“I believe we are already what we seek. It is waiting for us like a seed to be loved into blossom.” — Mark Nepo

About Flora Schanda

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Warm Welcome!

Thanks so much for being here. I am Flora (she/her) and I delight in supporting others to come into conscious relationship with the more-than-human world and their own kind and loving ancestors, and reconnect with the wisdom, beauty and magic of the ancient heart of this animate Earth.

My love for the Earth and the benevolent people and powers seen and unseen is rooted in my practice as queer witch, seeress, ritualist, scholar, animist activist and Pagan priestess re-imagining and rekindling the Earth-honouring ways of older European ancestors in service to a more kind, just and sustainable world for all.

I am a descendant of diverse Celtic, Germanic, Norse and Slavic peoples, and my recent ancestors are from Austria, Bohemia, Hungary, Slovenia, Italy and Germany.

My people are people of the oak and the white deer, of mountains, clouds and the northern lights, of the ocean, rivers and the yew, people of stone circles, grains and the sun, of wildflowers and bees, of birch, owl and elder, larch, juniper and falcon.

Through my own journey to overcome profound challenges caused by intergenerational and energetic burdens, I have learned to partner with helpful ancestors and other wise and compassionate powers to change poison into medicine, turn the tides, and reweave the threads of my fate.

With 30 years of experience in ritual and nature connection, I hold space for witchy tree-huggers, gentle old souls, sensitive spoonies, anti-fascist mystics, spiritual activists, starry-eyed faeries, nerdy scholars, animist queers, and the weird and wild at heart.

By accessing the immense support available in the seen and unseen, I help my clients to find clarity and new resources, strengthen energetic boundaries, transform blockages, connect with their guiding star, remember their place in the web of the living world, and embody their gifts and magic for the benefit of all beings and the sacred Earth in this time of the Great Turning.

There's a blackbird perched
in the branches of the silver birch
Growing from my chambered heart
Singing through the rising dark
Singing of the world to come

— Johnny Flynn & Robert Macfarlane

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My Story

Born and currently living in Vienna between the Danube and the Vienna Woods, I grew up mostly on the northern border of the Alps in the Central Austrian lake region of the Salzkammergut.

A child of landscape ecologists, I was raised with an awareness and appreciation for the beautiful diversity and interdependence of the many beings and ecosystems of this planet.

As an Earth empath, I have always felt a deep connection with the more-than-human natural world, and continue to be blessed by my friendship with flowers, trees, forests, moss, lichen, fungi, mountains, animal kin, the fae, and spirits of water, wind and weather.

I got involved in ritual arts and Earth-honouring modern Pagan spirituality as a teenager, and have been on these paths for 30 years now. My ever-curious mind and heart have likewise guided me to explore meditation, mindfulness, somatics, oracular mediumship, trance and ecstasy practices, as well as body and energy work.

With an academic background in German and English literary studies, I have spent many years doing library and archive work, and am currently pursuing a master’s degree in comparative religious studies with a focus on ancient history, mythology and gender studies.

I have also long been involved in activism, art and community organising, especially for queer-feminist and sex-positive spaces and projects, and I cherish these connections and experiences.

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Starting in 2017, a health emergency followed by chronic illness and lateron Long Covid turned my life upside down and led me to seek support and experience the transformative potential of ancestral healing, ritual arts and nature connection.

Through the course of a long, nonlinear healing journey, these practices have been beacons on my path and anchors in the eye of the storm. They helped me to navigate and overcome profound challenges.

And they helped me not only get through, but emerge again to greet the new dawn with more groundedness, inner strength, presence, clarity, compassion, alignment with my true self, and appreciation of the preciousness of our unique and fragile earthly lives.

Following ancestral guidance and the threads of my unfolding destiny, I have taken various practitioner trainings to extend that support and light the way for others, and I started seeing clients in 2020. I have also stepped further into embodying some of my lineage gifts as dedicated Priestess of Freyja in the Way of the Völva, a contemporary Norse Pagan tradition, and am currently deepening my training as Priestess and Oracle of the Goddess.

This also calls for reclaiming and disentagling what remains of some of these older wisdom ways from legacies of colonialism, erasure, or romanticised misrepresentations, as well as from abuse by supremacist, fascist and nationalist ideologies.

Work With Me

Deepening my relationships with the living world and the compassionate elder powers, and embodying the blessings and ancient magic of my wise and kind ancestors have become sources of felt belonging, support and guidance in my life.

I feel grateful, happy and honoured to share the gifts I have received on my own journey, and to guide others on these pathways.

I welcome clients from diverse cultural, religious and personal backgrounds, and specialise in working with fellow empaths and highly sensitives, people seeking to reclaim or deepen spiritual gifts, artists, activists, scholars, geeks, those living with chronic illness, disability or neurodivergence, and members of the LGBTIQ+ community.


If you are interested in working together, you are warmly invited to book a free 20-30 minute consultation to ask initial questions, clarify what you are looking for, and find out whether we are a good fit. There will be no pushy capitalist sales tactics, strings attached, or witchy spells cast on you.

May we all remember that we are blessings, and may we know home, and belonging, and that we are loved.

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Teachers, Mentors & Wisdom Lineages

Some of my trainings, teachers and mentors previous or ongoing include:

  • Ancestral Lineage Healing Practitioner ~ Dr. Daniel Foor / Ancestral Medicine, USA

  • The Way of the Oracle Priestess (in training) ~ Sally Pullinger / Glastonbury Goddess Temple, UK

  • Priesterin der Göttin / Priestess of the Goddess (in training) ~ Hildegard Kirchweger / Noreiatempel, AT

  • The Way of the Völva - Priestess of Freyja ~ Zindra Andersson / Glastonbury Goddess Temple, UK & Noreiatempel, AT

  • Awakening to the Runes ~ Maggie Cunningham / Magin Rose, UK

  • This Land Magical Training ~ Al Head / Moving Energy, UK

  • Advanced Ritual Healing Practitioner ~ Maris Bergrune / Living Voice Medicine, USA

  • Gather at the Well - Norse Ritual Animism ~ Maris Bergrune / Living Voice Medicine, USA

  • Oracular Seiðr & The High Seat ~ Maris Bergrune / Living Voice Medicine, USA

  • Transformational Mediumship ~ Maris Bergrune / Living Voice Medicine, USA

  • Foundations of Psychopomp ~ Shannon Willis / Red Earth Healing, USA

  • Ancestral Dreamwork ~ Shannon Willis / Red Earth Healing, USA

  • Waldbaden-Trainerin / Forest Bathing Trainer ~ Ulli Felber / waldwelt, AT

  • Nature and Forest Therapy Guide (in practicum phase) ~ ANFT, Slovenia/USA

  • Naturmentorin / Nature Mentoring and Wilderness Skills (in training) ~ Wildniscamps, AT

  • Forest Pedagogy Seminars e.g. Wilderness Herbalism, Fungi Adventures, Animal Tracking ~ Forstliche Ausbildungsstätte Traunkirchen, AT

  • Energy Work ~ Robert Henderson, AT

  • Energy Body Mastery & Energy Body Clearing ~ Langston Kahn / Last Mask Center, USA

  • Urban Tantra Professional Training ~ Barbara Carrellas / Urban Tantra, Sweden/USA

  • Lomi Ke Ala Hoku Master Practitioner ~ Margareta Kappl, DE / lineage of Kahu Abraham of Kawai’i

  • Bowen Technique Basic Training (in training) ~ Bowen Academy Europe, AT

  • Sharon Wheeler’s ScarWork ~ Andrea Clusen, DE

“Flora and I met in 2019 at an Ancestral Lineage Healing Intensive in Berlin and at another she hosted that summer in her home city of Vienna. She then joined Cohort Four of the Practitioner Training, and over the past five years, I’ve come to know Flora as kind, funny, empathic, and deeply committed to the long-term work of cultural healing.

In a moment of competition for the spotlight, she’s more likely to be found out feeding the crows, tending to an abandoned gravestone, or otherwise caring for those human and other-than-human kin who inhabit and fall through the cracks of the dominant culture. Flora is caring, reliable, and skillful and I can easefully and fully recommend her offerings.”

– Dr. Daniel Foor, Author of “Ancestral Medicine - Rituals for Personal and Family Healing”

Heart of Belonging

These days I walk the forest
with the love of my ancestors
coursing in my blood like sap in a tree,
their voices on the wind and echoing in my footsteps.

Listen, they say, there is a door in the oak
and if you enter you will be as the tree of life,
roots reaching deep underground
into the heart of Earth,
at one with the infinite web
whose pulse beats like a drum within the land.

Your core is a flash of bright lightning
with a heart of green flame
and your branches touch the clouds,
the stars and the heavens.
An ancient bird nests there,
looking out high from the center of the world.

Listen, follow the ancient tracks
and you will be as the white deer,
antlers crowned with stars,
your hooves sparking a shimmering trail
across the night skies.

Listen, there is moss growing secretly
beneath the snow
and if only asked kindly,
it will heal wounds of flesh and of soil.

Listen, they say, all of this is us, all of this is you.
You have been with us from the beginning.
Your bones are made of sweet kinship
and you are held in the heart of belonging.

In the dark of the forest two owls call
and in the voice of my ancestors I answer.
Listen, all of this is you, all of this is us.
We have been here from the beginning.

— Flora Schanda