Tree of Life began with the deep yearning to be free, to be known, to belong to this earth, to belong to a healthy cosmology and community, and to be made whole and useful.
This yearning burns inside every young self. It spans across time and land. It is the larger soul-centered adult self longing to break out of the smaller shell of the self-centered adolescent self.
Powerful offerings emerge when the yearning is paired with deep nature connection, sound mentorship anchored by elders and healing ceremonies. We are designed to mature in community, to be held by others more wisened by years of experience, through each passage.
The founding of Tree of Life came through the yearning that lived in the heart and mind of Rachel Erin Ruach. Her longing was sharpened; its appetite wetted by the profound gift of being put on a journey of deep nature connection, of sitting amongst indigenous elders and learning their cosmologies and understandings of how to relate to this earth as humans, and sitting inside earth-centric ceremonies where Rachel was given a felt sense of what is possible. She came into touch with Spirit and her own direct connections. Through all that, she was guided on a deep wilderness journey of coming back into belonging with this earth.
She was called to both become her larger adult self and to help birth a pathway into adulthood for others; to help reinstate our cultural rite as young folk to initiate. And to do this surrounded by community and elders. You may read more of her story here. It is one of magic, perseverance, and collaboration.
Some key pieces to name in her story are that she went on her own quest to initiate into adulthood. In the winter of 2008, she was given a Sacred Vision of a Cultural Map for Women. In 2009, she gave away her worldly possessions and set off on a 40-day walking pilgrimage North into the unknown, only knowing she needed to find the snow, find the elders, and initiate. This act led her into a relationship with six profound elders and then into a three-month wilderness solo at the base of a mountain in Northern Idaho. The what and how of her solo time was guided by Spirit. In the heart of that time, she walked up the mountain and spent ten days camped in the bosom of the mountain. Indeed, she was contacted and guided by Spirit and was handed many pieces regarding culture for our times and initiation rites.
Eventually and reluctantly, she came off the mountain and out of her solo time. She journeyed back home to Northern California, where she was welcomed back by elders in her home community. She found home and birthed a process for others to come through.
Old Growth Oak Tree on the land, Polcum Springs, where Tree of Life culminating ceremonies have taken place.
After receiving the Sacred Vision of the Cultural Map for Women and then going through the process of her initiation with the support of her allies, mentors, and community, Rachel began to understand what she was handed and her path as one who helps hold the portal of adulthood initiatory rites. In 2010, she invited a few young women into a process where they enacted these ceremonies and inquiries that followed the maps that she was shown and the process she was led through by Spirit.
The first round was a rag tag group of daring, brave, and honest souls that wanted their own adulthood versions of themselves enough to say “yes” to a very unusual invitation. It was beautiful, potent, raw, and messy. A lot was learned and, miraculously, they remained friends through it all.
After setting everything down for a year of integration of the many big teachings, three women from this first group—Joti Shephi Levy, Kait Singley, and Rachael Knight—have and continue to play influential roles in supporting the evolution of Tree of Life and have served as facilitators for the journey.
The second round came through young folk in the community approaching Rachel and Joti Shefi Levy. They sat with their request. They prayed, made offerings, and solidified their elders and anchors. They agreed to take the second round of initiates through, and thus, Tree of Life as an organization began to have a life.
Through the second round, more nuanced aspects of the process were born. Joti helped develop it in many ways. More folks came in to support and feed the fire we were tending for adulthood initiation. Ann Rosencranz became adopted in as an elder who has shaped and held so much of the Tree of Life Joureny.
For the third round Kari Stettler was brought in as a co-director, a strong leader in her own right, who brought wisdom, guidance, and helped form the Tree of Life into the tree that it is today. Since then, the journey has evolved into its full two-year form, and it continues to evolve based on the emergent needs that present themselves with the particular women who gather to form a circle, the mentors, elders, and supporters, and the changing times we are in.
Over the past 15 years, the Tree of Life journey that exists has been informed by elders Ann Rosencranz, Madeline Wade, Rachel Kaplan, Shadi Shamsavari, Susan Prince, and many other mentors and supporters who carry this vision for young women to have a solid container to undergo this transformational initiation into adulthood.
Manual for Initiation
excerpt by Rachel Ruach Golden:
Rachel Ruach speaking at Send Off Ceremony for 2019 Tree of Life Initiates
How do we reclaim a way of life that benefits and supports this Earth and All of Creation?
How do we reestablish healthy reciprocity and taking responsibility in all the ways to care-tend this earth which we rely upon?
What does a modern-day, regenerative, culturally-intact, society look like? What does it sound, smell, and feel like?
“People in modern America are battling now more than ever with a feeling of anxiety, emptiness, loneliness, sorrow, worthlessness, anger, meaninglessness, apathy, and fear with the symptoms from these depressed and repressed emotions displaying themselves in rampant illness and addictive behaviors through the rush-rush world of non-being, obsessive consumerism, overwork and over-extension of self, checking out through media and substance abuse, and epic levels of chronic illnesses, such as adrenal exhaustion, cancer and heart disease.
What are the values of the mainstream modern western culture?
When Capitalist Corporations rather than elders answer the question of values, what impressions and images are we left with and what is guiding us?
If these behaviors leave us feeling empty, depressed, and reaching into addiction – then maybe this isn’t our culture.
Maybe what we have been pushed into living is not what will truly feed life nor our souls. So, what, pray tell, does the culture look like that we are actually yearning for? What is the cultural map that produces healthy, upright, vibrant, happy people and a regenerative planet – people who know who they are, are fulfilled in how they live, are excited and happy to grow into their wisdom and age, glowing in their own love and gratitude for life, supportive of each other, who joyously and naturally care tend the earth and each other at each stage of life?
As my walk on the earth this time around is in a body carrying seven different blood lineages while being born raised and living on lands that are not my ancestral homelands, the sacred question I began to carry and hold in my heart focused down into, “What is the Cultural Map for Our Times in This Place?” In other words, what is the way to live that will truly uplift our people for this day and age? I imagined I would be carrying this sacred question, this holy frustration, within me for twenty years, collecting bits and pieces as I went. But, alas, we live in extreme times where the extraordinary is dancing in our midst.
2008 was the hardest year of my life to date, with 2009 close on its heels. After years of intensive cleansing and spending most of my free time in nature and in some form of ceremony, it seemed that the intensity just increased until the prospect of death or insanity was my constant bedfellow. With the level of anguish, pain, spirit-twisting purging, sobbing, shaking, and other-worldly experiences, I didn’t know if I would come out the other side sane or alive. And somehow I made it through. These were also the years that I was asking very hard questions about myself and my cultural upbringing, and, graciously, some of the more miraculous visions and spiritual merging happened to me.
In late December of 2008, I was given a Sacred Vision. I know this to be a Sacred Vision due to how it was given and the content of the vision itself.
According to my teachers, a vision is considered sacred when the truth of it can stand alone and when other people are holding pieces to that same vision…
...being given a Sacred Vision and understanding the Sacred Vision are two separate things. After the night of the vision, my whole body and being felt energized and excited while simultaneously feeling weighed down, as if I were carrying a very heavy bundle. For the next few years, I went on a deeply soul-searching journey to understand what was being shown to me. A good portion of this journey involved my own initiation. Through the help of the teachers, elders, and mentors around me, as well as my spirit-journeying, I began to form a picture of what this Sacred Vision is speaking to; a picture of what cultural maturation for our modern Western world can look like and how to get there.
Being in an all women’s ceremonial space has been profoundly rich and an integral part of my healing journey and personal liberation. I feel confident of my place in this world and that I can truly stand in my power.
~Dana Becker, Acupuncturist, Co-founder of OvaMoon Supplements, 2017-19 Tree of Life Initiate
Co-Directors, Rachel Ruach and Kari Stettler with Ceremonial Elder, Ann Rosencranz