THE KISS
The craziest question anyone has asked me in recent years was surely shamanic teacher colleague Karmit Evenzur emailing in to say: “Do you like rock art, Imelda?”
DO I LIKE ROCK ART?!! What kind of question is that?!! I adore rock art! I would grow wings and fly to the Moon if there was rock art to be seen there… For me rock art is about instant connection to other time periods and other worlds. Rock art never fails to move me, it never fails to feed my soul, as a painter and shamanic practitioner I can never get enough of it.
“How come Karmit, why are you asking?” As it turned out Karmit had a vision of us co-teaching a workshop in Andalucia, where is based. An innovative and ground-breaking workshop where sacred art meet geomancy (the art of communicating with the earth and reading the energies of the land and features in the land).
I said: LET’S DO IT before even looking at a map. This was a dream come true. No wild horses were going to keep me away!! This instant reply was followed by months of skype and shamanic journeying and delicious research that took us into local history, mythology, ancient fertility rites, the period of the Great Mother Goddess, the night sky, birds and their migration paths over Europe, serpents, dragons, creation stories and much else.
We first taught the course in October last year, at the Laguna de la Janda, with an amazing group of talented and committed students. We are teaching this course again on 9 – 13 October this year .
We will enter a cave called LA CUEVA DE LA PILETA and do shamanic work deep below the ground.
Here is a link for a recording made by musicians Max and Einav in this cave (plus delicious images of the cave and surroundings!)
http://www.cuevadelapileta.org/textos_archivos/introart.html
We will be painting our own rock art on stones by the river as we perform a ceremony for the land. We will visit place where all of us will have their own cave to meditate and dream in – so we can all go home reborn, our souls full to brim with inspiration.
THERE ARE A FEW PLACES LEFT!!
OCHRE WOMAN
In this seminar we will use shamanic techniques and art to explore images painted by Neolithic peoples on rock faces and in caves near the old Laguna de la Janda in Andalucia, southern Spain.
Our aim is to connect with the Spirits of Place and the ceremonial experiences ancient people had on this land. In our previous workshop we learned that hunting magic and fertility rites inspired ceremonies that kept the land, animal and human population healthy and in sacred balance.
Southern Andalucia is a place where two oceans and two continents meet (Africa and Europe) and where migrating birds rest on their epic migration journeys north and south.
Shamans have always understood that nature is the visible face of Spirit. That shamanic work is about opening portals between the eternal realm of the sacred and the earthbound world of everyday reality. That material reality is maintained and revitalised in close cooperation with beings and processes in other realms.
In our seminar we will engage with the ancient concept of ‘The Green Language’ or ‘Language of Birds’. This is understood to be a magical, mythical and/or divine language used by birds to communicate with the initiated.
In Norse mythology Sigurd discovered he could understand the language of birds after he accidentally tasted the blood of the dragon Fafnir.
From the geomantic point of view there are strong dragon lines in the landscape at La Janda. Through connecting with dragon energy we come to understand alchemical processes in the realm beyond words: creation, manifestation, soul flight, regeneration. This is the fertile space beween the In Breath and Out Breath of Creation itself.
Metaphorically speaking we ‘taste Dragon’s Blood to understand the Language of Birds’. Practically speaking we will be performing a spirit–led healing ceremony for the land. And in doing so we arrive at a
GNOSIS OF THE LAND!
Imelda Almqvist & Karmit Evenzur
SOUL FLIGHT
imeldaalmqvist 