is accessible, animistic trance training and magical mentorship for grown-up gifted kids and sensitive souls longing for deeper witchcraft without deeper dogma.
Spiritwork is the art of engaging in meaningful conversation and relationship with spirits, especially subtle spirits. Some religions practice spiritwork, but spiritwork is not a religion. So, weird as this might sound, you don’t have to have believe in the existence of literal spirits to practice spiritwork.
The witch is the cultural heretic who thinks and acts outside the dogma, communing directly with spirit and divinity. The witch is the cosmic heretic who dares to participate in the on-going creation of the universe.
Hedgeriding, the witch’s trance, is the art of skillfully and intentionally entering specific types of trance that change your state of being, sensing, and behaving in ways that are conducive to spiritual and magical communication, exploration, and transformation.
I first learned about witchcraft as a child the old-fashioned way—by being accused of it by schoolmates and neighbors. I developed my witchcraft the old-fashioned way, too—by talking to the magic I experienced.
Most kids play with trance. Singing spontaneous songs. Repeating words until they dissolve. Spinning in circles. Some kids, like me, take it a little further.
I currently live in North Carolina, but my accent is from nearly 20 years each in Texas and California. I like campfires, mossy rocks, and martial arts. Bisexual spoonie who wants pictures of your animals.
“I am noticing a huge uptick in my creativity, problem-solving, and experience of synchronicity. I feel empowered by what I don’t know and what I have yet to discover, rather than discouraged.
I am trusting myself in a way that is new and astounding to me.”
“Last year I would’ve told you I was new to all of this, but deep down it was so familiar. I have always been a spiritworker.
I just didn’t have words for it or ways to work with it until now.”
This community welcomes beginners. Even experienced occultists will be beginners at the language and techniques used in Hedge+Riders.
Just like someone with a background in Judo joining an Aikido club—you might have some advantages as far as physical ability, experience recognizing timing, or confidence under pressure. You might have some disadvantages when you realize many techniques have the same names but different details. Your brain will want to say, “I already know this!” instead of “What can I learn from this?” or “How is this different?”
Beginners have an advantage! Your brain is primed to step into a new paradigm.
Around here, we say that questions are magic. That absolutely includes basic questions. Seemingly simple questions are often profound.
What is a spirit? What does that word mean to me? What have I been told it means? How are we defining that here?
As far as “baby witches”—that’s fine as long as you act like adults. Entering witchery is a bit of a re-birth, so I get it. But, literal babies, witchy or otherwise, are not allowed. 
You must be legally an adult according to the laws of your country.
Well, worst case, you already know everything I have to share about trance journeying. Maybe you know more than me!
So, instead of knowledge, you’ll get experience and adventure.
You’ll get the joy of riding out every month with an awesome community. You’ll have a space to share those experiences. You’ll get to benefit from the enthusiasm the beginners bring. You’ll get the knowing nods and grins from your fellow old-timers.
With so many magical people throwing in their visions, questions, and perspectives, there’s sure to be something that will delight or provoke in you new insight.
Like with any skill, there may be a point at which you don’t really need more information about how to paint, how to sing, or how to ride—but you will always need a place to practice, create, and share.
The folks we call experts and masters in their craft often find that the basics are bottomless wells of wisdom.
Hedge+Riders is not intended to prepare you to be a professional reader or witch.
It will provide skills relevant to professional readers, healers, spiritworkers, and witches. Also skills relevant to psychologists, doctors, kindergarten teachers, stay-at-home-dads, baristas, and dog-walkers.
Hedge+Riders will provides folks with basic frameworks, safeguards, and experiences needed to create ritual, journeys, readings, or any sort of spiritwork.
I’m a big fan of giving folks the skills and confidence to be their own source of magic—to celebrate holy days with family or find friends to experiment with. Turn your guest room into a temple. Unofficially officiate weddings or funerals.
I’m sure some folks will weave trancework into their existing professional offerings, private practices, or village witchery in ways inspired by our work here—I hope they do!
But no, Hedge+Riders does not cover professional readings or content related to opening a witchy private practice or business. (It also doesn’t techniques for teaching witchcraft or raising a coven.)
No particular belief, knowledge, or prior experience is required for participation in Hedge+Riders.
I do not care what you believe in your own time or how you identify your path. Atheist. Animist. Archdruid.
However, when we ride, we make-believe.
If you don’t believe in hidden, non-corporeal, autonomous spirit beings…
…for the duration of our ride, you make believe to the best of your ability. You imagine they are real and treat them accordingly. You don’t slap Athena because whatever she’s not real.
Someone else might believe in spirits, but need to make believe in magic. In their day to day they feel so powerless, but when we ride, they make-believe they can influence the cosmos. They make-believe that they matter.
Folks who are accustomed to doing whatever spirit says, because they are spirits…
…when we ride, they’ll be asked to make-believe that they are witches.
Witches don’t do subservience or obedience. We do collaboration and co-creation. Don’t do whatever Athena says because she’s Athena.
If our riding goes well, with time, I expect most of us will accumulate experiences of spirits, magic, and power that will evolve our day-to-day beliefs. That’s kind of the point. But, until then, believe as you like!
Seeing, contrary to popular wisdom, isn’t believing. It’s where belief stops, because it isn’t needed anymore.
+ Sir Terry Pratchett, novelist of great wit & wisdom
Totally fine. You can identify however you like.
Fair warning: you might be called a witch from time to time in the training. In our monthly ride you might be called riders or witches or weirdos or any number of loving pet-names.
But, no pressure to use the word yourself if it doesn’t speak to you.
No. Not really.
Imagine you are signing up for horse-riding lessons. It’s going to challenge your mind and body. You may feel uncoordinated or confused. You are going to get blisters. You could fall. Horse-riding is not as safe as staying home and reading a book.
On the other hand, it will make a big difference if you have an instructor that is committed to teaching you how to ride as safely as possible—a teacher that knows that productive training lies somewhere between zero risk and frequent injury.
A teacher that bores you with lots of talk about the reins and horse psychology and saddle care when all you want to do is ride.
I’m a highly sensitive person, too! Witchery and trancework calls to many sensitive people.
Our training covers a variety of topics that may be very useful to sensitive folks. Sensitivity and trance often go hand in hand.
Our discussion space comes with extensive communication guidelines designed to support the fact that this first level of training at Ren+Spiritwork welcomes the weird, the wounded, and the uncertain.
The gist is that all discussions are treated as brainstorming. We’re here to ask questions and share possibilities, perspectives, and experiences. No debate or worrying about contradictions. All ideas on the board!
But also, the topics of discussion may be terrifying and triggering. Imagine a group getting together to openly, candidly share what they dreamed. Anything could come up.
Also, we’ll be hedgeriding. Mythical, provocative, and disturbing imagery and experience is common. If the discussions don’t shed light on your deepest fears, the hedgeriding (at some point) will. I hope you have a lot of good trips. But you may have the occasional bad trip, so to speak.
Witchcraft is about awakening, evolution, and liberation. So, for example, if you believed you were heterosexual, straight as an arrow, and a spirit came along to point out that you’ve been kidding yourself…that encounter might be very disturbing. A nightmare. An assault.
And also, how loving. You asked for depth and self-love and truth, and a spirit was willing to offer it, knowing you wouldn’t appreciate it at the time. A decade later, in hindsight, you might see it differently. How loving.
So, if you’re sensitive, but willing to be shook. Come on in.
If you are at a point in your healing where strict trigger avoidance is critical to your safety or the safety of people around you—then I would not recommend studying hedgeriding in a big online community at this time.
Firstly, please consider the previous section about sensitivity.
Further, Hedgeriding requires these four pillars:
If you are in acute distress of any kind, these may be shaky. It may not be the best time to start riding.
Hedge+Riders is for long-term skill development. If you are looking for a quick fix for a pressing issue—this would be like signing up for an online martial arts class while someone is breaking into your house. Yikes!
But, if your distress is chronic and you feel pretty stable for a depressed / possessed / dying person—
If despite the pain, fatigue, or shower-crying you still feel a desire for long-term growth and exploration—
If your will to live is greater than your desire to check out—
You are welcome to join.
REGARDING ADDICTION AND COMPULSION:
If you are presently in need of treatment, in treatment, or in recovery for diseases or issues with addiction or compulsive behavior, be aware that the trance techniques we are learning here have the potential for abuse. Our training ground discourages using witchcraft or hedgeriding to get high with the intent of escaping life, but some kinds of trance may create neurochemical highs and hangover. Please discuss with the folks supporting your recovery. If you do not have support, please seek support before pursuing hedgeriding.
REGARDING MENTAL ILLNESS:
Some types of trance increase focus. Some types of trance create feelings of ecstasy. Some experiences can be intense or cause shaking. These experiences have a cost as far as using more than your average load of neuromodulators. In our training the word hangover is used to describe a variety of after-effects. Hangovers aren’t glorified or celebrated. Discussion of reducing after-effects is welcomed. But please note that these highs and lows may not safe or recommended for all people. Please discuss with the folks supporting your health. If you do not have support, please seek support before pursuing hedgeriding.
COLOR BLINDNESS:
Our community site has been designed to meet online standards or readability for folks with color blindness.
LIVE CAPTIONS:
Our monthly live ride does not include live automatic captioning at this time. This feature may be added in the future.
RECORDING CAPTIONS:
Videos uploaded to the classroom contain burned-in captions.
RECORDING TRANSCRIPTS:
Transcripts are provided for persons who prefer to read, either to reduce the intensity of the ride, to help with auditory issues, or for those with English as a second language.
INTERNET BANDWIDTH:
Members with limited or spotty internet bandwidth may prefer to utilize our private podcast feed to access lessons and recordings, as these can be downloaded to your device and played back without access to internet.
Something else? Email [email protected] with your question.
Through these collective rides with Ren I feel empowered to connect with my deep wisdom and to converse, play, dance, and howl with the energies I find inside.
After years of disappointment searching through and experimenting with so many practices that never quite felt like me, where I felt that I was glimpsing into my interior through a foggy window, I am amazed at how the trancework Ren guides makes my internal landscape sing.
Like Dorothy walking into Oz and seeing color for the first time, I am dazzled by the meeting and greeting of my inner territories with such life and vibrancy and self sovereignty.
+ Whitney Bliss
There are very few people I would trust to teach this type of work as much as I trust Ren. She is wildly brilliant, radically inclusive, inclusively radical, a truly powerful witch, and an all around awesome person. Her approach to trance and ritual is extraordinary.
She is hilarious and weird and slightly scary but also deeply, profoundly kind (but not always nice, and I say that as a good thing) and safe and comfortable (but not too comfortable), and mind and heart expanding and enlightening and enlivening. All of those things.
For folks like me who are fascinated by this, but a bit resistant to woo-woo witchiness, Ren is really splendid at helping us re-frame how we see and think of concepts like Spirit–part of her welcoming vibe.
+ Julie James
Through these collective rides with Ren I feel empowered to connect with my deep wisdom and to converse, play, dance, and howl with the energies I find inside.
After years of disappointment searching through and experimenting with so many practices that never quite felt like me, where I felt that I was glimpsing into my interior through a foggy window, I am amazed at how the trancework Ren guides makes my internal landscape sing.
Like Dorothy walking into Oz and seeing color for the first time, I am dazzled by the meeting and greeting of my inner territories with such life and vibrancy and self sovereignty.
+ Whitney Bliss
There are very few people I would trust to teach this type of work as much as I trust Ren. She is wildly brilliant, radically inclusive, inclusively radical, a truly powerful witch, and an all around awesome person. Her approach to trance and ritual is extraordinary.
She is hilarious and weird and slightly scary but also deeply, profoundly kind (but not always nice, and I say that as a good thing) and safe and comfortable (but not too comfortable), and mind and heart expanding and enlightening and enlivening. All of those things.
For folks like me who are fascinated by this, but a bit resistant to woo-woo witchiness, Ren is really splendid at helping us re-frame how we see and think of concepts like Spirit–part of her welcoming vibe.
+ Julie James
In animistic witchcraft, states of being are spirits. So trance isn’t treated like an inert tool. Trance is a spirit. Trance is a horse.
Trance can leap the fence of our resistance to transformation. Trance can carry us over the boundaries between the worlds!
Trance spooks a bit easily. Trance can be stubborn and will stop to eat dandelions when you’re in a hurry.
Trance will buck you right off if you don’t have the right touch.
Becoming a trance-whisperer is more than a means to an end, it’s one of the most essential spirit-relationships we cultivate as witches.
Have you ever seen a picture of a witch flying on a broom?
to ride the horse of trance ahead
to leap beyond the fear and dread
and gallop up the highest hill
where change is fueled by witch’s will
this hallowed mare through vision trods
and seats you side by side with gods
in times of need for silent word
through trance the spirits’ voice is heard
so take the reins, come join the dance
and journey with the witch’s trance
heed your inner voice that stirs
and fly free with the…
Monthly Ride with Ren (recorded)
Private Community Forum
Trance Classroom (coming soon)
Bonus Library
