Mediating on behalf of the seen and unseen worlds.
Next cohort opens with the autumn equinox · Pacific time
The Animist Apothecary is an experiential apothecary for the restoration of an animist relational practice and worldview.
The Training Grounds is its school — where procedural ritual technology and ceremonial practice are formalized and embodied. Where one is trained to engage interdimensionally with skill, poise, rapport, and the artisan's touch of inspirationally skilled mastery.
We are here to participate in the miracle. Adi Marie · Founder
These are urgent times.
The world asks for the restoration of relational balance between the seen and unseen worlds. For humans to step down from the throne of supremacy and return to the place we were entrusted to hold — stewards. Guardians. Kin in service.
In every age, in every people, some have been born with the emergence of gifts. Medicines to be carried on behalf of the land, the community, the many-valenced worlds. And many were born into diaspora, where the lineages were cut. The elders who would have taught what is innately ours could not be found.
You are not too late. The medicine that is yours is still yours.
The Training Grounds is the place to come into it — fully, with structured guidance, in the mastery and discipline of your craft.
The world needs more practitioners.
More people in the field. Holding sacred spaces. Holding front lines. Pollinating the flowers in the garden of life. Restoring beauty. Balance. Harmony.
For those with a calling to participate in this way at this time.
Interdimensional intermediary, somatic medium and oracular diviner, ceremonial and ritual steward. Sixteen years of devoted practice. Over a decade of initiation and study. The Training Grounds is the school she founded to teach the work she was given to carry.
Trained in the Dagara lineage, in the somatic and ceremonial arts, in the medicine ways of [tradition]. The full lineage list, the teachers, and the trainings live on the About page.
Based in Topanga Canyon, Los Angeles. Available worldwide for virtual work, in person for those called to the land.
Read the full lineage →Each studio is its own living breath of the school — its own ethos, body of knowledge, and skill set. Choose the path that calls. Cohorts open with the wheel of the year.
Each studio is held by Adi Marie, with supporting practitioners and guest teachers guiding and leading in their areas of expertise — named within each studio.
Choose a magical story. Live like your life depends on it.
Attending and rewriting the myths and narratives that shape and define who we are becoming.
Apply to the Cohort → Bodywork · Spirit TouchBring hands-on healing into medicine work.
For bodyworkers and massage therapists deepening their gifts and cultivating their offerings with spirit work.
Apply to the Cohort → Guardian · StewardshipHow to hold the sacred container.
How to be a guardian and supportive guide — for those who want to help hold the work.
Apply to the Cohort → Creative · ExpressionLet the wild thing speak through you.
Voice, movement, color, and song — for those reclaiming the creative life-force as a medicine path.
Apply to the Cohort → Mediumship · IntercessionBridge the worlds. Carry the messages.
Working as an intermediary between the human world and the Spirit Worlds — for those called to translate, mediate, and serve as channel.
Apply to the Cohort → Creation · VesselThe sacred containers we make and tend.
Working with the basins, vessels, and containers that hold creation — for those who steward the work of bringing forth.
Apply to the Cohort →Cohort enrollment by application. Reciprocity is shaped in the Intake & Inquiry conversation. Read about Sacred Reciprocity →
Each of the Five Movements is taught through the same four-layer course. The map, the navigating, the walking, the offering.
The bodies of knowledge. The cosmologies. The lineages. Every map that has come before — and the one you will draw by walking.
The symbols. The principles. The applied equations. How the map is read. What each marking means. How to orient when the land is new.
The map becomes earth beneath your feet. You walk. You fall. You find your gait. The classroom becomes practice. The practice becomes lived.
Carrying the work outward. An intermediary in community, in ceremony, in the long quiet labor of relational mediation. The walk becomes the offering.
The named methodology of The Training Grounds. Five movements, walked in sequence and returned to across years. Every studio unfolds within this pathway.
Astronauts train in pools before they go to space. Divers find their gait in the shallow before the open ocean.
We begin with clearing. With acclimation. With learning to hold our water through the altitude change. The day-to-day self is tended. New states of being are met without losing ground.
Listening with clarity. Being communicated with clearly.
The reciprocity, the discernment, the relational manners of working with the other worlds. The skill is developed, then carried back to the day-to-day self. The identity and ego come along as ballast — a pendulum acclimating to a higher oscillation, holding stable ground.
In ceremony, you are a technician.
Exploring the mechanics of what can and cannot be worked with. What is a lever. What is a pipe. The scope and skill of practice. You listen. You receive guidance. You discern. You implement.
The harder work.
To rise in resonance and bring it back. To hold the field and anchor it down — here, in the body, in the day, in the world. We are not only meant to open to those energies. We are meant to anchor them down. This is what the world is asking of us now.
Once the practice is fluent, the work expands.
Ceremony becomes rhythmic in your life. You become a liminal membrane. An oracular vessel. An interdimensional gateway. Information flows in and out — for yourself first, then for the world's intentions, then in service to others.
The artisan's touch of inspirationally skilled mastery, applied between the worlds.
Moving between the seen and the unseen with steadiness, etiquette, and discernment.
The work of medicine — diagnosis, intercession, restoration across the worlds.
Anchoring the frequency back here — in the body, in the day, in the world.
Frequency TBD live cohort calls held on the wheel of the year, in community with fellow practitioners.
Hours TBD of pre-recorded teachings on cosmology, lineage, and method.
Ongoing support calls for guided practice, ceremony rehearsal, and questions that arise mid-walk.
Sessions TBD per cohort — private mentorship with Adi Marie for personal discernment.
A held community of fellow students, with small breakout groups and asynchronous discussion.
Reading lists, guided meditations, ritual practice instructions, and source material from across lineages.
[Placeholder testimony — replace with student quote. Pattern: 2–4 sentences naming the experience of the work, what shifted, what they carry now. Direct, unembellished, in the student's own words.]
[Name] · [Role / Location][Placeholder testimony — replace with student quote. Ideally a voice from a different studio than the first, or a different depth of engagement.]
[Name] · [Role / Location][Placeholder testimony — consider one from a practitioner who integrates the work into their existing field (medicine, therapy, leadership, art).]
[Name] · [Role / Location][Placeholder testimony — consider one that speaks to the long arc of practice across multiple cohorts.]
[Name] · [Role / Location]The Training Grounds is not for everyone. Read both columns honestly.
Twelve students per cohort. One-year intervals, with tracks of one to eight years for those who walk the long arc. The four-tier Sacred Reciprocity sliding scale per year — choose the tier that reflects your relationship to abundance and access in this season of your life.
$18,000
per year · 200% of accessibility
“A blend of gratitude and generosity — one of the ways the accessibility rates are possible at all.”
Apply · Patron$15,000
per year · the full rate
“Reflects the real cost of my time, materials, preparation, and the depth of skill I bring.”
Apply · Abundance$12,000
per year · at-cost community rate
“This is where I break even — supportive, fair, sustainable.”
Apply · Community$9,000
per year · limited number held
“It’s essentially a scholarship rate, held because care should remain reachable during hard seasons.”
Apply · AccessibilityPayment plans are available at every tier — enrollment is held with a deposit. If what’s true for you sits outside these four shapes, bring it into the Intake & Inquiry. The arrangement is shaped together there, where context is held. The school is one room in this larger work — there are many other ways to be in it with me. Read about Sacred Reciprocity →
If you have read this far, I want you to know that I see you.
The world needs more practitioners. More people in the field. Holding sacred spaces. Holding front lines. Pollinating the flowers in the garden of life. Restoring beauty. Balance. Harmony.
I built this school for those of us who were born with the gifts but without the elders. For those who are ready to come into the discipline and devotion of a real practice. For those whose work is meant to matter beyond their own healing.
The Training Grounds is not the only school. But if you have read this far, it might be your school. The first step is a conversation. Apply when you are ready. We will meet you at the threshold.
With deep love,
[Date TBD]
Applications open [months] before each cohort begins.
One year per interval
A full developmental arc held on the wheel of the year — equinox to equinox, or solstice to solstice. Tracks of one to eight years for those who walk the long arc.
Twelve students
Small intentional cohorts. Limited capacity per year so each student is held in real relationship.
Frequency TBD
Live cohort calls plus practice support sessions. All calls recorded; live participation strongly encouraged.
Pacific (primary)
Calls held at [time TBD] Pacific. Recordings available within 24 hours.
Every cohort begins with explicit agreements around consent, confidentiality, and conduct. The container is named, agreed to, and held throughout.
Refund window TBD. After the cohort begins, withdrawal is honored case by case; the conversation is part of the work.
Scholarships are reviewed quarterly. Apply through the standard application, indicating the Scholarship tier. Decisions are made with care for need and capacity.
[Placeholder answer. Name the weekly time expectation (live calls + practice + reading), the cadence across the year, what's optional vs. required.]
[Placeholder answer. Name the relational-ceremonial scope, the lineage it sits in, how it relates to but does not replace therapeutic work.]
[Placeholder answer. Clarify which studios are entry-level vs. for those with existing practice, what foundational orientation is provided.]
[Placeholder answer. Recording policy, asynchronous participation, expectations around live attendance for community cohesion.]
[Placeholder answer. Virtual cohorts as the default, occasional in-person intensives in Topanga Canyon, private travel engagements.]
[Placeholder answer. The Intake & Inquiry call is precisely for this — discernment, alignment, naming where you belong now and where you might travel next.]
[Placeholder answer. Ethics of containment, limits of group work for processing trauma, recommendation for parallel therapeutic support, safety protocols held in cohort space.]
[Placeholder answer. Explain how the four tiers function, when payment plans are available, how the Intake & Inquiry conversation shapes the right arrangement.]
[Placeholder answer. Walk through Application → Invitation to Intake & Inquiry call → Discernment together → Enrollment offered → Cohort opens. Name the timeline.]
[Placeholder answer. Typically one studio per cohort year; explain the layered curriculum across years if students wish to study multiple studios over time.]
Write to us. Every inquiry is read by hand. Send a note →
