2011/2012 Calendar

All Women Vision Quest
Mpumalanga, South Africa

9am Thursday 3rd November – 6pm Sunday 13th November 2011

Have we forgotten
that wilderness is not a place,
but a pattern of soul
where every tree, every bird and beast
is a soul maker?

Have we forgotten
that wilderness is not a place
but a moving feast of stars,
footprints, scales and beginnings?

Since when
did we become afraid of the night
and that only the bright stars count?
Or that our moon is not a moon
unless it is full?

(From “Wilderness” by Ian McCallum)

The Invitation

This is an invitation to all women to join us for an 11 day Vision Quest. A Vision Quest is a journey into yourself, a solo fast in the wilderness, where you are held in safe sacred space by the facilitators. This gift to yourself is about allowing time and space to listen deeply to your internal voice, to allow nature to be your companion, teacher and mirror.

A woman’s life is linked to natural rhythms and cycles from birth to death.  Our connection to nature is innate. We call the earth on which we tread daily “mother” and she holds us through the trials and tribulations that make up our days, weeks, months and years.  The moon cycles through its phases illuminating and hiding aspects of ourselves and our lives, reminding us of the push and pull of the tides of love, passion, beauty, grief, loss.

This Vision Quest offers opportunities for reflecting on, celebrating, releasing or welcoming an event, a life passage, a time. It is a way of seeking clarity or simply deep rest. Throughout the ages people have honoured the phases and acknowledged challenges and changes in their lives by thoughtfully taking time out from their routines for deep listening and reflection.

What to expect

We will spend all 11 days in the wilderness. The first 4 days we will be spent preparing for the solo time by clarifying intentions, learning skills to support yourself on the fast and severing your connection to your daily life and routine. Then we will move to a base camp from which you will venture out into your own wilderness, your sacred mountain time. This will be 4 days and nights alone in a fasting state. On your return from the solo time we will spend 3 days easing back into the world by listening deeply to each other’s stories and preparing to return to families and work. 

While the Vision Quest itself is a solitary activity, the time before and after the solo will be spent in community.

Your Guides

Theresa Plewman and Judy Bekker are collaborating on this Vision Quest, bringing together a broad range of facilitation and therapeutic skills and a shared love of the land and passion for the particularities of being women in the world. Judy, with 20 years experience of guiding vision quests with Valerie Morris (more than 60 vision quests in all), trained Theresa as a Vision Quest guide in 2004. Theresa has since run vision quests with Kevin Rudham, her partner in Circles of Stone. Kevin and Judy have co-facilitated a vision quest as well. Theresa and Judy have worked together as co-facilitators and organisers of rites of passage events for young and older women.  They share a strong bond of mutual respect and fun!

Details:

Date: Thurs 3 – Sun 13 November 2011
Time: Arrive at the venue by 10am on Thursday 3rd. Depart the venue by 4pm Sunday 13th.
Venue: Privately owned farm near Middleburg, Mpumalanga, South Africa, approximately a 2½ hr drive from Johannesburg.
Fee: R6500 or £625.
(Fee includes all facilitation and guiding, all meals and simple shared indoor accommodation in a rustic farmhouse – there is hot running water, gas and paraffin lighting)

Contact us for your registration form and for further information. 

On receipt of your registration form we will send you a Guide for Preparation for Vision Quest, which gives extensive detail for preparation.  Please register as soon as possible – a few months preparation is essential.

Theresa Plewman
theresa@circlesofstone.co.za
UK Mobile: +44 (0) 7548 913 872
SA Cell:            +27 (0) 83 600 4523
www.circlesofstone.co.za
www.rba.co.net

“Wild woman” – “when women hear those words, an old, old memory is stirred and bought back to life.  The memory is of our absolute, undeniable and irrevocable kinship with the wild feminine, a relationship which may have become ghostly from neglect, buried by over-domestication, outlawed by the surrounding culture, or no longer understood anymore.  We may have forgotten her names, we may not answer when she calls ours, but in our bones we know her, we yearn toward her; we know she belongs to us and we to her.” When we can bear her absence no longer, when we are lost to ourselves, exhausted with life, and grief stricken by loss, “then we leap into the wilderness and run hard, our eyes scanning the ground, our hearing sharply tuned, searching under, searching over, searching for a clue, a remnant, a sign that she still lives, that we have not lost our chance.”
(Clarissa Pinkola Estes,1992)