Across our Earth, land has inspired many different cultures, languages and spiritual traditions. In Britain, our oldest traditions, our earliest cultures, have been buried under many waves of invasion and layers of cultural influence. In looking for authentic traditions, it’s easy to turn to surviving cultures elsewhere to feed our spiritual hunger. It is tempting to borrow their practices, plant medicines and rituals, but there is a danger that we end up consuming other people’s cultures at the cost of overlooking what is left of our own.
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DADENI is a call, a howl, a shout-out to those who want to work spiritually and ritually with the land and connect with the ancient, native spiritual threads of Britain. We believe the best place to look for our deepest roots is before Christianity, before the Roman invasion, tracing it back as far as the end of the last Ice Age. This ancient, native spirituality is deeply animist. Combined with contemporary practice, we weave it anew, drawing together ancient lore and the great ecological and human needs of our time. This is not spirituality in a vacuum. This is a tradition that catalyses engagement, action and generative change in our world, supporting us to root deep and rise strong in these great times.

"Dadeni is like nothing else you will have experienced. It’s a rebirth of the traditions of this land, of community and connection. It has impacted every part of my world, and how I am living and thriving. What a wonderful journey!"
~ Brigit, 2026 Alumna
 
Our ancestors had no holy book, and neither do we, but there are many traces of their lore that have survived into our times. There are a dedicated few who have given their lives to delving into different aspects of our native lore. Some of these will be our DADENI teachers, helping to weave together the tattered fabric of our tradition into a spiritual practice based on the old ways but relevant to now.
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The ancient poetry and stories of Wales contain some of the most potent lore of this land. For many centuries, this body of lore, with its roots deeply entwined in the Bronze and Iron Age, thrived in the oral tradition across the British Isles. It is the matter and lore of Britain. Later, medieval scribes committed some to ink and vellum and they have been kept safe and honoured within the language and culture of the Cymry (Welsh), the oldest peoples in these Isles. These stories and verses hold the surviving fragments of the glimmering spiritual traditions and practices of the Brythonic people who lived across Britain (south of Scotland) until the Saxon incursions of the 5th Century.
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The wild landscapes and sacred sites of Wales will be our stomping ground. We begin the journey in Pembrokeshire, South Wales, an area resonant with mythic and spiritual sites. We will later journey north, with a final retreat offered as a pilgrimage in Snowdonia and Anglesey (Ynys Môn) where the ancient Druids had their heartland. People came from all over Europe to study with them. They added their own sacred and magical practices to the Bronze Age and Neolithic sacred sites, deities and traditions that had been honoured for thousands of years before. Because the accessible landscapes in the western peninsulas of Wales are still fairly undeveloped, many ancestral traces - standing stones, stone circles, burial chambers, trackways and hillforts - can easily be found. Here is as good a place as any to immerse ourselves in indigenous spirituality. We will walk songlines or story-lines that still sing in the landscape here and listen deeply at sacred places, and respond as ceremonial impulses arise from the land to meet our human need for ceremony and the sacred.

While this programme is based in the landscapes of Wales, the aim is to impart knowledge, practices and ritual forms so that you can work with them in your own community, on the land on which you stand.

While DADENI is a ‘spirit school ’, it is not about top-down learning. The word 'education' has two different Latin roots. They are educare, which means to train or to mould, and educere, meaning to lead out. Both meanings will be present on this programme. Our teachers will share their knowledge, particularly in the first three retreats, and help draw out the deep intuition already slumbering within you. This has been the way of teaching and handing down lore amongst traditional people since time immemorial: learning, practising, experiencing, intuiting and understanding. The final three retreats are a deeper dive and by invitation. This will be a smaller group ready to learn, grow, experiment and explore at a deeper level, building upon the taught foundation of the first three retreats.
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You don’t need to be from this land to do this work. Land calls to us regardless of race or birthplace. Importantly, this programme will provide a framework and set of tools for working with landscapes elsewhere, where other native spiritual traditions have been almost lost or overlooked. Ultimately, this is about using instinct and intuition to connect to an older, wilder way of knowing Land, Nature and Tradition. It’s about learning to deepen into a soulful practice aligned with our corner of the earth.
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Dadeni is an initiatory programme. Initiations transform, so be prepared for a significant impact on your life. It is not for the faint-hearted, but if your soul is stirred by this call, if you’re ready to commit to three years of spiritual enquiry and growth through learning, ceremony, song, myth, plant spirit medicine, intuition and landscape with a small group of people who will become your spiritual, ceremonial and dreaming tribe, then please consider filling in an application and joining us on DADENI.
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The application process for our next Dadeni is now open until January 10th. The new cohort will begin their journey in November 2027. To apply, click here.​