Remembrance Day on Sunday 11th November 2018 |
GRIEF COMPOSTING CIRCLE~ BOOKING ESSENTIAL 14:00 to 18:30 CLOSED CIRCLE A 4 hours deep and beautiful Ancient Earth Wisdom based Ritual to Compost our Grief and return to Love Part happens in total darkness. A space for all grief not only focused on Remembrance day. It is not a substitute for regular self care and therapy. at WOODLAND PRESENTS in Devon All donations will go towards the creation of our Life Cairn in Totnes | REMEMBRANCE EVE ~ OPEN TO ALL 19:00 to 21:00 OPEN TO ALL At WOODLAND PRESENTS in Devon COME WITH SOME DRY WOOD and A CANDLE if you can. We will have a hat going round to harvest donations of a few pounds from each of you to support the happening of our Life Cairn in Totnes on the 30th November. and 1st December 2018 |
"an 'Apprenticeship to Emptiness'." "It was to be... I would represent and speak from Extinction. We all sat as a Council." "They hear and communicate with plants, animals and their cosmology is present" | During a 'Council of All Beings', last month, I was 'chosen' by Extinction. We were to gather on a tiny island in a Belgium lake. As you can imagine I tried to negotiate a better 'deal' something a little easier like a River or even the last One-Eyed Faisant for example...nothing was to be n-e-g-o-tiated It was to be... I would represent and speak from Extinction. We all sat as a Council. For the people who have done this ritual before you know the structure. First we speak to one other as a Council of All Beings ( apart from humans). We then address the humans. We tell them of our suffering and hardship due to their activities and choices. Then knowing how humans need support to learn and act differently we give away some of our 'medicine', some of our energy/quality/skills and nature . Extinction spoke through me these words to Humans: " I am offering you an 'Apprenticeship to Emptiness'. I am offering you the capacity to free yourself of always needing to 'Understand'. Instead I invite you to dive in the Heart and in the Body. To come back into the flesh and to create and birth together a new species . To re-Incarnate into a new Species. " Could that mean I wonder that the 150 to 200 species of animals/plants and fungi who are being extinct EACH DAY...Could that mean that their songs, their ways of life, their Love for their kins and the web of life... Could that mean that their ways and sensitivities could be what the new generations of human children carry and manifest in our world? I meet an increasing number of children who are of high connectivity and sensitivity. Children and youths who cannot enter or engage with any of the collapsing systems anymore without great costs to their health and well being. They hear and communicate with plants, animals and their cosmology is present. I bow to their parents who are being initiated by these young being. So perhaps the 1000's of species being extinct each week. Perhaps that their energy and beauty are being reincarnated into a new species that look like humans but are a more evolved, connected and awakened species re-in-carn-ated from all that we are loosing right now. I am opening a conversation would you be touched by this topic. I hold no fundamental truth but rather I attempt to bring messages that are being regularly passed on from what is perhaps called the collective imagination,. The very same one that created the world we are now in! Thank you Valerie Thome for SOULand.org |
The Last Forest appears to my left. A haunting scene gathered in my eyes calling my full attention.
A circle of empty logs where 4 very large slumping characters sat there.
A small fire flickers in the center...
I approach. I present myself and make an offering. I ask them who they are and why they seem so sad and depleted:
"Us four: Grief, Love, Death and Life are seating here lonely, despondent and sad around a tremblotant fire. It has been to long since your species has joined us for conversations. We are the backbone of your existence, come back and seat with us...we have been gradually disappearing from your Psyche. Come back and weave conversations with us...come back"
'
18 women sat on these logs | The 4 Sisters are now alive in our psyche |
My deepest most passionate longing is to create a place called SOULand where we pray 3 times a day everyday in songs, communion and silence. | No electricity for 20 years, no wifi, internet, mobile phone. They pledged poverty to not take from the already very poor. They make their flour with ancient wheat grown by a neighbour, bake their bread. honey, olive oil, sweet chestnut flour are from their land and sentient beings. Their vegetables are stored in old washing machine barrels to last as long as possible. Each day the 8 wildish sheep with large bells need tending. They help lessening the fire risk by eating the grass on the many terrasses made by the ancients of this land in the Ardeche in France. Each week people from all sorts of background and walks of life, all pilgrims, come to pray and find a portal to spirit again. Some bring walnuts from their fields, butter (getting rarer in France) or chocolate from Carrefour. Abundance always seem to enter that space. Hermits living near by take care of the flowers for the tiny dark chapel made of schist, stones and local wood...so dark it takes a minute to see the simple icons, the long candle and the quiet welcomed stove in a corner. Two 'little brothers' live there in a tiny Monastery 'La Demeure notre Père'. One 'brother' arrived as a young man at 20 years old 43 years ago, Paul. He went for a week from Holland and never left. The other arrived 36 years ago and is now 73, Jean-Michel. They follow and are totally devoted to Jesus and to some books that are not easy to take in as a woman (an other post). ...yet my heart opened like a pear tree blossom in their company this last few days perched in a sweet little wooden cabin by a stream where I lived and prayed. 3 times a day there were set time for praying together in the chapel in communion, in songs and in silence sometimes. I kept staring at Marie, she looked dignified, beautiful and kind there. I needed that energy so gratefully. It has been a road of real mystery and quite humbling which I needed . These people have been sharing their place with a hospitality, generosity and 'bienveillance' that as a non Christian I feel truly blessed by. Their openness to 'the other' has disarmed me...and taught me much. Their impact on our earth is like the one of a honey bee... pollinating, creating beauty, living within mystery and of service to the greater whole. That perhaps is the important element when setting up a place of sanctuary, that it is of service to a Divine entity. Creation, Pachamama, God, Jesus, Allah or anything else that connects us to the great mystery...then perhaps there is a possibility to get a glimpse at what being a human being could be and offer a place of rest and listening. They fought, were grumpy, impatient and rough sometimes... They never pretended to be nor wanted to be perfect. Their humanity on their sleeves, knowing themselves, they fell down so many times and kept getting up to stand for life. They work all the time through waves of elated exhaustion (63 and 73 they are) ~ welcoming a 'stranger pilgrim' and praying times always take priority. We prayed for two/three brothers to find their way there and stay to help out. And they want to keep working until the last breath...retirement? from what :-) they say? Everything for them is borrowed and to be tended to. I think it might be love. They are to me the pioneers of tomorrow. Feeling blessed to have followed my broken heart after the suicide of a friend, to share a moment with these beautiful sacred and scarred souls. Thank you! Azul www.souland.org |
On this stormy wet morning, while wandering in the mazes and wild mycelium of psyche, I day dreamt of how to access our innate knowing as women to fulfil our life's longing. I hear from many is is to bring our greatest gifts to our Pachamama ... How? My latest work with WomBelt: Weaving Women back into Matter has been a gold thread to follow into the depth of Soul, into her deep waters and wisdom. Into the healing crisis ...sometimes so very intense and we feelunder such great pressure. Most of us are still strongly encouraged to be in the Head and in the Heart... why are we avoiding the great wisdom of our Womb? Perhaps because so much grief and trauma is also held there? The start of an exploratory system emerged then. I am calling it: THE TRIWOMAN’s AGREEMENTS which took me to Life's origin... hang on and sorry if I go to fast... |
Our first original Womb was our ocean where all Life on Earth came from 3.8 billion year ago.... So I wondered about who was our first relatives living then and what we could learn from them. They exist in the deepest part of our Ocean and they Love and actually thrived under pressure... Thy are the Piezophiles: the 'Pressure-Lovers'. I am so fond of them it is bewildering... |
Our lives have become longingly visited and ravaged by homelessness of soul, anaesthesia of what we deeply love and the amnesia of where we belong to. | WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM PIEZOPHILES? I am now looking with passion at the medicine, teachings and wisdom of Piezophiles ~ The 'Pressure-Lovers'. One of the oldest beings on our planet. They are Bacterias leaving at the bottom of our deepest oceans. 3.8 billion years of experience and intimacy with MamaGaia. Can we get invited back into this wisdom I wonder? Our times and our varied families are under such pressure... can we become the lovers of such pressure...the Piezophiles guardians ? They are the very origin of life on earth and of our existence. A long gestation happened then while at the surface of earth the toxicity and poisonous conditions went through transmutation. An environment that can support life and nudge her to thrive then emerged. |
BACTERIA So we, Life on Earth, came out of our Pachama’s womb as simple cells from a single Bacteria ~ ‘Bak: ‘staff used for support’. It was thanks to the capacity to hold that sort of intense pressure that enabled all our relations to live on the land and breath our air and thrive. And what about the Water Bears? the Tardigrade are also Extremophile: The Ones who Love Extremes. These beings; the 'Staff used for Support', the 'Lovers of Pressure' and 'Lovers of Extremes' can perhaps teach us how to hold the pressure and extremes of our time with a 3.8 billions years old wisdom. They could teach us again us, women, to hold the pressure deep into our Womb, our Ocean, while our new emerging world transmute its toxicity and poisonous air and lands into a planet that supports life again ~ with or without us in it. That is not what matters to me whether we stay or not. What matters is to return to our humanity, within the time we have, and return to the original web of life. So today I am in love with Piezophiles with gratitude for showing up in my life with their wondrous teachings. Azul Thome |
The cost of our success is the exhaustion of natural resources, leading to energy crises, climate change, pollution, and the destruction of our habitat. If you exhaust natural resources, there will be nothing left for your children. If we continue in the same direction, humankind is headed for some frightful ordeals, if not extinction.
Christian de Duve
16/12/2017
We will be creating spaces for Soul to feel welcome again. We will learn with passion and little patience to feed, care, court and praise Her back into being.
I look forward to a deep and wild conversation with you all in the company of Grief, Love, Death and Life as if our Wild and Precious Life truly Mattered.
Azul-Valerie Thome
Azul-Valérie Thomé is hosted by Donna Helete San Luis Obispo is the first stop on Azul's 13 month international SOULand Pilgrimage in service to the care, health and maturing of the human soul. She brings with her a vision, sacred questions and a bundle of soul nourishing practices and rituals, including the Grief Composting Circle and the WomBelt workshop to bless, heal, celebrate and protect women's wombs, divinely timed offerings that are in such need right now. Azul Valerie Thome will be traveling from the UK this February on the first international stop of her 13 month SOULand Pilgrimage generously hosted by Donna Helete. Registration for Workshops & Trainings WomBelt Workshops & Apprenticeships for Women ~ 2/7 (Wed.) For all women - all day ~ 2/18 (Sun.) For all women+apprenticeships - all day Each WomBelt (event & apprenticeship) = £65 = $95 depending on exchange rate ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Grief Composting Circles ~ 2/11 (Sun.) Circles for Men and Women - 3pm-7pm Grief Composting Circle = £20 = $30 depending on exchange rate ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Grief Composting Circle ~ Basic Training ~ 2/23-2/25 (Fri.-Sun.) 3 Day Training, all day each day. Must attend all 3 days. Non residential. Grief Composting Training = £380 = $550 depending on exchange rate ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Other offerings during the month of February include Individual sessions of Soul&Sanity (50 min.) with Azul in person or via Skype eARTh commissioned art work. Art infused with rituals infomred by our Motehr Earth for the Thriving of Life. Please email Azul directly for an initial chat on Skype: soulandinfo@gmail.com Grief Composting Circles are regular collective grief rituals informed by the work of Sobonfu Some, Joanna Macy, Francis Weller and Azul-Valerie Thome WomBelt: Weaving Women back into Matter are events that bring 13 women together to bless, heal, celebrate and protect their wombs, the wombs of other women and of Mother Earth herself through the art of traditional backstrap weaving combined with story sharing and prayers. | |
“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.” |
“An inspiring day spent connecting with myself, other women, making, talking, laughing, singing and praying feels so ancient and so natural. A way of healing wounds, through the sisterhood and making. It’s also such a meditation for me! Learning not to judge my creativity but to allow it to flow without attachment. So heart warming to be with women of different ages, it feels like an important part of mending our societies.” A WomBelt weaver | Azul invites you to WomBelt weaving events for women who long to make the world of their longing with thread, sisterhood, prayer and eARTh’ Devon 23rd & 24th Sept ~~~ Belgium 21st & 22nd Oct MORE INFO: www.souland.org/wombelt. BOOKING: soulandinfo@gmail.com Azul-Valerie Thome: +44 (0)7765 257517 WomBelt is part of SOULand’s vision: Making the World of our Longing one Maturing Soul at a Time... |
“J’ai ete tres touchée par ce rituel surtout parce qu’il se passe dans la nature, autour d’un arbre et aussi parce que les femmes qui tissent ensemble, dans la joie, la creativite et le partage est tres symbolique pour moi du role que nous, les femmes, avons a jouer pour faire advenir un autre monde; nous sommes toutes tisserandes! Notre intention, guerisseuse pour nous et toutes les femmes est aussi tres puissante. Merci, merci.” Muriel
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