Category: Beauty

SOULand : Making the World of Earth's Longing

18/4/2020

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SOULand: Making the World of our Longing ~ has recently become SOULand : Making the World of Earth's Longing

in response to Corona Virus insights.

While being sick with the virus, in the last few weeks, I saw that much will be changed after this phase of lock down.

Personally and collectively we are going through an initiation, a collective Rite of Passage.

My identity, positioning, offerings and responding to and in our world are now all in the sacred compost heap of Soul, of Anima Mundi, at her service.

This post is to honour and celebrate, in your good company, all of the active prayers that moved through me in the last 5 years. Bowing in front of them all, while thanking each vision and projects for the unravelling, initiating and the tempering medicine they carried so generously...

Thanks to you all for your part in it whether that is as an apprentice, a mentee, a participant or a supporter of all kinds, forms and species alive and dead. In awe and wonder!

With gratitude, grit and attentiveness ~~~

Azul Thomé ~ active visionary of SOULand
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SOULand is an ensouling response to our uninitiated, traumatised, collapsing and transforming world.
It is a growing programme of nature-informed rituals, a mycelium of trainings&apprenticeship, eARTh and mentorship. To restore and weave our humanity back to a deep & wild relationship with the Earth, mature the human soul and co-create the world of our Earth's longing. It is a vision of sanctuary, a great giveaway. It is soul activism.

Making the World of Earth's Longing
Longing is the language of SOUL. A current moving through us, whispering wildly to us how to come back Home.
Most of us behave as if we were homeless to our SOUL and orphaned to our Earth with great consequences.

When we feel deep longings moving through our bodies and through our dreams we are blessed by SOUL. So what happens to these Longings? Why are we in such dire state if SOUL constantly speaks through our imagination, hearts and dreams? Are they like seeds falling on concrete? What does our SOUL need?
These longings moving through us... could be bringing us to one of the initiatory gates of grief. Grief of not being welcome, wanted, enough, or of not knowing enough, have enough support, money, skills etc...Paralysis, shame and envy can become the new guests in our beings.
Grief is a gate that most of us want to avoid at all costs, even if it costs us our lives ~ therefore we never move beyond the call of SOUL. An initiation to empower us to create the world of our longing is miscarried.
We stop, numb and stay small not to feel our sadness, our numbness, our fears and anger. We are not skilled in Grief neither in Love. A terrible poverty takes place in our heart and imagination.
SOULand provides collective spaces for the release of our sacred grief, so we can meet ourselves as creative gifted human beings ~ a little more empowered and resourced to make the World of our Longing as a great gift...

Initiation
Initiation is a invitation to wildly court and lean into the SOUL of four Sisters - Grief, Love, Death and Birth. There is no true initiation without the ‘small’ death of our personality, our set positioning in life or our childlike naivety.
A well held initiatory ritual will bring us closer to a homecoming, a return to our interconnectedness with all of life, transforming our sense of being homeless or orphaned into belonging. Most importantly we move from being zombies in our lives to being fully aware of our death and therefore offering our lives fully for the thriving of Life...
https://www.souland.org
Facebook Page

Grief Composting Circles and Apprenticeship
The Grief Compositing Circles are communal rituals of 4 hours infused with beauty and connection with all beings, humans and all others.
Grief in this context is the welcoming of anger, fear, sadness, despair, numbness and the mystery of all these emotions as we welcome them in a collective safe space.
The Circles hold an important part in total darkness as if in a compost heap, a womb or a kiva. Sounds and wailing are freely used to encourage our wild and sensuous selves to be present. Wild means of nature, not feral or out of control!
CIRCLES: https://www.souland.org/grief-composting.html
TRAININGS: https://www.souland.org/training.html
FACEBOOKGROUP https://www.facebook.com/groups/griefcompostingcircles/

The Message of water
Water is SOULand’s main guide.
One grey day of December I found myself by the river Dart in Devon who gifted me with an astonishing message of Love.

‘’My dear child do not worry about me, Water. I recover quickly with the song of our birds, the love of trees, with movement, moments of rest and the prayers moving around our Earth. I regain balance with your heartfelt tears, your remembered songs added to the ones of so many now. Do not focus your energy on 'Saving me'. Something way more profound is taking place right now, listen and observe!
All of us; Soil, Water, Plants, Air, Animals and all Ancestors are Calling you Humans, to us so we can Save your species. We know and have known for a while that you do not have much time left if you do not wake up to your birthright Belonging to Earth and come Home soon, real real soon. We keep dying, we keep Giving Away our Lives to shake you up from a deep and very long amnesia. Once you can allow the truth and quality of such Love to permeate through your traumatised being and desolate soul you will wake up from a life time of anaesthesia to your immense grief and capacity for Love.
When you create containers of sacred beauty that opens your Heart to what Love truly is then you will realise with a massive sob that you were loved all along, always have and for ever by all of Us who you think You are Saving!
You have five years as a species to Wake up, Mature and Remember in your bones that you belong to Life "

https://www.souland.org/water.html

Conversations with Grief and Water
Conversations with Grief of Water is a series of interviews with women and men engaged fully with our collapsing world, our dying systems and our grief. People engaged with deep love and longing to fully participate in our world in ways of soul and beauty. They respond to the message of Water received on 2nd of December.
So far I have spoken with and recorded Joanna Macy, Simon Be, Li An Phoa, Jon Young, Francis Weller, Manda Scott, Pat McCabe, Megan Hollingsworth, Stephan Harding, Pablo Servigne and Stephen Jenkinson… each one bringing a thread for a cloth weaving in the past, present and future… I anticipate mystery and our bone memory to be awakened by it.
https://www.souland.org/conversations-with-grief--water.html

Earth Temples on the edge of cities
I have a vision of an Earth Temple at the edge of every town and every city. A circular womb-like place of astonishing beauty celebrating all of creation .. a place to rest into, reflect, pray, listen, speak and sing to all sentient beings and restore our animist selves.
After a year of dreaming, drawings of the Earth Temple have arrived. It is 25 Meters wide. Blessed by 2000 generations of ancestors. 4 living entrances and a Kiva in the centre. A Feminine shaped Temple for all. Made of the local material found on site.
I am calling for a meeting with anyone who resonates with helping create the first Earth Temple - Makers, Cobbers, Strawbellers, Glassmakers, Carpenters, Alchemists, eARTh Artists, Planners, Weavers of Natural Laws, Shambhala Warriors, and other cracked and called human beings.
https://www.souland.org/earth-temple.html

Life Cairn in Totnes
Every 24 hours, between 100 and 150 species of animals, invertebrates, fungi and plants go extinct. They will never court, sing, nest, seed, or dance their life-bringing rituals again. They are not dead - Death being food for the birthing of new life, no they are extinct! ...
Can we ponder on the difference in our own heart and the impact on our soul?
We are increasingly noticing that we need to gather and rise up in circles and community groups to meet the enormity of the consequences of our long term disconnection to the interconnectedness with all of Life thus bringing up an immense grief, un~skilled and feared in many of us.
On the 1st December, the Totnes community is invited to create a Life Cairn, a memorial for the honouring of Extinct Species. Please join us if you are touched by the 6th massive extinction of Life on Earth and want to give Away your gifts, broken hearts and talents to this offering.
Artists, singers, musicians, children, elders, mothers, fathers, lovers of all sorts and all two, three and four legged welcome!
https://www.souland.org/life-cairn-in-totnes.html

See Life Cairn in Totnes Event on Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/events/1773741646245298/

"WomBelt: Weaving Women back into Matter"
Our womb is a place of great wisdom for ourselves and one another, to stand soulfully and maturely on and for our Earth's wellbeing. Any trauma will create a dam and a great blockage to the river of our lives.
A Wombelt is made using the backstrap weaving method. Making a Wombelt is a ritual, a rite of passage, a way back to mattering, to honour our womb and the space holding it. We are weaving ourselves and our stories back together for one another, to skill up, to mend, to actively pray for one another.
Because we Matter, we are matter, mater, mother, Earth...
Life Belts
A day ritual of backstrap weaving for men and woman called to make the world of their longing by weaving the soul threads of their lives around a tree.
Collective Wombelts
WomanFest, the first All Women Radical Participation festival.
Azul wove for three days. She invited the women to respond to the question ‘What is your deepest wildest longing?’. 73 women wrote their response onto a roll of fabric. Each scroll was inserted into the weaving, therefore creating a collective Wombelt of our deepest and wildest longings. At the closing ceremony, the belt was given away and wrapped around the hips of Tanya Jacut, the visionary woman of this festival.

Oxford Storytelling festival
Azul was invited to weave her Wombelts. She decided to create only one ~ a collective Life Wombelt weaving people’s longing into it. She invited people to respond to ‘What is the world of your longing and belonging?’. Their responses are written on little fabric scrolls and inserted in the weaving. There is 108 responses offerings in this belt. The belt is to be given to a cave yet to be found. A cave, a Kiva is an Earth womb able to listen to such a soulful gift.
https://www.souland.org/wombelt.html
https://www.facebook.com/wombelt/

Inner Council of a Woman Queen
The archetype of the Queen when welcomed in its entirety is in service to something bigger than herself. The Queen with her King learns to listen and protect life both within the inner council and within her community of human and non-human beings.
The other 8 archetypes of the woman are then at her service. They are the Mother, the Child, the Nun, the Maiden, the Lover, the Huntress, the Magician, the Crone.
Listening to our inner council brings us to meet our inner archetypes, to welcome their lights and their shadows, to nourish decision-making for the thriving of Life.
Each flag became an invitation for the Daimon of one archetype to find the place to belong and share their deep wisdom. The meeting of the archetype and the other than human invites and welcomes an animist understanding of our archetypes.
This is a generous response to a prayer for soul sanity.
https://www.souland.org/inner-council-of-a-woman.html
Inner Council for men and women to come 2019

Returning to Earth what was stolen
Returning to Earth our silver, gold, precious stones, diamond, ivory, coral, platinum.
All those have been extracted with terrible violence and destructive impact to all living beings. The mining destroys rivers, people, animals and whole ecosystems to feed our greed and addiction to power.
I invite us to join me as I also return the result of my time as a goldsmith and silversmith in our mountains, forests, rivers and seas. To feel our sorrow, say sorry and make amend to come back momentarily to some resemblance of sanity.
We can then honour our creativity and the alchemist in us by using local and renewable material in a sacred way again.
https://www.souland.org/returning-to-earth-what-was-stolen.html

EARTH WISDOM TENDERS - DECLARATION AND PRAYER

OUR DECLARATION, ACTIVE PRAYER and VISION STATEMENT

Earth Wisdom Tenders is
FOR ALL SOUL ACTIVISTS WHOSE FAITH, BELIEFS AND SPIRITUAL PRACTICES ARE ROOTED IN EARTH WISDOM.

Earth Wisdom Tenders
We are Tending to all life on Earth in our troubled time, we are an eclectic group of people who are learning to deeply listen to the Earth, to the visible, the invisible and to the non human world ~ to honour their wisdom and knowledge, and to hear what they need from us right now at this time of crisis and extinction.

Honouring the wisdom of the Earth and Indigenous cultures, we work with the cycles of nature and the cosmos, and what we perceive as the great mystery.

Longing for a place of healing and connection, we seek to create a re-emergence and a rewriting of these ancient ways, through ceremonies, rituals, initiation and rites of passage, to enable our deep soul connection and wisdom to reawaken.

We sit in Council of all Beings, we Tend to the Children of all Species, we Initiate our Young ones, we claim our Elders, we Ancestralise our Dead and we recreate Community as a service to all of Life.

"We are Earth Wisdom Tenders…...

When all sentient beings are our sisters and brothers
When we actively remember that we belong to the living web of Life
When all laws and decisions consider the wellbeing of the children of all species
When we trust that our Earth can talk through us of her deep knowledge and wisdom
When we stand for all land, water and all beings to be free from ownership, colonisation and commercialisation…
When we understand that we are all re-apprenticing to these ways

Our dear Earth is 4.5 billions years of age, she is our Wise Elder whom we learn from and tend to”.

With Love and Cœurage
Earth Wisdom Tenders
www.earthwisdomtenders.net
FaceBook: GROUP

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A collective ritual for the support and honouring of all Corona's Dead

5/4/2020

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For all the people who have died of Corona virus without company or honouring and who are dying in mass now.

Bones to be returned to Earth on Wednesday 8th April

BURYING THE BONES ~ FOR ALL CORONA's DEAD
WEDNESDAY 8th APRIL 2020

Burying the Bones
Facebook Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/502217333779590/

Here is a vision and an instruction given to me while I was in and out of sleep with Coronavirus last Monday.

It was clear that I needed to pass this message on, one to large for one person to hold. As usual it bring fear into my system to share such messages and yet I must ~ as a duty of care and to honour our dead.
I ask that you keep a soft eye and a wide listening as you read . Thank you!

The vision connected originally with the thousands of bones washed over low tide on a beach in London...but to get anyone to harvest these and send them to Devon is almost impossible. So we will stay local.

~~~~~~~~~~~~
"It is time to Bury the Bones back to the Soil of the Earth.

Gather the bones on your shelves, in museums and all discarded bones.

Bones of all beings need to touch the soil again.

This includes also all gold, silver, precious stones and all stones mined and stolen from the Bones of the Earth.

All Bones must return to the Ground, to the Soil and to the Soul of Gaia, Mother Earth.

The Earth needs her Bones back to support all the dead coming in mass and fast.

As you return them you could:

~ Sing to them songs of praise and grief to sooth them
~ Rub them in red ochre and oil if you can
~ Place them in beauty on soil or bury them .
~ Ornate them with flowers, spices and seeds.
~ Light a candle so they can see the way back home
~ Sing to them again.

This action will free the flow for all the new dead.
If you have many bones, when you bury them placed them in a circle preferably in a forest or wood.

As mushrooms and mycelium grow their filaments, by burying the bones their 'filaments' start forming and weaving a net of connection and recognition for the recent dead of Coronavirus to feel held in love ~ for all to rest in peace and honoured.

A ritual to support them all to not feel alone as they passage to the shore of their well and wise Ancestors.

By burying all the bones that have not been honourably and sacredly buried in the past ~ we open the passage for a blessed and an easier flow for the recent dead of the Corona Virus.

We are in a time of Great Reconfiguration, each of our actions and spoken words are seeds for the garden of the future. Whether we eat from it or not. Our duty of care."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

With care, attentiveness, support and service
Azul ThomeAzul-Valérie Thomé and good company
for SOULand: Making the World of Her Longing
and Earth Wisdom Tenders GROUP

HERE IS THE LINK TO THE FACEBOOK EVENT AGAIN if you would like to be in good company.

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Is Gaia’s evolution being initiated by Corona Virus?

4/4/2020

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On Monday while being ill I received few messages from the Coronavirus.

If you have not switched off then welcome , and I hope you can keep a soft view and a wide listening throughout what I am about the share with you. There is fear in my body as I write and yet I must pass this on.

Gaia’s evolution is initiated and activated when Corona’s DNA enters the DNA of a human.

Intuitively it was also clear when the temperature rose and the lungs filled up that I needed to fast immediately, which is not something I ever really enjoy doing. Through high temperature, going in and out of sleep and deep dreaming I would come back as if I dived deep into the ocean ~ bringing back a treasure each time I woke up. This is one of them. But first an other portal.

Being an "intuitive geneticist", a deep dreamer who travels through planes is a gift that has its price.

Being an "intuitive geneticist", a deep dreamer who travels through planes is a gift that has its price. However there is also a duty of care to share the messages if I feel that they might be of beneficial use.
See for yourself and let me know in the comments section what it ignites in you if you wish. I would be delighted to read them.
Any rudeness will of course be erased.

2 THIS IS THE MESSAGE and THE VISION DESCRIBED AS ACCURATELY AND SENSITIVELY AS I CAN .

I 'saw' the 2 DNA (coronavirus and mine) meet in a dance, as they did something got activated and initiated into an other state of being.
then this came.
~~~~~~~~~~
~ The SACRED MEETING OF DNA –

"Gaia’s evolution is initiated and activated when Corona’s DNA enters the DNA of a human.

What is happening now is part of the Dream of Life of Gaia.

There is no stopping it.

What we are required to do is to facilitate, to witness, to ease the suffering, and to alchemise this rough experience into a sacred passage for all beings.

Each person that falls ill with coronavirus is being initiated into a new experience of self. Each dead is part of the evolution of our world and our re encounter with Death.

Here in this scenario, the field of right and wrong does not exist. There is a threshold to another way of seeing and engaging with this time.

The Sacred work of Grief Composting (compassion: suffering with) and Deep Gratitude (interconnectedness with all of life) is part of the alchemical process that facilitates the dream of life of Gaia to come through.

She (Gaia) is needing to move to the next phase.
It is happening now.
It is part of the evolving Natural Laws of the Earth and of our Cosmology.

There is no return to where we were and who we were, we have now left all that is familiar.

Our personality and identity that was not connected to Soul’s longing is now disintegrating.

Any part of us that is not aligned with Anima Mundi, the Soul of the Earth will need to decompose, to become sacred food for the world to eventually re-emerge and be reborn.

Right now we are in the liminal stage as is with the process of total transmutation of a cocoon before the butterfly forms. We are in the “soup”,

There is a longing and a way to meet our collective rite of passage before rebirth and the welcoming of our new world. May it be so."

Gaia’s evolution is initiated and activated when Corona’s DNA enters the DNA of a human.

I am obviously no geneticist nor biologist. But it is time for all kind of deep knowledge rooted in the living Earth to be taking their rightful place in the diversity of voices and perspectives required today.

SINCE THAT DAY I HAD DONE SOME RESEARCH ONLINE to add threads of other fields to reassure the left brain part of us.

Our Genome’s Viral Graveyard
LIVE SCIENCE
Our complicated relationship with viruses
An Ancient Virus May Be Responsible for Human Consciousness

New York TIMES
Ancient viruses are buried in your DNA

Thank you for reading that far. It was important to find a way and a platform to share this with you. I am now recovering from the virus attentive to what will and has happened.

With gratitude

Azul Thomé
SOULand: Making the World of Her Longing
www.souland.org

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the Wisdom of Suffering and Soul Activism

5/11/2019

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Soul whispered to me of "pathosophy" (the wisdom of suffering) since being a child.

It will be through our willingness to be tempered, to walk with a broken heart, to compost collectively our immense grief and the courage to make amend, restore and regenerate the soil & soul of our beautiful home that we may know what it is to be a true human being.

Whether we like it or not we are being initiated and 'passaged' into the next phase of being humans here on Earth.

Like many of you I was diagnosed, pathologised, institutionalised and medicalised due to behaving 'oddly' and attempting suicide a few times.

Since being a child I have been wondering how to transform suffering into wisdom, into a gift for Life.

As a Soul Activist ~ my whole life is now radically (rooted) in service to the sacredness of all Life. That clarity of purpose is a great ally.

To be a Give Away for the thriving of all life, as all other species do, is a sort of homecoming in a world filled with homeless orphans lost between being alive and dead.

Whether we like it or not we are being initiated and 'passaged' into the next phase of being humans here on Earth.

All rites of passage can become a sacred initiation or it can stay a rough unprepared, unaccompanied and unwelcome initiation. It is up to us and to our capacity to create the world of our longing, the world of Soul, the world of the Soul of our Earth.

Soul will always take us to the next edge of maturation and Homecoming. Our separation with all that Matters, with all that is made of matter is making life so very ill.

It will be through our willingness to be tempered, to walk with a broken heart, to compost collectively our immense grief and the courage to make amend, restore and regenerate the soil & soul of our beautiful home that we may know what it is to be a true human being.

Life is challenge. Life works us ~ as would a blacksmith who take a piece of steel to shape it gladly through fire, water and pressure ~ instructed by the movement of Soul.

SInce I was conceived suffering was breathing her sulfurique breath down my neck

Life tempered me through great and regular sufferings from birth propelling me to a multitude of foster care 'homes', through being a war child in Beirut then a refugee in France, to then being regularly and brutally violated until early adulthood by two adults who were perhaps to traumatised to mature.
What a fierce and fine training for where we are as a species.

Soul called me to her bosom when i had given up on humans relations including my own possible humanity. I created havoc bringing much suffering to my immediate surrounding. The claws of our colonising culture grabbed me ruthlessly.

Like many of you I was diagnosed, pathologised, institutionalised and medicalised due to behaving 'oddly' and attempting suicide a few times.

Each Death visited event happened at the crucial stages where my Soul called for a rite of Passage, when my psyche was ripening for an initiation into the next ecosophical manifestation of what being a true human means.

Our society does not want true initiated subversive and mature humans

Soul saw through the thick spell of pathologies (the science of suffering) and spoke to me through the seasons of the wild lands, earth rooted art and the sacred ways of the marginals and outcasts.

Soul whispered to me of "pathosophy" (the wisdom of suffering) since being a child.

I "knew" somehow that all this suffering will eventually be of use to others and to Life.

Earth told me and deeply dreamt me through earth~based ceremonies, deep rituals, renegotiating ancestral contracts and mending what was broken through Making the world of my Longing.

Each longing being a thread of Soul's wild imagination for a balanced way of Life.

She, Soul, speaks through you as well, through your deepest longings. I would say dare your life to give that longing to the thriving of Life. What else is there to do?

So i propose that there is a deep wisdom belonging to our earth that knows when our soul needs an initiation ~ that time requires a death of one state of being to transmute into the more mature state so we can serve life fully ~ all in response to the community we live in of humans and non humans.

Most of us have not been ‘passaged’ , have not been guided by the initiated Elders nor the mycelium of deep connection with all our relatives, them beings trees, animals, fungies, the living and the dead, the visible and the no-thing.

I propose that ~ Our earth’s wisdom and care weave her psyche within ours through Pathosophy.

'Passage' New piece of eARTh by Azul Valerie Thome

I would like to invite you to join in the conversation below, the latest of Pathosophy's courting us back to her:

For all the Rebels and Soul/Sacred Activists whose faith, beliefs, soul and spiritual practices are rooted in Ancient or New Earth Wisdom.

Earth Wisdom Tenders
We are called the ‘Earth Wisdom Tenders’. We are an eclectic group of people who are learning to deeply listen to the earth, the visible and the invisible and the non human world ~ to honour their wisdom and knowledge, and to hear what they need from us right now at this time of crisis and extinction.
We are guided by the wisdom of the past and original cultures and peoples of the present, we work with the cycles and rhythm of the earth, the planets and cosmos and with what we perceive as the great mystery.

Many of us feel grief and great poverty that we have lost these missing practices that were and are woven in intimacy with our living world.

In the past we may have been labelled as pagans, druids, shamans, witches or hippies.

This longing to find a place of belonging and healing has created a re-emergence and a rewriting of these ancient ways, through ceremonies, rituals, initiation and rites of passage, to enable our deep soul connection and wisdom to reawaken.

We sit in Council of all Beings, we Tend to the Children of all Species, we Initiate our Young ones, we claim our Elders, we Ancestralise our Dead and we recreate Community as a service to all of Life.

We are called the Earth Wisdom Tenders : Tending to all Life on Earth in our troubled time

"We are Earth Wisdom Tenders...

~When all sentient beings are our sisters and brothers
~When we remember that we belong to the living web of Life
~When no laws and no decisions shall pass that in any way could harm the children of all species
~When we know that our Earth talks through us of her deep knowledge and wisdom
~We are Earth Wisdom Tenders when no land, no waters and no one is owned, colonised nor commercialised for power and control.

Our dear Earth is 4.5 billions years of age, she is our Wise Elder whom we learn from and tend to”.

With Love and Cœurage
Azul Valerie Thome

Earth Wisdom Tenders
GROUP: https://www.facebook.com/groups/725194284575006/

'SOUL Activism is when Maturing as a Species becomes a Graceful and Rebellious act!'

Azul and friends at the Rebellion in October 2019 in London with the eARTh Flags as the Council of all Being

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Sacred Grief and Rebellious Cœurage

25/9/2019

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the Subversive work of Grief as a Sacred Initiation?

What does it take to shift from a Rough Initiation to a Sacred Initiation?

By Azul Valerie Thome
Since the last Extinction Rebellion Actions in London last April an enquiry and body of work emerged. As I observed people on Waterloo Bridge awakening through Grief and yet not even knowing her name I became concerned. That concern turned into curiosity then actions into creating a serie of offering ~ online and on land ~ with the golden thread: What does it take to shift from a Rough initiation to a Sacred Initiation?

Soul will always initiate us whether we like it or not. Right now we are being taken through a passage as a species and as a planet. We are being dragged right now from a state of being to an other state of being.
A transmutation, a non return mostly unsolicitated and feared.
It could be different.
It is bewildering not to be preparing for a regular rite of Passage with our Elders. It is heart renching for noone to be waiting for us on the other side of such passage, waiting for our stories and gifts which would, in an intact culture, be essential for its well being.

We could still mature through it all, we can make amend, fix our mess, restore Life on Earth and in our own hearts.

We could also crumble into despair, shame and blame.

In that gap between words there is CHOICE.

The choice to see our lives to serve all that is Sacred between humans, our Natural World and our Invisible World.
The choice to offer to Life our self honesty and self forgiveness woven in with our courage and creativity.
And the choice to make the World of our Longing while being Initiated by our sacred, wild, transformational and Rebellious Grief.

IN THE APPRENTICESHIP TO SOUL AND GRIEF 2020 WE WILL WORK WITH THIS

I took the wonderful 5 Gates of Grief of Francis Weller a little further, a little deeper. Here is where I have arrived.

THE 5 GATES OF GRIEF AS INITIATORY GATES

From a point of SEPARATION,
we awaken and come through a GATE OF GRIEF,
into a space of sacred INITIATION of maturing practices
to come back through our GRATITUDE to our natural state of BELONGING.

1 - From the Separation we have created between Life and Death, where we have pushed the pause button on youth to demonise and mock death, we have created a world out of balance. Our relationship with the autumn and winter of Life has been abstracted from our embodied imagination. Therefore the transition between life and death is something feared in stubborn denial. From here we enter the first GATE of GRIEF: What we love we will lose - calls an INITIATION into the mystery of death and into the GRATITUDE of our capacity to love within that mystery.

2 - From the Separation between what is ‘acceptable’ with what is shameful and ‘unwelcome’ in each of us we enter the second GATE of GRIEF: The Places That Have Not Known Love - That place calls for an INITIATION into the mystery of adulthood and maturation and into the GRATITUDE of being able to welcome back home to our Soul all that has been outcast and sent into exile.

3 - From experiencing the Separation between humans and the other than humans we enter the third GATE of GRIEF: The Sorrows of the World which calls for the INITIATION into the immutable bond with all of creation and with deep GRATITUDE that we Belong to our Living World.

4 - The Separation between our Stone Age ancestry and our great effort to eradicate our deep time memory calls us to enter the fourth GATE of GRIEF: What We Expected and Did Not Receive. It calls for an INITIATION into our Deep Time lineage and into the GRATITUDE of Remembering Who we are and Where we come from.

5 - The Separation with our Ancestors created by various unspoken traumas, illnesses, secrets and unreleased suffering is another fracture in our presence here on Earth. We enter the fifth GATE of GRIEF: Ancestral Grief - calling for an INITIATION into Elderhood and into the GRATITUDE that we can Restore and Renegotiate our family tree.

“Grief is subversive, undermining the quiet agreement to behave and be in control of our emotions. It is an act of protest that declares our refusal to live numb and small.
There is something feral about grief, something essentially outside the ordained and sanctioned behaviors of our culture. Because of that, grief is necessary to the vitality of the soul. Contrary to our fears, grief is suffused with life-force.... It is not a state of deadness or emotional flatness.
Grief is alive, wild, untamed and cannot be domesticated. It resists the demands to remain passive and still. We move in jangled, unsettled, and riotous ways when grief takes hold of us. It is truly an emotion that rises from the soul.”
― Francis Weller

Here is short film where I explored walking through the 5 Gates of Grief as Gates of Initiation and Deep Belonging

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The Initiatory Dance of Rebellion and Ancestralisation ~ Newsletter

28/5/2019

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From a full heart! Warm greetings from beautiful Totnes, UK and the river Dart ~ The seal and the heron are here, flowers have exploded in Eros beauty and all trees are now with a 1000 greens...
This is a well overdue Newsletter!
https://mailchi.mp/f3db1b…/the-initiatory-dance-of-rebellion

I don't know about you but it has been incredibly EPIC in my life and the ones around me since the start of last November ...#extinctionrebellion #strike4climate #culturedeclaresemergency #deepadaptation #earthprotectors ...

SOULand has been engaged in the above adding threads to its active prayer: Making the World of our Longing in small and steady ways

Below are some these moments with links.

And few INVITATIONs to JOIN SOULand Programme
more details as youscroll down:
~ WOMEN INITIATION~ A yearlong Ensouling and Creative journey
~ GRIEF and SOUL APPRENTICESHIP~ A year long for men and women
~eARTh ONLINE SHOP~ Open
~ Earth Temples in Cities~ London first?
~ SOULand Grief Apprenticeship en Francewith Pablo Servigne and Nans Thomassey

~ London Water Pilgrimagelaunches XR Actions on 15th April

~ Extinction Rebellion April's Actions in London. Our Totnes community had a strong and wonderful presence on Waterloo Bridge that we occupied and transformed into a Garden Bridge for 7 days and nights.
The Black Tent was there as an Earth Temple for rest and mend our broken relationship to our Living World. It was a deeply transformational experience. We are now gathering the learning and soon will be preparing for the next Actions...

~ POLLY HIGGINS ~ R.I.P
When our dear Polly died on 21st April I fell on Waterloo Bridge while the police made a mass arrest and rebels sang love songs, Greta spoke at Marble Arch that day and it was Earth Day ~ The next day I felt moved to create a ritual of 40 days of mourning and Ancestralisingvigil for Polly Higgins~ Ways of honouring our dead ~ to accompany the ones we love to the shore of their ancestors. This will be made into a little book for her hubby Ian and team. Here is Day 27 of (40). If you want one booklet emailme with a bit about you and Polly :[email protected]

~ Culture Declares Emergency~
Arts and Culture organisations and individuals declare a Climate and Ecological Emergency
SOULand has declared Emergency and so have I as an Individual!

Deep Adaptation proposed by Jem Bendell~ Learning each day about the 4 R's after our gathering last December with Jem and 35 others rebels.
~ Resilience ~ Relinquishment ~ Restoration ~ Reconciliation
Who best but the bees to know these 4 R's ~ My latest flag of the Dark Matter and Anima Mundi Series: The Bees... They have been here for 120 million years...

SOULand Programme and projects
~ GRIEF and SOUL APPRENTICESHIP~ A year long for men and women in 2019 and 2020

~ Women Initiation~ A Yearlong EnSouling and Creative journey in 2020

~ Earth Temples in Cities~ wild and wonderful dreams
To create one on the edges of Waterloo Bridge, near the River Isis/Thames where the IMAX cinema is at the moment. Working group happening in Totnes twice a month.

EVENTSand PROGRAMME
the next few months
SOULand at FESTIVALS
19th to 21st July Hawkwood College, UK ~ Seeds Festival in Stroud
I will bring my eARTh, theEarth Temple in the CityVision, a Grief Composting Ritualand a Water blessing ceremony
~~~~~
8th to 12th August, near Frome, UK~ WomanFest UK
I will be there with the Black Tent and part of SOULand Programme
AZUL eARTh
New eARTh pieces: " Dark Matter and Anima Mundi" and "Archetypal Daimons" now available to purchase as Cards, Print and Giclé on canvas. A Little Shop is now OPEN
~~~

SOULand dans la Drome en FRANCE
~ SOULand Grief Apprenticeship en Francewith Pablo Servigne and Nans Thomassey

15 Juin a Die~ Azul Valerie Thome en Conference avecPablo Servigneet Nans Thomassey
16 Juin pres de Die~ Azul Valerie Thome offreun Cercle de compostagede Deuil
12 au15 Decembre 2019 pres de Die~ AprentisSAGE de l'Ame et du Deuil arrive enFrance
Plusd'infos:[email protected]
ALSO...

an ONLINE Grief and Homecoming for XR
a Grief Composting for the Rebellionin Totnes, UK ~ 26th June
a Water Ceremony will happen in Oxford on 14th July by Isis River.
a WomBelt :Weaving Women back into Matter, Totnes, UK ~ 3rd August

A bientot dear all and stay connected in these troubled and extraordinary times...

Rest in Peace and in Love dear Polly xx
with Love,
Azul Valerie Thome
www.souland.org

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A Young Apprentice to SOUL and GRIEF speaks

24/5/2019

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A young apprentice to SOULand GRIEF speaks with beauty of her experience and commitment

"As a collective of apprentices we spent three days in the rich embrace of SOULand. It is now a few days further along the road that I can reflect on the qualities of that embrace and give echo to what struck me and stays with me as I integrate and walk along.

SOULand is a place that opens with a question: What is your longing? Are you ready to die for it? Are you ready to give yourself away to it? What do you have to give ? Can you keep giving regardless of the rest? Can you move with grief away from lack and complain towards giving and repairing?

Over and over, SOULand presents me with the occasion to give, repair and be of service. This spring, we gathered as apprentices to Grief and Soul. Once more, I felt the confirmation that grieving collectively is a gift to life, to the lives of our ancestors and to the life that is to come. It is the freeing of the river that clears my vision of stiffening regrets. In the darkness of our Grief Composting ritual, I experienced tears of despair, transformed progressively into a screaming desire to live, and finally rested into a quiet readiness to appreciate what is and come back home to laughter. In darkness still, I could hear our individual voices merging into a large song of grieving, loving and questioning what aches.

Here we learn how to sit with each, supporting each other and not saving each other, entrusting the expression of our grief to the alchemy of compost.

Time is dense as every-thing, every-one and every of their expression is amplified by the attention it is gifted within the very particular embrace of SOULand.There is consistency in this attention, there is commitment, there is the belief that over time and breakdowns, there is the possibility to transform all that matters. Here I learn to make prayers, to say them out loud, to infuse them into what I do. I am encouraged to make mistakes, to stumble and fall, and stand back again. SOULand cultivates deep care and beauty and asks us to visit the edges of this comfort where the fertile soil lies to grow our longings and bring them into form. "

Titiane ~ an Apprentice to SOUL and Grief in 2018-2019

Titiane has been SOULand apprentice for almost a year now. She has started to bring her offerings to other places. We are blessed as a world and I am bereft to loose her. First Gate of Grief: Everything your Love you will Loose. Truth ! Blessed all be. Azul

NEXT FULL APPRENTICESHIP to SOUL and GRIEF held by Azul and guests ~ starts FEBRUARY 2020. It will be again in 2 parts, Zoom calls in between and a one-on-one mentoring session ~ More details soon

eARTh: Azul Valerie Thome

eARTh by Azul Valerie Thome

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...river of words and images, by Azul Thomé

SOULand : Making the World of Earth's Longing

A collective ritual for the support and honouring of all Corona's Dead

BURYING THE BONES ~ FOR ALL CORONA's DEAD
WEDNESDAY 8th APRIL 2020

Is Gaia’s evolution being initiated by Corona Virus?

the Wisdom of Suffering and Soul Activism

Sacred Grief and Rebellious Cœurage

the Subversive work of Grief as a Sacred Initiation?

Here is short film where I explored walking through the 5 Gates of Grief as Gates of Initiation and Deep Belonging

The Initiatory Dance of Rebellion and Ancestralisation ~ Newsletter

A Young Apprentice to SOUL and GRIEF speaks

A young apprentice to SOULand GRIEF speaks with beauty of her experience and commitment

NEXT FULL APPRENTICESHIP to SOUL and GRIEF held by Azul and guests ~ starts FEBRUARY 2020. It will be again in 2 parts, Zoom calls in between and a one-on-one mentoring session ~ More details soon

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...river of words and images, by Azul Thomé

BURYING THE BONES ~ FOR ALL CORONA's DEAD​WEDNESDAY 8th APRIL 2020

the Subversive work of Grief as a Sacred Initiation?

Here is short film where I explored walking through the 5 Gates of Grief as Gates of Initiation and Deep Belonging

​

A young apprentice to SOULand GRIEF speaks with beauty of her experience​ and commitment

NEXT FULL APPRENTICESHIP to SOUL and GRIEF held by Azul and guests ~ starts FEBRUARY 2020. It will be again in 2 parts, Zoom calls in between and a one-on-one mentoring session ~ More details soon

Categories

Archives

BURYING THE BONES ~ FOR ALL CORONA's DEAD
WEDNESDAY 8th APRIL 2020

A young apprentice to SOULand GRIEF speaks with beauty of her experience and commitment