Walking Between Worlds: Psychopomp Practitioner Training
Ritual Approaches to support the Lamented
Begins October 3rd, 2025
Embark on the Path of a Psychopomp
This training roots you in the ancient, service-worn art of guiding the troubled dead—a calling as old as breath and burial. It will hone your intuitive senses, attune you to the subtle currents of the unseen, and deepens your capacity to hold connective ritual space where personal and collective healing entwines like mycelial threads beneath the soil of the living and the dead.
Many of us have encountered the unexplainable—moments when the veil thins, and something unseen brushes against the edges of our reality. Often, these disturbances are the echoes of spirits whose passage was ruptured by trauma or tethered by unfinished threads of longing, their souls caught in the looping patterns of the earthbound. Without guidance, they remain restless, pressing against the living world, seeking witness, seeking release. Until they are met with the right hands, the right rites, they linger—whispering through thresholds, unsettling the fabric of waking life.
The Essentials of Cohort 8
Psychopomp Practitioner Training
WHAT IS A PSYCHOPOMP?
A psychopomp (from the Greek ψυχοπομπός, meaning “guide of souls”) is a soul-walker, a boundary-dweller, tasked with dragging the dead from the realm of the living to the unknown beyond. In this work, the practitioner steps into the chaos of non-ordinary reality, where the dead stumble, restless and unmoored, needing a hand to guide them through the rupture of their passage.
To find these lost souls, the psychopomp journeys deep into the underworld, calling upon their helping spirits to hunt down the fractured ones, those tangled in the grief of unfinished business or the trauma of a violent, broken exit. When they are found, the psychopomp doesn’t offer platitudes but meets them in their rawness—engaging with the scars of their lives, the echoes of their pain. Some will be ready to move on, but others, bound by shame or fear, cling to the past, caught in endless loops of trauma, terrified of what comes after.
Here, it’s not about coaxing or comforting—it’s about holding space for the truth. The psychopomp creates an opening for the soul, one born of trust, clarity, and the promise of something better on the other side. For some, it’s simply the reminder of the love that’s waiting for them. For others, it’s a harder fight—a battle to untangle them from their obsession with the earthly plane, where they’ve dug in, creating havoc for the living.
The psychopomp’s job is to keep the borders intact, to ensure that the living aren’t preyed upon by the restless dead. And when a spirit is ready to ascend, the psychopomp opens the gate—often through the power of a higher ancestral being or other forces beyond this world—letting the soul slip through into their rightful place.
Walking Between Worlds: Psychopomp Practitioner Training is forged from years of hard-won experience in this dangerous, sacred work. It’s for those willing to sharpen their gifts, dive into the murky depths, and become adept in the art of guiding the unwell dead. It’s a privilege to co-weave this community with fellow ritualists, and I welcome the eighth gathering of those brave enough to deepen their craft in the service of the departed who have yet to find their peace.
WHAT TO EXPECT
Our aim is clear: to learn how to guide non-blood lineage ancestors to wellness, to break the chains that bind them, and to help them find their way to rest. In this training, you will cultivate a deep understanding of the obstacles the troubled dead face and the rituals needed to break those chains, elevating them toward their rightful place.
As you step into this work, each skill you gain will build on the last, progressing in stages. You’ll learn ritual etiquette by forging relationships with helping spirits—those powerful, unseen allies who will accompany you in facilitating the healing of these lost souls. Each ritual skill will be introduced in the one-day core training, honed further in the second Friday teachings, and then put into practice through monthly sessions with your fellow practitioners.
At the heart of this training is personal transformation. By partnering with greater powers—ancestors, guides, spirits—you will deepen your own capacity, refining your skillfulness as a ritualist. You’ll cultivate practical healership skills that go beyond mere technique and into the realm of sacred partnership.
What Awaits You in This Training:
•Holding the Threshold: You will learn how to create and maintain protective, boundaried ritual space in non-ordinary reality—ensuring that when you step between worlds, you do so with clarity, strength, and the ability to keep yourself and others safe.
•An Immersive Descent: This training is not a passive accumulation of knowledge but a lived experience. You will weave between self-paced study, live ritual practices, peer exchanges, and community-wide teachings—each one rooted in the ethos of our Psychopomp Collective.
•A Structured Yet Fluid Curriculum: Three Fridays of live teachings and experiential practices with Shannon and guest presenters. A monthly practicum, anchored by an experienced mentor, where you’ll take what you’ve learned into applied work. Bi-monthly pre-recorded lessons that will deepen your understanding and hone your skills.
•One-on-One Guidance: You will have three private mentorship sessions with Shannon—spaces for reflection, refinement, and direct feedback. Your facilitation skills will be observed and sharpened, ensuring that when you stand before the dead, you do so with the confidence and precision of a trained practitioner.
•Expanding Your Knowledge: Each month, you’ll sit with guest teachers—elders, ritualists, and psychopomp practitioners who will share their insights on death, the afterlife, and the work of guiding souls.
•Resources and Future Pathways: You will gain access to extensive materials in the field of psychopomp work, with opportunities to step into advanced training. For those who feel called to offer this work in service, there is also the possibility of client referrals through Red Earth Healing.
This is not a course—it’s a passage. A journey into the deep waters where the unseen ripples against the waking world. If you are ready to step forward, know this: you will not leave unchanged.
THE PRICE
The cost for this six month professional training and certification is $3000 USD if full payment is made before March 1st of 2025.
Afterwards the cost of the training is $3800 USD
Payment plan options for 6 or 12 months are available, and participants are required to confirm a payment plan upon acceptance into the training.
A $500 dollar deposit is required to hold your placement in the training once you have been accepted. Deposits are non-refundable after June 30th, 2025
We’re deeply committed to fostering a network that’s globally, economically, and culturally diverse. As such, the standard cost of the program enables room for financial assistance for less economically advantaged applicants. This supports ongoing sustainability for a balanced Network. If you’re economically advantaged (employed in the Global North, own property or land, expect some sort of inheritance, have investments, etc.) and you’re not comfortable with the rate you’ll pay supporting access for others, this probably isn’t the right program for you.
Scholarships
Need-based scholarships are typically reserved for BIPOC, those who natively speak a language other than English, LGBTQ+ folks and applicants from economically disadvantaged nations or backgrounds. All who are interested and meet the prerequisites are encouraged to apply.
We do our best to find mutually agreeable solutions for all, and please understand that in order to sustain our business, the livelihoods of our employees, and the health of our network, we cannot accommodate every single request and we do our best and can often work something out, so err on the side of letting us know what you may need.
Eligibility, Requirements, Prerequisites
Who is Called to This Work
This path is not for the unmoored. Psychopomp work asks us to stand at the threshold between the living and the dead with clarity, strength, and the ability to hold steady when the unseen presses in. Before stepping forward, we ask that applicants be grounded in their own psychological and spiritual well-being. This is not just a course—it is an initiation.
Qualities We Seek in Applicants:
•A deep, ongoing commitment to personal healing and self-inquiry.
•A vocational calling to serve others through ritual arts and spiritual practice.
•Experience with ancestral reverence and ritual work.
•A commitment to cultural equity and an awareness of the broader social and historical landscapes in which we work.
•A rooted practice in a healing art, spiritual facilitation, or cultural change work.
•A literacy in history and culture that informs ethical, nuanced engagement with the dead.
•A reverence for the Earth and an ecological awareness that acknowledges our kinship with the more-than-human world.
•An openness to learning and participating in an international community of fellow ritualists.
Threshold Requirements for Participation
Those drawn to this training must meet the following prerequisites to ensure they can engage with the work fully and responsibly:
1.Competency in Journey Work & Spirit Sourcing
•Applicants must be skilled in journeying or drop-in meditation, with at least two years of experience working with their own helping spirits and guiding others in non-ordinary reality.
•You will need to bring your own ritual tools—drums, rattles, or other sound-based instruments—to facilitate journeywork.
2.Readiness for Initiation
•This work dismantles before it rebuilds. The training will stretch you, requiring you to step into larger spiritual forces and deeper realms of engagement.
•You must be in stable mental and physical health, capable of holding the intensity of this path and have ongoing outside resources to support you.
•Before applying, consult with your helping spirits and ancestors to confirm that this training aligns with your highest good at this time.
3.Ancestral Healing Foundations
•Experience with ancestral healing work is required.
•Your direct bloodline ancestors (both matrilineal and patrilineal) should be well in spirit before engaging in psychopomp work. If this is not yet the case, resources are available to support this work before you step into this training.
4.Completion of the Foundational Course
•Applicants must have taken Forces of Nature (beginning February 24, 2025) to ensure they have the necessary groundwork for this advanced training.
5.Strong Ritual Hygiene
•You must already have the ability to anchor yourself in solid protection, maintain your own energetic sovereignty, and show up in shared ritual spaces with skill and care.
6.Commitment to Six Months of Training
•This path requires sustained dedication. Participants must be willing to engage fully in six months of structured lessons, peer work, and applied practice.
7.Willingness to Receive the Work
•This is not theoretical study. You will be practicing on and with your cohort members, allowing the work to move through you as well as through those you serve.
Logistical Requirements for Participation
•Access to and Comfort with Online Learning
The training is hosted through Ancestral Medicine’s course portal and online platforms, including Zoom for live teachings. Applicants must have:
•A reliable internet connection.
•A quiet, uninterrupted space during live teachings and practices.
•The ability to use or install necessary applications for accessing course materials.
•A willingness to engage in an online learning community.
•Availability for Scheduled Teachings & Peer Exchanges
•Attendance at the weekly Friday calls and the peer exchanges on the 3rd Friday of each month is required.
•Time Commitment
•This training demands 15-20 hours per month of dedicated practice, study, and live engagement.
•Because this work is initiatory, attendance is required at all core teachings and practicums.
This is not a passive learning experience. It is a path that will shape you, unravel you, and call you into deeper service. If you feel the pull, if the dead are already whispering, step forward with intention. The work is waiting.
Training Schedule
Each month we will focus on specific ritual skills and intentions to assist the lamented. This path is not one of passive witnessing. It is a path of action, of presence, of walking into the liminal with steady hands and a clear heart. If you are called to it, the dead are already waiting.
OCTOBER: Fortifying the Vessel – Protection and Ritual Embodiment
Before stepping into the work of tending the dead, we must first strengthen the vessel through which we move. This month, we will hone our personal ritual container—the body, the breath, the boundaries—ensuring we can traverse the unseen safely and with clarity.
- Establishing firm ritual boundaries and deepening your relationship with your Psychopomp Guide, who will walk beside you in this work.
- Strengthening pathways of connection through embodied invocation and ritual processes that sharpen perception and heighten potency.
- Cultivating protection strategies and self-care techniques essential for psychopomp work—learning how to fortify yourself so you are not frayed by the spirits you serve.
NOVEMBER: The Dead’s Cartography – Helping Spirits and Deathscapes
The landscapes of the dead are varied—some lush, some desolate, some tangled in forgotten histories. This month, we turn to those who know the terrain best: our council of helping spirits. They will be our guides through the shifting topographies of death.
- Learning different cosmologies of the Dead’s Realms and their corresponding landscapes.
- Strengthening your connection with a personal helping spirit who will assist in Middle World protection and navigation.
- Developing the art of tracking—following the thread of a spirit’s presence to locate and assist them.
- Sharpening your Clairs (intuitive senses) and using dreamwork as a means of divination, allowing the dead to speak through the quiet corridors of sleep.
DECEMBER: Crossing Thresholds – Rites of Passage and the Art of Dying
Death is not a single moment, but a crossing—one that requires ritual attention, guidance, and care. This month, we examine the End of Life Cycle, stepping into the role of both witness and wayfinder.
- Engaging in ritualized Death Rites through visioning practices, learning how to midwife the dying process.
- Exploring the work of the Death Doula, touching on topics such as living wills, Death with Dignity, home funerals, lying-in-state, organ donation, grief tending, memorials, and the many cultural perspectives on death.
- Understanding the importance of ritual at life’s threshold moments—how a well-woven death can shape what comes after.
JANUARY: The Unraveling – Obstacles of the Troubled Dead
Not all souls move easily. Some remain tangled in trauma, bound by unfinished stories, shackled by curses, or fractured by soul loss. This month, we step into the work of deep intervention, learning how to retrieve, unbind, and release.
- Understanding soul loss in the dead—how missing fragments keep spirits from fully transitioning, and how soul retrieval can restore wholeness.
- Tracking and unraveling curses and soul contracts—learning to identify the binding forces that keep spirits earthbound and the means of dissolving their hold.
- Working with possession—when another conscious being, living or dead, takes up residence within a body. Learning how to recognize its symptoms and perform the necessary rituals to restore sovereignty to the afflicted.
FEBRUARY: The Weight of the Work – Rituals for the Dead and Ethical Considerations
With skill comes responsibility. This month, we turn toward the ethics of psychopomp work, ensuring that the rituals we craft are both effective and anchored in integrity.
- Crafting your personal crossing-over ritual—the rite you will use to guide the dead, with variations for different situations.
- Learning rituals of appeasement and forgiveness, understanding how unresolved grief and unspoken wrongs can keep spirits tethered.
- Exploring grief as a sacred force—how it moves through both the living and the dead, and how it can be honored through ritual.
- Establishing best practices for psychopomp facilitation, ensuring that our work is done with clarity, consent, and ethical awareness.
MARCH: Tending the Collective Dead – The Work Beyond the Self
Not all dead belong to individuals. Some belong to histories, to landscapes, to collective wounds that have yet to be reconciled. In our final month, we step into the larger work—tending the forgotten, the unclaimed, the ones who linger in the shadows of time.
- Learning the art of collective rituals for the unwell dead—working with ancestral traumas, mass death sites, and unresolved histories.
- Understanding land clearings—how spirits anchor to places, and how to facilitate their release.
- Looking ahead—how to continue this work beyond the training, deepening your practice in the years to come.
- Participating in a closing ritual—honoring the work, the spirits, and the journey you have undertaken.
details of the Training
Below are the many ways we will commit to the vessel of learning in community with one another. This includes ways we will connect, dates of engagement, and approximately how many hours of commitment you will engage in should you decide to join the pratitioner training.
6 live classes
6 Monthly Continuing Practice Calls
6 Continuing Education Calls
Group Application
Group Pod Gatherings
Personal Mentoring
Learning Resources.
Private connection space
Learn More
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6 live classes. There will be 6 days of instruction/ritual meet-ups via the zoom platform~ 1st Friday’s of each month for 6 hours each beginning in October through March. These sessions are 6 hours in length from 11am-5pm.
- 6 Monthly Continuing Practice Calls. We will meet via zoom as a group on the 2nd Friday of each month to continue to explore psychopomp practices and deepen our skills, share insights and provide an opportunity for Q & A. These will be 2 hours in length from 3 pm to 5 pm.
- 6 Continuing Education Calls. We will meet via zoom as a group on the 4th Friday’s of each month to explore fields related to psychopomp work with guest teachers. These will be 2 hours in length from 3 pm-5 pm Eastern.
- Group Application. Once a month we will meet in our practicum experience. Here you will meet in dyad pods for experiential practice. These calls will be the 3rd Friday of each month and will be three hours in length.
- Group Pod Gatherings. Additionally, there will be 3 scheduled group meet-ups with a larger pod for entrainment, connection, and Q&A. These group meet up will be facilitated and scheduled by a graduate of the Foundations of Psychopomp training. They are to be at least one hour in length, but often folks chose to hang out and deepen their connection with one another.
- Personal Mentoring. 3 personal mentoring sessions with Shannon to resource you around your work as you progress through the training.
- Learning Resources. Additional course content will be dropped each month to review, material covered in both the classrooms and continued practice experience. They will also provide resources for further exploration and provide exercises for you to do on your own.
- Private connection space. This is the space where we will gather virtually to deepen our connection with the work and each other. There will be a feed to ask questions about content, connect with other participants, and share experiences as you navigate through the material. No public social media or additional login is required.
Ready to Begin Your Journey?
📅 Application Deadline: September 1st, 2025.
Thank you for your interest in the Walking Between Worlds: Psychopomp Practitioner Training. We are excited to support you on this transformative journey.
Before proceeding with your application, please review the following key details:
- Application Process: Responses should be thoughtful and reflective, but perfection is not required. Your application will be reviewed holistically.
- Review Timeline: Applications are typically processed within one week. If selected, you will receive further instructions on the next steps.
- Consultation Option: If you have questions before or after submitting your application, you may schedule a complimentary 15-minute consultation with Shannon here.
- Prerequisite Requirement: Completion of the Forces of Nature Course. If you have not yet taken this course, you can indicate your intent to take it in August.
The Forces of Nature Course is a foundational prerequisite for the Walking Between Worlds: Psychopomp Practitioner Training.
🌿 What You’ll Learn:
✔Meet and develop connection with a primary helping spirit.
✔Build Ritual Skills of protection
✔Meet and develop a connection with spirits of place in connection with each elemental direction local to the lands you inhabit.
✔Cultivate skills of holding ritual space for both individual and group service
✔Hone an invocation to call these powers to you by envisioning and committing to your shared service to the world.
our team
Shannon Willis, M.Ed
Facilitator
Facilitated by Shannon Willis, M.Ed who is a dedicated animist and ritualist, helping others achieve clarity, connection and rootedness through the exploration of liminal landscapes of the seen and unseen. Through heart-centered ritual aimed at re-establishing balance and personal sovereignty, and through deeping the pathways of connection within the wider web of relations, her work is found at the intersection of dream midwifery, psychomping, and ancestral reverence.
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For over 30 years she has committed her life to partnership with others in transforming trauma and cultural wounding for both the living and the dead. She has a Masters degree in Professional Leadership and Counseling with a focus in Jungian and Gestalt modalities, is the founder of Red Earth Healing, a student of Yoruba culture as an initiate of Ọbàtálá, and Ọ̀ṣun, in the lineage of Olúwo Fálolú Adésànyà Awoyadé from Òdè Rẹ́mọ. making pilgrimages to work with elders in West Africa. She is also a devotee of Nepali shamanism, and other diverse indigenous paths of her ancestors. She is a certified practitioner and teacher of Dr. Daniel Foor’s Ancestral Lineage Healing method.
Her recent and older people of blood and bone hail from the British Isles, France, West Africa and Cherokee and Kaskaskia/Illini nations. Committed to collective healing, she holds grounded, empathic, non dogmatic, heart-centered ritual space which supports presence, trust, and community rooted in the ancient ways of being of service to the Earth.
Shobhana Mason
Mentor
Shobhana Mason is a certified ancestral lineage healing practitioner, psychopomp practitioner, diviner, ritualist, and astrologer whose horoscope columns have been featured online and in magazines worldwide. She views the celestial bodies as divine beings who have the power to influence our lives, and offers astrology as a tool to come into harmonious relationship with these powers. She enjoys helping her clients cultivate relationships with the unseen, whether they be planets, deities, ancestors, or other benevolent forces. She hosts a bimonthly tarot study group for tarot enthusiasts. She currently resides on the lands of the Piscataway and Susquehannock with her 9 year old chihuahua, Magnus. You can find out more about Shobhana here.
Sidhaeg MacLeod
Mentor
Sidhaeg MacLeod is a ritual artist and musician who keens for the earth. In sacred partnership with wise ancestors and ancestral land spirits, Sidheag makes art in service, uplifting the ancestral dead. She is a practitioner of oracular and divinatory healing arts who is dedicated to serving elders, artists, and LGBTQ+ folks in weaving their life path with destiny. Her lineage repair practice includes helping folks embody ancestral gifts while exploring the creative inspiration to express them in the world. Sidheag celebrates belonging with her older lineage ancestors among the Gaelic speaking nations, Norse, Germanic, Slavic, and Baltic Sea peoples.
