❋A Sacred Container for Death Walkers and Water Bearers
Folx Alchemy School
3 months | 6 sessions |Via Zoom
initiation, death, &
the mystery
3 SATURDAYS, 3 SUNDAYS | BEGINNING SEPTEMBER 26TH
Saturday, September 26th
Sunday, October 4th (Ritual/Ceremony Session)
Saturday, October 31st
Sunday, November 8th (Ritual/Ceremony Session)
Saturday, November 28th
Sunday, December 6th (Ritual/Ceremony Session)
All sessions are from 11:00-1:00 pm cst
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ABOUT THIS CONTAINER
“initiation, death, and the mystery”
The world is calling for death walkers and water bearers—those who can walk with poise amidst the chaos of the unknown and bring forth the medicine of reconciliation to a world on fire.
Those who can handle the weight of grief.
But most people do not recognize the invitation to this initiation when it arrives.
It does not arrive announced. It arrives packaged as LOSS.
It looks like divorce. It looks like death. It looks like job loss. It looks like perimenopause. It looks like single motherhood. It looks like losing family, friends, and career over your refusal to be silent about Palestine. It looks like 600,000 Black women losing their livelihoods at once. It looks like a new diagnosis, an ailing parent, a body that will no longer perform the life you built.
These are not problems to be solved. These are initiations to be entered.
This container is for those who have received the call — whether they named it or not — and are ready to learn to walk with death as medicine, to carry grief as water, to become what this world most desperately needs.
We often say we are “drowning” when overcome by the experiences of life.
However, drowning is a water medicine waiting to emerge. When grief floods our life, we are being immersed into the watery realm of the spirit. This realm that doesn’t operate within the confines of linear reality, of logical knowing, of predictability.
Within this realm of spirit are mysteries, the Yeilbongura—what the Dagara call that which can’t be consumed. Drowning is an ancestral invitation into the liminal spaces where we are shown how to reconcile what has died and what lives on.
Born from my own passage through the death of my father in 2019 — which became a baptism into what my ancestral water spirits shared is “the path of waters through grief”— this container is rooted in two cosmological frameworks: the wisdom and teachings of my Elder and Dagara Shaman Dr. Malidoma Patrice Somé, and my own proprietary framework, the Àjẹ́ Cosmology of Imagination.
To see the grief ritual born from this journey, watch my commissioned ritual theatre piece “Fatherland” by clicking the still image above.
Three Invitations
You are being called to become a death walker.
To recognize initiation in the faces of loss — and to meet it with ceremony rather than survival strategies.
You are being called to carry water.
To transform your grief into medicine — not by transcending it, but by learning its sacred grammar and cosmological function.
You are being called into right relationship with the Mystery.
To deepen your bond with the Ancestors, the elemental powers, and your own pre-birth purpose as guide through the unknown.
What is this work?
Initiation, Death & The Mystery is a 3-month, 6-session sacred container offered by the Folx Alchemy School — a threshold crossing into the transformative path of grief and the medicine of Waters.
Within this container, we do not rush toward healing. We learn to dwell in the liminal. We create ceremony and ritual to assist us in walking with death and loss as medicine keepers. We develop new ways of being that allow us to meet the sacred within grief and return with wisdom. We deepen our relationship with the Ancestors and with our own Suira — the primordial memory and indigenous soul that knows how to move through unknown territories and cross thresholds the modern world offers no map for.
What Is Included
6 live sessions — sacred teaching, ceremony, and guided ritual practice
Ceremonial framework rooted in Dagara cosmology and the Àjẹ́ Cosmology of Imagination™
Water element teachings as the cosmological ground of this container
Ancestral and Suira deepening practices for navigating liminal space
Grief as medicine — not pathology, not productivity — ritual tools for the path of waters
Community container with others who have received this call
Lifetime access to all recordings and materials
With the energy of the September full moon, we enter into sacred container.
Session Curriculum
Session One: The Call — Recognizing Initiation
Learn to identify the initiatory nature of loss, death, and threshold crossings
Enter the Water element as cosmological home for this work
Open ceremony: crossing the threshold into the container
Session Two: Death as Teacher — The Dagara Path of Waters
Study the Dagara understanding of death and its role in community and cosmology
Explore what it means to walk the path of waters — grief as element, not emotion
Ritual: first encounter with the Ancestors through Water
Session Three: The Àjẹ́ and the Waters — Power That Moves Through Loss
Learn the Àjẹ́ Cosmology framework for understanding grief as sacred feminine power
Explore how Àjẹ́ moves through the body of the griever and the body of the collective
Ceremony: calling in the medicine of what has died
Session Four: Suira and the Liminal — Navigating the Unknown
Deepen relationship with Suira — the indigenous soul, the pre-birth knowing
Learn ritual technologies for moving through liminal spaces without losing the thread
Practice: ancestral dialogue for threshold navigation
Session Five: The Altar of Loss — Ceremony for What We Carry
Build the ritual container for your grief, your dead, your thresholds uncrossed
Learn the cosmological distinction between grief that feeds life and grief that accumulates
Ceremony: Water offering and communal grief ritual
Session Six: The Medicine Keeper — Becoming What the World Needs
Integrate the path of waters as an ongoing initiatory practice
Name your gifts as a death walker, water bearer, grief medicine keeper
Closing ceremony: threshold crossing into the next passage
Meet the Instructor
About Your Guide
Candice D'Meza is a multidisciplinary artist, liberation educator, ritualist, cosmologist, and public scholar rooted in multiple Diasporic African spiritual lineages — including Dagara cosmology (studied under Dr. Malidoma Patrice Somé), Haitian Vodou (Bois Caïman lineage), and Yoruba/Àjẹ́ frameworks.
She is the founder of the Folx Alchemy School, creator of the Àjẹ́ Cosmology of Imagination, a 2025–2026 Artist-in-Residence at Lawndale Art Center, a four-time Houston Press Theater Award winner, and Herb Alpert Award nominee, with over $200,000 in institutional arts funding and a digital community of 47,000+.
This container was seeded in 2019 with the death of her father — an initiation that baptized her into the path of waters and has been the animating intelligence behind her cosmological and ritual practice ever since.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is this container for?
Those who have experienced significant loss — death, divorce, illness, displacement, political grief, systemic violence — and sense that something initiatory is present in what they have lived. You do not need prior experience with African cosmological frameworks, but you must be willing to engage with ceremony and ritual as primary technologies.
Is this grief therapy or grief support?
Neither. This is cosmological and ritual education grounded in indigenous African frameworks. It is not a replacement for therapy or personal spiritual care, though it may catalyze deep movement in both arenas. We work with grief as an element — as water — not as a psychological diagnosis to be treated.
What is the Water element in this context?
In Dagara cosmology, as taught by Dr. Malidoma Patrice Somé, Water is one of five elemental forces that organize the cosmos and human purpose. Water governs memory, the ancestors, grief, and the flow between worlds. This container uses Water as both framework and medicine.
What is the Suira?
Suira is a Dagara concept that points toward the indigenous soul — the primordial memory of who we are before and beyond this life. It is the part of us that holds our pre-birth purpose and knows how to navigate what the modern world has no language for.
Will sessions be recorded?
Yes. All live sessions will be recorded and available with lifetime access for all registered participants.
What if I cannot attend live?
You are welcome and will receive full access to recordings. The live container is encouraged for the depth of communal witnessing it offers, but the teachings are available to all.