The Honey Temple
Come Dance, Sing, Lament and Nourish in the Tent of Oil and Spice
January 16-18 | February 27- March 1 | April 17-19
Come to one or all three ~ While the form is the same the theme for each will change
The January and February dates are for women only and we are welcoming ALL GENDERS to the April Honey Temple!
Introducing the Honey Temple–a place that has always existed in the in-between, called in when the need for it is there. A place where women remember what it is to be part of one cloth– one earthly, singing, loving, nourishing body– offering our gifts for the filling of the well in ourselves, each other, and the world.
We know in our blood and bones the sensual primordial Mother. The mother culture, the Goddess, the temple of mud, blood and water– of our earthen bodies and how they move with swaying hips, together, long skirts caressing the earth and temple floor, adorned as the earthly goddesses we are, singing our love into being.
Recognize this place of many names that we are calling the Honey Temple.
Come, let down your burdens, your repenting, your striving, your silent turmoil, your simmering rage. Let them melt in this honeyed cauldron of life to be voiced, sung, offered, wept, held, danced and stirred into the wholeness and embrace of the Mother.
The raising of this temple will be our declaration of life.
The raising of hearth and of heart, of song and of sensuality, of ritual and of rage. With bells on our feet, sandalwood on our breasts, and honey on our fingers, we will sing our love and grief for the world and in so doing become so vulnerable to love that we become invincible. Emerging into Spring filled with ancient primordial power and connected to sisterhood through both sorrow and celebration.
Join us.
“…through her falling tears she saw a trail marked in red upon the sand. After many moons following it, she came upon a tent set in the barren land. Strange music reached out from the tent and caressed her cheeks. At last, she left her weary wander and dipped beneath the canopy into fragrant warm copper, red and amber light. The tent pulsed with energy, the air infused with the aromas of spice and sweet oil.
Everywhere within that place rolling sounds surrounded her, filling her senses. Songs bathed her, settling on her lips, entrancing and overwhelming her. She let go, and lay down upon the carpet while the tent sang to her. It seemed to her that a honeyed hive of ethereal women’s voices swelled in undulating harmonies, declaring and proclaiming the profound inevitability of life.
She began to remember those songs. Into that tent of oil and spice, the deep music of the living earth was being drawn in, gathered, stored, distilled, a simple ancient alchemy stirred up by the grief and longing of women.”
–Edited excerpt from Carolyn Hillyer’s Weaver’s Oracle
Honey Making Elements
Grief & Prayer
For thousands of years, Goddess culture and the feminine mysteries associated with it have been pushed underground in the name of Patriarchal rule. Across the globe ancient relics and hieroglyphs have been found: symbols of worship for Her as the keeper of the cycle and of the fertility magic that sustained life through milk and honey, food and blood. She was the land, from seed to harvest, from stillness to ecstasy. People of all kinds traveled far and wide to visit Her temples, kneel at Her altars, and place offerings at Her feet, to drink from her cup of medicine and be invited into embodied Gnosis, into remembering themselves home as a sacred, holy, descendant of Her.
As the patriarchy rose the dismissal, demotion, and disenfranchisement of the feminine spread like a shadow across the land. The political and religious culture forced her through scripture and law into submission, quieting her voice and veiling her radiance, making the worship of the Goddess forbidden, heresy. So much was lost then. Women divided, their ancient rites and wisdom fell and in their hearts grew fear, distrust and forgetting, and the most damaging of all, shame for their own bodies.
Through grief and lament we melt the hardness and numbing we endured to survive so that we may bring to life our embodied prayer again.
Drum & Song
The drum is one of our primary tools of connection to Her. Depicted in cave drawings across the lands of ancient Goddess cultures, it is our symbol of the moon, womb, sacred circle and cycle of life. In playing, we enter rhythmic trance where our body wisdom arises and soul channels through. The suppression of women’s drumming was paired with the suppression of the Goddess, and it is essential that we remember and reclaim this ancient skill for healing, collective trance and the synchronizing of mind, body and soul. Singing together is to ride the swells of heart, emotion, memory and solidarity. Songs are the pathways of shared story, knowing, dream and prayer. Singing awakens the heart, the voice and with these, power. Singing together awaken collective power.
Movement & Eros
Eros is the electric shimmer that moves lythe grace, pulls us in the chemistry of love-making, grows, births and sustains life, and and is an essential source of feminine leadership. Woman needs sensual, circular movement to stir her inner cauldron, alchemize emotion and lubricate her creative juice. What began in life as a natural expression of sensual aliveness became conditioned in patriarchy as a shameful and seductive, and eros fell into shadow. We must undo these binds, allowing space for the body to become erotically alive again and dissolving the shame that stifles full flowering creation.
Hearth & Heart
Core to the Honey Temple is nurturing life-honoring culture which means a bright burning hearth and bright loving hearts. Nourishment for all the senses fills our well of resource. Kindness, connection and belonging is as basic a need as food. Through the tending of the hearth, creating a culture of care, and the sharing of meals we feed our well of sisterhood and are fed by the Goddess..
Flow
We are holding a space for organic aliveness to emerge in the moment, calling in a living temple culture that has a full presence of beautiful offerings, all of which are optional. We see the layered weaving as well as the attunement to your needs and desires as part of a steady turn of the wheel of Honey Temple life. We will be set on the beautiful land at Orchard Hill this winter, while the temple is being built at Ravenwind, and encourage you to rest or wander the land whenever it is nourishing for you, knowing that whether you opt-in to scheduled offerings or not, your innate belonging is sewn into the fabric of this temple.
Friday
Temple set up with rolling arrival | 4-530 pm
Collective Welcome Dinner | 6 pm
Enter the Temple | Opening Ceremony | 730 pm
Grounding into Temple Culture & Belonging
Saturday
Rolling breakfast and temple tending
Pastry Day at the Bakery ~ Yum!
Morning Temple Offering
Collective Lunch
Afternoon Temple Offering
Collective Dinner
Emptying the Vessel | Oracular Ceremony
Sunday
Rolling breakfast and temple tending
Final Temple Offering
Rolling Lunch & Trade Circle | 1230-230 pm
Temple pack up | 230-5 pm
Come resuscitate your senses in the power of the feminine as an essential, creative, loving life force for the world.
Come Re-Member and bring the scattered pieces back together.
Come dry, leave quenched.
Come weary, leave rejuvenated.
Come alone, leave whole in the somatic wholeness of the collective.
Come hungry and leave nourished and fortified with your cup filled to the brim with Honey.
Come and touch into the Well that feeds both Soma and Soul for these wild, precarious and demanding times.
Exchange
Sliding Scale: $222-$444 | Details Below
Includes six meal Friday dinner to Sunday lunch & on-site lodging.
Sleeping is shared floor space in three open format rooms. Bring your own bedroll.
Attendees are welcome to stay off site (no discount).
A few discounted spots per weekend for Hearth tending exchange.
Email Rahlüne to inquire: hello@rahlune.com.
January and February Honey Temples welcomes all women – cis, trans or otherwise – and nonbinary individuals who find their homes in women – and femme-centric spaces.
Girls and Maidens 6-16 are $222. Girls 5 and under are free. If registering for your daughter, please register yourself first and then email Rahlüne to let us know the children coming with you.
Registration
$444: Receive | Relaxed departure, pre-temple pack up welcomed
$333: 13 Moons Coven members and attendees staying for temple pack-up,
single mothers | Use code Pollinator333 at checkout
$222: Maidens 6-16, BIPOC, trans and disabled | Approved Hearth Support bringing a meal
Use code Honey222 at checkout
Refunds: We cannot offer refunds, however in the event that you cannot attend, you may transfer your registration to a future Honey Temple or to another attendee.
Register via Venmo @Jonah-Ruh-Roberts
With “Honey Temple &email address” in the notes
Additional contributions to support the mission and community members
in need of discounts is SO welcomed and appreciated!
Venmo with Description: “Honey Temple Donation”
Location
The Center at Orchard Hill
114 Old Settlers Rd, Alstead, NH
The Honey Temple is a collaborative weaving of many priestesses. It is seeded by Jonah Ruh Roberts and co-managed with Raylyn DiPaolo. Each temple raising holds the Honey Making elements through a rotating core of priestesses that come through 13 Moons and Forest and Village. Priestesses for each Temple raising weekend will be posted as teams are formed. Please join the email list to receive announcements of upcoming Honey Temples.
