COURTING THE SACRED HUNT
A Men’s Rites of Passage and Ritual Facilitation Training
This is not just a training
It is an initiatory journey.
Are you ready to step into your vision & purpose as an initiated man?
We are in a cultural crisis of lost Initiation Rites
Our Ancestors knew that initiation rites were the key to cultural renewal.
However, when initiation rites were lost, we became stuck, developmentally arrested at the stage of adolescence - herein lay our collective crisis.
There is a resurgence of ritual and rites-of-passage work as humanity wakes up to this ancestral key of cultural regeneration.
And yet, there is a tremendous gap in trained facilitators—those who not only have the outer skills, but who have been held in a cultural container of their own initiation.
Our elders have taught us that it takes initiated humans to effectively facilitate rites of passage and ritual for others.
Courting the Sacred Hunt was crafted directly out of this need…
Are you ready to step across the initiatory threshold?
In a world that neglects initiation…
This training offers a rare opportunity to engage in a structured, ceremonial process of personal and communal evolution.
Drawing from ancestral wisdom and contemporary practices, and held by mentors, elders, nature and more-than-human allies, we will explore the transformative power of rites of passage, learning to hold space for others, through the process of our own
ritual transformations.
WHY THE SACRED HUNT?
The Sacred Hunt is both our map and mythic context — a timeless rite through which men hone their presence, skill, and capacity to relate with the wild.
Across cultures, the hunt was a core initiatory path where blood, challenge, and courtship of the wild forged true regeneration.
Imagine if…
You were held in a fierce brotherhood—one that saw your soul, spoke your truth, and wouldn’t let you shrink.
Your soul work and your way of making a living became one—rooted in purpose, not performance.
You met your shadow not as an enemy, but as a guide—revealing the power beneath your wounds.
The ache you carry—your brush with death, grief, or loss—became a whisper toward true initiation.
You stepped beyond the loop of “self-improvement” into a life of sacred responsibility and mythic service.
You walked in rhythm with the Wild—inside and out—hearing old songs from fire, mountain, and bone.
Ancient rites became living ceremonies, marking your path with earth, fire, and truth.
Dreams, synchronicities, and the unseen were invitations from the Mystery to remember who you are.
WHAT THE MEN ARE SAYING
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It is still unbelievable looking back how much we learned and experienced. The leaders taught and guided so many modalities so skillfully.
The stats from the program are pretty incredible. Four of the six men came in single and left in serious relationships. One conceived a child, one had a child born and proposed. One lived through cancer. It can be hard to see how much you are changing as you are changing, but these sort of tent poles show the progress. I feel forever changed for the better. I have experienced a lot of spiritual modalities and programs, and this has been one of the most meaningful.— Joe Greene
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“I had done a lot of work on myself in therapy, ceremony, etc. over the years, and it's not to minimize any of that but this is in many ways on another level.
Working on your growth in a focused and intentional way with a group of men doing the same, held by wise facilitators, for a year, culminating in a profound a challenging rite of passage, is really an apex technology that I feel privileged to have accessed. This container was truly special.”— Jordan Eipper
Men’s Initiation Participant -
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“I went from being a zealous hero to a humble human; from a man always trying to prove myself to one vulnerable enough to be myself; from a defiant rebel to a man capable of standing in my truth while honoring reality in its imperfection.
I couldn’t initiate myself — it took the cultural context of a healthy, earth-based community, the guides, rituals, elders, uncles, brothers, and bonds to bring my soul through into adulthood.
There is a world to serve, and thank god, I have gifts. This journey has been a ritual marking of my commitment to be a man who supports the turning of the great wheel in our trying time with a generosity of presence and heart.— Joshua Reizenstein
Initiation is not optional.
It is either a sacred, contained confrontation with death—or an uncontained one that life eventually delivers.
True initiation catalyzes the shift from ego-centric to eco-centric living. It aligns us with soul, service, and the courage to live our purpose.
It is a return to the beginning—a descent into the seed state where your original potential waits, holding your unique gift and the many paths your life could take.
This return demands an encounter with death—an inner reckoning, a surrender, a communion with the wild earth—so that something greater than the self can emerge.
Born from the call to re-village our world, this training is both a healing and a forging.
You will tend to the unmet places of your own childhood while rekindling your soul-fire—not just for your own becoming, but to earn the wisdom, skill, and presence to guide others across life’s most sacred thresholds.
This year-long initiatory training will give you everything you need to guide rites of passage and ritual work.
THE PILLARS OF YOUR JOURNEY
STEP INTO EMOTIONAL MATURITY
Learn to relate with your inner parts - both the wounded child and adolescent protectors - so that you can skillfully navigate your emotional terrain and forge healing relationships.
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LEARN THE SOMATICS OF HUNTING
Initiation - and skilled ritual and ROP facilitation - lives not in the head, but the body. Your body will be honed, pushed and ultimately refined as your deepest sensory tool of relational power, intuition and leadership.
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CULTIVATE THE EMPATHETIC KILL
Initiation (and skilled ROP facilitation) unlocks one’s capacity to be a bringer of necessary death - with one’s heart fully open. Through the process of a ritual animal slaughter (as practice for the hunt), you will learn what it means to consciously weild the power of death, both as a hunter, and a ROP guide who supports others through their own thresholds.
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CONTACT
YOUR VISION
Through intensive soul practices, mentorship, inner tracking, threshold rituals and vision quest you will come in contact with the core vision for your life.
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UNDERSTAND RITUAL LITERACY
Ritual is innate to being human. Through ritual thresholds - those you undergo and facilitate - you will understand the core anatomy of ritual and how to effectively craft ritual for any situation.
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MOVE FROM WOUND TO GIFT
You will be lovingly held and tracked in both a circle of brothers, and by mentors, elders and guides to unearth your core wounds and transform into the seed of your deepest gifts.
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BECOME A SKILLED FACILITATOR
You will learn the theory and walk and practice to unlock your own facilitation gifts and power. Through hands-on experience and ritual immersion, you'll deepen your ability to hold space with confidence, presence, and authenticity.
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HARNESS YOUR ANCESTRAL ROOTS
Initiated men and effective ROP guides move as if they come from somewhere. Claiming one’s ancestors is the deepest form of anchoring and supports turning transgenerational trauma into gift and the seeds of true power.
KNOW THE MYTHIC LANGUAGE OF SOUL
Ritual and ROP are fundamentally activities of the soul, and becoming an effective guide demands that you can read the language of the soul. The soul speaks through mythopoetics - through image, symbol, myth and synchronicity. You will learn to support yourself and others in understanding how the soul of the world is speaking to you.
CONNECT FROM TRUE SOURCE
True initiation, having faced death, brings you in contact with the ultimate source of power - the well of mystery, what some call “God,” the place of deep uncertainty, which is also the fertile womb of all creation. Knowing one’s true source is the seat of one’s deepest power.
STEP INTO
STORY CRAFT
Story is the oldest way humans make meaning and pass on ancestral wisdom. You will learn to “read the language of story” become honed as an oral teller who can move audiences and seed culture through your own mythic prowess.
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BECOME A SACRED HUNTER
Sacred Hunting is not just about the capacity to kill - it is both becoming honed in the hard skills of hunting (tracking, wilderness navigation, sensing presence) while also being capable to reverently connect with the land, the species, the animal and skillfully open that sacred portal of life and death.
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STEP INTO POWERFUL LEADERSHIP
Effective guiding is not just about facilitation, it is about becoming a leader in every facet of one’s life, how you model integrity, and how you anchor your leadership both with humility and the unique gifts of your own soul. Every leader is different - this training will help you find your soul swagger.
WALK WITH GRATITUDE
AND PRAYER
An initiated man, instead of grasping for control in a world that is fundamentally wild and alive, continually dialogues and harnesses source through walking prayer, offering gratitude and gift to the mystery forces, all that gives us life, while humbly asking for - and receiving - help from greater powers.
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ACTIVATE MENTORSHIP
Initiated humans are activators in a culture of mentorship. In this training you will tasked with finding anchors (i.e. mentors) for your life as well as becoming a mentor for others. This mentorship bridge is a key of regenerative culture, and we like to think of the process as finding one’s “personal board of directors.” Being anchored is power.
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BECOME TRUSTWORTHY
Modern men have a hard time being trusted, and for good reason - most are not initiated and thus have no true integrity. In this training, you will be lovingly held accountable to find what integrity truly means and how to live it - enabling a field of trust for others to step into with you.
Over the course of a year, we will build through the 5 modules below.
Each module includes: an in-person ritual intensive, 1:1 mentorship calls, group councils & integration homework.
Is This For You?
You feel a call to deeper service — and know it won’t come through another book or ayahuasca trip.
This training is for the man who:
Longs for brotherhood and earth-rooted ritual
Has been walking alone and knows that must end
Wants to become a guide, not just a seeker
Feels death, grief, or great loss calling him to initiation
Is ready to confront what is untrue in him — in service to what is eternal
Has felt the soul-call of the wild, the mythic, the sacred
Carries a quiet ache — a longing for elders, for mentors, for the wisdom that should have been passed down — and feels the call to become what was missing
Knows there is something sacred about masculinity, and wants to rediscover it beyond domination and shame
This training arose out of the impulse to remember what modern life has buried: that men must be initiated if they are to carry medicine for the world. That rites of passage are not a luxury - they are a necessity.
This is a crucible for those who feel the longing—for brotherhood that’s real, for a return to the wild, for the skills to hold others in sacred passage. Together, we will descend into the depths, call forth what is true, and train ourselves to be carriers of culture, not just consumers of it.
You will be asked to confront what still grips you. To listen to the earth. To track your soul. To hunt not only for meat, but for meaning. And from that place, to stand as a guide for others with your heart intact and your presence forged.
If you feel the trembling yes inside - the one that scares you just enough to know it’s real -- then come. But come not just for yourself. As our elder and lineage-holder Francis Weller warned:
If you're coming for personal growth, don't bother. Show up for the future generations.
THE MEN BEHIND
COURTING THE SACRED HUNT
John Wolfstone
John Wolfstone is a Rites of Passage Guide, Initiatory Facilitator, Mythopoetic Educator, and Wilderness Ritualist committed to the remembrance of soul, culture, and Earth.
With over two decades of experience guiding transformative processes, John weaves myth, movement, and ceremony into immersive rites of passage rooted in ancestral wisdom and animist reverence. His work draws from deep study and mentorship in Earth-based lineages, wilderness initiation, and regenerative community practices.
John is the co-director of the award-winning documentary The Village of Lovers, and co-founder of the School of Mythopoetics—a training ground for soul initiation, cultural repair, and ceremonial leadership. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Wisdom Studies at Ubiquity University, focusing on the revitalization of rites of passage for a post-industrial world.
Through his storytelling, ritual design, and grief tending, John guides individuals and communities across thresholds of transformation. His facilitation invites a return to deep belonging - with land, lineage, and purpose - offering maps for becoming trustworthy humans in a time of profound cultural transition..
Darren Silver
Darren Silver is a Rites of Passage Guide, Nature-Connected Coach, Ceremonialist, and Mythic Educator committed to the revival of earth-rooted, soul-centered culture.
With a master’s degree in The Mythology of Initiation, Darren weaves scholarship and lived experience into a body of work that reawakens ancestral memory and animist belonging. He is the founder of the Great Earth School, where he guides individuals into transformational encounters with wilderness, ritual, and the deep imagination.
Darren’s path has been shaped by years of immersion in wilderness survival, indigenous ceremony, and the sacred technologies of vision fasts and divination. As a gifted storyteller and apprentice to the old myths, he invites others into direct relationship with the more-than-human world, guiding the retrieval of purpose and power through embodied, ceremonial thresholds.
Over the past two decades, Darren has facilitated countless vision quests, men's initiations, and soul-rooted journeys - both on the land and across cultures. His work serves the remembering of regenerative lifeways, rooted in beauty, reverence, and the wild intelligence of the Earth.
PRAISE
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“Darren provides a raw and sincere connection with nature to take anyone as deep as they're willing to go to untangle their connection with the natural world and inspire their inner purpose to be lived.”
— Ben Barnett
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"With a unique and graceful artistry Darren weaves mythic archetypes and ancient wisdom seamlessly into experiential lessons that hit deep and resonate for weeks, months, and years. He embodies playful childlike wisdom, sage old reverence for the land, and everything in between. From practical wilderness skills to masterfully delivered stories, Darren provides exactly what is needed, adapting and flowing intuitively to meet his students for starkly present and often life-changing teachings."
— Pan Williams
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"I’ve been on a self-guided journey of personal transformation for several years, following breadcrumbs without a clear path. Those breadcrumbs led me to John, who has filled a much needed void as both mentor and guide. Prior to my work with John I spent a lot of time in deep meditation, cultivating a loving awareness that often felt dissociated from my body and disconnected from my grief, my anger and my vitality. John has helped me anchor down, has supported me through the painful dissolution of my marriage, and has helped to spare me many dead ends on the spiritual path. I’m deeply grateful to John for his wisdom, his courage to challenge me when necessary, and his tenderness in holding me when I feel raw."
— Rick Ramirez
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“John is at once both a grounding presence and an edge-pusher in his style of Adult Initiation guidance and mentoring. His Ritual and Initiatory literacy combined with tangible middle-world ideas have helped deepen and expand my life while under his guidance.”
— Trevor Mervyn
Relevant Questions
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The first step is filling out the application below. You will be directed to a calendar to set up a clarity call with John and Darren where you will have a 30 min private meeting to go over any lingering questions and leave with clarity as to whether you’re a fit for this initiatory training.
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We will have 5 in-person intensives, including a 10 day vision quest, one per quarter. Between these intensives, we will meet every 3 weeks (approx.) for either a council or teaching call. Additionally, you will have a 1:1 mentorship call with John or Darren every quarter, as well as a brother-accountability/check-in call weekly (self-organized). This design is both spacious enough to integrate material, tend to other facets of life and consistent enough to keep a strong momentum.
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Initiation is not about age — it’s about readiness.
Most of us had many initiatory moments - heartbreak, children, success, loss, psychedelics, men’s work, maybe even moments of deep solitude in the wild.
And yet, without a cultural container, with eldership, without witness, without anchored thresholds - without integration and confirmation - these initiations remain incomplete, and the medicine not stabilized.
It takes a great humility to bend towards being held, and some of our most profound men were ones who came to this journey later in life - often as their own rite towards elderhood.
So whether your 18 or 68 - welcome.
You’re needed here. There’s a seat for you at our fire. -
What you put into this course is what you will get out of it! There will be videos, readings, songs, podcasts, and other resources available to you through our online course portal.
Each module you will be asked to complete ritual, ceremonial, or facilitator homework at least once. -
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The in-person intensives will happen near Boulder, Colorado.
The Vision Quest will be in the mountains of Colorado, likely within a few hour drive of Boulder/Denver. -
Rather than rolling with an attendance policy, or worse, dogma - this initiatory journey is fundamentally relational.
This journey must be a high, if not top, priority in your life - and we understand that life happens.
Missing an intensive would be hard, but not impossible. Same with any of the online components.
And if you do miss, we will expect that you not just skip or assume that’s kosher without first bringing the issue to the circle of brothers, and having the courtesy to ask to be not present, share your why, and how you will stay committed, supportive and balance the impact of your absence.
If you join, you will be needed, and you must proceed as such. This journey is profoundly not just about you. -
This training is a non-refundable investment. We trust you to make a wise decision that this training is the right fit for you.
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If you complete the year-long training, including all relevant ritual homework (including a final service project), then you will receive a certification as a Rites of Passage and Ritual Facilitator from the Institute of Wild Belonging (our organization).
A final note from Darren and John…
The wild is at once unbearably generous and utterly unforgiving. And it is within that clawing embrace that the vision for our lives - a vision of cultural renewal - was given to us.
It’s not a vision we expect to see fulfilled in our lifetimes. It is generational work. Work that belongs to those who came before us, and those yet to come.
This training was born in the fires of ritual, grit, and grief. Born from the bone-deep trust that there are other men out there - men who feel the same pull. Men who ache to walk a path of deep humility and soul-rooted service.
We give thanks for our mentors, our uncles, our elders - those who have walked beside us, and still hold us to the path. They stand with us now, holding you too, as we step forward into this work together.
And so we pray: Great Spirit, help us. We are nothing without your guidance. Bring us into communion with the men whose hearts are ready to say yes - to the soul-vision at the center of their lives, and to the mystery that, once touched, can never be forgotten.
The way is open. If this is your call, we welcome you.
—Darren & John
Sacred Hunting has taught us more about leadership, service, and integrity than any program, workshop, or medicine journey we've ever undertaken.
