The story of initiation is an ancient one.  

Manual for Initiation
excerpt by Rachel Erin Ruach:

“People in modern America are battling now more than ever with a feeling of anxiety, emptiness, loneliness, sorrow, worthlessness, anger, meaninglessness, and fear with the symptoms from these depressed and repressed emotions displaying themselves in rampant illness and addictive behaviours through the rush-rush world of non-being, obsessive consumerism, overwork and over-extension of self, checking out through media and substance abuse, and epic levels of chronic illnesses, such as adrenal exhaustion, cancer and heart disease.  

What are the values of the mainstream modern western culture? Though there is a moral awareness of being a good citizen, when private corporations rather than elders answer the question of values, we are inundated with images that promote looking sexy, staying thin and young, having the next great product, more media consumption, hyper-independence, being materially successful, and spending spare time recreating.   

If these behaviors leave us feeling empty, depressed, and reaching into addiction – then maybe this isn’t our culture.

Maybe what we have been pushed into living is not what will truly feed life nor our souls.  So, what, pray tell, does the culture look like that we are actually yearning for? What is the cultural map that produces healthy, upright, vibrant, happy people and a regenerative planet – people who know who they are, are fulfilled in how they live, are excited and happy to grow into their wisdom and age, glowing in their own love and gratitude for life, supportive of each other, who joyously and naturally care tend the earth and each other at each stage of life?  

How do we reclaim a way of life that benefits and supports this Earth and All Its Creatures? What does a modern day culturally intact, healthy, happy society look like? Smell like? Feel like?

As my walk on the earth this time around is in a woman’s body, the sacred question I began to carry and hold in my heart focused down into, “What is the Cultural Map for Women?”  In other words: What is the woman’s cultural responsibility that will truly uplift our people for this day and age? I imagined I would be carrying this sacred question, this holy frustration, within me for twenty years, collecting bits and pieces as I went.  But, alas, we live in extreme times where the extraordinary is dancing in our midst.

2008 was the hardest year of my life up to date, with 2009 close on its heels.  After years of intensive cleansing and spending most my free time in nature and in some form of ceremony, it seemed that the intensity just increased until the prospect of death and insanity were my constant bedfellows.  With the level of anguish, pain, spirit-twisting purging, sobbing, shaking, and other-worldly experiences, I didn’t know if I would come out the other side sane or alive. And somehow I made it through. These were also the years that I was asking very hard questions about myself and my cultural upbringing and, graciously, that some of the more miraculous visions and spiritual merging happened to me.

In late December of 2007 I was given a Sacred Vision.  I know this to be a Sacred Vision due to the manner in which it was given and the content of the vision itself.

According to my teachers, a vision is considered sacred when the truth of it can stand alone and when other people are holding pieces to that same vision…

...Being given a Sacred Vision and understanding the Sacred Vision are two separate things.  After the night of the vision, my whole body and being felt energized and excited while simultaneously feeling weighed down, as if I was carrying a very heavy bundle.  For the next few years I went on a deeply soul searching journey to understand what was being shown to me. A good portion of this journey involved my own initiation. Through the help of the teachers, elders, and mentors around me, as well as my own spirit-journeying, I began to form a picture of what this Sacred Vision is speaking to; a picture of what cultural maturation for our modern western world can look like and how to get there.”

A young person cannot pass fully into adulthood without metabolizing her/their childhood stories.  Thus, in order to move through the Creation Rites portal, for those who didn’t have a conscious Blood Rites, she/they may need to do some reclamation and reclaiming of that childhood and early adolescent time period.  We encourage women who say yes to this journey to participate in both the Foundations and Initiation journey to get the most out of their initiatory process.

The objective of the Tree of Life journey is to support healthy initiation into adulthood.  

We focus on two important life stage markers in a woman’s life:

1. Maidenhood Rites—what we call the Blood Rites—in the Foundation journey

2.  Adulthood Initiation—what we call the Creation Rites—in the Initiation journey  

After receiving the Sacred Vision of the Cultural Map for Women and then going through the process of her own initiation with the support of her allies, teachers, mentors and community, Rachel began to understand what she was handed and her path as one who helps hold the portal of adulthood initiatory rites.  In 2010 she invited a few young women into a process where they enacted these ceremonies and inquiries that followed the maps that she was shown from 2007-2008 and process she was led through by Spirit. Two women from this first group—Joti Shephi Levy and Kait Singley—have and continue to play influential roles in supporting the evolution of Tree of Life and have served as facilitators for the journey.

Over the past 12 years, the Sacred Vision has grown and evolved into the Tree of Life journey that exists today and is informed by elders Ann Rosencranz, Madeline Wade, Shadi Shamsavari, Susan Prince, and many other mentors and supporters who carry this vision for young women to have a solid container to undergo this transformational initiation into adulthood.  In 2015, Rachel invited Kari Stettler to co-direct the Tree of Life journey. Since then, the journey has evolved into its full 2-year form and it continues to evolve based on the emergent needs that present themselves with the particular women who gather to form a circle, the mentors, elders and supporters, and the changing times we are in.