KEY AND COMPASS
Doors and Pathways to the Radical Remaking of our World
An Earth-Rooted Training in Soul-Centric Leadership
Applications Are Now Open!
NEW cohort begins March 2027!
For what are we
if not the dreams of our ancestors?
What are we
if not the earth
and the great wild mystery
dreaming itself into being?
— Caroline Mellor, from “Hold Fast to the Vision of the Bright New World”
CONTEXT & CALL
We are living in a time of profound unraveling—ecological collapse, political polarization, systemic injustice, spiritual disconnection. The dominator culture has led us to the edge of a precipice, severing our ties to Earth, Soul, ancestry, and the Sacred. Many feel the grief, the disorientation, the urgency—but don’t know the path forward.
Yet beneath the noise and numbness, a deeper current is moving. A new/ancient way is stirring—a way rooted deeply in Soul, ceremony, and kinship with the Living Earth — a way that honors mystery, welcomes the unseen, and calls forth the unique gifts each of us carries for the healing of our world.
We know that this shift cannot be made alone.
It takes a village of visionaries, guides, artists, and edge-walkers.
It takes those willing to do the inner work of wholing, self-healing and descent,
and the outer work of weaving community, tending grief, and leading with humility and heart.
🗝🧭
Key and Compass
is a training ground for this emergence.
We are calling in those ready to midwife a new culture—one born of Earth’s dreaming and our Soul’s devotion.
Those ready to lead — not from dominance but — from deep listening.
Those who carry seeds of the future and are longing for the skills, tools, mirrors, and community to help them grow into their most
soul-rooted leadership.
🗝🧭
If you feel the ache of the world and hear the call of something more whole, more real, more beautiful,
you belong here.
Program Outcomes
By the end of Key and Compass, trainees will be able to:
🗝 Hold Transformational Space
Create ceremonial containers of safety, deep listening, and soul-rooted sharing where every voice is truly heard
Design and guide a wide range of soul-honoring ceremonies and rituals
Guide various forms of Council and community dialogue
Offer powerful mirroring to help others deepen their self-discovery and soul journeys
Weave nature immersion, ceremony, and council into potent experiences of transformation
🧭 Guide Soul-Centric Practices
Lead deep imagery journeys that open portals to the mythopoetic realm
Work with dreams in a soul-centric way—for both personal and collective insight
Guide somatic practices including, basic yoga, authentic movement and soul-infused wanders on the land
Navigate the terrain of the soul journey and offer guidance to others on the path of transformation
Track soul threads—your own and others’—and help midwife their unfolding
🌎 Practice Earth-Rooted Healing & Leadership
Practice shamanic and earth-based healing modalities in respectful, culturally aware ways
Guide processes from The Work That Reconnects, supporting ecological grief and empowerment
Model reciprocal relationship with the living Earth and more-than-human kin and help others reanimate that connection
Articulate your unique soul vision and claim your ecological niche of service in these times
Continue your own soul work and inner healing while guiding others on their journey
Years One and Two
〰️
Years One and Two 〰️
Key & Compass is a unique, living journey—an invitation to explore your Soul’s unfolding myth while cultivating the tools, practices, and presence needed to bring your creative vision into active service to address the challenges and opportunities of these pivotal times.
Throughout the program, we will weave inner discovery with outer action, walking the path of both seeker and guide.
Year One: Discovery and Reclamation
Our first year centers on personal wholeness, self-healing, deepening connection to the animate world, and becoming part of a community of practice where we sit in council, share stories, dreams and ceremonies and journey into the inner and outer wilderness. Working with the Seven Directions over our seven group sessions, we will deepen our relationship with our own unfolding story— discovering (or rediscovering) our soul gifts, purpose, and belonging within the greater Earth community.
You will engage in transformative practices that nourish your personal evolution and step “behind the guide’s curtain” to begin learning how to use our tools and skills within your own circles and communities.
Year Two: Embodiment and Application
In the second year, we move from inner exploration to embodied expression. Gathering for five immersive, five-day sessions—each aligned with one of the Five Elements—we will explore how our individual medicines can meet the crisis and possibility of this historical moment.
As a collective, we will listen deeply to the voices of Mother Earth and all her children, human and other-than-human, crafting offerings that respond to Her need.
Year Two becomes a collaborative laboratory:
Participants will practice leadership by facilitating circles and mirroring, leading dreamwork and imaginal journeys, guiding the practices and models we’ve been immersed in and designing experiential group sessions.
Each member will receive guidance, support, and feedback from peers and guides
The year culminates in the manifestation of a fully-developed project—a living expression of your gifts and service, ready to be carried into your own community (whether human or other-than-human).
WHO IT’S FOR
KEY AND COMPASS is for all genders and ages who have heard the whispers of their true soul calling and are committed to offering their gifts in service of Earth’s Great Turning.
This two-year training for those who:
🗝 Are on a soul-discovery path and ready to bring their visionary essence fully alive
🗝 Long to support radical change through healing, teaching, creating, or guiding
🗝 Are dreaming into or tending nature-based, soul-centered offerings, circles or community
🗝 Feel called to unplug from the dominator culture and reconnect with the living world
🗝 Carry the fire of the future and need tools, allies, and inspiration to bring it forth
Come if you’re a bridge-builder, edge-walker, cultural midwife, or peace-weaver—ready to walk through the doorway and lead from the deep heart of the world.
The DeTaiLs
Key and Compass is a never-before-seen program that grows out of our live’s work in deep listening to Earth, cultivating decades of tools and skills, and guiding hundreds of humans of all ages and stages. Much of our work is rooted in intensive guide training with Bill Plotkin and the Animas Valley Institute, the Work that Reconnects, the Ways of Council, as well as our many years’ passion for and experience with creating spaces, programs, immersions and vision fasts where transformation into our deepest service can occur. Join us for our maiden voyage into Mystery’s terrain!
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Spirit Hollow is on historically Mahican land at the end of the road on 100 forested acres and enveloped by thousands of acres of National Forest Land on the slopes of Grass Mountain in Shaftsbury Hollow, VT.
Our sessions will be held in our 30’ yurt and out on the sacred land. Tracey Forest lives with her family and animals in the geodesic dome on-site. Along with organic vegetable and medicinal gardens, Spirit Hollow has begun the process of building a food forest, to leave a food legacy for those yet-to-come.
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We are seeking those hungry for their truest, most soul-infused ways of being of service in these days of crisis and potential.
This is a two-year program, and your solid commitment to the unfolding that will occur together over our 24 months together is crucial.
Attendance at all seven sessions in Year One and all five sessions in Year Two is crucial, not only for your learning but also for the cohesiveness of the group. Please check the dates to make sure there are no scheduling conflicts. Talk to us if there are.
As fiercely loving guides, we are committed to both your individual evolution and the evolution of the whole group; likewise, we expect a full commitment from you in return.
This journey will ask a lot of you–psychospiritually. It is NOT for those who are currently unstable, in a healing crisis or in active trauma.
It IS for you if you have come far on your journey, done significant healing work, and are emotionally and psychologically strong. You should be excited to spend extended time alone out on the land, to delve into the inner workings of your soul, committing to ALL of our in-person and online meetings, and be willing to make time in your life to really work with the practices we give you to do between sessions.
If you are feeling a strong magnetism to the words we speak here, then we welcome you to apply.
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$3800 for Year One, includes lodging
We will be opening an Early Bird special and offering payment plans. Details forthcoming about payment plans.
A $500 non-refundable deposit is required to hold your spot.
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Please fill out this application.
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Spirit Hollow is a rustic retreat. Your options for lodging are sleeping in one of our two yurts (slumber-party style), or personal tents. We have hot outdoor showers, an outdoor kitchen, and four outhouses for your use.
If you require more amenities or privacy, we encourage you to stay in a local inn or Air BnB.
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You will be responsible for bringing your own lunches and breakfasts to all sessions. We will form meal teams to share shopping and cooking responsibilities for our group suppers.
PrograM Dates for 2027 New Group
Following the cardinal directions and map of the human psyche, we meet in person seven times over 2027 for Year One. Between sessions, there will be Zoom councils and e-sharing as well as invitations to engage with to keep the conversation alive.
Together, at one of our early meetings in 2026, we will — together as a group — decide on Year Two dates for 2027
Session 1
NORTH
March 11 - 14, 2027
Session 2
EAST
May 6 - 9, 2027
Session 3
SOUTH
July 17 - 20, 2027
Session 4
WEST (vision fast session)
August 18 - 23, 2027
Session 5
SKY & COSMOS
September 30 - October 3, 2027
Session 6
EARTH & UNDERWORLD
December 2 - 5, 2027
Session 7
MYSTERY
January 13 - 16, 2028
OUR PRACTICES
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Soul Craft
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Wild Mind
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Craft of Council
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Work That Reconnects
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Core Shamanism
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VIsion Fasting
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Embodiment Practices
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Soulcentric DreamworK
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Ceremony and Ritual
KeyTurner and NorthStar are excellent at seeing straight through the fog and debris that clouds you, and seeing right into your potential and your gifts. They are true guides that will not force you or try to change you or bludgeon you with unhelpful spiritual platitudes. They come with a palpable sense of love and integrity.”
— Emily, "WayShower"
GuideS on the Journey
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Northstar radiates her unique luminescence as a Soul Guide. She is deeply committed to assisting women and young ones who are adrift in the darkness of these times of fracture and forgetting to reorient to their own True North.
The early stages of her own journey were spent in a desperate search for the divine that took her down a long and winding road, replete with myriad wrong turns and dead ends. Through apprenticeships and trainings in Raja yoga, core-shamanism, and the initiatory priestess path of 13 Moons, she finally found her direction Home.
Now, she serves as a co-guide of various nature based, soul-centric workshops and immersions at Spirit Hollow in Shaftsbury, VT where she sits on the board of directors, as well as being a co-founder of The Goddess Grail, a virtual Mystery School devoted to the oracular arts. Northstar is a core-weaver of Forest & Village, an annual gathering for the Rites of Women in Sandwich, NH.
Her life’s mission is to be a navigator of spirit, dedicated to holding space and shining light so that lost girls and lost boys of all ages might chart their own course back to loving, regenerative relationship with Nature, with Community, with Mystery, and with Self.
You can learn more about her work at http://northstar-soul-navigation.com.
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Tracey (KeyTurner) is a soul initiation guide, who is passionate about helping others step through the doorway into the mystical and the mythical, the sacred and the sublime, the earthy and the erotic, the dark depths and high heights. She is a fearless and compassionate facilitator who has “been to the mountain” and descended into the abyss to lament for the earth, to celebrate the beauty and pain and who knows the rich gifts that lie in the dark to be mined. She stands in the portal, holding a lantern, singing ancient songs, dangling a key, inviting you to step through into the vast landscape of your Soul.
Director of Spirit Hollow, the center where she lives and guides in SW Vermont, she is a healer and teacher, yoga teacher and singer of soul-stirring songs. She is a graduate of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies Three-Year Program (1998) in Advanced Shamanism and Shamanic Healing under the direct teaching of Dr. Michael Harner; also, she’s a Certified Yoga Teacher at the 200-hour level, having studied with transformational teacher, Shiva Rea.
With 30 years of experience guiding others, she been studying with Bill Plotkin for the last nine years. She is a Certified Level 1 Wild Mind Nature-Based Underworld Guide with the Animas Valley Institute. KeyTurner just graduated from the multi-year Soulcraft Apprenticeship and Initiation Program with Plotkin where she learned the nuances of Soul Initiation Guide and cultivated many tools to assist in the wholing and healing of this broken, beautiful world. Visit her at KeyTurner Forest
KeyTurner is a Certified Wilderness First Responder.
“A Vision”
By Wendell Berry
If we will have the wisdom to survive,
to stand like slow-growing trees
on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it,
if we will make our seasons welcome here,
asking not too much of earth or heaven,
then a long time after we are dead
the lives our lives prepare will live
here, their houses strongly placed
upon the valley sides, fields and gardens
rich in the windows. The river will run
clear, as we never know it,
and over it, birdsong like a canopy.
On the levels of the hills will be
green meadows, stock bells in noon shade.
On the steeps where greed and ignorance cut down
the old forest, an old forest will stand,
its rich leaf-fall drifting on its roots.
The veins of forgotten springs will have opened.
Families will be singing in the fields.
In their voices they will hear a music
risen out of the ground. They will take
nothing from the ground they will not return,
whatever the grief at parting. Memory,
native to this valley, will spread over it
like a grove, and memory will grow
into legend, legend into song, song
into sacrament. The abundance of this place,
the songs of its people and its birds,
will be health and wisdom and indwelling
light. This is no paradisal dream.
Its hardship is its possibility.