Deathwalking is a calling.

It’s a need — to stand between worlds,
to walk with the dying, and to help the dead move on to What Comes Next.

In this conversation, we’ll explore what deathwalking truly is, why our culture resists it, and what’s at stake when the dead are not allowed to die well. We’ll speak to the spiritual warfare that keeps grief unresolved, souls unquiet, and living communities disconnected from their ancestors—and why, right now, that disruption benefits certain forces more than we might think.

This isn’t a lecture or a class. It’s a shared conversation about remembrance, repair, and resistance. Come listen, ask, wonder aloud—and feel into what it means to walk with the dead in a world that fears its own endings.

This pop-up is part of the living conversation that will deepen next year in The Quest Series — a longer exploration of death, spirit, and the work of returning wholeness to our communities.

Class Objectives

In this gathering you will learn:

• The difference between animism and soul tending
• What deathwalking is
• What The Broken Path is
• Why we don’t deathwalk
• Why we must deathwalk our dead
• Why the dead are unquiet
• A blessing ritual for the unquiet dead

Why I Teach Deathwork

I saw souls of the dead as a child and knew I was called to work I didn’t know how to do. Oddly, when I was seven years old a Disney movie explained my role, and I spent the rest of my life learning how to help the unquiet dead. There are aspects of deathwork that require deeper understanding soul tending to be able to do well. However, just as I knew there was something I was being asked to do as a child and had no elders to teach me, I feel there are aspects of deathwork that we are all intended to recognize if not do, even if we don’t feel called to soul tending.

Likewise, I feel we are all called to meet collective need. I realized very young as a female-bodied person that my needs and sovereignty weren’t recognized or protected by the world’s larger systems. In fact, I recognized that those systems fed off of the distress that they cause marginalized folx. Over the last year I have seen aspects of spiritual warfare in which our world systems feed off not only the marginlized living, but also the marginalized dead.

Outside annual pop-up classes, I don’t each deathwork outside The Spirited Path, the longterm training intensive that I mentor, for which The Quest Series is the prerequisite. This pop-up dialogue is intended as an opportunity for folx to gain animistic knowledge of the unquiet dead, their needs, and why dying well is critical. Likewise, it is an opportunity to honor grief and focus our need to create interdependence . Weaponizing the Unquiet Dead is an opportunity to honor grief and our dead, to confront how oppressive systems deny space for both, and to reclaim the collective interdependence needed for our shared liberation.

For this reason, it is open to those who are beginning deathwork, and also to those returning to it, who want to feel safely held sacred space to explore death and dying in cultural collapse.

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

• 6 Things the Dead Want Us to Know about Life
• The Samhain (and deathwalking) Roundup
• If Spirit Allies Could Deathwalk Souls
• If Colonization Didn’t Disrupt Awareness of Oneness
• If We Don’t Die Well
• We’ve Always Done Death Rituals
• Folx on Unbroken Paths
• Deathwalking is Required
• Deathwalking
• Summon You

Gain animistic insight into the runes, learn to elder well with ancient wisdom, and cultivate a strong spiritual path

by joining the Runes for Change community.