I’m Riordan—an artist, independent researcher, ritualist, and PhD candidate exploring the edges of healing, identity, and soul.

I hold a bachelor's degree in anthropology and political science from the University of Washington. I worked for five years as an award-winning journalist, covering food systems, craft beer, and farm-to-table culture—places where I found meaning and community during the first major collapse of my life: leaving an abusive marriage and beginning to reclaim my queer and trans identity after years of religious repression.

My professional work mirrored my personal initiation. As I remembered who I was, my writing and research turned toward consciousness, healing, psychedelics, myth, grief, and the return to an ensouled world. I came through suicidality to something far more sacred than survival: joy. A true desire to live. A passion for helping others do the same.

Over the years I’ve worked as a gonzo anthropologist, independent ethnographer, and ceremonial participant-observer—researching from the inside out. That path has now formalized into a PhD at the Transart Institute for Creative Research, where I’m building a project that weaves together art, mysticism, plant medicine, and Indigenous cosmologies. I study how humans have always used ceremony to reconnect with what matters—and how we can remember those ways in a modern context, especially for queer, trans, and neurodivergent people.

My work draws on:

• Jungian and archetypal psychology

• Mystic and contemplative traditions (Buddhist, Hindu, animist)

• Maya calendar systems (trained by a lineage holder)

• Plant spirit healing and the Shipibo system

• Internal Family Systems, EMDR, and Compassionate Inquiry

• Direct experience, ritual design, and ancestral dreaming

I now offer 1:1 sessions, group workshops, seasonal ritual containers, and immersive art/performance experiences. I see every offering as an invitation to return to the sacred—in body, in community, in time.

I believe everything is alive.
The dead are as present as the living.
And every part of us belongs.