"The Art of Collective Grieving as if Life and Death really Matter​" by Azul Thomé and Christina Jarc Stembal

This apprenticeship is a weaving of many sources of learning that Azul was apprenticed into.
~ Honoring Our Pain for the World-  from the Work that Connects, taught by Joanna Macy;
~ The collective mourning rituals for the village and the sacred and ancestral work taught by Sobonfu Somé;
~ The Five gates of grief - proposed by Francis Weller
~ The transmuting alchemy of compost and darkness. Pathosophy: wisdom born of suffering. The creation of sacred and beautiful spaces and the 6 Gates of Initiation by Azul Thome.

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| MORE INFO+REGISTRATION FORM 2022 | - to fill and send by the end of 28th Feb

LAST Q&A with Azul and Christina on 27th Feb - Register

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​The roots of this work of initiation through the sacred work of  grief and gratitude​
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by Azul Thome

By the age of 10, I had already experienced 10 foster families, extreme violence, prolonged sexual abuse, civil war, abandonment, neglect and exile.

I also remember a voice speaking to my young heart that I had a lucky star and that all of these experiences of suffering would. one day or night. be used to help others. May it be so

In the pathologizing system of our modern world, I was 'fucked' - for life!
Or, at best, I would fit into a modern trauma recovery program, jumping through various government nets. I became... diseases, pathologies, medicines and institutions.

The story that I carried everywhere, as the framework within which all future experiences were to be woven into, was that - I was unwanted, unwelcome and illegitimate...

But the soul loves beauty and truth. She had other choreographies in mind for this precious life of mine..
 
In 1997, at 31, I found myself a single mother with a young boy.
After years of stumbling through a maze of trauma-based crises and behaviors, I experienced my first initiatique ceremony with others who were also stumbling through life with broken hearts and shredded souls.

There we sat in a circle with beauty placed at the center of everything. We lit a fire, we were enveloped by the night sky pierced with timeless stars. We sang, we drummed, we sobbed and roared. We danced and shared deeply and awkwardly our grief, our broken hearts from the generations behind and we talked about our longings..the longings of our Earth.
We were welcomed and felt that we were finally legitimate.

I didn't even know the names of the trees or their songs. My soul was so 'poor and hungry'. My soul was screaming from my conception. I was beginning to hear. For the very first time, I felt like I had a choice in how I was going to live, love and die.

It was the beginning of my initiation into the language and ways of the soul - the soul of me and of creation - Anima Mundi.

The framing of the story of my life, hitherto only a crude and brutal initiation, was now weaving a new blanket, that of the sacred initiations.

My life was starting to change from pathology to a life rooted in homecoming  rituals, a widening circle of kinship, true beauty, generous myths, wise metaphors, ancient archetypes, wild imagination, Earth arts, deep music and a integrated entanglement with the visible, the invisible and the well and wise ancestors.

An apprenticeship in the sacredness of suffering is slowly embodied in me.

When I did a Master of Art at Schumacher College (UK) at 50, after leaving school at 14, I knew it was going to be another essential passage for the ripening of my offering.

The master's degree in Ecological Design Thinking led me to write and propose a ritual that I entitled: "The Art of Collective Grieving as if Life and Death really Matter​. This was in 2016.

My suffering no longer scares me, it has become the raw material of the alchemist and artist in me. If suffering is inevitable, then it is the wisdom that can come from it.
​My new book I'm writing talks about it: "Pathosophy: Wisdom Born of Suffering. A living Art" and will include the 6 Gates of Initiation

Today, in 2022, I propose a more mature version of the work of the last 6 years with the Cercles de Compostages de Deuil-
​The 6 Portals of Initiation - an 8 month apprenticeship through Mourning and Gratitude.

It starts in English on April 3 and in French on April 10.

We will meet on the first SUNDAY of the month from 3rd April, 2022
on ZOOM-land with moments with soil and Earth as well as creative moments.
We will enter spaces of rituals, we will have moments of writing, we will explore and feel the 6 portals together and in our 'soulitude'.
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For the maturing of our species through collective rituals - we become welcomed and rightful - in the company ofGrief, Love, the Death and Re-birth- the Four Sisters.

If you would like to join us, see below for more information and how to register.
​Mamat Aye
​Azul

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Words from Christina Jarc Stembal (heartfully assisting and inspiring Azul for many years) 

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Christina Jarc Stembal by her beloved river Ljubljanica in Slovenia

river Soča

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After my father’s death my heart burst open with pain, shame, loneliness and anger. Old forgotten feelings resurfaced and multiplied. The ones that have been pushed down in to the damn of my river. The ones that as a child have been swallowed so I wouldn’t gag in order for me to survive and breathe, to fit in and to be accepted with no place to go and no ground to lie down and rest. The heart heavy and broken. No witnessing or welcoming by a community. Only the echo of the world telling me that I don’t need to grieve so much in life all the time and that I will be ok if I just move on and keep my tears dry. To not think of Death. To not speak to Grief. To not sing and re-open my heart to life. 

What a gift it was to receive the invitation to my first Grief Composting Circle held by Azul Thome in Slovenia in 2018. The mystery of the calling and the vision of my dreams.  

Everything changed at that single moment as I entered the sacred space of Grief and Gratitude Ceremony. The wild in me came alive courting and honoring my sensitivity and allowing me to become a pilgrim in the landscape of my soul. Finding and hearing my own voice that has been silent for so long. Bringing so much beauty and awe in to my whole being. Fermenting the deep listening to myself, all the people that joined in circle and the invisible. Touching the thread of the wound holding us together. The embrace of the seen and unseen bringing me back to my roots and my own authentic self.   

The gates of grief opened with an explosion of tears of love for all that has been taken away, killed, destroyed, lost, passed down, shamed and forgotten. The release and swaddling of my heart with a magnitude of soul medicine I have never felt before.  The healing powers of love that widens our circle, interconnects us with all beings, drums and dances to the heartbeat of Mother Earth, breaks the illusion of being separate and brings us back home to the web of life. 
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The journey of becoming an apprentice to Soul and Grief has been forever awaken. And as it awakes in one it touches all of us. It is a seed that is forever planted. It is a harbor and a light house guiding my work as an End-of-Life Doula, as a holder of Grief and Gratitude circles. It is a living and ever-changing invitation and a conversation to go deeper and deeper while softening all that is hard, expanding and accompanying a culture that is dying.
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 ​Christina Jarc Stembal

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We are warmly inviting you to an 8 months ENSOULING APPRENTICESHIP THROUGH GRATITUDE and GRIEF to become ensouled guides.
6 GATES of INITIATION 
- with Azul Thomé assisted by Christina Jarc Stembal -
we depart on the 3rd  April 2022 on ZOOMland

| MORE INFO+REGISTRATION FORM 2022 | - to fill and send by the end of 28th Feb

LAST Q&A with Azul and Christina on 27th Feb - Register