The Four Shields of Human Nature: A Teaching DVD

Steven Foster and Meredith Little

In 1996 a group of nine youth, four trainees, and two wilderness rites of passage guides, Steven Foster and Meredith Little, gathered in the mountains of the Sierra Nevada to complete a modern day wilderness passage rite, an initiation from childhood to adulthood. This video is documentation of one of the many preparatory meetings which were held in the days before these young people walked out to live alone without food for three days and nights.

The Four Shields is a teaching Steven and Meredith offered to every group of youth or adults who were purposefully marking their passage from one life phase to another. It speaks to the belief that humans are not separate from nature and what is sacred is not removed from the profane of our daily lives. It is an ancient, nature-based “psychology,” expressing a truth that resonates in people of diverse cultures and religious paths. It is a teaching of the land – a thread of “eternal” truth.

The profits from the sale of this DVD will be divided between the Steven Foster Memorial Scholarship Fund at the School of Lost Borders, and Lost Borders Press, which is committed to publishing works which explore various ways of introducing meaningful passage rites into modern culture. The information on this DVD is a simple, clear version of what is more fully explored in the book The Four Shields: The Initiatory Seasons of Human Nature, by Steven Foster.