Soy de Barro: Women’s Initiation & Rites of Passage Guide Training

Clay is a primal teacher; raw and gritty at the same time refined and supple. This sculptable rock dust under our feet is a miracle of a changing, alive creative planet. As are we, being made of the same minerals of the earth shaped into vessels that hold these life giving waters. May we be fortified and flexible to face the obstacles of our times and incite everyday acts of love, beauty, and peacemaking.

Journey with us as we become the earth, harvest from her, and craft our very own clay cook pots to be fired at the end in a culminating ceremony. We will reflect on how we have shaped our lives, repaired our cracks and fed our dreams and visions, as we prepare to surrender our creations to the fire.

Clay cook pots hold a time-honored place at the hearth of folklore and myth. They are snakes coiled in our hands up from the earth, into the shape of a belly to cook up something potent. Cook pots feed family and community, they breathe under heat and take their time, retaining the nutrients of the foods we are cooking. Across the world and throughout time, cultures have cooked in clay and developed their unique flavors and recipes of their land. Building one of your own is like planting a seed in our ancestral memory as humans.

Soy de Barro — I am of the Clay

A Wild Clay & Elemental Initiation for Women

Soy de Barro is an elemental rite of passage —where every woman learns the ancient earth-skills of harvesting wild clay, shaping a functional cook pot with your hands, and firing our pots with an Ancestral Pottery Firing ceremony.

We do not just form vessels.We become vessels.

phase 1: Offering Ceremony & Wild Clay Harvest

We make offerings.We give thanks.We gather wild clay directly from Earth.

phase 2 — Clay Cook Pot Apprenticeship (Each Woman Makes Her Own Pot)

You learn — slowly, intentionally — how to transform raw clay into a functional cooking vessel:

• processing the clay

• hand-building using ancient coiling techniques

• shaping, smoothing, creating a pot that can withstand flame

• learning how clay teaches boundaries, patience, and embodied presence

phase 3 — Earthen Pigments & Body Paint

We grind pigments from soil and stone.We decorate our pots, and our bodies, with prayer and intention. 

Adornment becomes devotion.Creation becomes ceremony.

phase 4 — Fire by Friction & Fire Tending

You will learn how to:

• make fire by friction (bow-drill)

• tend a fire as an ancestor — with reverence

• cook food in your pot over open flame

Fire becomes teacher.

phase 5 — Fire Walk: Becoming the Vessel

Before our pots enter the fire, we enter the fire.

Through a guided Fire Walk ceremony, we:

• release old identities

• step into personal power

• cook ourselves in transformation

❖ PHASE 6 — Ancestral Firing (You Fire the Pot You Made)

We place our pots into an open outdoor fire —not a kiln.

This is ancestral firing — unpredictable, alive, ceremonial.

You will:

• fire the pot you made with your own hands

• tend the flames

• witness transformation through heat, smoke, and ash

Every woman leaves with:

• a functional clay cook pot fired in ceremony

• a new relationship with fire, earth, and her own power

  
  

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

• Harvesting and processing wild clay

• Making your own functional clay cook pot

• Earthen pigments & ancestral body paint

• Cacao ceremony & elemental ritual

• Fire by friction (bow-drill)

• Fire tending & fire safety

• Fire Walk initiation

• Somatic + embodiment practices

• Sacred boundaries: the power of yes and no

We are not producing pottery. We are restoring culture. We are building cultural topsoil.