WILD NATURE / WILD BEING – COURSE

COUNCIL OF ALL BEINGS * ANIMISM * RITUALS * MEDITATION * DRUM JOURNEY * POWER SONGS

Guided by Eero Peltonen and Helena Karhu

We invite you to spend the magic of winter with us at Villa Ora’s retreat center, right next to Koli National Park. There, in the middle of wild nature, we get to enjoy rest, fire, good food, gentle warmth of a wooden sauna and each other’s company. The course takes us to the circle of our ancestors, to feel the connection to everything in our bones and in the core of our beings.

Wild Nature/Wild Being invites us to sense ourselves as part of nature and nature as part of ourselves through ritual, songs, drumming, imagination, and dance. We invite our ancestors, natural forces, places of power, and representatives of the plant kingdom, rock kingdom and animal kingdom to our weekend.

The main theme of the course is sensing and discovering our own inner nature and the wild nature that surrounds us. The main theme of the course is the ritual drama the Council of All Beings developed by Joanna Macy.

We start preparing for the council already on Friday evening by following the sound of the drum and the sensory path opened by poetry singing and meditation. We experience the beauty of ourselves as a part of all that exists. Each of us chooses a member of the animal, stone, or plant kingdom, a force of nature or a place of power that we want to represent in the council. This is how we bring out the richness and diversity of nature and help the different phenomena of nature to tell about their lives, both joys and sorrows.

During the course we will make a mask that embodies our Being. This helps us to deepen our connection to the natural being that we are representing in the council. If you wish, you can bring materials for your own mask for the course, e.g. bark, firewood, feathers, moss, or other natural materials. We instructors bring also some materials for the masks. The course culminates in the Council of All Beings on Saturday evening.