This is not a course, it's a circle.
Sacred Paths Shamanic School
A two-year initiatory journey into the heart of the living world.
Sacred Paths Shamanic School has been running since 2012.
Hundreds of students from across the world have walked through these doors. Some came seeking healing. Some came seeking purpose. Some came because something in them was burning and they didn't know what to do with the fire. All of them left changed. Not because I changed them, but because the practices did what they have always done:
They remembered people back to themselves.
The 2-Year Arc
The school is rooted in Andean Cosmology, one of the oldest and most complete spiritual traditions on Earth, alongside Norse Shamanism, European ancestral practices, grief tending, and animist wisdom. It is delivered primarily online, accessible to students worldwide. But this is not passive learning. Every student is expected to practice, to work with the land they stand on, to build relationships with the more-than-human world in their own place. The online format carries the teaching. Your local land carries the practice. Together, they carry you.
Opportunities for in-person gathering exist: retreats at La Ferme du Cerf Bleu in Burgundy, ceremonies at the farm, and for those called, journey to Peru to sit with the Andean elders in the landscape where this teaching was born.
Enrollment closes once the circle begins. The circle starts together, walks together, and completes together. That is how real initiation works.
Your Teacher
Angell Deer
I raised forty million dollars in the corporate world. Then I walked away from every cent of it. I am a trained veterinarian. I have spoken at Harvard Business School and sat in ceremony with Andean elders at Lake Titicaca. I stewarded a sanctuary in the Catskills for twenty years, then uprooted everything and began again on an old farm in France at midlife, with a young family. I know the empire from the inside. I survived it. And I chose to leave.
For over twenty years, I have studied and practiced within the traditions of Andean Cosmology and Norse Shamanism, working closely with indigenous teachers, elders, and wisdom keepers. I live with my family at La Ferme du Cerf Bleu, an 18th-century farm in Burgundy, France, where I am rewilding twenty acres of land. I have planted over a hundred trees. I tend beehives alongside the old stone walls. The land is not a backdrop to this teaching. It is a teacher in its own right.
I am the author of Becoming the Medicine (Hay House / Balboa Press) and The Sacred Web. I write Rituals & Rebellion on Substack to over 15,000 readers. I do not create followers. I create sovereign practitioners who can stand on their own ground.
Year 1: Earthwalker
Learning to walk on the Earth with your eyes open
The EarthWalker year is where everything begins. It is the foundation stone.
Not the easy stuff first, the hard stuff later. The real stuff from day one.
This year is for those who are arriving on the shamanic path for the first time, or for those who have been walking it on their own and need a lineage, a community, and a teacher who has been where they are going. You do not need prior experience. You need a body, a willingness to be honest, and the courage to feel what you have been trained to numb.
What you will learn
- The Andean Medicine Wheel: not as a static symbol on a poster, but as a living map for understanding yourself, your relationships, and your place in the web of life.
- Andean Cosmology (The Three Worlds): UkuPacha, KayPacha, and HananPacha. Not as academic concepts, but as lived realities you will learn to move between in ceremony and in daily life.
- Offerings and Reciprocity: the Andean practice of despacho and the wider animist understanding that all relationship begins with giving.
- Self-Healing Practices: energy work, emotional release, grief tending, and the practices that allow you to clear what is not yours and tend what is. You cannot hold space for others until you have learned to hold space for yourself.
- Signs, Dreams, and the Language of the Living World: how to read the world as an animist. Discernment, not wishful thinking.
- Spirit Allies and the More-Than-Human World: establishing real relationship with spirit animals, guides, plant teachers, and the intelligence of the land.
- Protection and Sacred Boundaries: how to open and how to close. Spiritual hygiene is not optional. Every tradition knows this.
Prerequisites
- No prior experience required. Only sincerity.
 Year 2: Firekeeper
Learning to tend the fire and carry it for others
You have walked the earth. You have learned to listen, to offer, to grieve, to read the signs. Now comes the harder question: what do you do with what you have been given?
The FireKeeper year is for students who have completed EarthWalker (or who bring equivalent experience confirmed through application). This is where the path shifts from personal practice to service. From receiving to offering. From walking to tending. You will learn what it means to hold a fire for others, and what it costs the one who holds it.
What you will learn:
- Advanced Shamanic Healing: soul retrieval, cord cutting, energy clearing, extraction work. These are not techniques to collect. They are responsibilities to carry.
- Ceremony Leadership: how to hold and lead ceremony. Not how to perform it. How to create sacred space, read a room, hold what arises when people open to the unseen.
- Shamanic Tools: working with drums, rattles, and other traditional instruments as extensions of your intent.
- Plant Dieta and Vision Quests: guided plant medicine work and extended solo time in nature. Deep, quiet, supervised.
- Client Work and Community Service: supervised practice working with real people. Service is not a nice idea. It is the point.
- Land Guardianship and Earth Service: what it means to be a guardian of the land you live on.
Prerequisites
- Completion of EarthWalker, or equivalent experience confirmed through application.
Beyond the School
The journey does not end when the two years are done.
For graduates of FireKeeper who are called to continue, Angell offers advanced mentorship by personal invitation. This is not a third year with a curriculum. It is an apprenticeship in the old sense: sustained,Â
intimate, shaped by the needs and gifts of the person in front of him.
This is how the old traditions always worked. The school teaches the foundations and the deeper work. The advanced work happens in relationship, through years of walking alongside an elder. When youÂ
are ready, you will be invited.
What makes this school different?
I will not tell you that this school is for everyone. It is not.
It is for the ones who feel the call and have not been able to silenceÂ
it. The ones who know that the life the empire handed them is not theÂ
life they were born for. The ones who sense that the more-than-human world is alive, intelligent, and waiting for them to show up. The ones willing to do the slow, unglamorous, sometimes painful work of becoming who they actually are.
It is not for spiritual tourists looking for another credential. It is not for people who want to consume indigenous wisdom without the accountability that comes with it. And it is not for anyone looking forÂ
a guru. I do not create followers. I create sovereign practitioners whoÂ
can stand on their own ground.
The teaching comes from over twenty years of study within the Andean and Norse traditions, from working closely with indigenous elders and wisdom keepers, from tending land, from sitting with grief, from failing and starting over. It is not theory. It is a path I have walked with my own feet.
Hear from those who have walked this path
Testimony `1
Testimony 2
Testimony 3
Testimony 4
Testimony 5
Testimony 6
