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Ancestral Studies for Living Souls
Passages is a lineage-rooted Earth School devoted to cultivating nature literacy—the ability to read, remember, and participate in living systems of life.
Through ancestral studies, embodied inquiry, and earth-based cosmology, we explore the mythic, ritual, and psychological threads that shape the human experience.
Our offerings weave anthropology, oral tradition, plant wisdom, and initiatory practices to help living souls reconnect with their origins, their purpose, and their place in the great ecology of being.
The Earth is Alive.
You are a part of it.
OUR MISSION
Our mission is to support living souls in becoming nature-literate—remembering where they come from and who they are becoming—while cultivating clarity, reverence, and embodied leadership rooted in reciprocity with the Earth.
OUR VISION
Our vision is a world where people become biocultural leaders who carry lineage with integrity, walk their path with truth + authenticity, and participate in the ecology of transformation with courage and devotion.
OUR FRAMEWORK
Passages exists to regenerate cultural memory, rebuild relational bridges, and help the modern heart return to the rhythm of the Earth. At the heart of our work is nature literacy—a way of learning that unfolds through lived experience, ritual practice, and embodied attention.
The Living Council is our free monthly community gathering and an open invitation to pause, reflect, and learn together.
Guided by the Cholq'ij Mayan calendar, we explore the seasonal energies, the movement of time, and the ways life is meeting each of us in the present moment.
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Together, we share conversation, questions, cacao, and community as we cultivate a living relationship with the cycles that shape our inner and outer worlds.
Some meetings will be guided by Passages Wisdom Keepers.
The Living Council
Free Community Gathering
First Sunday of every month
OUR
PATHWAYS
Learn with OTHERS
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SEMESTER COMMUNITY STUDIES
Semester-long online studies
Our Community Studies are guided semester journeys that bring people together around a shared inquiry. Through reading, theory, discussion, reflection, and embodied practice, participants explore a subject over time within a learning community.
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These studies are designed for those who wish to cultivate a sustained relationship with an idea, a text, or a living tradition through conversation and collective learning.
Learn with PLACE
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PASSAGES FIELD SCHOOLS
Immersive learning in relationship with place
Passages Field Schools bring learning beyond the classroom and into direct relationship with landscape, culture, and community. These in-person immersions combine embodied practice, place-based learning, and collaborative inquiry.
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Our Field Schools may include seasonal intensives, cultural immersions, ethnobotanical studies, and research residencies in partnership with local communities. Rather than observing from a distance, participants are invited to learn through relationship, reciprocity, and lived experience.
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Our current focus is in Mexico and Guatemala
Learn with SELF
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PERSONAL MENTORSHIP
(1:1 Guidance)
Personal guidance for individuals seeking clarity, direction, or deeper relationship with ancestry, lineage, and life's transitions.
Offerings include Nahual & Tonal introductions, legacy work, ancestral mentorship, and one-on-one sessions designed to support your unique path.
Fall Semester
A season devoted to cultivating sensitivity
How do we cultivate the sensitivity to be moved by life?
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This semester invites us to slow down, to listen, and to enter into relationship with the living world through reciprocity, ancestry, ritual, community, and the body.
Our Pathways begin by cultivating attention, presence, and the capacity to feel.
Semester Community Studies
THE WOMB & THE GRAVE
Begins October 18th ·
7-Week Community Study ·
3 Wisdom Keepers ·
Tuesdays + Sundays at 11 AM
Free Introduction: August 21st
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The womb and the grave have long stood as parallel thresholds across cultures—one welcoming life into the world, the other returning it to mystery.
This six-week study explores the anthropology of birth and death, rites of passage, ancestral memory, liminality, and the symbolic life of the womb across Indigenous traditions. Drawing from archaeology, mythology, Maya cosmology, and eco-psychology, we consider how cultures have understood beginnings and endings as part of a single living cycle.
Serving as the gateway into our Womb Cosmology Pathway, this course invites participants to cultivate a deeper relationship with ancestry, embodiment, and the rhythms that shape human life.
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While this study is not required, we encourage participants to begin here before entering Rematriarchy, as it establishes the shared language, cosmological foundations, and relational frameworks that deepen the journey ahead.
Fall Monthly Journeys
October: The Ancestral World
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Cacao: The Elixir of Xibalba
3-hour Anthropology Workshop
Across Mesoamerica, cacao has long accompanied the living and the dead.
This lecture explores cacao through the lens of mythology, archaeology, and ritual, tracing its role as a sacred companion in journeys of transformation. Drawing from Maya cosmology, funerary practices, and contemporary Indigenous traditions, we consider cacao as a bridge between worlds and as a teacher of reciprocity, remembrance, and renewal.
FLOWERS OF OUR ANCESTORS
Seasonal Online Gathering
Dia de los Muertos
Flowers have long served as bridges between memory and presence.
During this three-day gathering, we explore the cultural, ecological, and symbolic lives of flowers through the traditions surrounding Día de los Muertos. Together we create altars, study ethnobotanical histories, honor our ancestors, and reflect on beauty as a form of remembrance.
The Living Council is our free monthly community gathering and an open invitation to pause, reflect, and learn together.
Guided by the Cholq'ij Mayan calendar, we explore the seasonal energies, the movement of time, and the ways life is meeting each of us in the present moment.
​
Together, we share conversation, questions, cacao, and community as we cultivate a living relationship with the cycles that shape our inner and outer worlds.
Some meetings will be guided by Passages Wisdom Keepers.
The Living Council
Free Community Gathering
First Sunday of every month
OUR PATHWAYS
Indigenous Cosmologies & Ritual Technologies
We study earth-based cosmologies, ceremonial frameworks, calendrical systems, and the ancestral technologies that orient human beings within cosmic time, space, and the living world.
Plantcestors & Earth Wisdom
We learn from cacao, corn, tabacco, and other plant- and the Great Elemental beings as teachers of relational ethics, memory, reciprocity, and ecological consciousness.
Womb Consciousness & Embodied Cosmology
We examine the womb as a spiritual, biological, and energetic portal: a place of memory, descent, creation, and initiation. This includes menstrual cosmology, the underworld, fertility of earth and body, and the cosmological relationship between womb and grave.
Biocultural Belonging & Leadership
We explore how lineage, land, culture, memory, and identity weave into an integrated sense of belonging - supporting leadership rooted in reciprocity, integrity, and the living world.
Ancestral Story & Mythic Memory
We explore the myths, symbols, and archetypal stories that shape human consciousness across cultures and how these narratives guide our inner and outer lives.
Death Awareness, Grief & Initiation
A Relationship Reclimation to Death: We study death not as an end, but as a guide. Grief as a sacred passage. Underworld journeys as psychological and cosmological thresholds. Ancestor veneration as continuity.
Depth Psychology & the Mythic Psyche
We engage the psyche through the lens of Jungian, archetypal, and somatic psychology; understanding descent, shadow, transformation, and the imaginal as processes of soul-making.
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ABOUT THE FOUNDER
Mariana Bandera
Mariana Bandera is an Anthropologist and Archaeologist, whose work weaves Mesoamerican cosmology, ancestral studies, depth psychology, and embodied ritual.
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Walking alongside Mayan and Mexica teachers for nearly a decade, she bridges academic research with earth-based spirituality, mythic storytelling, and somatic inquiry. Her teachings center on death awareness, womb consciousness, plantcestors, and the ancient technologies that orient human beings within time, lineage, and the living world.
Through Passages, she offers spaces of remembrance where people can reconnect with their origins, reclaim their purpose, and walk with greater clarity, reciprocity, and devotion.
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"Our Mission is to become leaders in our community in our own way, with our own unique gifts. And that makes us good Ancestors in the web of life"
