Upcoming Programs
Medicine Wheel Spiritual Technology for Healing & Belonging
January 15- March 22, 2025
Live & Online
Join ROPC founder Kedar S. Brown live and online for this 6-week course focused on the medicine wheel, the foundation of much of rites of passage work.
We invite you on this incredible journey to embody and encompass seasonal, elemental, psychological, archetypal, animistic, and Shamanic perspectives.
🌿 Reconnect with Ancestral Wisdom: Access the deep knowledge etched into the landscape through the teachings of those who came before us.
🌳 Awaken Soul-Centric Healing: Transform your approach from mind-centered to connecting with nature, ancestors, and the unseen world as allies.
💧 Engage in Ritual and Ceremony: Experience powerful community-based practices that restore harmony and foster connection with all our relationships — both humanity and nature.
🌸 Deepen Your Healing Practice: Learn medicine wheel diagnostics and prescriptive rituals to support clients, expand your offerings, and build lasting, meaningful relationships with the natural world.
In the spirit of the Global School for Quantum Evolution and Sacred Economics, we are offering this program on a donation basis.
Death Lodge Ritual Process Training
January 24-30, 2025
Near Asheville, NC
Ready to deepen your practice and support those you work with even more fully?
Through a combination of somatic mindfulness, depth psychology, deep nature connection, animism, medicine wheel spiritual technology, and a variety of indigenous ceremonial practices, you’ll learn a framework for helping those you work with profoundly release old ways of loving and or surviving that have been holding them back so they can step without reservation into the next phase of their lives
Four Spots Open!
Six night residential training intensive in the Beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of NC.
Includes three meals a day and lodging at a Beautiful Mountain Retreat near Asheville, NC.
Limited to 10 Participants.
Tuition $3500. If interested contact Kedar@RitesofPassageCouncil.org
*This training is open to Rites of Passage Guide training alumni and students/licensed professionals of a therapeutic profession ie: psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, licensed mental Health counselors, addictions specialists, life coaches, nature guides, etc.
Vision Quest Ceremony
May 6-16, 2025
Asheville, NC
Deep within your soul lies a fire that directs your passion and purpose. Often this flame lies quiet like the ancient whispers of smoldering embers; sometimes directed by those internal voices, not belonging to you, that came from another time and place. You reach out to your brothers and sisters and echo these words: WHO AM I?
Through an eco-spiritual process we will assist you in releasing repressed emotions and old belief patterns that no longer serve you. This will enable you to identify, with clear intention, the passage of your life that you are ready to mark as you enter the threshold phase of your initiation. It is here that we will guide you in embracing new ways of living, loving and learning.
Within this eleven day village encampment is the 4 day and night “threshold phase” of the rite of passage. The time at base camp both before and after is surrounded by deep connection and community in nature with a Council of Elders who have walked this path before you. They are committed to serving as your ceremonial midwifes as you navigate the territory of your own crossing.
Guides: Our Founder Kedar Brown & other ROPC Staff
Vision Quest Ceremony
May 29-June 9, 2025
Mt. Shasta, CA
Deep within your soul lies a fire that directs your passion and purpose. Often this flame lies quiet like the ancient whispers of smoldering embers; sometimes directed by those internal voices, not belonging to you, that came from another time and place. You reach out to your brothers and sisters and echo these words: WHO AM I?
Through an eco-spiritual process we will assist you in releasing repressed emotions and old belief patterns that no longer serve you. This will enable you to identify, with clear intention, the passage of your life that you are ready to mark as you enter the threshold phase of your initiation. It is here that we will guide you in embracing new ways of living, loving and learning.
Within this eleven day village encampment is the 4 day and night “threshold phase” of the rite of passage. The time at base camp both before and after is surrounded by deep connection and community in nature with a Council of Elders who have walked this path before you. They are committed to serving as your ceremonial midwifes as you navigate the territory of your own crossing.
Guides: Our Founder, Kedar Brown and other ROPC Staff
Dancing the Wheel: Women’s 5-day Ritual Immersion
July 23-27, 2025
On sacred land in The Blue Ridge Mountains near Asheville, NC
We see ritual as a technology to help us embody new ways of being we are calling in on our path of ever expanding wholeness. We send out a call to Spirit for support from the Otherworld.
Our ancestors have been doing ritual since the beginning of time to mark the cycles of the sun, moon and stars, the cycles of life-death-life and life passages.
We gather on sacred land as a group of sisters to hold ritual for each other, to support each other in becoming the fullest, brightest, most life-affirming version of ourselves we can be.
The specific rituals we co-create during this time remain in the Mystery. We will guide ritual processes that allow us all to move through the women’s wheel offering healing where needed for each woman. Our rituals will be grounded in the four elements - earth, air, fire and water and will be performed only with your full consent.
We incorporate a diverse range of healing modalities including breath-work, eco-psychology, dance, song, art, ancestral healing, personal myth making, music and storytelling.
This is an encampment, we will be camping for 4 nights, eating our meals outside and not doing much showering! If lack of camping gear is a barrier to you joining us for this program please let us know and we will help you get here.
Part 1 The Archetypes is a prerequisite to this program- this year we are offering it pre-recorded to complete before you join us
Vision Quest Ceremony
August 12-22, 2025
Asheville, NC
Deep within your soul lies a fire that directs your passion and purpose. Often this flame lies quiet like the ancient whispers of smoldering embers; sometimes directed by those internal voices, not belonging to you, that came from another time and place. You reach out to your brothers and sisters and echo these words: WHO AM I?
Through an eco-spiritual process we will assist you in releasing repressed emotions and old belief patterns that no longer serve you. This will enable you to identify, with clear intention, the passage of your life that you are ready to mark as you enter the threshold phase of your initiation. It is here that we will guide you in embracing new ways of living, loving and learning.
Within this eleven day village encampment is the 4 day and night “threshold phase” of the rite of passage. The time at base camp both before and after is surrounded by deep connection and community in nature with a Council of Elders who have walked this path before you. They are committed to serving as your ceremonial midwifes as you navigate the territory of your own crossing.
Women’s Forest Prayer Fast Ceremony
October 2-10, 2025 deep in the forest of Western North Carolina
Once we have done the emotional and intellectual work of finding the aspects of our womanhood we want to expand into or re-balance, and have then called in support from the Spirit world it is time to offer ourselves in prayer to receive guidance.
Fasting and praying alone in the natural world is an ancient way for humans to be in touch with the Otherworld. We tend to hear about the men who have done it - Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha - but we have no doubt that our pre-Christian great-grandmothers knew how to do this too. The specific prayer or ceremonies performed by our ancestors may have been buried under the layers of invasions and colonizations but we can access their wisdom by clearing our bodies of food and being still in the forest.
The heart of this 9-day program is the 4-day, 4-night prayer fast when you will journey into the forest alone without food (you will have drinking water) to talk with Spirit about whatever you need to. The two previous programs, and additional time we will have spent together will have prepared you for this Rite of Passage. The four of us will keep vigil at the fire while you are out, praying for you and available to respond should you be in need of anything.
When you return we will have time together to help you integrate this experience and be ready to step into your new life.
This is the third part of the Seasons of Womanhood program; the Archetypes Program and Women’s 5-Day Immersion are prerequisites.
Rites of Passage Ceremonial Guide Training
Are you clear that we are all here on the planet with a purpose? And that part of your purpose is helping others discover and live their purpose. Have you faced your own initiations and emerged out the other side with a deeper knowing of who you are and why you are here, with a greater love for humanity and our planet?
Learning how to guide fellow humans through wilderness rites of passage (otherwise know as the initiatory decent of soul) may be for you. This 16-month training program will help you unlock a deeper expression of the medicine you carry so you can be part of the transformation process for others (a ceremonial midwife) and and be part of the cultural change happening now.
2025 Dates TBA
Guides: Our Founder, Kedar Brown & other ROPC Staff
Deposit $500 to hold your spot
Pay in by 8 weeks before program begins - $5,800
Within 8 weeks of program start date - $6000
Installment Payment Plans Available
Cowry Shell Divination Training
June 25-27 ~ July 30-Aug 3 ~ Dec 3-7
Near Asheville, NC
Become a Diviner! Add to your medicine bag of offerings for helping others examine their life and heal with this 3-part Cowry Shell Divination Training:
Session 1. June 25-27 Sacred Site Activation
Session 2. July 30 to Aug 3 Elemental Ritual Immersion
Session 3.December 3-7 Gathering & Crafting Divination Items and Cloth Making. . Also Includes activation and practice sessions with the general public.
As a Cowry Shell Diviner you’ll learn a deeply empowering method of assisting others in examining their life as it relates to their personal medicine and their relationship to the ancestors, spirit and to the greater community.
You will learn the diagnostic form and function of cowry shell divination along with how to offer relevant and specific ritual prescriptions through the use of elemental medicine (fire, water, earth, mineral, nature & wind).
You will also learn to address unresolved ancestral patterning and trauma, clearing of unwanted energies and restoring of right relationship to the natural world.
Special Note for Guide Training Participants: This is an optional seventh session for those currently enrolled in the ceremonial guide training program and for previous graduates of the ceremonial guide training program. You must meet one of those requirements to apply for this training.
Ancestral Grief Ritual
2025 Dates TBA
Sage, California
In partnership with Down-to-Earth EcoShire
We are not designed to experience our grief alone, however personal it might feel. Since the beginning of time humans have come together to share their grief and help move it though so it doesn’t get stuck in the body and psyche causing lingering sadness, physical pain and disease or disruptive behavior patterns passed down through generations.
In indigenous cultures grief rituals are held for the health and wellbeing of the individuals and the community. It is our collective responsibility to hold each other through the most challenging times in life. Indigenous cultures have always known this. It is only in modern times that we have banished our grief and so we turn to cultures with intact rites and rituals for dealing with grief in community.
Our version is a closed container that brings 20-40 people together for four days in a beautiful natural setting. Here we create our own village, build community and learn to trust each other. On the last day we collaborate to create a ceremonial space, gather our bundles of grief, and set up the drums. That evening, and often late into the night, we grieve together, as a village, as a people who share a common life experience.
Recovery as Medicine: The Next Threshold
2025 Dates TBA
Asheville, NC
Recovery as Medicine is a 5-day retreat in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina steeped in ancient practices that will help enhance your recovery. Through teachings, lectures, ceremonies, and ritual practices, you’ll be guided to rediscover the strengths you have within. You’ll learn to use a Medicine Wheel to guide you to find balance, an essential concept to maintain and deepen your recovery.
We will spend the retreat tent camping on private land bordering the Ivy River near Asheville, North Carolina.
What will this program offer me?
Experiential group ritual facilitated by guides who are also in active recovery.
Tools to deepen your relationship with the natural world and Spirit/Higher Power/Great Mystery.
Program facilitators who were once where you are today and have used these concepts to create meaningful change.
A transformative guided day spent in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, meditating, fasting, and connecting with the visible and invisible worlds.
Fundamental understanding of how to utilize ritual and ceremony in your life of recovery.
An understanding of how your recovery story can be used as a powerful medicine to guide you to continued recovery and service to others.
A deeper connection to self through connection with the natural world.
And more!
Elemental Ritual Immersion
2025 Dates TBA ~ Asheville, NC
In the old stories and old ways it was understood that the power of participation in community elemental ritual and ceremony offered a way of weaving together, like braids of sweetgrass, our disconnected strands of memory, healing and belonging.
It could be said that if ritual is the choreography of communication between ourselves and the Great Mystery, then the elements themselves (Fire, Water, Earth & Air) serve as the active ingredients of that medicine.
Join us for this powerful deep dive into radical elemental rituals of Fire, Water, Earth and Air. We will begin each morning with elemental teachings around the medicine wheel as a way of deepening our personal relationship and understanding of the elemental ancestors and their various uses in ritual prescriptions.