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Dear travellers of rough waters You are warmly invited to join in this 3 YEARS PROGRAMME for the reGENERATION of our SOULS VOYAGE: a SCHOOL and SANCTUARY for the SOUL TWO RIVERS rivering through the 3 years programme Sept 2024 to Dec 2026 - Registrations are open until June - limited to 25 students ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ TWO RIVERS rivering through the 3 years programme 1 - FEEDING and LEARNING of the LANGUAGE of SOUL Altar making - wild offerings - sacred postactivism - unlearning practices - feeding the soul - Grief Composting - fierce love - soul activism - intuitive writing - die the small deaths - welcome the rebirths - eARTh ART making beauty... 2 - BECOMING a DOULA for the birthing of ELDERS guided by a cohort of teachers and by my twin books: 9 passAGES to Die Alive and PathoSophy: A Living Art- Wisdom born of Grief and Suffering ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The next Q&A session with Azul Thome the creative visionary behind it is this Tuesday 9th April 5pm EET (Eastern European Time) for 90 minutes max. CHECK YOUR TIMEZONE I am so moved to now be ready to present to you the hive of 2024 and part of 2025 after much dreaming, spinning and weaving through the winter and early spring. While the world is falling onto itself, Soul is like a great underground River of deep imagination. We will voyage to and with Her in much praise and offerings. I PRESENT TO YOU THE ENSOULING CREW that will guide, challenge, inspire, feed, teach, share and accompany you on the VOYAGE! They come to you with their Water Body and a Sentient Being. The cohort is not only human. That was also a long time longing, to see teachers and guides with their wider family of entanglement… Here they are! With profound gratitude for their souls and medicine.   FOR MORE INFORMATIONS |
"The human soul is hungry for beauty… When we experience the Beautiful, there is a sense of homecoming". 
 the Ash tree under a microscope, sorry!
 eARTh art in the forest by Azul Thome
 eARTh by Azul Thome
 eARTh art by Azul Thome
 eARTh art in the forest by Azul Thome | This morning I would like to write about the toxic spell I am under with COVID19, the proposed journey from pathology to pathosophy through the sacred work of grief composting and the vital feeding of Soul. What happens if we move from allopathy to allosophy? What is the root of the collective terror and disorientation we feel? Can the disappearance of our nomadic freedom be the awakening call for loving more furiously and for radical generous cœurage? I am writing so when I forget again and fall under the strong spell cast on us, I can at least return to it. May it be so, inshallah and inshgaia! I have no answers. I am sharing my experience of the last 2 months when I was not sure I would come back from madness and illness. The last 9 months has seen me feeling dis-eased, very disorientated with a brain unable to do simple tasks I have been experiencing deep physical and psychic pain while feeling uncontrollable raw emotions. I am deeply exhausted with cough and breathlessness. The above list holds the perfect materials for an alchemist and a medicine person to be born and/or practice. The above list also holds dangerous materials and definitions for a corrupted system to use to control us and put on under a spell...the spell of terror, blind obedience and of course increase isolation from all that matters... DEPRESSION in OUR SYSTEM unable to grieve I took a risk to seek support from the allopathic system of my gp practice 2 months ago. I was immediately put on antidepressant, painkillers and valium. I took it all and walked again on that path of medicated pathology. I had to find something I had lost the last time I was there. So I put the pills on my altar and prayed for a safe return. After a few days of swallowing the pills I gradually stopped crying, the pains in my body dulled and a feeling resembling a voiceless stupor wrapped over me. I became controllable again, pacified and numbed. WILD GRIEF, MOVEMENT and FOREST After a few weeks I stopped it all and allowed myself to feel what i had parked for the experiment. First my immense grief, sorrow and rage moved again. I allowed my body to move and paint, stitch and embroidered through the many stages of pain and I relearned to lay on the forest skin while breathing with the trees, my kins. I needed to leave the home of Soul to return to it with some refreshed clarity. I am unsure if it is wise to use myself as the raw material but sometimes we are required to be the laboratory, the alchemist, the temple, the dangerous path, the prima materia and the patient all at once. PATHOLOGY and PATHOSOPHY Being conditioned to pathologies, our experiences of pain, strong feelings and suffering all our life we seem to look for something to fit these symptoms into. ME, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, depression, psychosis, bipolar, autism, manic, etc... When tired and alone we just want to rest there, for a moment, for a sense of veneered belonging, a home, however dysfunctional it is. I noticed that when I think of dying it gives me the same feeling of rest and belonging!!!? That makes me suspicious, it awakes in me to the possibility that something dangerously unfriendly is going on in our world right now. A world that makes us want to rest and belong in the arms of the system that harms and controls us... Are we part of a human system that would rather see us dying than living? Looking at the evidence, it is probably the case. After all our healing system is all about illness, not about well being, kindness or the thriving of life. People who are truly alive are dangerous! Perhaps because they are fearless, interconnected to the web of life and compassionate... These pathologies were named and defined by whom and for whom? Why have we accepted them with such docility? Same question can be transferred onto every part of our society, politics, laws, truths, all over the world ... These pathologies become prison cells, they take away our freedom, stifle our imagination and crash our dignity. They enable medication to be passed on without proper check about its true effect. Power is never shared with the sick and the suffering one. Our return to the web of life, to our wild grief, to our songs, dance, art, poetry, old stories and empowering myths are never part of the prescription. We are never asked about our relationship to our visible and invisible allies and to our well and wise ancestors. All of these threads are never spun by doctors and patients.. They are bellitelated, shamed and laughed at most often. They are flipanteley and dangerously named as irrelevant matters and discarded. If you have ever been in a psychiatric hospital you will know what I mean. Hospitals are the same. We love you nurses and some docs. It is the system and the anesthesia I am addressing here. OTHER WAYS I am reminded of a few of my mentors. Francis Weller about depression: " depression is a plea from the soul to stop all you are doing and go down on your knees to feel your grief" Martin Prechtel who said to a director of a psychiatric hospital: "Aha this is where you keep your shamans!" and of Malidoma Somé : What a real shaman sees at a mental institution So if we look at the spell of ALLOPATHY: "treatment of disease by remedies that produce effects opposite to the symptoms," The definition says it all. How can I break the strong spell of allopathy . I call on Sophia, I call on Allosophy: "wisdom born of the other" "Allo" means 'other..."Al": means 'beyond'... Where is 'Pathosophy' in this? where is "the wisdom born of suffering, of feeling" Where does she reside? Why is the breath of freedom and respect that come from the enquiry not encouraged by our medical system? I let you guess. SOPHIA Sophia is the feminine aspect of divine wisdom. You can see that She is not what the people in power will want to foster in the people they are meant to serve and protect. Recently I have been offered another emerging pathology : "long covid or post covid, or covid syndrome". In the uk the medical system is setting up a series of test at the end of November to identify us and create a new illness. The illness will lead to new medications . I rested there for a few days, in the seat of being part of the reffered one for the new experience. My ego and love of pioneer adventures got confused. I even felt relief again to belong to some study of suffering even if unknown. To fall into the void, to fall into the unknown frightens me, so I grab prematurely onto some offered solutions, like a shocked amnesiac, anaesthetised zombie. I realised this morning that I had given up the fight for beauty. That by being offered a comfortable and easy solution my whole being was weakening even more, divatilasing. By being offered a pathology woven in the terror of Covid19, added to the growing control of our lives, the world wide authoritarianism and a mad making system I became even more unwell. I was under a spell. I am under a spell. And the forgetting keeps happening, the falling asleep - again and again. It took me to look into the eyes of a painting I made in the forest to wake up to my strength again. That tree is becoming my temple. |
eARTh art by Azul Thome : "PATHOSOPHY"
SPELL
Yesterday after watching a very disturbing french documentary - Hold Up - about the possible horror happening behind the scene of covid I saw my giving up, my wish to die rather than having my freedom taken away even more.
I did not want to see what will happen to me or the beings I love. I was horrified to not be able to see my family. I am experiencing the crumbling of my livelihood. Feeling the loneliness and powerlessness...but worst of all what could I DO in the face of such a worldwide sickening and so frightening madness ? I think we have passed the hummingbird story of doing individually all that we can. It might be a time for the murmuration of starlings now, working together in unity. And the teaching of mycelium is coming into our psyche again through books, talks, psilocybin and the return of the fungi. It is time to get together, go underground and create a mycelium of support and resistance.
ALLIES and GUIDES
I remembered my childhood archetypes/sheroes and heroes like Boudicca, Mandela, Tree, Pocahantas, Hypatia, Robin Hood, Kali, Gandhi, River, Lords of the Ring, Le Petit Prince, the Suffragettes, Raven, Dr King, the courage of the people of Beirut, the Jumping Mouse story, the Four Sisters of the Last Forest on Earth story...
MADNESS and WILD GRIEF
Last night I howled and screamed in ways that could have got me 'locked up and down'. I felt fury, rage, lostness, fear, sorrow with stretched claws and thick fur, with sharp long teeth eating the moon.
I felt in ways that no city dwellers can allow themselves to do or can dare remember how. For the fear of going mad or being ostracised and locked in is too great. So we take the blue pill even if its promised bliss is a slow killer. I remember days taking both the blue and the red pill. I propose a third element...
CEREMONIES and HIDING
I still hide to enable my wild grief to bring me back home to the wild truths, unless I'm in ceremonies with other humans. These ceremonies have stopped due to the 'lock down' and restrictions...it costs our psyche and our heart greatly. So they must be internalised, they must go underground, they must keep happening in secrets, in the forests and in our psyche.
The touching of madness, the crashing down beyond the level of gravity, the rage of my nomadic soul to be locked down, the disorientation and terror of the lack of congruence in our leaders and neighbours, the pains and suffering, the sleeping and waking in a state of torpor...they all become a gate toward the deepening understanding of my human family.
LONG COVID
These are not just personal states of being. may we not be caught in the emerging net of the next pathology: Long and post COVID.
I now see that these experiences of dis-ease are a response to our freedom being taken away from us.
A gagged scream due to the trauma of knowing our elders are locked in their room with a key, unable to be touched by their grandchildren or by the sun. Future mothers are giveing birth with a mask, the children are beaten up and masked and forbidden to touch and be touched in kindness! Many of us cannot travel to see our loved ones.
We know that what we are obeying does not make sense and that the root of the word obey means 'listening' not losing our humankind rights . Yet we want to be good citizens... But when a situation is called a war with an enemy to win over...we have lost our freedom. A very madening dynamic.
We know that there is a fat great lie seeping into our daily cup of tea. That there is no more debats, no press with integrity left, no freedom of speech about the situation of covid. If we say - hold on a minute, let's challenge this - we are called conspi-racists...or...or...
I let you fill the dots with your own experience...
It is deeply disturbing, I long to sit with each one of you unmasked in the forest around the same bon-fire to share our uncensored truth. But fear has sipped in our own hearts now. It will take great practice and discipline to stay awake!
So this morning I woke up pledging to fight for freedom and fearlessness until the day of my death.
The words came this morning:
I will die in the fight for life and freedom composting terror when it comes.
I will find my tribe in the mycelium of resistance and join them in service to all that matters,
I will not live and die in pacifying comfort . I will live and die for Sentient and Civil rights.
I will keep feeding my well and wise ancestors while seeking their support,
I will keep seeking the solace and wisdom of the trees, the children, the mycelium, the ravens and the river.
I will let the bird songs remind me of mine.
I will keep my appointments and gasp in joy at the rooks being on cue at dusk and dawn announcing the shift in things.
I will keep painting and making the conversations beyond words to listen to our beautiful mamatay.
OUR FOR-GETTING
The memory of our ancestors were kept and passed on to the children through songs, stories, ceremonies and rituals. They also had the sonlines and the ways of seeing the invisible gold threads of the mycelium of connections of the great web of life.
Yesterday after watching a very disturbing french documentary - Hold Up - about the possible horror happening behind the scene of covid I saw my giving up, my wish to die rather than having my freedom taken away even more.
I did not want to see what will happen to me or the beings I love. I was horrified to not be able to see my family. I am experiencing the crumbling of my livelihood. Feeling the loneliness and powerlessness...but worst of all what could I DO in the face of such a worldwide sickening and so frightening madness ? I think we have passed the hummingbird story of doing individually all that we can. It might be a time for the murmuration of starlings now, working together in unity. And the teaching of mycelium is coming into our psyche again through books, talks, psilocybin and the return of the fungi. It is time to get together, go underground and create a mycelium of support and resistance.
ALLIES and GUIDES
I remembered my childhood archetypes/sheroes and heroes like Boudicca, Mandela, Tree, Pocahantas, Hypatia, Robin Hood, Kali, Gandhi, River, Lords of the Ring, Le Petit Prince, the Suffragettes, Raven, Dr King, the courage of the people of Beirut, the Jumping Mouse story, the Four Sisters of the Last Forest on Earth story...
MADNESS and WILD GRIEF
Last night I howled and screamed in ways that could have got me 'locked up and down'. I felt fury, rage, lostness, fear, sorrow with stretched claws and thick fur, with sharp long teeth eating the moon.
I felt in ways that no city dwellers can allow themselves to do or can dare remember how. For the fear of going mad or being ostracised and locked in is too great. So we take the blue pill even if its promised bliss is a slow killer. I remember days taking both the blue and the red pill. I propose a third element...
CEREMONIES and HIDING
I still hide to enable my wild grief to bring me back home to the wild truths, unless I'm in ceremonies with other humans. These ceremonies have stopped due to the 'lock down' and restrictions...it costs our psyche and our heart greatly. So they must be internalised, they must go underground, they must keep happening in secrets, in the forests and in our psyche.
The touching of madness, the crashing down beyond the level of gravity, the rage of my nomadic soul to be locked down, the disorientation and terror of the lack of congruence in our leaders and neighbours, the pains and suffering, the sleeping and waking in a state of torpor...they all become a gate toward the deepening understanding of my human family.
LONG COVID
These are not just personal states of being. may we not be caught in the emerging net of the next pathology: Long and post COVID.
I now see that these experiences of dis-ease are a response to our freedom being taken away from us.
A gagged scream due to the trauma of knowing our elders are locked in their room with a key, unable to be touched by their grandchildren or by the sun. Future mothers are giveing birth with a mask, the children are beaten up and masked and forbidden to touch and be touched in kindness! Many of us cannot travel to see our loved ones.
We know that what we are obeying does not make sense and that the root of the word obey means 'listening' not losing our humankind rights . Yet we want to be good citizens... But when a situation is called a war with an enemy to win over...we have lost our freedom. A very madening dynamic.
We know that there is a fat great lie seeping into our daily cup of tea. That there is no more debats, no press with integrity left, no freedom of speech about the situation of covid. If we say - hold on a minute, let's challenge this - we are called conspi-racists...or...or...
I let you fill the dots with your own experience...
It is deeply disturbing, I long to sit with each one of you unmasked in the forest around the same bon-fire to share our uncensored truth. But fear has sipped in our own hearts now. It will take great practice and discipline to stay awake!
So this morning I woke up pledging to fight for freedom and fearlessness until the day of my death.
The words came this morning:
I will die in the fight for life and freedom composting terror when it comes.
I will find my tribe in the mycelium of resistance and join them in service to all that matters,
I will not live and die in pacifying comfort . I will live and die for Sentient and Civil rights.
I will keep feeding my well and wise ancestors while seeking their support,
I will keep seeking the solace and wisdom of the trees, the children, the mycelium, the ravens and the river.
I will let the bird songs remind me of mine.
I will keep my appointments and gasp in joy at the rooks being on cue at dusk and dawn announcing the shift in things.
I will keep painting and making the conversations beyond words to listen to our beautiful mamatay.
OUR FOR-GETTING
The memory of our ancestors were kept and passed on to the children through songs, stories, ceremonies and rituals. They also had the sonlines and the ways of seeing the invisible gold threads of the mycelium of connections of the great web of life.
“I had drunk so deeply of grief and innocently gambled so hard with fate and irony that a special kind of vision was gathering in my eyes, not entirely clear just yet. This was the same look people saw in your eyes when you have died for beauty and come to live accepting nature as life with no promise of paradise, and mad at people who couldn't see that.”
― Martin Prechtel,
An other musing
When we 'become ill' there are choices opening to us. Important and vital choices of how to position ourselves within the constellations and systems available to us for healing.
We can identify with the ill-ness or/and identify with the Alchemist, the Medicine person in us who is longing to be initiated into their full beingness.
WHat I am saying is that - We can identify with Pathology or 'Pathosophy'!
I have been deep diving with the word Pathosophy and its medicine for many months now...an astonishing and opening journey...
When we become dis-eased we must remember that it is not a failure, something to fix, to hate, to even adore, to shame, nor something to use as currency for all the past suffering never composted...
Illness is NOT an invitation to the insane medical industry, that grew around our suffering, to join in...not always and mostly not.
Our suffering is absolutely NOT a permission to be owned through the naming of our pains, by pathologising it, medicating it, categorising it and essentially owning and gagging our freedom&capacity to become intimate with the ecosophy of our living world!
I see too many people profiting and making insans fortunes by keeping people entangled in a system that is rooted in fear of grief, terror of death, dismembered from soul and beauty.
A system that has no more filament of connection to the living world, the invisibles worlds and the well and wise ancestral world.
I propose that -The illness and the disease can become the raw material, the prima materia that the Artist and Alchemist within us can create a workshop, a forest, a lab around .
.All is there to initiate us to become a fuller, wiser, ripened human being.
I have been ill most of 2020. It has become an experimental event. I am becoming the alchemist through also being, the ill one, the illness, the lab, the paintbrush, the paint, the howling, the despair, the delight, the awe for it all, the suffering and the wisdom born of it all. It became an entity and a deep exploration which is still going on.
I call Her
"PATHOSOPHY: The Wisdom born of suffering"
I drew a triangle with Pathos (suffering/feelings) Logos (reason/study/logic) Sophia (feminine divine wisdom)
Within the triangle lives an interrogation mark. Anima Mundi stepped in for a while, then the Field of Rumi and today it is empty again.
I thought that Pathosophy wanted to be away from pathology but today she turned back towards it and a marriage of the three, PATHOS, LOGOS and SOPHIA has taken place.
I am curious to know how this lands on your hearts, bodies and souls.
I sense that there might reside something here that could be of benefit to many ill and pained people right now...
To move from an over identification to suffering, to the wisdom born of suffering...to move from the illness within to the medicine person longing to be initiated within the ill one using the illness itself to make gold out of lead...and in that way we initiate our world a little.
Azul Thome
When we 'become ill' there are choices opening to us. Important and vital choices of how to position ourselves within the constellations and systems available to us for healing.
We can identify with the ill-ness or/and identify with the Alchemist, the Medicine person in us who is longing to be initiated into their full beingness.
WHat I am saying is that - We can identify with Pathology or 'Pathosophy'!
I have been deep diving with the word Pathosophy and its medicine for many months now...an astonishing and opening journey...
When we become dis-eased we must remember that it is not a failure, something to fix, to hate, to even adore, to shame, nor something to use as currency for all the past suffering never composted...
Illness is NOT an invitation to the insane medical industry, that grew around our suffering, to join in...not always and mostly not.
Our suffering is absolutely NOT a permission to be owned through the naming of our pains, by pathologising it, medicating it, categorising it and essentially owning and gagging our freedom&capacity to become intimate with the ecosophy of our living world!
I see too many people profiting and making insans fortunes by keeping people entangled in a system that is rooted in fear of grief, terror of death, dismembered from soul and beauty.
A system that has no more filament of connection to the living world, the invisibles worlds and the well and wise ancestral world.
I propose that -The illness and the disease can become the raw material, the prima materia that the Artist and Alchemist within us can create a workshop, a forest, a lab around .
.All is there to initiate us to become a fuller, wiser, ripened human being.
I have been ill most of 2020. It has become an experimental event. I am becoming the alchemist through also being, the ill one, the illness, the lab, the paintbrush, the paint, the howling, the despair, the delight, the awe for it all, the suffering and the wisdom born of it all. It became an entity and a deep exploration which is still going on.
I call Her
"PATHOSOPHY: The Wisdom born of suffering"
I drew a triangle with Pathos (suffering/feelings) Logos (reason/study/logic) Sophia (feminine divine wisdom)
Within the triangle lives an interrogation mark. Anima Mundi stepped in for a while, then the Field of Rumi and today it is empty again.
I thought that Pathosophy wanted to be away from pathology but today she turned back towards it and a marriage of the three, PATHOS, LOGOS and SOPHIA has taken place.
I am curious to know how this lands on your hearts, bodies and souls.
I sense that there might reside something here that could be of benefit to many ill and pained people right now...
To move from an over identification to suffering, to the wisdom born of suffering...to move from the illness within to the medicine person longing to be initiated within the ill one using the illness itself to make gold out of lead...and in that way we initiate our world a little.
Azul Thome
And words from Khalil Gibran on
PAIN
“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must break,
that its heart may stand in the sun,
so must you know pain.
Much of your pain is self-chosen
.It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.
Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquillity:
For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen,
And the cup he brings,
though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter
has moistened with His own sacred tears.”―
Khalil Gibran, The Prophet
eARTh art by Azul Thome: "PASSAGE"
eARTh Calendar 2021 by Azul Thomé
is AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE
A BEAUTIFUL GIFT FOR YOU AND AN OTHERWISE
Original eARTh by Azul-Valérie Thomé of some of her Dark Matter, Archetypal, Soul and Dæmons Series made into a beautiful quality CALENDAR 2021
Easy to Hang on any flat surface
POSTCARDS
Including 12 removable and usable POSTCARDS
MOON
With the DARK MOONS and the FULL MOONS marked each month
SIZE when hanging
slim A4 ~ L30cms x W14cms
PRICE
£19 for a year CALENDAR and 12 removable POSTCARDS
It will arrive to you in a CARDBOARD envelop
eARTh by Azul Thomé
SOULand: Making the World of Life's Longing
www.souland.org
is AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE
A BEAUTIFUL GIFT FOR YOU AND AN OTHERWISE
Original eARTh by Azul-Valérie Thomé of some of her Dark Matter, Archetypal, Soul and Dæmons Series made into a beautiful quality CALENDAR 2021
Easy to Hang on any flat surface
POSTCARDS
Including 12 removable and usable POSTCARDS
MOON
With the DARK MOONS and the FULL MOONS marked each month
SIZE when hanging
slim A4 ~ L30cms x W14cms
PRICE
£19 for a year CALENDAR and 12 removable POSTCARDS
It will arrive to you in a CARDBOARD envelop
eARTh by Azul Thomé
SOULand: Making the World of Life's Longing
www.souland.org
"The Fours Sisters of the Last Forest on Earth"
A plea, a story, a book, a map and a prayer...
this Story is by Azul Valérie Thomé and
the Forest of Devon, England (Albion)
It is available in English and in French.
13 illustrations. 40 pages. For adults and older children.
It is dedicated to my father Nano Thomé,
who was born from the land and waters of Lebanon.
Illustrated by Stu McLellan
September 2020, Devon, England
Self- Published by SOULand: www.souland.org
PRAISES
'Thank you for this exquisite tale. It will open heartminds the world over. Thank goodness.
This tale is no fantasy, it is as true as a potato. The utter bleakness of our world is true. So is the last forest – as real as remembrance and longing. And the four sisters, they are the realest thing about us. They only need to be set free. Everything depends on it." –
Joanna Macy, author World as Lover, World as Self
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"We are in need of a particular form of medicine in these uncertain times. It is a soul medicine and it comes to us through beauty, through sorrow, through poetry and it comes through potent stories.
Traditionally, fairy tales carried the ability to enchant us and stir our imaginations in ways that enabled us to see with different eyes.
The Four Sisters is a tale of such magnitude, inviting us to listen deeply and to pay attention.
It is the kind of story that reminds us of another way of knowing the world through an intimate and tender encounter with the sacred.
Azul-Valerie Thome has gifted us with a story that does just this; it brings us back into an embrace with the living forces of the world."
Francis Weller, author of The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"A tender bitter-sweet story that floats, gliding between sunset and sunrise, a story that whispers truth into the shadowed silence of indifference, and then pauses, alert, intent, listening for the sound of love awoken to action.”
Mac Macartney, author of The Children’s Fire: Heart Song of a People
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“With skilful words Azul takes us on a subtle journey rich in meaning and discovery. The artwork is exquisite.”
Dr Stephan Harding, author of Animate Earth and professor in Holistic Science at Schumacher College
| TITHING 10% of the profit will go to a project that loves Life, . It is part of the sacred way of tithing (giving 10% of your profit to a project that tends to Life to keep the sacred energy flowing) | THANK YOU To the Forest of Devon in England to entrust me with her vision. To dear Stu for his art, his gentle grace and courageous willingness to be touched and transformed by the story and the Four Sisters. Thank you so much for his gift of the 13 illustrations. I want to thank also my brother Mathieu Thomé for his steady holding and feedback. Valerie Teller and Lut De Naeyer for their ongoing support and Shante Zenith, Helena Ter Ellen, Carole Thomé for the proof reading, the french translation and generous presence. |
WHO ARE WE?
| AZUL VALERIE THOME To create a first book is an incredible experience of reciprocal transformation and learning! To have carried the original vision for 5 years, to see it change and transform and to accompany it to is full maturity has changed me indeed. These Four Sisters are good company for our troubled times. They offer the wisdom we might all long for from our Elders. The story, or rather the vision, first came to me around 5 years ago, while walking in the forest in Devon, England. I 'saw' the last forest on the Earth, I saw the Four Sisters (they were not called that then) . It was like a day dream, deep time where the past, present and future are a whole experience. I did not realise then that the vision longed to become a little book, a prayer, an instruction and a way to bring soul back to the frontline of our lives. The story has ancient and new guidance. It can be read to children and adults. It can be used as a way of journeying in systemic constellation , a community ritual or a solitary map to feel more alive and in life. When in 2017 the original vision was activated by 18 women in Belgium, I held an all night vigil guiding us all through the meeting of the Four Sisters: Grief, Love, Death and Rebirth... Each of the Four Sisters were dressed up and placed around a circle of empty logs in a forest on the north of the country...it was touched by Grace and brought Soul to the frontline of our lives. I knew then that the vision now brought into form needed to be shared wildely and widely...but how? 9 months ago I contacted Stu to see if he would do the illustrations. He said yes and we went on a journey that needs to be heard. Here is my BIO and WEBSITE | STU MCLELLAN Stu McLellan is the talented illustrator who created and gifted SOULand with the 13 illustrations. We worked for 9 months to birth what is now an integral part of the story. Our working together was alive, rich in heart. WITH STU's WORDS (the text has been shortened- you can find it in full on his website) ...Azul's work embraces that, and much more, that invites us into life in fullness, welcoming love and grief and death and rebirth. This invitation presents both deep sighs of relief and a stirring to courage in the face of things our culture often mutes or runs from, that pokes a finger into our fears. And so the possibility of working on drawings to accompany this story was something that I felt I wanted to accept... ...To represent four Sisters, as a man. To feel the depth and vitality of the story and. To present a story that involves encountering wildness and shadow as well as the fire of community and intimacy... ...Encountering life and finding that these Sisters are longing for us to sit with them, they are longing for our company, for our conversation, for our vulnerability and willingness to offer ourselves in service to all life. There is something the resonates deeply about that circle of empty logs. I feel the truth of that image for us as species and I know that what they ask is communal, yes, and also deeply personal. .... ...The non human presence, of the raven and badger and fox and dragonfly also grew over time. And so they are here. They still invite me to make eye contact with them. To ask me what it is I will do, what will we do, to walk into that forest with Hamsat, in meeting those sisters and allowing our eyes to meet. In returning to those empty seats and adding our offerings to the fire. It is a very beautiful, moving, achingly poignant story. I'm struck by Azul's courage in seeking to live out Hamsat's example and with extraordinary energy offering waymarkers for all our journeys. May this story be such an offering." Stu's BIO and WEBSITE |
More info www.souland.org
The Four Sisters bow to you!
Thank you for your support.
May this story find you in good company.
Azul
Listen... Water brings a Message (We belong to Life)
| The Message of Water was given to Azul Thomé on 2nd December 2016 by the River Dart, Devon, UK after she fell on her knees asking the river how to love when there is so much loss? | "I was deeply touched by this message and felt the water call me to translate her words into the spirit of a song, that Mother Water could speak through music to our hearts and call us home... |
LISTEN...WATER BRINGS A MESSAGE (We belong to Life)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`
The lights in the sky tell the story
of a tribal people that listened to the voice of the earth
The fires on the land tell the story
of a human kind that got lost and forgot what was sacred
Mother water brings her message
“Wake up and remember your birthright belonging to the Earth
If you don’t stop sleeping,
if you don’t come home soon
Then there is not long left now, there is not long left now, there is not long left
My dear child do not worry about me
I recover quickly with the song of the birds and the love of the trees
With prayers moving around the Earth, I regain balance with your tears
So remember you songs, do not focus your energy on saving me
Listen, listen, listen, listen, listen and learn
Bring the change to your hearts first
All of us
Ancestors, soil, water, plant, air and animals
Are calling you humans to us so we can save you
Sacred beauty,
sacred beauty
Open you heart
to what love truly is
You were loved all along,
always have been and forever shall be
By all of us who you think that you are saving
You were loved all along,
always have been and forever will be
By all of us who you think that you are saving
Wake up, come home, remember in your bones
That you belong to life
Wake up, come home, remember in your bones
That you belong to life
Wake up, come home, remember in your bones
That you belong to life
Wake up, come home, remember in your bones
That you belong to life
Wake up, come home, remember in your bones
That you belong to life
Wake up, come home, remember in your bones
That you belong to life"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~`
Ayla Schafer
www.aylaschafer.co.uk
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`
The lights in the sky tell the story
of a tribal people that listened to the voice of the earth
The fires on the land tell the story
of a human kind that got lost and forgot what was sacred
Mother water brings her message
“Wake up and remember your birthright belonging to the Earth
If you don’t stop sleeping,
if you don’t come home soon
Then there is not long left now, there is not long left now, there is not long left
My dear child do not worry about me
I recover quickly with the song of the birds and the love of the trees
With prayers moving around the Earth, I regain balance with your tears
So remember you songs, do not focus your energy on saving me
Listen, listen, listen, listen, listen and learn
Bring the change to your hearts first
All of us
Ancestors, soil, water, plant, air and animals
Are calling you humans to us so we can save you
Sacred beauty,
sacred beauty
Open you heart
to what love truly is
You were loved all along,
always have been and forever shall be
By all of us who you think that you are saving
You were loved all along,
always have been and forever will be
By all of us who you think that you are saving
Wake up, come home, remember in your bones
That you belong to life
Wake up, come home, remember in your bones
That you belong to life
Wake up, come home, remember in your bones
That you belong to life
Wake up, come home, remember in your bones
That you belong to life
Wake up, come home, remember in your bones
That you belong to life
Wake up, come home, remember in your bones
That you belong to life"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~`
Ayla Schafer
www.aylaschafer.co.uk
The River Dart, Devon, England
THE ORIGINAL ~ MESSAGE OF WATER was given to Azul Valerie Thome on 2nd December 2016 by the River Dart, Devon, UK: It is the guide of all SOULand's offerings to our passaging world.
" 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 "
This was followed by a series of interviews :The message of water in Conversations with Grief & Water was read to each person activating a unique response.
So far I have spoken with and recorded Joanna Macy, Jon Young, Francis Weller, Manda Scott, Pat McCabe, Megan Hollingsworth, Stephan Harding, Pablo Servigne, Stephen Jenkinson, Simon Be, and Li An Phoa…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here the full Message of Water is spoken by Azul Thome
With care and attentiveness for all who matter... Azul
" 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 "
This was followed by a series of interviews :The message of water in Conversations with Grief & Water was read to each person activating a unique response.
So far I have spoken with and recorded Joanna Macy, Jon Young, Francis Weller, Manda Scott, Pat McCabe, Megan Hollingsworth, Stephan Harding, Pablo Servigne, Stephen Jenkinson, Simon Be, and Li An Phoa…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here the full Message of Water is spoken by Azul Thome
With care and attentiveness for all who matter... Azul
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
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
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
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
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.
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.
"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.
from Grief Composting to Deep Belonging
4 one day ceremony through 4 months in 2020 with Azul Thomé in Devon.
Grief is a wild lady who asks much of us, in exchange she might guide us to a place a deep belonging, to the eye of the hurricanes.
I do not think nor feel that we are doomed...this would be to mediocre an answer to the miracle of being gifted and entrusted this precious Life.
To be lived, touched, tempered and breathed by the Mystery that weaves it all is astonishing and excruciating most days. Suffering is the raw material with which we can mature as humans and find out who we are and act as if we are needed..
Grief, Love, Death and reBirth as the backbone of our Life are calling us to become initiated into a place of Deep Belonging.
Through my own tempering journey of leaning and engaging into Grief, fierce Love, Extinction, Death and reBirth I was taken to the fertile void of Deep Belonging.
I invite you to come with me to the eye of the Hurricane. It will cost you much, there is not certainty, no hope nor positive solution outside your self...but there is the awaiting of the swelling and longing of Soul and her wild companions ♥
I invite you to be touched through deep ceremony by the 5 Gates of Initiation .
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Grief Composting to Deep Belonging ~
4 one day ceremony through 4 months 2020
4 DAYS to be taken either individually to feed a personal soul calling or as a set of 4 days as a way of apprenticing to the sacred work of Grief Composting.
WED 11th March
WED 15th April
WED 13th May
WED 10th June
11am to 5pm ~ arrive at 10:30am each day
Near Totnes, Devon, England (venue tbc)
LIMITED to 15 people
£60/70/80 per day depending on your financial capacity
Potluck Lunch - Bring food to share
<<<£30 deposit to secure your space>>>
To be lived, touched, tempered and breathed by the Mystery that weaves it all is astonishing and excruciating most days. Suffering is the raw material with which we can mature as humans and find out who we are and act as if we are needed..
Grief, Love, Death and reBirth as the backbone of our Life are calling us to become initiated into a place of Deep Belonging.
Through my own tempering journey of leaning and engaging into Grief, fierce Love, Extinction, Death and reBirth I was taken to the fertile void of Deep Belonging.
I invite you to come with me to the eye of the Hurricane. It will cost you much, there is not certainty, no hope nor positive solution outside your self...but there is the awaiting of the swelling and longing of Soul and her wild companions ♥
I invite you to be touched through deep ceremony by the 5 Gates of Initiation .
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Grief Composting to Deep Belonging ~
4 one day ceremony through 4 months 2020
4 DAYS to be taken either individually to feed a personal soul calling or as a set of 4 days as a way of apprenticing to the sacred work of Grief Composting.
WED 11th March
WED 15th April
WED 13th May
WED 10th June
11am to 5pm ~ arrive at 10:30am each day
Near Totnes, Devon, England (venue tbc)
LIMITED to 15 people
£60/70/80 per day depending on your financial capacity
Potluck Lunch - Bring food to share
<<<£30 deposit to secure your space>>>
From a point of SEPARATION,
we come through a GATE OF GRIEF,
into a space of INITIATION of maturing practices
to come back through our GRATITUDE to our natural state of BELONGING.
THIS IS THE FRAME OF THE JOURNEY WE WILL GO ON to COURT and FEED a STATE of DEEP BELONGING through Grief Composting :
Five Gates of Grief, Initiation and Belonging
Invitation and guidance into our Grief Composting Circles
ACTIVATED VISION by AZUL THOME with FRANCIS WELLER's MENTORING
We will also weave in the WORK that RECONNECTS (Joanna Macy ) and the sacred work of Sobonfu Some.
From a point of SEPARATION,
we come through a GATE OF GRIEF,
into a space of 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.
Azul-Valerie Thome's research and exploration with Francis Weller about how each Gate of Grief call for a sacred and witnessed Initiation into Maturity and Deep Belonging
with Love and Cœurage, join me.
Azul Thome
www.souland.org
Five Gates of Grief, Initiation and Belonging
Invitation and guidance into our Grief Composting Circles
ACTIVATED VISION by AZUL THOME with FRANCIS WELLER's MENTORING
We will also weave in the WORK that RECONNECTS (Joanna Macy ) and the sacred work of Sobonfu Some.
From a point of SEPARATION,
we come through a GATE OF GRIEF,
into a space of 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.
Azul-Valerie Thome's research and exploration with Francis Weller about how each Gate of Grief call for a sacred and witnessed Initiation into Maturity and Deep Belonging
with Love and Cœurage, join me.
Azul Thome
www.souland.org
SOUL ACTIVISTS WHOSE FAITH, BELIEFS AND SPIRITUAL PRACTICES ARE ROOTED IN EARTH WISDOM.
From the Message of Water being read on Parliament Square October 2018 as the Voice of the Other than Human, this was born: the Earth Wisdom Tenders
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
OUR DECLARATION
DATED 23RD JANUARY 2020
Earth Wisdom Tenders
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 indigineous 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
FOR ALL SOUL ACTIVISTS WHOSE FAITH, BELIEFS AND SPIRITUAL PRACTICES ARE ROOTED IN EARTH WISDOM.
FACEBOOK~GROUP: https://www.facebook.com/groups/725194284575006/
WEBSITE: www.earthwisdomtenders.net
From the Message of Water being read on Parliament Square October 2018 as the Voice of the Other than Human, this was born: the Earth Wisdom Tenders
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
OUR DECLARATION
DATED 23RD JANUARY 2020
Earth Wisdom Tenders
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 indigineous 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
FOR ALL SOUL ACTIVISTS WHOSE FAITH, BELIEFS AND SPIRITUAL PRACTICES ARE ROOTED IN EARTH WISDOM.
FACEBOOK~GROUP: https://www.facebook.com/groups/725194284575006/
WEBSITE: www.earthwisdomtenders.net
 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. Our Declaration is : "no laws and no decisions shall pass that in any way could harm the children of all species" FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE DURING THE EXTINCTION REBELLION INTERNATIONAL ACTIONS IN LONDON 7th to 20th Oct 2019 | Earth Wisdom Tenders We are called the ‘Earth Wisdom Tenders’and are an eclectic group of people who are learning to deeply listen to the earth 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 indigenous 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, 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 Earth Wisdom Tenders |
"Oh Liberty, hear us, and speak in behalf of but one individual, for a great fire is started with a small spark. Oh Liberty, awaken but one heart with the rustling of thy wings, for from one cloud alone comes the lightning which illuminates the pits of the valleys and the tops of the mountains. Disperse with thy power these black clouds and descend like thunder and destroy the thrones that were built upon the bones and skulls of our ancestors."
— Kahlil Gibran
All Welcome | These Bones represents all our Ancestors who have not been Honoured ~ of all Species. These Bones represent our Mother Earth Stones Everyone longs and deserves an honorable ancestralising It is our Duty of Care to tend to our dead We will Gather the Bones, sooth them with pigments, red ochre and oil, we will create an altar on site and let the tide take our prayers. It will be temporary Altar for the Ancestors of All Species to be tended to, blessed and loved with courage. We will seek the support and healing from the Well and Wise Ancestors to gather and bless the living to thrive during the Actions and beyond BRING: Drum Rattle Pigments and oils Songs |
WE WILL BE ON XR FAITH BRIDGE ~
FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE
with Love and Cœurage
#extinctionrebellion
#earthwisdomtenders
#xrfaithbridge
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.
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.
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
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 you
We 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
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
 Azul Valerie Thome ~ founder of SOULand  Black Tent and Dark Matter  Azul eARTh will also be there holding space and for sale  Weaving Women Back into Matter | SOULand Schedule at Woman Fest 2019 THURSDAY 8th 11AM TO 11PM ~ INNER COUNCIL OF A WOMAN QUEEN ~ 20 WOMEN 4PM TO 6PM~~ BLACK TENT FOR MENOPAUSAL WOMEN ~ 20 WOMEN FRIDAY 9th 11AM TO 1PM ~ WILD GRIEF AND FIERCE LOVE IN TIMES OF EXTINCTION ~ 20 WOMEN 8PM ~ AZUL WITH JEWELS ~ GRIEF CEREMONY SATURDAY 10th 3AM TO 5:30AM ~ DREAM CIRCLE, GRIEF COMPOSITNG CIRCLE AND NEW DAWN~ 20 WOMEN 4PM TO 6PM ~ WOMAN INITIATION ~ THE 4 SISTERS: GRIEF-LOVE-DEATH-REBRITH ~ 20 WOMEN SUNDAY 11th 11AM TO 1PM ~ WEAVING WOMEN BACK INTO MATTER ~ 20 WOMEN To get in touch with Azul to offer your gift into the Black Tent: [email protected] |
           | 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 ~eARThONLINE SHOP~ Open ~ Earth Temples in Cities~ London first? ~ SOULand Grief Apprenticeship enFrancewith 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 enFrancewith 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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