TRANCE TRAINING GROUND
Trance is a horse.
Work together to build trust and skill, so that you can ride out with joyful courage into the initiatory challenges and changes that come with choosing a deeper, more magical life.
FOUNDING MEMBER PRICE: $9.79/mo
☝️ Register now for immediate access.
Or read more and get extra stoked. 👇
Are you struggling to wrangle your brain?
Do you sit down to connect with the ancestors and end up wondering what’s for dinner?
Do you try to empty your mind like the psychic skills book said, but your mind responds We Don’t Talk About Bruno, no, no, nooo.
Do you finally make time to clear all distractions, blindfold, and binaural beats…gonna trance so deep…and now you’re asleep.
Not sure how to connect on your own terms?
Do want to meet your familiar and commune with ancient gods and have trysts with tree spirits, but worry that you’re making it all up?
Do you fear, if it is real, that you’ll get into a situation you can’t handle? What if my familiar turns out to be a narcissist like my ex?
Do you have books on ritual construction and quarter calling and moon drawing, but aren’t sure how to bring it life like the beach scene in The Craft (1996)? ⚡⚡⚡
What if you could transform your trance?
IMAGINE
Booking your own appointments with the gods.
You chat with spirits while chatting with clients. Tap the hidden wisdom while working on your book at a coffee shop. Weave a spell while sitting in traffic.
You know that everything you were fighting for: focus, presence, freedom, depth—these aren’t things you have to do. They’re side effects of skillful riding.
You don’t have to wait for someone else to offer the ritual or ride that you’ve been needing—you’re a feral priest/ess able to call and connect with the hidden folk. You have your witch-curious friends over for a moon working that has everyone howling with strange delight!
Going where you want to go including home.
You’ve worked to recognize, ride beyond, and rid yourself of so many self-imposed and societally-constructed limitations and traps. You know yourself and you trust yourself. From your unfettered voice—you speak and breathe into being a kind of witchery unique to your spirit.
You don’t just ride out to the edges, you ride courageously over the hedge that traps most folks outside of their heart, their humanity, and their innermost home.
You’re not just grounded and present—you’ve got your feet on a path that lights you up.
Hedge+Riders is your place to learn and practice trance technique in a community made just for grown-up gifted kids, old souls, heretics, creatives, and other oddly intense folks longing for deeper, ethical, experiential spiritwork and witchcraft without deeper dogma.
You will learn how to wake up your workings and build conscious, co-creative relationships with spirits. You will be encouraged to find your unique way of seeing and speaking your magic into being. You’ll be empowered to dismantle and defend against dogmatic trance and brainwashing.
Trance is transformation! We’re gonna change the world!
Then we’re gonna ground. Journal. Eat chips. We’re gonna learn to love the mundane all the more for having tasted big magic.
FOUNDING MEMBER PRICE: $9.79/mo
Three Key Concepts
Three Key Concepts
What's a hedge?
Hedges are self-imposed or socially-constructed limits, boundaries, or enclosures.
Like the boundary between “normal behavior” and “you’re so weird.”
Or the line between “mundane reality” and “hidden veins of whispering light that permeate the midnight forest.”
Or the gap between “socially acceptable self-love” (like bath bombs) and “heretical self-love” (like ignoring the latest diet-trend).
What's trance?
Trance is an umbrella term that includes meditative states, flow states, hypnotic states, ecstatic states, post-traumatic shock, compulsive rumination, texting-while-driving, and any state that diverts us from mundane, pragmatic, grounded awareness.
It’s a big umbrella.
What's hedgeriding?
Hedgeriding, the witch’s trance, is the art of skillfully riding specific types of trance back and forth over the hedge of your choosing, allowing you to experience life on the other side.
Like riding into the hidden realms of spirit.
Or riding into the hidden corners of your heart.*
*WARNING: Hedgeriding may cause acute self-knowledge. Some riders may experience cackling.
Witches do it different.
Three Key Differences
Three Key Differences
Animistic Approach
Traditional witchcraft is animistic, so we think of states of being as spirits. Trance is more than a tool. 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?
That broom’s name is Trance.
Witchcraft, wide-awake
Unlike the more widely-known arts of guided meditation, hypnosis, or spiritflight (leaving the body)—at Hedge+Riders we build a foundation of embodied, active, conscious trance skill that allows you to bring the depth and freedom of trance to on-your-feet activities like ritual, spellcrafting, and spiritworking.
It’s hard to build meaningful relationships with spirits if you only hang out with them when you’re zonked. It’s not even particularly safe to contact elder gods while unconscious. Cunning requires consciousness!
A witch needs their wits!
Raise Trance Awareness
These wide-awake, intentional trance experiences teach us to recognize trance in other places that might be less intentional (in psychic readings, at the doctor’s office, scrolling Instagram) and even to learn how to resist and break baneful trance, like dogmatic brainwashing and manipulation.
At Hedge+Riders you won’t just be empowered to make creative, free-flowing workings for your self, your friends, and your community—you’ll be collaborating on a future for humanity where the use and abuse of trance is common knowledge.
It’s not all navel-gazing. We’re witches with a mission.
Defense against the dogmatic arts.
FOUNDING MEMBER PRICE: $9.79/mo
“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.”
WHAT YOU'LL FIND INSIDE
Monthly Ride
Every month Ren facilitates a new trance ride on Zoom. We’ll have journeys. Spirit meetings. Spellweavings. It’s our time to train together, put in the reps, and build experience!
Our monthly ride is recorded, transcribed, and available all month in our classroom or through your podcast player.
Our best rides and other bonus journeys (including a sleepworking) are added to a library that you can access anytime.
If all you do is ride with us once a month, you’re gonna make big progress this year on building those key spiritual connections—especially your connection to the spirit of Trance.
Trance Training**
**Founding members will be walking into an empty classroom. I’ll start making recordings of the basics over the next few months and continue to flesh out the curriculum as we go.**
I want to listen to how the workings are working for you and get a feel for your desires and challenges. By joining now, you’ll be helping shape the Hedge+Riders training!
Our training program will include guided rides to establish and grow key relationships, information on types of trance, trance side effects, and trance’s role in sacred and mundane life, and simplified and elaborate methods and recipes for initiating, sustaining, and closing trance-infused workings for yourself or other willing weirdos.
Private Community
Ren is a huge nerd and built a completely custom classroom and community platform on private servers.
We have communication guidelines designed specifically for this first level of training, wherein all discussions are treated as brainstorming or group journaling. We share possibilities, perspectives, and experiences. No debate. All ideas on the board!
Whether it’s your first time in the saddle or you’ve been doing trancework for a long time, you need a place to train, trails to ride, and friends to share in the journey.
a place for
Paradoxical People
You might like it here if...
- You aren’t strictly seeking solitude, some facilitation can be fun, and you’d be grateful for some guidance. But also, don’t tell me what to do.
- You may or may not identify as a witch, but you don’t mind riding out into the moonlight with them. Hand me a broom!
- You’re interested in the gas and the brakes. You’re not here to get high; you’re down to get grounded or to dig deep.
- You aren’t trying to escape your life. But you wouldn’t mind a life with more exciting, surprising adventures!
- You want to develop skill, control, and dexterity as a rider, but understand that good riding is not done with a death-grip on the reins.
- You understand that a bigger hangover does not equate to bigger healing. But also, you aren’t afraid of some trial and error.
- You care about consent and safety. And you understand that safety is relative. Witchcraft is skydiving. Trance is horseriding. There are safer hobbies. You might get some bumps and bruises.
This training ground is brand-spanking new.
What does it mean to be a founding member?
That means it's unfinished! Unpolished. Beta tests and bug reports. 🐛
That means trailblazing! Exploration. Participation in community creation. 🔥
Also, that sweet founding member price: $9.79/mo
Your price for as long as you're a member in good standing.
Meet the creature teacher.
My name is Ren Zatopek, and I’m the stable master and spirit wrangler here at Hedge+Riders. I know jack shit about horses—it’s a metaphor. But I know witchcraft.
I’ve spent more than fifteen years guiding folks deeper into the mysteries as a teacher, ritualist, and in my private practice as a spiritual guide and healer. I’ve lead and collaborated on hundreds of rituals, journeys, and spellweavings at shops, festivals, and coven gatherings.
I’m an initiate of Ced Tradition, a working coven of mystical, magical heretics with more than 40 years of history in its current incarnation, arising from one of the surviving magical streams of Britain. (Not that you can kill a witch stream. You can just…make it temporarily non-corporeal.)
I’ve also studied death midwifery with Sacred Crossings, faery lore and folk magic with House of Brigh, and have a certification in bodywork, energetic healing, and somatics from the Institute of Psycho-Structural Balancing.
Meet the creature teacher.
My name is Ren Zatopek, and I’m the stable master and spirit wrangler here at Hedge+Riders. I know jack shit about horses—it’s a metaphor. But I know witchcraft.
I’ve spent more than fifteen years guiding folks deeper into the mysteries as a teacher, ritualist, and in my private practice as a spiritual guide and healer. I’ve lead and collaborated on hundreds of rituals, journeys, and spellweavings at shops, festivals, and coven gatherings.
I’m an initiate of Ced Tradition, a working coven of mystical, magical heretics with more than 40 years of history in its current incarnation, arising from one of the surviving magical streams of Britain. (Not that you can kill a witch stream. You can just…make it temporarily non-corporeal.)
I’ve also studied death midwifery with Sacred Crossings, faery lore and folk magic with House of Brigh, and have a certification in bodywork, energetic healing, and somatics from the Institute of Psycho-Structural Balancing.
Why Hedge+Riders?
1 + Because I love riding. I fucking love it. I love riding with friends and then eating cookies and talking excitedly about it afterwards.
2 + Because I wasn’t a natural when it came to trance. The most commonly-known tools were underwhelming. The traditional tools were overwhelming. I was both wide-open and cramped. I craved magic, but felt mostly misery and frustration. I had the Sight, but wondered if I was strong enough to survive with it.
Researching, testing, and developing better trance skills saved my life.
Maybe not in the most literal sense, but if I hadn’t transformed my trance one of two things was going to happen:
I was going to damage my sanity, my body, and my ability to function as a human by continuing to try to ride and practice witchcraft without any sort of control over when I was altered, how deeply I was altered, what realms I was ending up in, what spirits I was contacting…and forget about grounding.
Or I was going to have to give up on practicing witchery in order to protect my sanity, which is like a musician quitting music, or a fish quitting water.
I could’ve done it. And it might’ve saved me, but it would’ve been another kind of dying.
So, Hedge+Riders is a place for me to continue researching, testing, and developing my trance skills in community with other folks interested in the same.
Maybe I’ll have the technique, tip, or training that will unlock trance for you. I have a lot of experience with a lot of very unique brains. Maybe you’ve got enough information and just need more practice and experience. We’ll do lots of that!
Maybe you’ll have unique challenges and a kind of Sight I haven’t seen before. In which case you might want a space where your difficulties won’t be dismissed or disbelieved by a teacher who feels their technique is one-size-fits-all.
Instead, you’ll have a supportive space to keep experimenting and training, a framework to make experimentation as safe as possible, and a community to celebrate your inevitable success—and benefit from your findings!
I made Hedge+Riders because I love riding, and I love the sorts of tender weirdos that love riding. 🐎
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
Questions are magic.
Program & Payment Basics
A founding member subscription to Hedge+Riders is $9.79/month. Payments are handled securely through Stripe. (Ren+Spiritwork cannot view your card number as part of the transaction details.)
The price for new members is likely to increase in the future, but you will be able to keep the rate you joined at for as long as you are a member.
If you leave and re-join, you’ll be offered the current price at that time.
Membership in Hedge+Riders is month to month.
You can cancel anytime right from your member dashboard—just click and you’re done.
You may receive an email from Ren+Spiritwork after cancelling your membership with a request for feedback. Totally optional.
We do not offer refunds for payments that have already been processed.
Ren is a huge nerd and built a completely custom classroom and community platform on her own private servers.
Discussions, training programs, and the recorded monthly ride will be on this platform. Trainings and the recording of the monthly ride will also be available to you via a private podcast feed.
At this time, the live ride will be on Zoom. This may change in the future.
The monthly live ride will occur on a Sunday at 2pm EST // 11am PST.
The monthly ride is recorded and will be available to view in the classroom or listen to via the private podcast feed in the podcast player of your choice until the next monthly ride.
A library of our best, most useful, most thrilling, and most repeatable rides will be available for anytime access.
Ren loves participating in community discussion.
But, for this first level of training (and this price), Ren can not provide or promise individual coaching and support in the discussion forums.
Instead, she makes note of recurring themes, questions, and challenges coming up in the discussions and will write posts or record videos addressing or offering insight in these areas at least once a month.
Ren’s private practice is currently open to members of the Hedge+Riders community.
At this time, casual counseling is available on Zoom for $170/hr and basic Zoom workings (guided rides, cleansings, healings, uncrossings) are available for $333 per session (typically 1-2 hours) only after an initial session of casual counseling in which we both agree a working would be the best next step.
Appointment scheduling is available in the classroom.
Days and times are extremely limited. Ren may not offer any appointments in certain months or seasons. Access to appointments is not guaranteed as part of membership in Hedge+Riders.
Is this for me?
Members must be 18 years of age or older to access or purchase any Ren+Spiritwork content or communities, including Hedge+Riders.
If legal adulthood in your country of residence is over 18, you must be legally an adult within your country of residence.
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 the most 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.
However it does not cover, specifically, how to use various tools for professional readings or critical considerations for starting a woo-woo witchy private practice or business. (It also doesn’t techniques for teaching witchcraft or raising a coven.)
That said, 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, generally speaking, professional spiritwork is beyond the scope of this first level of training.
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 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
Safety & Accessibility
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.
Please read the previous question about sensitivity to start.
Hedgeriding requires these four pillars:
- Personal responsibility & ability to self-reflect
- Mental flexibility & desire for growth
- Compassion (including self-compassion) & a conscience
- Will to live & be human
If you are in acute distress of any kind, these may be shaky. It may not be the best time to start riding.
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. Hedge+Riders is for long-term skill development. Yikes! I hope you can get help!
But, if your distress is chronic or 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:
Please note that 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 keep in mind that these highs and lows may not be a risk that can be safely taken by 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 captioning at this time. This feature may be added in the future.
CLASSROOM CAPTIONS:
Videos uploaded to the classroom as instructional content will contain captions.
RECORDING TRANSCRIPTS:
A rough transcript of the monthly ride will be provided within a week of posting the recording 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.
Something else? Email [email protected] with your question.
Frequent questions were covered. Got an infrequent question?
Email [email protected] to speak to a member of the Ren+Spiritwork team.
“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.”