M Y S T I C S’ P A T H

C U L T I V A T I N G   Y O U R   C R A F T

Take note of what brings you to this page. 

Curiosity and resonance are very important aspects of intuition.

Perhaps the mysteries have begun courting you. 

Maybe even haunting you and demanding you pay attention. Sometimes we have a choice in this matter. 

Other times we are thrust through experiential portals (often bumpy and disorienting) into new worlds and there’s no going back. 

Perhaps you are longing to develop your mystic skills but feeling a bit lost as to where to begin or how to go deeper. 

Maybe you want help reorienting and developing a solid foundation of praxis.

Maybe you’ve been on the path for a bit, and studied in various lineages and culturally specific traditions, but want to allow your craft to evolve and adapt to your present reality and unique experience

If you are ready and willing to be guided by an experienced practitioner with years of study, practice, and experimentation - you’ve come to the right place.

In the Mystics’ Path, I offer personalized 1:1 learning and practice cauldrons in the mystic arts. 

(See below for more details about cauldron topics and logistics)

My intention here is to provide a relational space for you to develop an animist perspective and experiment with practical applications in your life.  

You can think of these cauldrons as individualized tutoring to deepen and strengthen your crafts.

They are useful options if you prefer learning through personalized instruction and want live-time feedback and individualized attention - vs learning in a group course with generalized instruction and little-to-no 1:1 time with the facilitator. 

Because ultimately the mystics’ path is a hidden one of direct experiencing, communion, and gnosis.

H O W D O E S T H I S W O R K ?

You choose an area of focus from the cauldrons list below - and then together we explore skill level appropriate practices and techniques to increase your knowledge and tangible proficiency with the subject. You are encouraged to repeat and explore cauldrons over time. I will have recommendations based on your unique needs and desires.

Each cauldron consists of three 1hr sessions - in-person at my home studio in South Minneapolis and/or virtually via zoom, whichever format works best for you. 

I recommend a frequency of 1-2 sessions per month pacing - each cauldron will last approximately 1.5 - 3 months. This gives you a bit of off time in between sessions to incorporate practices into your life and experiment.

Cauldrons subjects : I am deliberately keeping the descriptions of these cauldrons simple due to the nature of individualized study. Think of each subject as a resonant trail head into the mysterious forest, remembering they all lead to the same destination if you walk them long enough. And despite whichever ones you choose, ultimately how we move through them will be determined by what/who comes up along the way. And because there are many directions we can explore with each of these cauldrons, in our first session we will collaborate on a trajectory of study that best fits your needs/wants and skill level and go from there! 

Choosing cauldrons : Trust your curiosity and longing to guide you in choosing which cauldron is right for you at this time. Let your heart, gut, and intuition decide - vs your rational mind.  If you have questions about any of the cauldron subjects, shoot me an email - I’m happy to give you my perspective and sugggestions.

Skill level : I created two categories of cauldrons to help you discern where to start: beginner friendly and intermediate. All skill levels and eclectic flavors of mysticism are welcome!

Your magical brew : What you get out of your cauldrons will be determined by what energy you put in. True wisdom is only gained through the passing of time and on-going practice. It naturally flows from well-integrated life experiences. These cauldrons are intended to nourish your spirit and sharpen your skills along the way.

C A U L D R O N S

Beginner Friendly - getting the lay of the land

  • Alchemical Ground : breathing, eating, moving, practicing, sleeping

  • Attunement : working with resonance and dissonance, vibrational harmonics 

  • Blood Cycle : creating-destroying, bleeding magic, tidal rhythms, moons, earth connection, lineage

  • Death Practice : shedding, composting, dissolving, emptying, transitioning, liminality

  • Devotional Altar : feeding and being fed, eros, intimacy, love, awe

  • Energetic Hygiene : building and tending your sacred vessels 

  • Elementals : connecting with air, fire, water, earth, and ether

  • Everyday Animism : integrating animism into your daily practices and worldview

  • Grief and Joy : remembering what it is to be human, grief practices, joy rituals

  • Guardianship : discerning threat, defining boundaries, layering protection

  • Initiation : moving through portals, death and rebirth, gaining new powers and responsibilities

  • Intuition : exploring and honing sixth sense capacities

  • Invocation : summoning skills, shape of sounds, using the power of spoken word and song 

  • Helpers : weaving your web of support, seen and unseen

  • Journeying : shamanic flight 101, trance basics

  • Land Body : rooting into place, spirits of ecology and culture, stewardship

  • Lineage : honoring your ancestors of blood, milk, soil, and spirit

  • Navigating the Realms : playing with fractal micro-macro patterns, mapping the multiverse, interdimensional travel 

  • Oracles’ Well : asking, listening, interpreting, trusting divination 

  • Riding Waves : running energy, harnessing breath and the nervous system, energetic manipulation

  • Ritual Craft : building potent ritual and ceremonial containers for specific purposes 

  • Signs : co-creating symbolic language, tracking with synchronicity

  • Slow Magic : fostering discipline and patience, integration, rest, attuning to deep time

  • Tree of Life : establishing embodied axes, anchors, doors, and pathways to upper, middle, and lower worlds.

  • Trust Fall : falling off and on the path, surrendering, opening, agency, willpower 

  • Wheels : working with cycles, phases, directions, and seasons

Intermediate - playing in collaboration

  • Bardic Revolution : courting the Muses and becoming the hollow bone

  • Bitchcraft : wielding righteous anger, sub/dom power dynamics, ethical curses

  • Dreaming : navigating the continuity of the imaginal and dream realms  

  • Long Body : expanding through time, history, culture, land, and species

  • Lunatic Love : destigmatizing madness, harnessing insanity, fostering crazy

  • Psychonaut Life : respecting the power of entheogens, enacting right relationship with the animate forces, safety protocols, cultural and historical contexts 

  • Psychopomps’ Calling : helping the dead cross over, assisting ghosts to become ancestors 

  • Politicized Spellwork : aligning your craft with ethics, integrity, and collective liberation

  • Possession : identifying spirit possession states, summoning and exorcising

  • Queer Cosmos : playing with permeable membranes, fluid forms, syncretic spirits, bent and crooked powers

  • Shamanic Power : cultivating gnosis, merging with helpers, adornment, tools, reciprocal protocols  

  • Shapeshifting : exploring deeper trancework, channeling, ceremonial theater, and improvisation

  • Song Carrier : catching medicine songs, spirits of rhythm and melody, crafting enchantments

  • Trickster : inviting good trouble, breaking taboos, inverting power dynamics  

All cauldrons are offered via sliding scale :

$285-$375 ($95-$125 per session). 

Please email me at connect@portiarichardson.love to begin.

I look forward to opening to the mysteries with you.

[Portrait of me post ceremony by Starseed Studios, 2022]

We are very lucky in the Twin Cities to have a teacher, practitioner, and healer like Portia as a resource to work with. I have seen Portia for services, classes, and ceremony events for more than 10 years now and I have witnessed her continue to offer new and relevant programming and grow to be an advanced expert in what she does. I recently decided to apprentice with Portia for a short 3-session series focused on holding ceremonial space, cultivating magical group containers, and becoming a ceremony facilitator. This is a big topic and will likely take a lifetime to feel comfortable in. However, I feel that my sessions with Portia provided significant value and knowledge on practical and technical aspects but also provided larger kernels of wisdom that I can continue to explore for years. Each session started with a summary of what we covered previously, then involved a key new lesson or practice, and ended with homework of concepts or actions to explore for the future session. I came away from the apprenticeship with an entire plan for a ceremony that is ready to execute, in addition to feeling a deepening in my personal relationship to Spirit and a greater understanding of it means to be called to the role of a ceremony facilitator. What I appreciate about Portia is that she has the edge of bringing an academic, scholarly-type rigor to the realm of spirituality which is often an unregulated space of practitioners that offer services with very little to no training. Her depth of experience translates well in sessions because she is readily able to cite credible sources for her teachings, explain complex topics in a myriad of ways, and weaves in multiple models of spirituality seamlessly to provide a tailored approach to me, the client. Portia has been and continues to be a "Key Master" for me in my life. I give her credit for turning me on to herbal wisdom (she introduced me to my very first essential oil experience!), introducing me to the path of the Divine Feminine with her Moon circle series in 2016, and for giving me the language and teachings to explore my relationship to animism and the practice that I now call my spirituality. ~ T. R.