The Honey Temple
Come Dance, Sing, Lament and Nourish in the Tent of Oil and Spice
Three Temple Raisings in the First 100 Days
Jan 17-19 • Feb 28-Mar 2 • Apr 11-13
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.
It is no mistake that we raise this temple within the first hundred days of the inauguration of one firmly holding the same banner as those who tore down our temples thousands of years ago. We raise them again, and again, and again because the life force of women is as whole as it ever was and we do what we do, birth life.
The first hundred days 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
Hearth
Held by Cammie Austin, ‘Birdie’
Birdie is devoted to the sanctity of the temple from the visible to the non-visible. Creating and holding spaces of deep reverence, generosity and love. A mother and a grandmother, a seeker on the path of love and the beauty way. A peacekeeper, dancer and a whirler. She will be holding the Hearth from a place of graciousness, order, consideration and love, inviting us to come into a place of deep nourishment, reverence and mindfulness.
Oil and Spice
Held by Melodie Fallon
Melodie is devoted to bringing beauty into form through the senses. Enlivening our self honor through adornment and tending the temple of ourselves, one another and Gaia, she is devoted to the beauty way of Earth stewardship and seeing ourselves as a mirror of Earth. Her practice of herbalism, womb wisdom and bodywork weaves into her offerings of guided self massage, and ritual self care with plant steeped oils. She invites us into a graceful relationship of honoring soul within the slow, sensuous temple of Self so that we are deeply at home as we generate the ripples of love and beauty out into the collective. You can learn more about Melodie at www.yoursacredvessel.com.
Song and Grief
Held by Hannah Jeffery
Hannah is a spritely song fairy who catches, carries and teaches songs of joy, love, devotion, hope, longing, sadness, anger, emptiness, seeking, and not-knowing. They gather song-kin wherever they go, bringing together those who wish to worship at the altar of life through song! Hannah is a Goddess of play and expresses their devotion to aliveness through parts play, ritual theatre, ecstatic movement and grief ritual. They invite us to honor all that is–our grief as well as our joys, our heartache as well as our celebration, our separation as well as our belonging. They’ve been an apprentice to the grief-tending work of Joanna Macy and the Work That Reconnects. Hannah is delighted to hold song and grief tending for this temple to help us re-member and welcome home all the parts of us that long to know they are well held by love and that they belong to the beauty that is this magical life!
Eros
Held by Raylyn DiPaolo, ‘Rahlune’
Rahlüne is devoted to healing the divide between spirit and matter through the forgotten mysteries of the Goddess Temple Arts. In the name of ecstatic intimacy, she is passionate about walking with individuals, couples and communities through three gates of initiation: shadow dancing through the underworld for authentic soul remembrance, the artful channeling of living, creative energy, and open-hearted, turned-on relating for co-creating a more beautiful world. She will weave the ancient art of bellydance into our gathering in devotion to embodied intimacy and living eros. Learn more about Rahlüne: https://www.rahlune.com.
Mystery and Muse
Held by V. Wade
A poet of the veils, V holds the bridge between the worlds of the physical and the unseen. She is deeply connected to the more-than-human-ones and speaks the language of mystery and soul. A dancer, ceremonialist, minstrel, and handmaiden to soul and Source, V. helps us open our eyes and ears to our true nature and to the magic of the earthly, celestial, and more-than-human realms. V. serves as a conduit to pour into the fabric of our being the immense love, beauty and bounty of Mystery.
Love and Prayer
Olivia Grace ‘Nali Boa’
Nali is devoted to the temple of Gaia as an ever-tuning instrument of soul, endeavoring to experience the spirit of love fully embodied. She is passionate about dancing and singing her praise of the sacred with earthen wildness. Her personal journey of liberating her body and voice from the confines of an oppressed culture has been illuminated through 13 Moons, a year long soul pilgrimage traversing the feminine archetypes within a temple of women, where she has also served as a support priestess. Her soul stream flows into the facilitation of sacred spaces for the multifaceted magnificence of the goddess to be experienced and expressed. As a priestess for the Temple of Gaian Eros, Nali lovingly invites human kin into the embodied exploration of their wild, sensuous, interconnective nature. Her prayer is for all beings to embrace their primal divinity in a symbiotic spiral dance with the web of life.
Heart
Held by Jonah Roberts, ‘Raven’
Raven is devoted to the center pulse of prayer that organizes our very soma into harmony, and to the Heart which, when seen, heard, expressed, loved, juiced and couraged has the power to lift our prayers to the Heart of the World. She is devoted to presence, to the collective, to Earth, to what is real, and to unfolding out of shame, hiding and withholding to truly share ourselves and offer our collective love to each other and this exquisite world. She holds at the center the poignancy between devotion and despair, and the opportunity to be with the fullness of Life in the presence of Now. Raven holds transformational journeys for women through 13 Moons: A year in the Temple, Anima Terra: A Yearlong Journey of Wild Descent and Soul Emergence for Women, and Forest and Village: An Annual Gathering for the Rites of Women. While The Honey Temple is one of Raven’s heart projects she will not be attending the April gathering.
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 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
Dinner
Enter the Temple and receive a sensuous, love wash
Shed the layers of travel, soot and dust
Ground through a tea ceremony and connect in opening council
Saturday
Rolling breakfast and temple tending
Morning prayer and movement
Sweet Oil and Spice self care ritual
Lunch
Opening the layers of grief and song
Ceremonial Adornment
Dinner
Invoking the Primordial Mother through ritual trance
Sunday
Rolling breakfast and temple tending
Morning prayer and movement
Seeding Prayers with Cacao and Folkloric Dance
Lunch
Closing Ceremony and Land Offering
Temple pack up
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
$350 temple offering. Includes 6 meals.
Several spots are available at $300 for Hearth tending exchange. Email Raylyn to inquire, hello@rahlune.com.
The Honey Temple welcomes all women – cis, trans or otherwise – and nonbinary individuals who find their homes in women – and femme-centric spaces.
We strongly desire our daughters to feel the magic of women in our collective medicine so we also welcome babies and the young.
Girls 16 and under are half price. Girls 5 and under are free.
Includes all meals from Friday dinner to Sunday lunch.
Sleeping is shared floor space in three open format rooms. Bring your own bedroll.
Location
The Center at Orchard Hill in Alstead, NH
