Rite de Passage
A curated experiential immersion

A rite of passage names a condition of transition. A subtle displacement in which the familiar loosens and certainty begins to shift.

First articulated by Arnold van Gennep in Les Rites de Passage (1909), the concept describes a structured process through which individuals move from one state of being to another — social, psychological, or spiritual. Across cultures, rites of passage have functioned as architectures of transformation: not symbolic markers of change, but operative frameworks through which change becomes possible. They momentarily unmoor the individual from their habitual coordinates, suspending the given and opening a space for reconfiguration.

The experience takes place in the Moroccan desert, understood not as landscape but as a conceptual condition. Historically and symbolically, the desert has functioned as a site of withdrawal, exposure, and recalibration — a space where systems of reference thin out and attention sharpens. As Terry Tempest Williams writes, “If the desert is holy, it is because it is a forgotten place that allows us to remember the sacred.” In this terrain — where there is no place to hide and so we are found — the desert becomes a passage toward humility, concentration, and creativity: a pilgrimage less toward elsewhere than toward the self.

Within this setting, the experience is articulated through three movements — separation (withdrawal from the familiar), liminality (the suspended threshold of shared ritual), and incorporation (a quiet return, subtly reconfigured) — activated through curated rituals, immersive art experiences, yoga and somatic practices, tea ceremonies, and traditional cultural practices.