Part of the Wind and Stars, Blood and Bone series: Diverse online offerings highlighting inspirited relationship, the soul as artist, Earth Eros, and the mysterious beauty of body wisdom. 

Earth Eros: Imagining-- The Dreaming Art of Faery

Dates: specific dates not currently set.

Cost: If you find this interesting, please inquire as to how to attend and for cost.

Description: An unfettered imagination; a dreaming that includes birdsong, the undercurrents of creeks, decaying flora and fauna–which means you, too–the unknowable flow of your ancestors satisfactions and losses, the scorned monsters under the bed, the moist coolness of forests and their chthonic underbellies and the vast cycles of the galaxy and beyond are key to merging into relationship with the spirit realms and to expressing the possibilities of our human nature, which is a holographic waveform of inspirited dreams and longing—and more. Our lavish dreaming has the power to loosen the cultural ties of conditioned realism and return us to the fertile Void where more than we know of is possible.

And so……this gathering is an invocation, a call of Eros to our original ground of multiplicity of selves to emerge from the abyss of their sundering, however ragged, and shape our focus on the anomalous experiences weaving through our lives that are often filled with wonder, enchanting beauty, a sense of suspended time and space, and an indescribable yet palpable sense of magic, an “otherness” our routine pattern of days can seem to lack; while acknowledging as well the shaking soil of dread that can accompany this feral unknown like a stalking lover lost in the underworld. All thresholds hold a paradox of tension and within this tension, our dreams and actions may conjugate into the miracle of form.

We will begin rolling our tongues around words like wonder, longing, enchantment, glamour, beauty, magic, fecund, mystery, and more in order to have some clarity for what we even mean. And as we become enchanted by the unnameable presences that arise as we seed our field with these wordspells, we will likely find our elemental, ancestral bodies spontaneously riding the accompanying waves of our layered cosmologies– how they are woven in our lives and their ancestry; their effects on us and life around us and what powers we have available to alter and navigate such liminal realms of earthbody experience. And we will discover how all of this yearns to be known through life-sustaining art.

This surrender into the dreaming art of Faerie, which is a rhizomatic ground of consciousness and what some might call the imaginal realm, is a true letting go of the dominant cultural admonition to always be realistic and logical in known acceptable ways; to tie our practicality to the status quo; to limit our imaginations and yearnings; to restrict our experience of ourselves to a notion of discrete and rigid individualism which strangles the original songs of life and silences the ancient rising through the new. Through inviting ourselves into this shifting edgeless realm of mystery, we begin to free ourselves from the separatist mode of imagining, and rejoin the great dance heralded by the emergence of Faery into our visions.   

To unshackle one’s imagination can be a difficult process within an insane culture even when you are part of a privileged population; and so much more so if you are not, yet vitally important. Scholarships available for the latter.

*note to clarify: This exploration is not focused on poor Tinkerbell and her clan nor the historical/mythological aspects of little magical creatures with wings or great powerful liminal beings of light; it’s not all about the Sidhe/Tuatha de Danaan or the Shining Ones, nor the Peri, Yumboes, Aziza, Mimis, Rusalka, Yosei, etc. Although some aspect of any of those may certainly be conjured; this gathering is about the imagination/creative matrices, human and other, and tending it in alignment as and with spirit power.

8 Zoom meetings:  2 per month, 1 two hour session one evening per month 7:00-9:00 pm; 1 three hour session one Sunday per month 10am-1pm.  Attendance at all sessions encouraged when possible for the pleasures of community but not mandatory. All sessions recorded for later viewing.

Private mentoring/healing: 2 individual sessions with me during the 4 month period. Your choice of healing, coaching, or integrating monthly course topic.

Independent study: Inquiries/explorations/ceremonies/artistic expressions will be formatted and offered for you to do yourself and with cohorts each month. As in all the Wind and Stars online series, every participant will be encouraged to translate their inquiries, knowing, desires, curiosity —their experiences—into whatever shape of artistic expression they are moved by and to share this with our community.

Google Drive and private page: Supportive information, cohort contributions and supplemental work will be shared here 

Experience: None required, but earth-honoring practices helpful

from Testimonials: “Damaris is the kind of teacher who works and moves beyond any kind of standard or traditional criteria. It’s not enough to say that you, as a student, will do a great deal of learning. It’s more accurate to say that you will change the way you think, feel and move in the universe. It’s like that. It’s that level of teaching. I am profoundly grateful for what I have received through her guidance, wisdom, and friendship. In short, if you want to understand something better, read a book. If. you want to set your reality ablaze, I present Damaris.”

………….. K. Klonowski, Cultural Foundations Educator, Cleveland OH