When I thought about that with regard to what I’m doing here, it wasn’t about identity. It was about being spirited, that this place is spirited, and that is our natural state of being. Earth is en-souled as is all of her kin. That relationship is meant to be a synthesis of supporting each others’ spiritedness, and that’s when it hit me that the path of human-persons can either embrace that or be oblivious to it.

I choose to embrace it, and that relationship to Earth and beingness is what birthed The Spirited Path training intensive.

The first step on this path is The Quest Series, a four-part live, online journey that lays the foundations for animistic, relational, and soul-rooted living. Designed as both an introduction and an initiation, The Quest Series grounds us in the core teachings that orient the larger Spirited Path training: soul tending, relationship with Nature Spirits, ritual practice, cosmology, and the lived experience of animism. These aren’t abstract concepts but living skills—practices that help us navigate our days with deeper presence, clearer intuition, and a more reciprocal relationship with the world around us. Call it witchcraft. Call it shaman-ic. Call it badassery. The point is, what comes of the work is yours.

This work is not about memorizing a tradition, adopting a new belief system, or learning to perform spiritual techniques by rote repetition. Nothing in that is spirited. And neither is me pushing my cosmological relationships onto anyone else. Instead, The Quest Series trains us to cultivate each our own spiritual framework—one rooted in place, relationships, ancestral context, and lived experience.  My job is just to hold the space for you to do that. In a cultural landscape where spirituality is often packaged, commodified, or borrowed unexamined from other peoples, this coursework offers a different approach: an invitation to build a practice that is both ethical and authentic to you, developed through your direct relationship rather than imitation.

A central part of this journey is exploring what I call “the broken path,” the rupture of awareness of oneness that many of us inherited through histories of settler culture, colonization, displacement, and disconnection from land. We inherited it from lineages of being the oppressed and the oppressor. Rather than approaching this rupture with guilt or bypassing it with romanticized ideas of the past, The Quest Series helps us understand how these cultural fractures shape our identity, worldview, and spiritual orientation. By naming the broken path, we begin to move with more clarity. We gain language for the dissonance we’ve felt. And we learn how to transform that rupture into an opportunity for building something new—something grounded, honest, and relational.

Throughout the four lessons, we reorient our inner and outer senses. We learn to recognize and tend our souls, to discern the patterns that animate our lives, and to understand the difference between personal story and soul truth. We  deepen our relationship with the land where we live, meeting it not as metaphor but as a community of beings with agency and presence. Wel begin crafting ritual not as performance, but as meaning-making—a way of engaging thresholds, honoring transitions, and strengthening your cosmology. These practices cultivate a grounded resilience and a more skillful, embodied way of meeting both the seen and unseen world.

The Quest Series is not a solitary experience. A key part of the learning takes place in community, through live classes and shared engagement on Zoom and Discord. This is where participants witness one another’s unfolding, ask questions in real time, and learn through shared reflection. Animism teaches that nothing exists in isolation, and this training follows that truth. The relationships built in these spaces often become an integral part of the work, offering support, clarity, and the deep validation of being on the path with others committed to relational, soul-rooted living.

Though the series is only the first step, its teachings are designed to last. Many participants describe these foundations as the turning point that taught them not just how to practice, but how to understand themselves through an animistic lens. The Quest Series gives us the tools to cultivate a spiritual life that isn’t dependent on external authority or cultural borrowing. Instead, it helps you build a cosmology that fits our life, our land, our ancestors, and our future. These teachings are meant to sustain—not just for the duration of the course, but for a lifetime of practice, relationship, and ongoing soul tending.

@kelleysoularts

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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.

#beyourcommunity ~ #youareecosystem

elder well, die well, ancestor well

@kelleysoularts