Wisdom of the Earth experiential workshops to provide men’s rite of passage

Facilitators Jean-Claude Catry and Pravin Pillay are teaming up for this Wisdom of the Earth project to provide an elemental part of human culture they feel has been missing for centuries, and even more so in the past couple of decades.

Industrialization and advances toward a technical society have meant a continuing divorce from nature, which is only speeding up in the modern day, while positive changes in gender relations have at the same time left men without set guidelines as to their place in the world.

“We want to bring men into connection with their own identities through initiation, and from there pass it on to the next generation,” Catry said during a recent interview.

Catry has been practising and teaching wilderness survival skills for over 30 years and comes from a lineage that includes American trackers Tom Brown and Jon Young. He is a mentor with the Wolf Kids school and helped bring a group of young teens through the program’s first initiation last spring.

“With Wolf Kids we have observed joy, playfulness, the ability to focus — all this comes out of being in nature. Men who participate will come back with these qualities and will be able to function better in the world,” Catry said.

Pillay is a leadership mentor with experience running a number of innovative programs. He helped bring Doctors without Borders to Canada, is a former federal bureaucrat and the former executive director of the Rediscovery International Foundation, which helps rebuild communities through traditional culture and outdoor education. It was founded in Haida Gwaii and has since moved across Canada and the United States.

Pillay is also a past participant at one of Catry’s weekend survival workshops for adults, and found the mentor to have a rich understanding of humans’ connection to the earth and how to live in a more harmonious way. Both facilitators are members of an informal men’s discussion group and have lately realized the need for a course structured with them specifically in mind.

“Younger men are searching for clarity and older men are still trying to figure out how to be adults,” Pillay said.

“The compass of navigation is missing.”

“In tribal cultures it was really understood that youth were taught by the elders and initiated into knowledge, or else they would destroy their culture,” Catry said, noting the surge of testosterone needs to be directed in useful ways or negative actions, like war, are sure to follow.

He feels that developing the ego in relation to something you really can’t control — namely the wilderness — is a requirement for finding out who you are.

“Most men are going to spend their whole lives trying to find that out,” Pillay added.

The workshops, set to take place during the last weekend of each month from February through May, are to be based on experience rather than gaining information. Tracking, sensory awareness and wilderness skills will be part of the offering. Participants will also gain knowledge of the self using tools such as the Eight Directions, a “wisdom compass” that aligns interior states with the compass points. East, corresponding with inner happiness, is the starting point.

Pillay said he is aware of the stereotype of men’s groups retreating to the woods to howl at the moon and beat drums, but notes “even these are an effort to recreate ceremony and context — they’re trying to do anything they can.”

The workshop is a prerequisite to an initiation journey planned to take place on an uninhabited island in September. Registration will be limited to around eight participants.

For more information, call Catry at 250-653-9122 or email jean-claude@wisdomoftheearth.ca, or contact Pillay at 250-538-8898 or pravin@wisdomoftheearth.ca.

See wisdomoftheearth.ca for still more info.