Ceremony as Alchemy in Matrimony: Pinzolo, The Dolomites, Italy, July 2024 ~ Part 2

Wendy Robertson Fyfe

Following the call, looking up to Doss Del Sabion, wrf

"If your journey is indeed a pilgrimage, a soulful journey, it will be rigorous. Ancient wisdom suggests if you aren't trembling as you approach the sacred, it isn't the real thing. The sacred, in its various guises as holy ground, art, or knowledge, evokes emotion and commotion." Phil Cousineau

As we (Wendy) feel our way into writing this second part Museletter six months after the first*, indeed in a New Year according to the Gregorian Calendar, we find ourselves trembling again … Sometimes an Earthsong takes a while to linger and fly on various unseen wings before landing on soil, water, sand, mud, hair, skin, lung, ears. Sometimes wings can be clipped; words can be written, spoken, responded with too soon. The mystery of ‘the thing’, here ‘soul-world-making’, can be disturbed other than life-enhancing ways from the breath of the unseen moving into the world finding their own place in the shape of lives transforming, renewing. As Bayo Akómoláfé stated:

“The times are urgent, let us be slowed down by the beings that exceed us. The times are urgent, let us be released from the traps of the things we already know.”

Let us be exceeded here, as we continue in these holy liminal darkest days of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. Today, approaching a particular day of bringing gifts and revelations from the holy dark to the holy (or there already in Australia). Today, when festive lights are switched off here in Scotland/Alba as sunlight expands, returns noticeably once more in Earth’s astonishing spin towards Sun having reached as far as Earth can turn away. The planets know how far they can go; perhaps only by going too far do humans know. Will we be exceeded anyway by beak and claw, teeth and horns, feather and fur, shedding skins and feathered wings, turning stones and mountains, wind and moving water, tree, fire and song …

We acknowledge the particular form of Matrimony Ceremony here will not be possible or even desirable for everyone, particularly where these ways are already remembered. Maybe resonances of kinds will yet sing on your skin, in your cells. May it inspire, bring life. We’d love to hear.

May this Matrimony Ceremony also feed you, Earth, Mystery, grief, love, beauty-village-world-making …

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Let’s recall, begin here a little earlier than intended at the end of Part 1*, with the vitally important preparations …

As stated in Part 1, we (Wendy) are approached in February 2024 by Kelly Ann and Lou (now Louis Francis):

“We need someone who can help us hold the vision of our marriage and wedding as a Sacred Ceremony while also allowing Mystery a seat at the table.”

They are longing to find/be open/be found for the right kind of trouble asking if we would be willing to lead/guide the Ceremony. So begins a conversation since we really need them to be clear about what they are asking for, as far is possible, and the rumbling disturbances they could get into. Are they down for deep love work and willingness to surrender to something greater than, exceeding themselves/ourselves; to be called in. In other words, are they ready for:

~ a Ceremony that acknowledges and listens to Matrimony; what Matrimony wants with them

~ Matrimony as village-making/“an act of remembering culture” (Stephen Jenkinson)

~ being asked ‘everything’ from them and their people rather than ‘about/centring them’

~ a pilgrimage of deep soul transformation in ways that will initially seem impossible

~ inviting ‘the Otherworld into this world’

~ changing plans already made, considerably

~ saying ‘Yes’ to who they are now not knowing who they will be by the time of a ‘Yes(?)’ in Ceremony

~ surrendering response to a “Yes/No” from the village/Earth Community/from Mystery.

~ Holy Ceremony as the way.

“Who would do that?”, a question we find ourselves saying inwardly and outwardly over this journey. They insist they are ready to step in, that this is exactly what they are longing for though hadn’t articulated/known is available/possible. They offer and prepare for their marriage to belong to Mystery, to the village, as a village-making/re-making/remembering Ceremony; a Ceremony also within a wider animate, conversational, love-potion Earth Community commitment for life. They also sign up, perfect timing, to Stephen Jenkinson and Kimberly Ann Johnson’s conversations about Matrimony and Forgotten Pillars.

We (Wendy) want to acknowledge a wondering paradox of writing at this point. There is one thing articulating one such Ceremony, if it can be, and another expressing in a way that Mystery is not lost. Much of the Ceremony here is very much stepping in, feeling into and with the unknown. Practically no one knew what’s ahead, no rehearsal or pre-experience. Everyone held so much trust and love in not knowing, held enough curiosity to come. Articulating here in fullness might ruin it for anyone considering embarking on such a way, become rote, as l remember myself doing earlier in my life, of ‘death by analysis’, rationalising, labelling, ‘knowing’, appropriating. It feels a balance to offer enough that curiosity can be evoked without ‘giving everything away’, even to which poems are spoken; a bit like true magic, a true spell, organic. Yet it is also possible in the telling that an even deeper experience can be made possible too and be shared whilst every Ceremony is unique. Of course, Stephen Jenkinson is publishing more fully about his work; not for us to write here though our experience is. We also offer some differences in holding this journey too at Abbey Of Soul. Of course, as always, interested in your experience and how/the ways you receive this Museletter.

Coming closer, The Doss. wrf

The date and place for the Matrimony Ceremony is already made for 4 July in Doss Del Sabion, Pinzolo in the Dolomites, Italy. Pinzolo is where human ancestors and kin of Louis Francis are historically rooted, a ‘returning home’. Kelly Ann and he currently live in USA following his ancestral grandfather’s emigration many years ago. Louis Francis has a strong connection in Pinzolo where his family continue to hold a home. A hearty number of people are travelling over from USA for the Ceremony too and there are already plans for the days before with approximately forty guests/participants. The time of the Ceremony is now increased from one day to three. In the liminal time between February and July, Kelly Ann and Louis Francis have the immense task of their ‘everyday’ lives and work, practicalities of organising, and their deepening soulcraft conversations relationally within, with each other, and with their people. Letters offering invitations and essential information such as now shift to three days and to bring a hand-crafted gift to the Ceremony are offered to all their kith and kin.

Additional letters are sent to all their chosen ‘co-conspirators’. Co-conspirators, as Stephen Jenkinson created in his work, are co-conspiring with Mystery. Each of the betrothed choose their ‘team’ as it were with a ‘leader’ for each. Here, it was a team of women and a team of men.

For the next four months intense, beauty, fierce, soft, deep, shedding, expanding, shooting, separating, entangling, piercing, pollinating, vulnerable, opening, love, inner & outer Beloveds soulwork begins. As stated in Part 1, the betrothed have already been deepening with themselves and each other in relationship for over 10 years. They are indeed ripe and ready. The love here is exquisite nectar honey for this world. We (Wendy) are so deeply touched, moved and heart-cracked in honey love reminding us too how much we love this way of working in the world; particularly when more is asked of us. Perhaps you too long or love to be asked more of in the best kind of way of showing up. Louis Francis and Kelly Ann live/speak their own stories into this hungry world. Look out for them.

I don’t know the work that Stephen Jenkinson offers during the usual year with the betrothed on their way to Matrimony Ceremony. Our (Wendy) Pilgrimage of Soul, as a soul initiation guide, work entails meeting on zoom every two weeks with deep listening to Mystery and soul through:

~ stepping further into nurturing generative adulthood

~ dream-tending

~ invitational wanders/listening on the land (solo, together, with co-conspirators)

~ attending unbidden images

~ poetry

~ creating Altar

~ deep imagery

~ art

~ ancestral and future beings

~ welcoming home those of their wounded and fragmented parts emerging at this time born

to survive in cultures of relational co-dependency/conformity/extraction

~ intimacy

~ beauty-making

~ deepening invitations

~ making offerings to Matrimony

~ severing from ‘single’ lives/who is dying

~ grief tending

~ desires and fears

~ ever deeper intimacy

~ greater articulation

~ what feels ‘can’t be said’

~ imagining their own deaths

~ stepping further into their mythos

~ being with the truth at the heart of the matter.

It looks like a long list here, but is a more vibrant, wild, lived embodying experience that is challenging to convey in a wee Museletter. Do you get the drift? Even so, you might agree, who would do this? They do, and with such deep dripping open love there are times we are all brought to tears. Stunning, imagining a world where such ways of preparation, of life become widely normal.

Ripples and shifts of this deep work are already being felt in their kinship. How can they not? For example, Louis Francis’ father now undertakes heart surgery before the Ceremony and at one point there is a question of him being well enough to travel. He makes it. Our kinships (human and more-than) are so deeply intertwined, complex, and resonance or dischord.

The co-conspirators too participate in a kind of shedding/dying process so that the betrothed can go even deeper with support that ‘the unknown’ can emerge. Their preparation includes supporting each of the betrothed through the time together before and during the Ceremony, as well as playing a part in the holding of the Ceremony itself. Each of the two betrothed co-conspirers teams are asked to craft a screen/veil to be held in poles for the Ceremony. All preparation for making it more possible for the Otherworld to enter this one through the Ceremony days. As part of the village-making these connections can be life-long in terms of feeding and remembering the village, which is my experience so far. Any marriage is too much for only two people to hold, needs to be held more widely in the human and other-than-human worlds. As far as we can tell, everyone changes through the preparation experience. All part of beauty village-making by the village.

One of the images/threads emerging ever more deeply for the betrothed is rose with Kelly Ann and bee with Louis Francis. The deeper we go, the more mythic this journey becomes beyond the current ‘everyday’, that is, mythic in the sense of deeper truths under the veils of our everyday world whether we are conscious of them or not; truths that take us to our core image born to live into this life.

So much courage, so much courage … everyone! Beauty nectar. Who, indeed, would do this … and what is the potential cost, loss, poverty, of not?

On our last preparation zoom call together, soul guide Emma Duke, aka Snake Picaflor, from Colorado USA, joins us as one entering as support guide/ceremonialist in the three day Matrimony Ceremony now approaching very soon. Sometimes there is a ‘just right’.

Already noted but worth noting again:

~ the poverty that such a way of preparation as well as Matrimony Ceremony herself is not readily available

~ a possibility of deep shedding of skins within ancestral villages

~ a way of being and expressing deepest love in the everyday

~ a way of inviting the Otherworld, Ancestral, Future, ‘other-than-human’, unseen and more as a way of embodying life in the multiplicity of our being within a Cosmic/Earth Community. For example, the betrothed also now embody a rooted arousing presence in the world of their mythos (another story) becoming more embodied; Kelly Ann aka Tsunami/Enchanted Elf with rose and Louis Francis aka Piercing Heart with bee at this time.

So Matrimony Ceremony is also about more than them, and their human village it is also about remembering humans as/in Earth and Cosmic Community. For one example, the Ceremony to take place is as much a kind of reenactment reverence in romance between rose and bee, for pollination that this world so deeply depends on and needs at this time; deeply matters. Imagine too the possibility of releases and marriages on multi-dimensions and worlds here that our ancestors and future-ones remember and that the current humancentric, individualised ways have forgotten.

We are listening to, hearing, tending and following the call of Doss Del Sabion, staying at the place where a single pine tree stood after a torrent and a new place created at the feet of a windy, solid, majestic and magnificent mountain whose name means sand. We are indeed called and gathering into the mythic arousing world-love-making in the best possible kind of trouble where we will bow low for a while, humbly and mightily calling, inviting the veils between the worlds to respond, to open. We are prepared as we are ever going to be at this moment for whatever and whoever exceeds us; surrendering … trembling … and, as far as possible, “released from the traps of the things we already know.”

Who, indeed, would do this? What on Earth might happen when we do …

Pinzolo Campiglio Express, wrf

… To be continued in Part 3 …

*To read Part 1 which includes all acknowledgements. https://abbeyofsoul.substack.com/p/ceremony-as-alchemy-matrimony-in

** Stephen Jenkinson’s book will be published by Sounds True this year.

You are welcome to share

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If you are interested in exploring the kind of soul guiding enacted, expressed and embodied here there are various ways you can work with us at Abbey Of Soul. Contact Wendy for further information or/and a gifted 30m exploratory zoom call.

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If you have appreciated this Museletter, you are welcome to comment/start a conversation. We are interested to hear/see where this post takes you …

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Forthcoming explorations:

Wild At Heart an 8 week course meeting weekly through the zoom portal beginning this month, 22 January. Contact us now if you are interested. If you have been touched by this Museletter, the 8 weeks of Wild At Heart may be for you. I mean, who would do this? Maybe you too are ready to go deeper, or ready for the Pilgrimage of Soul.

The She Tree monthly slow-soul-deepening gathering for women on the Pilgrimage of Soul beginning February 2025

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Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus is approaching the 8^th year. Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus is a Feed The Earth gift Ceremony at dawn around the Earth yearly on 1 April. It is self-organising with lots of resources on the website which can be added to. You can organise a particular Ceremony for your people wherever you are on Earth. You can subscribe for further auditory/visionary posts and information and for your participation to be noted. This Ceremony has now reached people in 87 countries. How might you participate/offer this year. More to come soon with more news …

https://www.earthsongwave.com/

Forthcoming: Summer of 2025

Under The Waterline ~ Poetry and Images, Dunbar Harbour Walls, Scotland/Alba

May your journey in Midwinter’s dark bring gems to the world; may your journey in Midsummer’s light bring gifts to your people; may both bring revelations for these turning times.

Wendy/PI’A