Tree of Life
How do we show up for each stage of life?
How do we honor the complexity of life while standing upright inside of it?
“The Tree of Life's women's rites of passage work is the most powerful transformative experience I've ever witnessed. In the course of two years, a group of young women — unsure, a bit insecure, a bit frightened, still in many ways "adolescents" — flourish into gorgeous adults: confident, clear sighted, fully in their power, clear in their goals, moving fearlessly through the world from their hearts. Learning how to truly pray and authentically make offerings to Spirit is a touchstone that the women can — and do — return to throughout life; the ceremonies are an enormously powerful tool for remembering who they truly are, how to humbly serve the Holy, and how to care for one another and this earth. Any woman who has the enormous good fortune to take part in the Tree of Life initiation process will be forever transformed and blessed with the power to center and re-center herself/themselves throughout life.”
—Rachael Knight, Land Rights Attorney, Consultant and Ceremonialist
Are you feeling The Call into a deeper level of relationship to Life?
Tree of Life is a rites of passage collective, weaving deep nature connection, regenerative culture-work, and elemental ceremony in service to a humanity that fosters a thriving and interconnected world.
Intact cultures throughout time have and currently hold humans through rites of passage that support the transition from childhood into adolescence, adolescence into adulthood, and adulthood into elderhood. These initiatory processes are specific to the culture within which they are enacted. They often involve deep nature connection, an interface with sacrifice and ordeal encompassed in ceremony, and a process of reciprocity, while being held by community and in the hands of sound mentorship from those in the next stages of life.
Here in this place, in these times, with the incredible mixture of lineages that most people walk with, on lands that we may not be native to, we need to show up in responsibility for; we are co-creating a culture that has not yet been. Our elders teach us that we must go to the edges to learn what we need to weave back into a culture that informs the center. The tapestry that we are here to weave is multicolored, informed by many lineages, is in current-time relationship with Spirit, and serves the land, the species, and people that we walk and create home with.
The mentors and elders of the Tree of Life journey are here to help prepare the way, to bring guidance and support, to create and hold the container needed for this initiatory process and transformation.
Moontime Offerings
Adulthood Initiation
Mari Altar Yearlong
Our offerings tend to the childhood-into-adolescent portal (First Moontime), the adolescent-into-adulthood portal (Foundations and Initiation), and ceremonial groups for those who are walking in the mature stage of life beyond these thresholds (Mari Altar Yearlong).
We have active relationships with elders and we line ourselves up behind those elders who sit or wish to sit in their own initiation rites, and who wish to sit in support of the younger ones in our midst. If this is you or someone you know, please reach out.
“We are all on a journey. We can either do it alone, or in a beautifully held container that fosters deep and unmatched connection with the natural world and fellow initiates. I am so grateful for the subtle and potent energies that are now alive and refreshed in my spiritual and emotional systems.”
—Elena Pinsky,Tree of Life Initiate, Singer, Artist
Consider these questions to help you understand if a journey with one of our programs meets what is calling you or someone you know at this time:
Do you long to feel deeply connected to and resilient within
the web of life that sustains you?
Do you want to gain an understanding of how to walk upright in this world and with all of your relations; to live in sacred reciprocity with life?
Do you long to know who you are and why you are here beneath the social conditioning and external messages you have received?
Do you wish for guidance into which stage of life you are in and how to claim your place in the web of life?
Do you feel the quiver of what it is to be made useful by Spirit; to empty out your grief and become a vessel for your unique service to the world?
Do you feel the call to ceremony? Do you feel the call into initiation?
