Queer Animism in Motion
Queer Animism in Motion
QUEER SANCTUARY
The Ritual Movement is dedicated to the change makers, the culture makers, and the creative rebels.
We help people reconnect to their bodies, express themselves fully, and show up without hiding.
How The Ritual Movement Came To Life
We met working at a small queer treatment center outside Asheville in 2021. From the start, our connection was rooted in shared passion and care—for each other, and for the people we served. That November, alongside a colleague, we began facilitating a Five Rhythms-inspired dance group. The clients we worked with stayed in care for three to six months, and over time, we witnessed how the dance space deeply supported their recovery journeys. Watching their process, and moving through it together, profoundly impacted us both personally and as partners.
When the treatment center closed due to lack of funding in 2022, we decided to take the group out into the wider community. We followed the Major Arcana of the Tarot, anchoring our dance rituals in the archetypes of the Fool’s Journey. Each session featured curated playlists, altars, and teachings aligned with the lessons of the Arcana. Over two years, this project blossomed into a diverse community of dancers, creatives, activists, and seekers—and our bond as co-creators and lovers grew alongside it.
Alongside the dance offering, we deepened our study and practice of rites of passage. We spent days in ritual fasts surrounded by community, learning initiatory practices. We trained with the School of Lost Borders and dreamed of bringing queer rites of passage to Western North Carolina. In April 2023, we held our first week-long wilderness vigil at Panther Town to honor life transitions with our community. This experience solidified our calling to do rites of passage work together.
In 2024, we filed articles of incorporation to become a nonprofit spiritual organization. This step was taken to expand our financial foundation—accessing crowd-sourced and federal funding—to ease financial burdens on individuals and grow our capacity to fully dedicate ourselves to this work.
We are creating a school that uplifts creative, ritual-based community projects centered on queerness and trauma recovery. This dream is inspired by our community and by the deep partnership we share. Together, we seek to cultivate a culture where queers and their allies can become more embodied and alive—connecting to deep meaning and amplifying the unique gifts each of us brings to this earth.
Meet The Folks Before The Movement
Meet Cass
Cass (she/they) is a queer therapist, rites of passage guide, tarot reader, ritual facilitator, and movement practitioner with over 20 years of experience guiding individuals and communities through life’s transitions.
Holding an M.A. in Clinical Mental Health Counseling, Cassie is honored to stand within the lineage of guides from the School of Lost Borders whose work is rooted in the belief that transformation arises when we reconnect with the wild—both within ourselves and in the natural world.
For two decades, Cass has woven wilderness guiding, embodied movement, and earth-based ritual into spaces where healing, growth, and belonging flourish. Cassie utilizes compassionate presence and fierce guardianship that allow participants to cross thresholds, process grief, and celebrate joy.
In The Ritual Movement, she finds a bridge between the physical and the sacred, a way to fully embody the stories we carry and the transitions we face.
At the heart of Cass’ work is a commitment to tending the intersections of queerness, social justice, and collective liberation. She is passionate about facilitating rituals and practices that honor the complexity of these times and celebrate the resilience of the human spirit.
When not guiding others, you’ll find Cassie sitting by a fire, playing board games well past midnight, or lying on a hot rock by a river.
Meet Bear
Bear (He/they) is a queer and trans community visionary, mediator, dancer, and geomancer devoted to tending the unseen and in-between.
From a young age, Bear immersed himself in the study of archetypes, myth, and the esoteric, which have profoundly shaped his spiritual practice. His commitment to fostering aliveness and embodiment stems from his upbringing a community of artists, land stewards, and dancers, including formative years in the 5Rhythms dance community, where he learned the importance of conscious movement as a vital expression of self.
As a queer and trans mediator, Bear brings over a decade of experience in conflict transformation, guiding couples along their spiritual paths and bridging the seen and unseen worlds. He takes his role as a mediator seriously, creating brave containers where grief, truth, and mystery can move freely. His work weaves together the sacred, the sensual, and the strange, inviting presence, permeability, and poetic precision.
In addition to his mediation work, Bear is a death care worker, grave digger, and grief steward, dedicated to honoring rites of passage through earth-based ritual. Drawing on mentorship and training from the School of Lost Borders, he finds joy and purpose in dancing, kneeling on the earth in prayer, and expressing himself freely. Co-founding Ritual Movement has allowed him to intertwine his passions for embodiment, queerness, and animist spirituality into a vibrant tapestry that brings beauty and meaning to his life and the lives of those in his community.
555
We incorporated 555 into the name of our organization as a nod to our commitment to tending culture along the fault line of change. The number four represents stability and structure. When we add a fifth leg to the table, it wobbles. This is how we view both this moment in human history, as well as the tools and strategies needed to navigate it. We meet change with a willingness to change. We remain flexible in the face of chaos, assuming dance position. We acknowledge ourselves to be in constant co-creation with with forces that are beyond our control.
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We honor creativity as a vital force for healing, transformation, and authentic self-expression in all its forms.
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We cultivate deep connection—to ourselves, to each other, and to the more-than-human world—as the foundation of belonging and growth.
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We celebrate queer embodiment as a radical practice of presence, liberation, and truth-telling in a world that often demands conformity.
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We build community resilience by nurturing spaces where collective care, mutual support, and shared ritual sustain us through change.
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We honor the beauty of imperfection, trusting in the power of untrained, intuitive expression to open unexpected pathways of growth and healing.
Our Values
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