CONVIVIALI-TEA SOUL SALON TEA PARTY
The dictionary definition of CONVIVIALITY is: the quality of being friendly, lively, jolly, festive, high-spirited, companionable; fond of feasting, drinking, and playful company.
When you are looking for like hearted beings to be in relationship with, is conviviality something that you are attracted to? That is, beings who are friendly, high spirited, companionable, fond of feasting, drinking, and playful company?
Human beings are innately groupers. That is, like crows, they are naturally drawn to gather convivially in groups and moreover, they are, like crows, also given naturally to chattering and connecting in convivial celebration. Since ancient times people have gathered in groups to honor and celebrate the natural cycles of nature in festivals whose purpose was to bring together and initiate people into deeper soul connection inwardly and outwardly to support each other in community..to support each other through social change and upheaval, through grief, through life’s myriad unfolding initiations. As we moved out of such close connection to the Earth’s seasonal cycles, and moved into the industrial age of working indoors longer hours and days away from any connection to the natural world, festivals became divorced from natural cycles and deep soul processes and became more simply a distraction from feelings of emptiness, disconnection, separation and thus often hollow entertainment.
As an example, if you look at the initiatory Festival of Eleusis that went on for hundreds of years in Greece, it was, like all ancient festivals, intimately tied to the Goddess and the vegetal cycles of nature. In preparation for the depth of the once in a lifetime communal ritual, people walked long distances fasting, chanting, praying together, on their way to the initiatory caves at Eleusis to receive the ecstatic rites of shared experience offered there. Their unified focus and intention sanctified the process and made it more potently impactful to their spiritual awakening. Contrast that with modern day festivals that have been stripped of any unified intention or spiritual meaning beyond entertainment. The innate desire we have as a human species is to reach states of ecstasy together in community: to sing, to dance, to play, to Witness and ecstatically celebrate the sacredness of life together.
Do you feel like something is missing from festivals that you have attended? Did you leave feeling fulfilled, uplifted, divinely attuned, awakened, ecstatic? If not, why?
What were the elements, rituals or processes in festivals that you have attended that worked towards creating ecstatic divine attunement, upliftment and fulfillment?
What elements of the festival left you rather feeling depleted, disconnected, exhausted, unfulfilled?
So what are the structural elements of an initiatory Festival experience, that allow for it to take us deeper into the Mystery rather than to merely entertain?
First of all is meditation on a shared, unified intention that answers the question.. “Why are we doing this ritual, creating this shared sacred experience?” What is the initiation that we want to align with offering to everyone . What is the potential growth potential we desire to offer? Then creating a structure that will support that intention that includes: Preparatory chanting, prayer, fasting etc. An Initiatory challenge to participate. A shared experience Festival Initiation that includes dancing, singing, praying, enacting, crafting of offerings, sacred tools or talismen, honoring of the Divine with offerings of flowers, incense, sacrament, dance, art, song, ritual mythic enactment in Sacred Theater. Unified ecstatic celebration with music, dance, singing etc. And finally, a concluding unified shared ecstatic ritual like lighting a fire , burning the offerings which have been made etc. with song, dance and celebration!
Is the festival being held in alignment with all the natural elements of the optimal phase of the moon, the season of the year, the time of day, synchronized with larger astrological alignments?
Has the Festival placement, been selected for its natural resonance with the amplified energetic power grid of the Earth? Geomancers are trained to do this kind of sensitive selection of place for harmony with intention.
Are we convivially aligned and honoring of all of the other elements of sentient life in the area chosen for the festival. That is, have the plants, trees, animals been petitioned as to requesting permission for the lands use for this purpose?
If YOU could create a festival from scratch.. what would be your theme and intention??
