We cover different themes in each season. If you'd like access to all of the recordings and lessons from "Initiations: A Life of Ritual | Spring Season" plus gain access to Summer's lessons and live teachings, we've packaged them up together for you here! Purchase together for 30% off, or sign up just for Summer above.
Other Pricing Options
Supporter
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This rate invites folks with comfortable means to contribute more. Your generosity allows us to offer reduced rates.
Community
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This rate invites folks with more modest means to enjoy our programs at a reduced cost. *Limited availability.
Scholarship
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Scholarships are for those experiencing hardship or from economically under-resourced areas. *Limited availability.
Money-back guarantee
If you’re not satisfied with the course after having engaged at least one lesson, we will grant you a full refund within 30 days from the beginning of the course.
What’s Included
- Weekly live teaching calls with Daniel, each 60-90 minutes. These calls are also recorded.
- Small-group breakout sessions during the teaching calls, facilitated by experienced practitioners. Includes optional breakouts for specific affinity groups.
- Generous collection of course resources, guided reflections, and suggested practices focused on the rite of passage for this season of life.
- Pre-recorded lessons, including transcripts and audio files.
- A guided moon ritual call Our Spring call will honor the first quarter moon.
- Access to our private Community Forum, where you can interact with Ancestral Medicine staff, course supporters, and fellow learners.
- Lifetime access to all course materials and recordings!
Developmental stages and ritual skills emphasized in the Summer course:
- Week one: Accessing Guidance from Source and Self
- Week two: Being Broken and Remade by Love
- Week three: Grieving with and for the World
- Week four: Rites of Passage for Adolescents and Young Adults
Curriculum
Lesson One
Lesson One: Adolescence, Courage, and Calling
- Consider youth rites of passage connected to the ability to call in new life
- Explore connections between accountability and accessing guidance
- Reflect on experiences with authority and connection to authentic power
- Practice ways to directly access reliable spiritual guidance and support
- Enjoy resources on youth rites of passage and ethical development
Lesson Two
Lesson Two: Early Adulthood, Devotion, and Feeding Life
- Explore love and devotion as foundational to spiritual development
- Learn ways to intentionally cultivate heart courage and tenderness
- Reflect on the healing power of relationships, human and otherwise
- Enact love and devotion by learning tangible, ritual offering practices
- Enjoy poetry, art, and other resources on devotion and the sacred
Lesson Three
Lesson Three: Limitation, Sorrow, and Choosing Love
- Consider how little we control and the sacred functions of pain and limitation
- Explore impacts of personal loss and tragedy on soul-level development
- Reflect on the courage required to choose compassion over resentment
- Practice ritual skills to receive, regulate, and metabolize grief and sorrow
- Enjoy resources on lament, heartache, and love in response to suffering
Lesson Four
Lesson Four: Rites of Passage for Adolescents and Young Adults
Our fourth week has no pre-recorded lesson and is instead focused on digesting how the teachings culminate together. Daniel’s teaching call this week supports this reflection through centering the ritual skills and rite of passage for those in an earlier stage of life.
Four Seasons of Ritual
Summer
Adolescent to early adult. Themes include accessing spiritual guidance, passion and devotion, and working with grief and loss.
Autumn
Midlife and early elderhood. Themes include clarifying destiny, sacred warriorship, making amends, and right use of power.
Winter
Elderhood through post-death. Themes include humility, service, ego death, rejoining the ancestors, and stabilizing love and wisdom.
Spring
Conception through childhood. Themes include voice, invocation, boundaries, pleasure, and living from wholeness and embodiment.
About the Instructor
Daniel Foor, PhD
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
This course runs from June 24 to July 18, 2023. Pre-recorded lessons will be released every Saturday at 12:00am US Eastern, beginning on June 24.
Live teaching calls with Daniel followed by practitioner-led breakouts will be held on the following dates (all times are US Eastern).
Week One: Tuesday, June 27 at 3:30pm
Week Two: Tuesday July 4 at 3:30pm
Week Three: Tuesday, July 11 at 3:30pm
Week Four: Tuesday, July 18 at 3:30pm
Our Moon Ritual call, coinciding with the full moon, will be on Monday, July 3 at 7:30pm.
All live teaching calls with Daniel will be recorded and can be viewed at any time in the online course space. The Moon Ritual call will not be recorded.
We recommend about 90 minutes to engage with the pre-recorded lessons, plus an additional 60-90 minutes for the live teaching call with Daniel. That’s approximately three hours each week.
The course is structured to follow an intentional sequence, so it’s recommended that you follow the lessons and practices in order. However, please don’t let the feeling of “falling behind” keep you from joining any of the live calls or engaging in the discussion forum. You’re very welcome to go at your own pace with the material.
For 2023, we have made significant updates to the structure of this course. Each course is now four weeks and coincides with significant dates for that season. There is also a moon ritual call that aligns with the moon phase for that season of focus. In addition, guided reflections and suggested practices that focused on that season’s particular rite of passage will now complement the lessons, live teachings, and additional resources for each seasonal course.
Other major changes from previous versions are largely schedule oriented. Initiations is now offered only as four separate season-based courses, instead of a whole year option, so there are no interim calls between seasons, for example. We are also not offering affinity group calls separate from the teaching calls. However, each weekly teaching call will include the option for affinity group breakout sessions. Private space for affinity group conversation is also included in the course Connection Space.
Details for joining the 30-minute affinity-based breakouts and online discussion spaces are provided after registration. We ask folks to mindfully self-select for participation in these spaces, as best meets your identities and how you wish to be supported. You’re welcome to participate as often or as little as you wish. There’s also no pressure to opt in. We recognize there are many other affinity space interests. We encourage participants to self-organize through the private course connection space if interested in forming groups beyond those available.
Past participants of Initiations: A Life of Ritual will receive an email with a special discount for the Spring season. If you do not receive this email by March 15, please contact info@ancestralmedicine.org to request the link to register at a discount.
Feel free to contact info@ancestralmedicine.org to request a copy; and please let us know if you need transcript access for the course call series.
We’d be happy to help with any additional questions! Reach out to info@ancestralmedicine.org with your question and someone from our team will be in touch usually within two business days.
