Howling at the Moon 2026
August 10 – September 21 Online Councils
September 27 – October 2 In-Person Immersion
Your next step on the path to becoming who you are meant to be.
Howling at the Moon is an Illuman cohort immersion for men who feel called to deep personal work and the recovery of wholeness. Through self-awareness, inner self-healing, and connection with the deeper archetypal self, participants explore the protective and fragmented parts of the psyche that shape how we relate to ourselves, others, and the world. Carl Jung called this process the “path to individuation”: the lifelong journey of becoming who you are meant to be.
This experience begins with four online Council sessions and concludes with a five-day, in-person wilderness immersion at Aravaipa Canyon Ranch in Arizona. The current immersion draws from Bill Plotkin’s Wild Mind, along with readings from other cultural and spiritual guides.
The Main Practices Include:
Cultivation of wholeness
Council and mirror work
Group mirror training
Solo wilderness wanders
Individual dreamwork, active imagination, and guided mirror work
Self-designed ceremony
Who Is This For?
This immersion is appropriate for any man who wishes to cultivate deeper aliveness, authenticity, and connection with soul. Through time in the natural world, participants will deepen their relationship with the wild, with Spirit, and with the protective parts of the psyche that may have shaped or limited their lives.
For some men, this work may culminate in a Men’s Rites of Passage, creating space to ceremonialize transformation and mark the threshold into a new season of life.
Event Details
Dates (Online Council): August 10 and 24, September 7 and 21; 5 PM PT
Dates (In-Person Immersion): September 27 - October 2, 2026
In-Person Immersion Location: Aravaipa Canyon Ranch, Arizona. Accommodations available in the ranch house or camping.
Price: $875
Questions? Contact John Lew at gjohnlew@gmail.com or Dan Dolquist at dandolquist@gmail.com
Our Guides
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Dan Dolquist has served for more than thirty-five years as a pastor, leader, mentor, and guide for those seeking to live more fully and authentically. His work moves through theology, community leadership, organizational development, and the deeper terrain of soul, transformation, and belonging in the natural world. Dan studied at Fuller and Princeton Theological Seminaries, the University of Edinburgh, and the University of Kansas, and completed post-doctoral work with Fr. Richard Rohr at the Center for Action and Contemplation. He is a member of the Animas Valley Institute Guide Guild and trained extensively with Dr. Bill Plotkin. Dan currently serves on Illuman’s Curricula Council, helping guide Howling at the Moon and The Deep Masculine Journey, and is the author of Finding Your Wild and Being Here: Mindfulness and the Practice of Presence.
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John is a wilderness guide who revels in depth psychology and the wilderness of nature and soul. He is trained in the Wild Mind work of Animas Valley Institute, as a Vision Quest guide with the School of Lost Borders, and is currently a Jungian Analyst in training at the CG Jung Study Center in Los Angeles, CA. He is a lover of depth analysis, the wisdom traditions, mysticism and esoteric religions, dreams and deep imagination, and the symbolic life. His sense of adventure is a wander into the underworld, an encounter with Self and Mystery, and the pursuit of wholeness for the unfolding of the world. His passion is to know you deeply, to be in relationship with both humans and “more-than-humans”, and to live fully alive. He did his Rite of Passage with Illuman in 2014.