An Animas Queer Ceremonial Fast – September, 2024

WE ARE HONORED to answer the call from Mystery to offer this Queer Ceremonial Fast — an eleven-day ceremony designed specifically for people who identify as LGBTQ+ and who are seeking greater connection, depth, and clarity regarding purpose and meaning. This contemporary Western embodiment of the ancient, pan-cultural vision fast is a dynamic wilderness rite of initiation into a life centered in Soul and deeper levels of authentic adulthood. This is an invitation to release your attachment to a life that has become too small for you, to descend to Soul, and to discover your greater place of belonging in the larger Earth Community.

This Quest provides Queer folks an inclusive, safe container that does not ask you to deny who you are but, rather, invites you to expand your experienced identity beyond what you already know about your queerness, perhaps unearthing a deeper identity infused with and informed by Moon, Hawk, Thunder, and Hemlock.

This Quest is designed as a threshold crossing, where we might courageously and vulnerably surrender to numinous encounters with the wild Earth, fecund dreams, mysterious experiences, and fruitful darkness, all woven together to form an alchemical cauldron of change pulling us toward the heart of the world — down into wild nature and into the dark earth of our deepest longings. On such a journey, we turn our ear to what Earth and Cosmos are dreaming and imagining thru us. We court a transmutation that is both radical and mysterious allowing Earth and Soul to become our two most trustworthy guides.

Many of us are awakening to symbols, archetypes, dreams and visions of an ancient principle of receptivity, instinct and body knowing, an Earth centered perspective that is rising to meet the dominant culture of development, control, growth and progress. This might also be expressed as the feminine principle meeting the masculine principle of the cycles of Life Energy. Some of us are experiencing a sense of imbalance in our current over-culture, recognizing a separation and polarization of our instincts and feelings from our intellect and mind. How might being born queer embed an inherent intra-psychic seed within us, serving as a portal to a collective epochal shift — a rebalancing in the contemporary psyche, in which uniting with all of the wild forces of nature and soul births a new era of human consciousness?

Although there is great need for healing and wholing within the LGBTQ+ community, both individually and collectively, this is not a main focus of this Fast. The primary intention, is to approach Mystery with our empty and open hands. On this journey, we seek to retrieve the gifts that are ours alone to bring to the world, gifts that identify where our personal story and the planetary story interweaves.

The heart of the Fast is the solo: three days and nights on the land without human companionship while fasting, enacting personal ceremonies, saying YES to the mysteries of Soul, tracking the true mythos of your life, praising and lamenting, connecting to the ancient queer mysteries, and birthing a vision. Upon your return to base camp, there are two-and-a-half days of reincorporation activities as you prepare to embody among your people what you received on your fast.

Preceding your time of solitude are five full days of preparation activities that enhance your ability to benefit from the fast. During this time, we work with dreams, poetry, deep imagery, ceremonial drumming and dance, dialogues with nature, the way of council, and other practices to help us slip out the door of our everyday lives and access our own deeper, wilder currents.

We ask that couples, family members, or friends not attend this program together.

WILD GEESE COLLECTIVE

WABANAKI TERRITORY, SWANVILLE, MAINE

A small rural town located in the mid coast area, Swanville is 40 minutes from Bangor International Airport and 10 minutes from the coastal city of Belfast, which is also accessible by interstate bus. Our camp is set in a mixed forest, with wetlands and hidden springs. Wildlife and bird sightings are abundant from resident porcupines who wander around in the evenings, to passing deer, bobcat, and many more seen and unseen wild ones. There is ample space for wandering on and off trail and plenty of space for tent or hammock camping.