Psychopomp
Travel Buddies
Meet the guides at the edge of the world & craft them an altar to-go.
Psychopomps are the threshold guides - beings who help souls cross from life into death. They exist in every culture that has ever reckoned with mortality. Join us for two classes exploring these ancient guides and creating portable altars to honor them in your deathwork practice.
2 Classes over Zoom
Thursdays, April 23 & April 30
5:30 - 6:30 pm MT
Led by Lauren Carroll & Lauren Seeley
PAY-WHAT-YOU-CAN
$11 - $33
Death has never been a solitary journey. Across time and culture, humans have understood that souls need guidance at the threshold. The Egyptians had Anubis to weigh hearts and guide the worthy. The Greeks had Charon to ferry souls across the river Styx. The Norse had Valkyries to carry fallen warriors to Valhalla.
These beings (psychopomps) are death's messengers and companions. They hold space at the threshold, offering protection, witness, and safe passage through the unknown.
In modern deathwork, we've largely forgotten them. But they haven't forgotten us. They're still there - at bedsides, in hospice rooms, for people of all ages and at every crossroad of life. Join us to meet them, learn how to work with them, and craft a portable altar that anchors your relationship.
2 evenings of Community & Co-creating
Evening ONE
Meet the guides
Psychopomps aren't universal - they're specific. Some specialize in guiding children. Others watch over sex workers, addicts, and those who died by suicide. There are psychopomps for warriors, for mothers, for those who simply slipped away in their sleep.
Together, we'll explore psychopomps across traditions: Santa Muerte, Hecate, Anubis, Xolotl, Mary Magdalene, Baron Samedi, and others whose names you may never have heard. You'll learn their histories, their offerings, what they ask of those who work with them.
Evening TWO
Craft your Altar
An altar is a physical anchor for relationship. A place to leave offerings, to pray, to remember you're not alone in this work. When that altar is portable, you carry the psychopomp's presence with you wherever you go (be that hospital rooms and vigils, or simply out in the world). Our second evening together will be spent co-crafting these portable altars for the psychopomp of our choosing.
You’ll be asked to bring a container (Altoids tin, wooden box, leather pouch - whatever feels right), basic supplies (scissors, glue), and items that resonate with your chosen guide (which we’ll cover together in week 1).
This is a class for everyone with junk drawers full of potential altar objects, grief workers who secretly miss finger painting, space-holders who collect trinkets from their walks, death doulas who've glimpsed the guides at bedsides, and anyone who's ever felt the tingle of the threshold while holding a glue stick.
You don't need experience with with spirit work or deity devotion to join - or a crafty, artistic background. Curiosity and willingness are enough.
enroll
Psychopomp Travel Buddies
2 Classes over Zoom
Thursdays, April 23 & April 30
5:30 - 6:30 pm MT
PAY-WHAT-YOU-CAN
$11 - $33
Use the following codes to select your price when you enroll:
Pay $33 - no code needed
Pay $22 - psychopomp22
Pay $11 - psychopomp11
Your teachers
Lauren Seeley
Lauren Seeley is an artist, death and grief doula, and death educator whose work weaves together death literacy, spiritual practice, and end-of-life care. Her interests and research span the tender edges of both human and pet end-of-life care, LGBTQIA+ and trans-centered deathwork, memory care, ritual and ceremony, and the many ways we honor the dead through funerary and disposition practices. Lauren currently works at a funeral home in Brooklyn, NY, where she holds space for the living and the dead, and facilitates the Silent Book Club of Death, Brooklyn’s quiet little refuge for readers who aren’t afraid to sit with the big questions.
Lauren Carroll
Lauren Carroll, co-founder of La Mort, is a Death Educator & Holistic Funeral Director who is passionate about weaving community and family back into the death space. Her work centers around re-aligning our culture with Mother Earth and helping humans remember how to love one another. She is a former board member for the National Home Funeral Alliance and co-founded The Deathwives. She lives on an urban farm at the base of a mountain where she tends to her animals, raises her two children, and dances around bonfires on the full moon with friends while listening to Nick Cave.
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