Fire in the Belly Alchemy
Applications for 2024/2025 Cauldron are now closed.
Enrollment for 2025/2026 will open Nov 1st, 2024!
Are you seeking more magic and meaning in your life?
Are you seeking a sacred community that helps you stay accountable to your personal and spiritual growth?
Are you looking for a way to deepen your experience with psychedelics or have more
opportunities for psychedelic integration?
Are you new to Earth-based spirituality or psychedelics and want to dive in deeper?
Are you seeking powerful ways to shift, heal and transform your life?
Then Welcome to The Cauldron!
Using the Elements of Air, Fire, Water, and Earth as our guide for psychedelic exploration, we will take an embodied Earth-based spiritual journey through
the Wheel of the Year.
The Cauldron will serve as a continuous sacred container and community for psychedelic experiences, integration and expansion.
The Cauldron is a year-long multi-faceted container, community and commitment that involves monthly community circles, an online platform, 4 seasonal ceremonial psychedelic medicine weekend retreats, as well as psychedelic preparation and integration circles.
Monthly Ceremonial Circles
These monthly spiritual circles will consist of elemental exploration, heart-felt sharing, song, sound healing, guided meditation, shamanic journey work, expressive arts, movement, ritual crafts, as well as continual integration of psychedelic work
and experiences.
We will meet on the third Thursday of every month at 6:30pm-9:30pm at Raven Bodywork in the Central district of Seattle.
Weekend Medicine Retreats
We will have four seasonal ceremonial psychedelic medicine weekend retreats! The medicine retreats will include movement, connection with nature, song and sound circles, community meal times, heart felt sharing circles, elemental exploration, group integration experiences, as well as a full day-long psychedelic ceremony.
Each retreat will begin on Friday afternoon, and will end on Sunday afternoon. While you are strongly encouraged to attend all four retreats, I understand that not everyone has the time, resources, or lifestyle that can accommodate quarterly weekends away.
The commitment I am asking participants to make is to *two* retreats in the course of the year. I ask that all participants commit to attending the FIRST ceremonial psychedelic weekend retreat (Fri May 17th-Sun May 19th that will be held at Paca Pride Guest Ranch in Granite Falls, WA), plus one additional retreat throughout the year, as the minimum commitment. I am asking you to attend at least two retreats throughout the year to help keep our community strong as well as to provide the most transformation for you as possible.
Dates for Medicine retreats:
AIR: Friday May 17th-Sunday May 19th (Paca Pride Guest Ranch, Granite Falls, WA)
FIRE: Friday, Aug 16th-Sunday, Aug 18th (TBD)
WATER: Friday Nov 15th-Sunday Nov 18th (TBD)
EARTH: Friday Feb 21st-Sunday Feb 23rd (TBD)
*There will be a thorough psychedelic preparation process that will asses each individuals readiness and desire for psychedelic work for each retreat. Please note that you *do not* have to partake in psychedelic medicines at each retreat to attend. There will be plenty of non-psychoactive experiences, ceremonies, community connection, and space holding opportunities to participate in if you choose to attend without taking medicines.
Psychedelic Preparation and Integration
There will also be retreat specific Psychedelic Preparation and Integration Circles surrounding each psychedelic medicine retreat.
Our Preparation Circles will be held *virtually* on Zoom, two Thursdays prior to the weekend psychedelic medicine retreats. There will also be surveys to complete that assess for readiness of psychedelic experiences as well as opportunity for 1:1 time to discuss care and concerns for the retreats.
Our Integration Circles will be held in person, the Thursday following the retreat (please see full calendar below) and will consist of elementally guided embodied practices, self inquiry, sharing and meditation. You are encouraged to attend these circles even if you did not attend the specific Medicine Retreat.
You will also receive extensive Psychedelic Preparation and Integration Workbooks for each Medicine Retreat.
Online Platform and Personal Home Practice
In addition to our monthly circles, virtual preparation circles, weekend retreats, and integration circles, there will also be an Online Platform and Community for The Cauldron, which will be hosted by The Mighty Networks. The online community will serve as a continual gathering place and space for community sharing, exercises, rituals, integration, and weekly journal prompts, inquiries, and song and beauty sharing to help deepen your practice.
In addition to online supports and guidance, participants will also receive extensive hardcopies of Elemental Workbooks to help guide their elemental and psychedelic journey work as well as hardcopy Preparation and Integration Guidebooks for each
Medicine Retreat.
Each participant will also receive elemental and seasonal magical items to work with and use on an altar.
I ask that participants commit at least an hour each week, or around 10 minutes each day, to deepening your practice and partaking in the self-guided rituals, inquires, or exercises. Part of integration work is figuring out how to implement these practices into your everyday lives.
There will also be Elemental Playlists on Spotify to accompany you throughout the season, as well as recordings of elementally focused songs and chants for you to center yourself with. There will also be a community Song Book.
Don't Live in the Seattle Area?
Don't worry! There is a semi-distance format for you to join The Cauldron!
The semi-distance format of The Cauldron will allow you to attend all monthly circles as well as retreat preparation and integration sessions on Zoom! You will also receive all seasonal elemental altar supplies and guidebooks through snail mail.
You are still asked to commit to *two* in-person weekend Medicine Retreats, including the mandatory Air Retreat 5/17-/5/19 at the Paca Pride guest Ranch in Granite Falls, WA.
You will be responsible for your own travel costs. We will be happy to provide and coordinate carpools and transportation to and from airports or train stations.
Financial Investment and Monthly Membership
The Cauldron is being offered as a monthly subscription to help make this container and our retreats feasible and possible. Your monthly subscription covers costs of the creation of content, facilitation time, energy and expertise, supplies and resources, and the membership also covers the majority of facilitation, supplies and medicine costs for each of the four Medicine Retreats.
Each Medicine Retreat will also have an additional cost to cover retreat venue and accommodations. I will try to keep the additional retreat costs around $200 per retreat.
Monthly Membership Tiers
I am offering the subscription on a tiered basis, and I invite you to determine the appropriate financial investment for you.
💜 Tier: $144 per month is a reduced rate membership available to those who are students, are disabled, or have very little expendable income. This allows for very basic costs to be met.
💚 Tier: $188 per month is the baseline cost of the program. Please choose this tier if you are employed and have some expendable income and are not experiencing financial hardship.
❤️🔥 Tier: $222 per month is a boosting membership level that will help make this program more affordable and accessible, for others. Please choose this tier if you are employed, have expendable income, and are in a position to help offer some resources to others.
Tier $333 per month is the ultimate benefactor membership level that will truly make this program affordable, accessible, and sustainable for all! Please choose this tier if you are gainfully employed, have significant expendable income or savings, and are in a financially solid and abundant position to offer resources and care to others!
Work Trade Opportunity
I will be offering one work trade opportunity for The Cauldron! I am seeking a retreat coordinator who would be willing to help coordinate accommodations, transportation, meals, and logistics in exchange for the monthly membership fee. Preference for this work trade opportunity will go to individuals who are students or identify as BIPOC, Trans, disabled or as a single parent. To apply for this position please complete this Application.
About the Container
The Cauldron is a healing container focused on liberation. This space serves as a sacred space and container to heal from the wounds of sexism, misogyny, white supremacy, homophobia, transphobia, fat phobia, religious trauma, and the oppressive powers of the colonial patriarchy. This is a space to liberate ourselves from outdated conditioning, stories, patterns, and limitations. This is a space to heal trauma and find authentic connection in a sacred community. We will compassionately yet firmly seek to keep each other accountable to our own individual and collective liberation.
The spiritual practices we will explore in The Cauldron are rooted in eclectic earth-based, pagan and neo-pagan magical teachings and wisdom traditions. The Cauldron is founded in the belief that there is no one singular pathway to transformation, liberation, or spiritual expansion, and honors that there are elements of truth found in all spiritual and wisdom traditions.
The Cauldron's practices and rituals are founded in honoring the four elements and the cycles of nature. Most every indigenous culture around the world has their own version of a Medicine Wheel and honors the four directions, seasons, and elements. The Cauldron is also deeply rooted in the transformative and expansive powers of psychedelic's and psilocybin mushrooms.
About Your Facilitator and Creator of The Cauldron
Avah Lux Anu (or Annie Herring, MA) is a sacred space holder and a guiding light for souls seeking transcendence and transformation. As a seeker and maker of magic and meaning, she offers spiritual and psychedelic navigation and vibrational transformation and sound healing for those seeking more than the mundane.
Avah Lux Anu is a sound healing practitioner, singer, ritualist, alchemist, poet, priestess, witch, psychedelic guide, and spiritual coach. She uses the tools of sound and vibration, the healing power of the voice, guided meditation, shamanic journeywork, and psychedelic medicines to help guide people to discover their own truths, divinity and transformation. Anu has two decades of experience creating sacred spaces and Earth-Based Ceremonies.
She holds a Master’s Degree in Women’s Spirituality with an emphasis in the sacred arts, healing, and women’s mysteries and has holds a Certification in Sound, Voice and Music Healing, both from the California Institute of Integral Studies. Anu has also completed a year long Certification in Psychedelic Therapy and Integration through Vital with Psychedelics Today.
Avah Lux Anu holds space and your tender truths as the kind, caring, constant and grounded Earth Mother, but breaks curses, rewrites contracts, and cuts away all that no longer serves like the fierce, ferocious and fearless Dark Goddess.
Click here to hear what people are saying about working with Avah Lux Anu.
Ready to Apply for The Cauldron?
The Cauldron welcomes ALL beings of all genders, sexual orientations, ages, races, ability levels, and spiritual traditions into the magic and mysteries of this sacred container. No previous experience with psychedelics or Earth-Based ceremonial traditions is required to attend. Only a willingness for spiritual expansion, the ability to sit in one's own discomfort for growth, the ability and willingness to participate in a group setting, and a liberatory mindset is required to attend.
To ensure that all members of The Cauldron are a good fit for the container and for psychedelic work, you are asked to complete a very in-depth Application to apply to this year-long container.
The application will take at least 3o minutes to complete, so please make sure you have the time, space, and resources to complete it before beginning!
*Please note that the only medical criteria I will not be able to accommodate in the program are individuals with uncontrolled high blood pressure, untreated heart disease, schizophrenia or Dissociative Identity Disorder.
*Applications are due March 1st, 2024!!!!*
I can't wait for you to join me on this year-long journey into magic, meaning and transformation!
Still have questions about The Cauldron or want to speak with Anu before applying or committing?
Feel free to email fireinthebellyalchemy@gmail.com or book a Discovery Call!