Ceremony as Alchemy: Matrimony in Pinzolo, The Dolomites, Italy, July 2024, Part 1
Wendy Robertson Fyfe
Pinzolo, The Dolomites, Italy
I awoke this morning, my ears alert and listening through the open bedroom window to the everso soft murmuring song of alighting starlings with their fast flapping wings flying from my garden. I remember Stephen Jenkinson words of Matrimony as a “murmuring of the generations.” Sometimes it takes a while for notes to land. I’m imagining them landing for a while, or even a lifetime.
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This multi-part Museletter reflects upon one of the ways Abbey Of Soul has been called and said ‘yes’ to show up in leading a three day Matrimony Ceremony in Pinzolo, The Dolomites, Italy for Louis Francis and Kelly Ann. Who would do such a thing, any of us; and why on earth would we show up so fully?
I’m exploring here a number of threads including the current poverty, as Stephen Jenkinson speaks, of true Ceremony with the alchemy it offers us such as with Matrimony as “an act of cultural memory.” Such a poverty makes a human life small, un-lived, and rational rather than entering into the largest, mythic, soul to village story we can live into and are born for. I believe it’s a trauma not to live into a ceremonial life living into our bigger story also as an act of cultural memory and regeneration. Ceremony is a way of creating a particular place/container and time to remember the holy, the OtherUnseenMysticalWorld beyond and within ‘the human’. Ceremony is a way to weave that world into the ‘everyday’ in a particular more conduit conscious love story way so that our more ego-centric ‘self’ can surrender with more ease, trusting into a more vulnerable expansion of experience of who we truly are. Ceremony can bring what is previously unknown to us, from Mystery and a bigger conversation where revelation can enter within a deeper ancestral human and more-than-human world where, as Neruda says:
“… the clay and the flower, the mud and the roots know your name.”
Ceremony is not a programme or retreat, though does need to be held. It’s more a way of living and learning to live intimately connected with knowing all life is/as sacred. Ceremony is a way of living a life as holy communion Thomas Berry might say, in the many ways life is lived within the village and wider Earth community. In Matrimony, it’s possible for ceremony not only to go into the wild consciousness shifting places in the world beyond human, it can take the very ‘human village’ too ‘out of the everyday’ that Mystery may enter more clearly and deeply with alchemizing presence into a wild cultural regeneration beyond these current privatised individualised, planned and rehearsed, human-centric times. Matrimony Ceremony is an opportunity for village alchemy, life-changing, world-changing experience like our early ancestors knew and heartbreakingly destroyed over many eons now returning home … wherever that might be. Here, it’s Pinzolo where there are deep ancestral village roots with the Betrothed. Of course, nature-based cultures have not forgotten.
One of the challenges l’m finding in writing is how to honour the depth, aliveness, and mystery of Ceremony without a kind of death by rational analysis and ‘fixing’, as well as honouring all involved. I want to let the writing happen; to write in a way that shares something of an experience which will continue taking us with it yet slow us down enough for life-changing ways to express and happen. Maybe like the way the mother’s milk of any animal of Earth, indeed perhaps like the breasts of Earth Mother herself, feeds an original transformational experience for new life to continue. Matrimony, Stephen Jenkinson notes, “is the mothering of a culture”. Ceremony makes demands of us to show up and participate for alchemy to occur matters, that:
“how you stand here is important. How you listen for the next things to happen. How you breathe.” William Stafford
Matrimony Ceremony creates ‘something else.’ Maybe like these times right now, there is a demand to show up in a bigger story of what it means to be alive today and to offer ‘our milk’, as it were, to contribute to an Earth in transformation, even in cosmic transformation. Matrimony, l’ve learned, is one such way.
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There are many places l could begin: the first contact with the then Kelly and Lou, their births, my birth, when the tunnels were built through the mountains on the way to the Dolomites from Milan to Pinzolo, the great great grandparents births, the Cenozoic era with the dinosaurs, the cyanobacteria creating oxygen beginning 3.5 billion years ago, ‘the big bang’ of (currently thought) 13.8 billion years ago. Did all these intelligences know what/who was coming ahead, did they just show up and do what they had to do without knowing? Is it like the far extended Painted Lady Butterflies who pilgrimage over ten generations to arrive in a particular place? Maybe for us too, the importance is to lean into what and who calls us forth to show up without having to know exactly what life lies before us. However, l think l’ll start here:
Louis Francis and Kelly Ann who have been loving together for ten years and more through turmoils, changes, flows, stalls, beauty deepening and more were now stepping closer towards marriage. They had been engaged for some years and were now wondering, amongst other things, how “marriage might allow us to shift our focus from the relationship between us towards our relationship with the wider world together … allowing Mystery a seat at the table…” These were some of the words sitting in their email drafts asking me for guidance and holding for what they felt was a Sacred Ceremony, a Ceremony they sensed had already begun. They were right. They continued: “it is an extraordinarily big invitation that we recognise asks for so much but the pain of not asking is too big so here we are.”
Synchronistically, l sent them information on Stephen Jenkinson’s Forgotten Pillars due to start in March earlier this year. They sent the email my way.
The acknowledgement of “the pain of not asking” pricked my attention and brought forth conversation. I knew love was in and l heard their deep longing. I was clear about what l could offer them as we entered a conversation to explore possibilities. If they wanted a three-day Matrimony Ceremony with their village participating in invitations where none of us knew what would happen in the alchemy of it all, or who any of us would be by then, or even if a marriage would take place after all that, then l may be the Holy Woman for them.
It was already late with just over four months to go with some plans and bookings made already. Stephen Jenkinson suggests a year of preparation, particularly in relation with ancestral conversations as l heard. The betrothed had worked with me previously so there were some threads already and they were already on the path, or rather, in the corridor. I said yes.
We prepared intensely over the next four months …
I’m not sure they imagined then (though they know now) that the tables, the seats, the beauty, the vastness is rather Mystery’s ways as they opened their hearts evermore deeply to themselves, the world, of each and both of them ‘being had’ by Mystery’s call to a deeper romance with themselves, each other, their village and the world. They will be reading this Museletter, they are welcome to comment with their experience below.
And so it is that l arrived in Pinzolo, one might say an ordinary Northern Italian town, one where the Sarca River’s cold mountain water the colour of sage runs through from the mountains; Pinzolo, nestling within the deep valley at the feet of the majestic and magnificent, solid and craggy Doss Del Sabion, The Dolomites, Italy; Pinzolo, l heard named from a single pine tree (pin sol) standing after a torrent took the previous ‘village’ Baldino; Pinzolo, a particular confluence, where l arrived late on Monday 1 July. I arrive with Emma, a soul guide from Colorado, who also courageously said yes to the call to step in during the last weeks to assist guide/holder/ceremonialist/alchemist for Matrimony Ceremony. I knew we were in the best kind of trouble when l heard that Sabion means sand. We arrived in Pinzolo where we were all magnificently ‘had’ by Matrimony and l, for one, glad not to have it any other way.
Sarca River, Pinzolo
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Before l say more about the courage, love, magic, grief, pain, holy alchemy and more of these life, perhaps world, changing days l want to acknowledge the ‘known’ lineage of the work of such ceremony weaving which took place in the wild Dolomite mountains. Usually, gratitude and acknowledgements are made in a separate place at the beginning or end of a piece of writing. However, l’m honouring people here as part of the writing and weaving itself of a different kind of village too alongside the Earth, cyanobacteria, shooting stars, sun, moon, and more; without them showing up previously there would be nothing happened or written here:
Gratitude to The Great Mystery, the Great Cosmos.
Gratitude to Mayan, Martín Prechtel for his stunningly deep rich work in ceremony, an alive world and particularly with regard to our debt in living by feeding the dead who birth life with song, grief, beauty and hand-craft making life/death reciprocity. So much more to say of which l’ll be speaking some in an article being published next month in Unpsychology Magazine. He has published many books well worthy of taking time to read; any of them.
Gratitude to Stephen Jenkinson whose next book regarding Matrimony, is currently being prepared for publication. I cannot recommend him/it more highly; it’s a must if you are interested in cultural regeneration. If there is an opportunity to see his recent course Forgotten Pillars: Patrimony, Matrimony, Kinship, Ancestors, and Ceremony with Kimberly Ann Johnson, l recommend that highly too. I hope the course can become more widely available. The possibility of such an extraordinary Matrimony Ceremony is due to his deep life work in remembering/taking forward ways of Forgotten Pillars towards creating mature adults and elders participating in the world. With the Matrimony Ceremony in Italy l was inspired by his work in and with Matrimony, with “Matrimony as an act of cultural memory” and “the mothering of a culture”. The Matrimony Ceremony being ‘the villages’ focus rather than a privatised/individualist/fairytale/nuclear family ‘happy ever after’ romance between two humans of these modern/post-modern times. Please note l am not trained by Stephen Jenkinson.
Gratitude to April and Trevor Tierney for their love, courage and generosity in calling in Matrimony Ceremony for their marriage in 2018. l was invited to participate in a particular way here that so powerfully called me in and made demands of me, and others, in ways of showing up that the curse never let me go (thankfully). The Matrimony Ceremony in the Rockies deeply fed the Ceremony in Pinzolo.
Gratitude to Bill Plotkin and Animas Valley Institute for their call to soul and journey of soul initiation within an animate cosmos and Earth Community including ‘human’. Here, we enter the deeper world beyond surface remembering a wilder and deeper conversation stepping into our unique mythos, an image we are each born to live into this world that will be lost forever otherwise. The world is witnessing the horror pain of such a big loss tear in the web and forgetting in the world today. Bill Plotkin speaks to stages of human development including a natural metamorphosis into mature adulthood and eldering that is led by Mystery (not human-centred). The metamorphosis is currently prevented within an extractive, medicalised, military, rational, human-centric matrix. Any of his books too are worthy reading; a must if you are interested in cultural regeneration. Bill Plotkin and Stephen Jenkinson come from their distinct perspectives, though that’s another interesting study, including whether it’s actually possible (or impossible) for me to draw on both as l have. The dream world isn’t so rational. The Matrimony Ceremony in Italy called upon his/their work upon many others including my own in listening with and including the mountains, wind, trees, clouds, grasses, sand, the valley, the flowers, the scents, tastes, conversations and more with their participation too. Particularly with Animas, the soul guiding of the multifaceted and mythos aspects of the betrothed previously and intensely in the months preceding Matrimony Ceremony (whenever that began) with years previous; that the Beloveds arrived embodying all currently known (and presently unknown) layering and multifaceted beings they are, human and more-than-human including here such as rose, bee, pollination, honey, and their Mythos. There is, of course, more l can say and have said elsewhere about the work above.
Gratitude to Louis Francis and Kelly Ann who had the courage to say yes to showing up in Matrimony Ceremony and who completely turned around their initial plans so swiftly in their readiness and deep longing to enter deeply and meaningfully into another way of 'wedding', to let go of old stories to live fully into what was/is being mysteriously called forth from them now. Bless them for weeping for what they would have lost if not saying yes to Matrimony Ceremony; again, for what Stephen Jenkinson calls the poverty of these times. Bless them for including all the ways of vulnerable intimacy, seen and unseen costs, the deep preparation being asked for, and needed extra days showing the way that all guests chose to participate vulnerably even with not knowing what it was all about for embodying village. Praise to the village.
Gratitude to Emma Duke, a soul guide from Colorado who came in at the last moment to assist and showed up deliciously fully making a difference.
Gratitude to the many Ancestors, known and unknown, human and other-than-human of those present and not present. I felt my brother particularly.
Gratitude for the Future Ones brought in with their love letters to us.
Gratitude latterly for soul guide Annie Bloom, and business coach Andrea Callanan whilst treading water in high seas of Grief and learning breast stroke again.
Gratitude to ‘my own’ soul pilgrimage taking me around and inside Earth’s Dreaming to Ancestral lands dreaming me, and all Earth life particularly from the dark women who birthed the cave where the world was born and where there are veils and portals consistently emerging through from the cosmos to enter and be entered. A central image amongst many is one of being married to canyon wall, Earth conduit, remembering the ancient BC lineage of PI’A of Earth Mother, PoEM, Holy Woman, Cailleach’s Eye, Chieftain Warrior who spears the heart; rememberer of Celtic Knotworks of Sacred Feminine, Sacred Masculine, Sacred Creature and more; now founder of Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus 2018, and Abbey Of Soul 2024. Listening deeply, Holy Woman developed the Matrimony Ceremony further in ways l’ll speak as l write along the way.
“… That somehow modern and sacred traditions were woven into the same tapestry. How our time is/has been saturated in unbelievable joy and praise but also deep grief…” Kelly Ann
Meantime, let us slow down, take time, for …
“I will never have
this version of me again
let me slow down
and be with her.” (him/them/it)Rupi Kaur
Wendy/Cailleach’s Eye, Pinzolo. Image by Emma
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Abbey Of Soul
was founded earlier this year. Abbey Of Soul is a place and portal for remembering and living life as sacred, for carrying the ancient sacred fire in ever emerging ways; for Ceremony; for tending the hollows where the veils are thin and Gods, Goddesses, humans, Earth Community and Mystery can sing together in remembering our unique, tending the dead life-giving songs intertwining within/as an animate and intelligent Cosmos; where revelation is the way Mystery orients life to guide us.
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CRAFTING INTIMACY WITH SOUL
Friday 2 August, tidal Holy Island Lindisfarne, Northumberland &
Tuesday 3 - Saturday 7 September, tidal Isle of Erraid, Inner Hebrides
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Blessings coming to you, your kith and kin as we approach Lughnasadh harvesting ~
Wendy
…walk … talk … dream … vision … myth …
Where revelation is the way Mystery guides us ~