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 |
How can a human-built space restore a broken relationship with the natural world? The temple is a place to welcome all, locals, passer-bys or refugees. We would like to offer the opportunity to engage and explore the different facets of this project : | How can a human-built space restore a broken relationship with the natural world? The vision is for Earth Temples to be built on the edge of all cities and respond to this question. The Earth Temple is a round place to rest, reflect, reconnect and restore our relationship to the natural world. It is a place of belonging to the Earth that is open to all; a place of beauty, made of local natural materials, and designed to include the presence of all beings of the natural world. We are sharing this vision along with first architectural drawings to invite you and hear from you if and how you would like to imagine engaging in bringing this vision into life - from model making to the finding of place, the realisation and the tending of the space. The design of the Earth Temple Touching the drawings on paper, you may imagine the warmth within thick walls of Earth and the unique sense of refuge in the city found in the silence of this space. The Earth Temple is envisioned to be 26 meters wide, round, made of natural material found on site. Its four entrances are designed to celebrate the Sun in the East, Water and Plants in the South, Earth and Soil in the West, Air and Animals in the North. An olive tree stands in the center as a symbol of peace and the sculpture of a woman and a man seating. The roof is made of glass. Within the walls are places of rest and underground at the center is a kiva, a dark cave, a place of reflection and deep listening. The temple is a place to welcome all, locals, passer-bys or refugees. At the first gathering in Totnes around the vision of Earth Temples, we started imagining Totnes as a potential place to welcome a first Earth Temple. We would like to offer the opportunity to engage and explore the different facets of this project :
Please do get in touch with questions and remarks, or suggestions of people to contact to make this happen. The vision of Earth Temples in Cities was brought to life by Azul-Valérie Thomé, designer of rituals, artist and activist devoted to restoring humanity back to a deep relationship with the Earth. She holds an MA in Ecological Design Thinking from Schumacher College and is currently based in Totnes. Azul Valérie Thomé for SOULand www.souland.org MEETING ARE HAPPENING IN TOTNES in 2019. See Facebook Page for more details or email me :soulandinfo@gmail.com |
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 |
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