Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before. Edgar Allan Poe the Black Tent ... invites youWe will explore and touch into the Passages of becoming fully alive, worthy elders, initiated ancestors... We will lean into the mysteries of being alive as Women. We will enter conversations with Grief, Love, Death and reBirth. We will lean into Darkness and stand to greet the new Dawn. We will weave our stories of before, of now and our future. We will rewind our hearts, souls and wombs. Well we are invited to do this and to make eARTh and to Make the World of our Longing. Join us! Azul Valerie Thome
283 Comments
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 sooneARTh: Azul Valerie Thome ![]() This document was sent a few days ago by a mentor, a sister and a friend ~ Joanna Macy. |
"SOULand is a response to our uninitiated, traumatised, collapsing and transforming world. "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. The Message of Water | SOULand: Making the World of our Longing... Longing is the language of SOUL. A current moving through us, whispering wildly to us how to come back Home to Anima Mundi ~ The Soul of the World. What does longing have to do with an Apprenticeship to Soul and Grief? . 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... ~~~ Grief Composting Circles 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 the sensuous land and waters, not feral or out of control! The circles weave also the work of Francis Weller ~ Joanna Macy ~ Sobonfu Some ~ Steven Jenkinson and Martin Pretchel among others. ~~~ 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. |
"Thank you SOULand for turning your gentle light onto long forgotten place and spaces which were desolate and ghost like within me. " Apprentice
"The strong, robust and respectful container you wove created a space for me to express my grief in all its wild forms. I love that.
The emphasis on personal responsibility and sovereignty is a welcome addition to allow me to find my own way." Apprentice
Women all over our Earth are gathering and rising from the ashes of genocides, slavery and betrayal. There is a new tide and all of life is at stake! Time to mature and offer our gifts fully with the support and blessing of our Sisterhood! Women...
The sisterhood is gathering... | When I was kindly invited to the first WomanFest near Frome, Uk last year, I had no sense of what I was going to. I just could not say no! Something in its calling courted me. All was in place for the Grief Composting Circle and WomBelt to be offered to this extraordinary and timeless gathering! My luggage were mostly filled with yarn and my heart growing with trepidation to arrive on the edges of what we know where life thrives! I was not sure why I went all the way from Slovenia to Frome...until I got there. I soon found a tree, tied myself to her and wove a WomBelt ...for three days. I invited many Women to write on a tiny scroll the World of their deepest Longing. Each piece of fabric was carefully rolled up and inserted in the 4 meters WomBelt. Many tears and heart sharing were witnessed by that sweet tree, delighted she was to see us women so raw and real. The belt was then offered to Tiana Jacoult who held the original vision of WomanFest. We know what it costs to hold Visions to better our world. We need support from all willing. Three of us wrapped the belt around her womb and hips to bless, protect, guide and praise all of her future actions in service to our world's well being and sanity. Women all over our Earth are gathering and rising from the ashes of genocides, slavery and betrayal. There is a new tide and all of life is at stake! Time to mature and offer our gifts fully with the support and blessings of our sisterhood! SOULand will be present at WomanFest this year in a Black Tent created especially by the Blissfull Belltent . We will be in the woods at the radically participatory WomanFest 2019 this Aug. We will be there for the Maturing of Women's Soul offering tasters of the full programme of SOULand. ~ Inner Council of a woman Queen ~ ~ Black Tent Council for menopausal women ~ ~ WomBelt: Weaving Women Back into Matter ~ Returning to Earth what has been Stolen ~ ~ Grief Composting apprenticeship ~ ~ Soul ripening emergent rituals ~ ~ Earth Temple ~ ~ eARTh: Art Infused with Ritual... for Earth! All this to prepare and ripen each woman to offer her praise to Life, her Genius and her Innate Gifts to our dear Mother Earth in our incredibly enlivening, troubling & transmuting times... Azul-Valerie Thome SOULand: Making the World of our Longing www.souland.org |
It seems to me that we are still negotiating with a truth which is: We have reached the end of the human experiment. We have not learned. We stayed immature, amnesic, separated and anaesthetised to the impact of leaving our Earth's Living Web. We objectified all, controlled most and destroying with great success. We can blame the 'authority'. We can shame ourselves and our species. We can zone out. We can kick and scream about it all or... We can live the next few years wisely and make amend. I love this word, making a-mend... we can act as if we are sorry for the mess we created, we can mend what we broke and regain a little sanity and perhaps dignity as well , lifting that heavy burden we all carry in our Soul. We can become a movement of deep gratitude. We can make the most beautiful gestures of restoration and thanks to our Earth's sentient beings. It is good medicine for the Soul I feel. I understand that if we have not learned to lean into communal Grief, into Interconnected Love, into the Beauty of Death and the Mystery of reBirthing we are profoundly empoverished in meeting our short precious time left in Life on Earth. We must skill up and enter conversations with the FOUR SISTERS: Grief, Love, Death and reBirth...they long for us to enter the forest and seat with them again around the Chidlren's Fire. The Message of Water gives us an other 3 years. What I am saying here is not sordid, negative of prophetic. It is what most of us might feel in our bones right now with little context to place this extraordinary experience into. So I would like to propose: Let's become and make our lives a Gift to Earth ~~~ a Give Away ~~~ of such sacred beauty that the whole universe will sense its true grace. Let's use the next few years to create the most outrageously beautiful and generous departure. Well, that is what I will be doing and working with the next 3 years. I will not be spending the precious time we have left blaming, shaming, hoping, neither running away from the task and invitation at hand. We are the ones they are waiting for. Let's turn round and join the greatest possibility of all: To join the web of life once more in a great restoring celebration of wild imagination and deep care.. If the Water, the IPCC report, the UN, Extinction Rebellion, Mission LifeForce, and others were 'wrong' . If we have much more time to live as a species to make a-mend can only benefit all living beings. It reminds me of a book I read many years ago: One Year to Live by Stephen Levine. If we have three years to live would we live the same life that we are living now? There seem to be a sacred invitation from Life to become initiated into a wiser and more mature species. It is up to us to make this rite of passage a conscious one or a very rough one! Azul Valérie Thomé | We have reached the end of the human experiment. We can become a movement of deep gratitude. We must skill up and enter conversations with the FOUR SISTERS: Grief, Love, Death and reBirth again We are the ones they are waiting for The Message of Water gives us an other 3 years. |
“It’s Important”. We shared our deep longing to be engaged in the profoundly bewildering times of our collapsing and transmuting world. thus bringing up an immense grief, un~skilled and feared in many of us. 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? Each of us will carry a stone representing an extinct species. | “It’s Important”. “It is love”, wrote Poppy, 8 years old, at the end of our Totnes Life Cairn community meeting. We gathered in Totnes, last week, to design together the creation of a memorial for the honouring of Extinct Species for the 1st December 2018 on Sharpam Estate*. Most of us had read the IPCC report* adding weight to the Message of Water* and most recently Extinction Rebellion* and Rising Up* all rippling in each one of us as we sat. We shared our deep longing to be engaged in the profoundly bewildering times of our collapsing and transmuting world. How can our actions really matter? How can we attempt to make meaning when reading the published numbers* of our extinct species being between 100 and 150 species a day? Every 24 hours ~ animals, invertebrates, fungi and plants will never court, sing, nest, seed, 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? As an designer of eARTh rituals including Grief Composting Circles I know that we cannot and must not meet this stage of awakening alone. 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 inter connectedness with all of Life thus bringing up an immense grief, un~skilled and feared in many of us. We seem to be totally astonished by the depth of our love for our Earth. The child’s presence, her holding of Love as a beacon alchemised the space and the meeting. Her mother sat there by her side, strong and open. I felt that Poppy’s presence brought some sanity to our community. I remember doing the Council of all Beings* with a whole classroom in london some years ago. Each child chose an other than human being to speak for and from. Animals, rivers, mountains, tiger, worms and bees entered the class room among others . The children made masks to personify each of the sentient beings. They then spoke from that place sat in council with a talking stick. I then understood that children know what is going on here on Earth at this time. I feel that children deeply need and deserve beautiful, strong and lovingly held spaces where they can bring their voices to the adults and to each other about what is going on in our world. Thank you my dear Poppy for bringing your beautiful self and your lion heart to the meeting of the memorial for extinct species - a life Cairn which will be created by our community on 1st December 2018 . We will depart from STEAM PACKET INN at 11:30am in a procession towards the site on Sharpham Estate about 30-40 minutes walk away, following the river Dart. Each of us will carry a stone representing an extinct species. We might stop a few times for a song or a poem. We might carry a mask of be face painted . We will then, once on the site offered by the Trust, place our stones, naming these animals, plants and other organisms that are no longer on our Earth... We will then have a grief ritual with music and songs and allow what needs to move, move through us. After a while we might feel a natural move towards celebrating who is still alive that we long to protect. It is important and yes it is love! Join us! All welcome. Azul Valérie Thomé More details at SOULand Facebook event Page: Life Cairn in Totnes |
The Last Forest appears to my left. A haunting scene gathered in my eyes calling my full attention.
A circle of empty logs where 4 very large slumping characters sat there.
A small fire flickers in the center...
I approach. I present myself and make an offering. I ask them who they are and why they seem so sad and depleted:
"Us four: Grief, Love, Death and Life are seating here lonely, despondent and sad around a tremblotant fire. It has been to long since your species has joined us for conversations. We are the backbone of your existence, come back and seat with us...we have been gradually disappearing from your Psyche. Come back and weave conversations with us...come back"
'
18 women sat on these logs | The 4 Sisters are now alive in our psyche |
The cost of our success is the exhaustion of natural resources, leading to energy crises, climate change, pollution, and the destruction of our habitat. If you exhaust natural resources, there will be nothing left for your children. If we continue in the same direction, humankind is headed for some frightful ordeals, if not extinction.
Christian de Duve
16/12/2017
We will be creating spaces for Soul to feel welcome again. We will learn with passion and little patience to feed, care, court and praise Her back into being.
I look forward to a deep and wild conversation with you all in the company of Grief, Love, Death and Life as if our Wild and Precious Life truly Mattered.
Azul-Valerie Thome
Azul-Valérie Thomé is hosted by Donna Helete San Luis Obispo is the first stop on Azul's 13 month international SOULand Pilgrimage in service to the care, health and maturing of the human soul. She brings with her a vision, sacred questions and a bundle of soul nourishing practices and rituals, including the Grief Composting Circle and the WomBelt workshop to bless, heal, celebrate and protect women's wombs, divinely timed offerings that are in such need right now. Azul Valerie Thome will be traveling from the UK this February on the first international stop of her 13 month SOULand Pilgrimage generously hosted by Donna Helete. Registration for Workshops & Trainings WomBelt Workshops & Apprenticeships for Women ~ 2/7 (Wed.) For all women - all day ~ 2/18 (Sun.) For all women+apprenticeships - all day Each WomBelt (event & apprenticeship) = £65 = $95 depending on exchange rate ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Grief Composting Circles ~ 2/11 (Sun.) Circles for Men and Women - 3pm-7pm Grief Composting Circle = £20 = $30 depending on exchange rate ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Grief Composting Circle ~ Basic Training ~ 2/23-2/25 (Fri.-Sun.) 3 Day Training, all day each day. Must attend all 3 days. Non residential. Grief Composting Training = £380 = $550 depending on exchange rate ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Other offerings during the month of February include Individual sessions of Soul&Sanity (50 min.) with Azul in person or via Skype eARTh commissioned art work. Art infused with rituals infomred by our Motehr Earth for the Thriving of Life. Please email Azul directly for an initial chat on Skype: [email protected] Grief Composting Circles are regular collective grief rituals informed by the work of Sobonfu Some, Joanna Macy, Francis Weller and Azul-Valerie Thome WomBelt: Weaving Women back into Matter are events that bring 13 women together to bless, heal, celebrate and protect their wombs, the wombs of other women and of Mother Earth herself through the art of traditional backstrap weaving combined with story sharing and prayers. | |
River of Words and Images by Azul Thomé:
A place to lay what moves, touches and inspires.
All
Activism
Beauty
Death
EARTh
Extinction
Grief
Imagination
Life
Love
Mentoring
Pilgrimage 2018
Sacred
Seeing
Soul Health
Training
Vision
Water
WomBelt
Women
October 2024
April 2024
February 2022
August 2021
June 2021
December 2020
November 2020
October 2020
September 2020
July 2020
April 2020
February 2020
January 2020
November 2019
September 2019
July 2019
May 2019
March 2019
February 2019
January 2019
December 2018
October 2018
June 2018
May 2018
April 2018
February 2018
January 2018
December 2017
November 2017
September 2017
August 2017
July 2017
May 2017
April 2017
March 2017
February 2017
January 2017
December 2016
November 2016
October 2016
September 2016
August 2016
May 2016
February 2016
January 2016
December 2015
November 2015