It might rise as a longing for roots, a sense of disconnection from place, or an ache for meaning that doesn’t quite fit the dominant cultural narrative. For some, it appears as a desire to speak to land and sense a response; for others, it shows up as a wish to be guided by something wiser through the noise and urgency around us. When we recognize this call, even faintly, the path ahead can feel uncharted. The Spirited Path was created to honor that pull and offer a way to walk with it intentionally.

This training does not ask us to adopt practices from someone else’s lineage, or to reconstruct imagined traditions from the past. Instead, it invites us to cultivate a grounded, land-based identity that emerges from where we live and who we are. Animism teaches that everything is alive—land, Ancestors, weather, story, and spirit—and that we are already in relationship with these beings, whether we have language for it or we do not. The Spirited Path provides the guidance and structure to awaken those relationships consciously, ethically, and with deep respect.

At its heart, this work is about re-membering: gathering back the parts of ourselves that modernity encouraged us to forget. It asks us to rebuild direct relationship with Nature—not as metaphor, but as kin. As we learn to listen to place, attune to the rhythms of the land we inhabit, and notice how environment shapes identity, our spirituality becomes something lived rather than imagined. It becomes relational rather than performative, grounded rather than abstract.

Ritual is central to this journey, though not ritual as spectacle or aesthetic. It’s not a repeated thing we eventually hope to get right. Here, ritual becomes meaning-making—an intentional container that helps us move through thresholds, honor transitions, and locate ourselves within a living cosmology. Through shared practice and personal exploration, we learn to craft rituals that feel deeply our own, woven from the materials of our lives, our lineages, and the landscapes that hold us. Ritual becomes a way of restoring presence to the moments that matter most.

Soul tending is a foundational distinction of the Spirited Path. This is the work of tending our inner worlds with skill and compassion—of understanding the unseen patterns that animate our lives and learning how to tend the wounds and find life among them with brilliance and integrity. We explore how to discern the voice of soul from the noise of culture,when shadow is happening, and how to repair the connections that allow vitality to engage freely. Soul tending becomes a form of spiritual stewardship, rooted in accountability to ourselves, our communities, and the relationships that sustain us.

Rather than inheriting a fully formed spiritual tradition, we learn in this training to greet and weave our own cosmology. This weaving honors lineage and respects the past, yet it centers presence, agency, and relationship in the current moment. It allows for a spiritual life that is not borrowed, but born—from practice, from land, from lived experience, and from the truth of who we are becoming. We can’t claim paths that aren’t ours, and we are required to claim the path that is. 

For those of us who feel called to something sacred yet uncharted, the Spirited Path offers both map and mentorship. We are not asked to imitate what once was, nor to fit ourselves into forms that do not belong to us. Instead, we are encouraged to shape a living, breathing expression of our own relationship with spirit, place, and soul. This work affirms that our spiritual lives matter—not only because they shift the landscapes within us, but because they influence the greater field of relationship we belong to.

If we feel that quiet tug toward something deeper, this training reminds us that the path is not behind us, but opening right where we stand.

The Spirited Path begins next June, and The Quest Series is its prerequisite. Registration for The Quest Series is now open.

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S. Kelley Harrell, M. Div.

Kelley Harrell is an animist, author, deathwalker, and death doula held by Tuscarora, Woccon, and Sissipihaw land. For the last 30 years, through Soul Intent Arts she’s helped others ethically build thriving spiritual paths. Her work is Nature-based, and centers soul tending through the Elder Futhark runes, animism, ancestral tending, and deathwork. She hosts the podcast, What in the Wyrd, and also writes The Weekly Rune as a celebration of the Elder Futhark in season. Work with her in the Runes for Change community or in her intensive soul tending training, The Spirited Path.  Full bio.

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elder well, die well, ancestor well

@kelleysoularts