‘In any creative work, be it the artist or the artisan, the creatve person unites with the material they are working with, which symbolises the world outside him/herself. The worker and the artefact become one. The human being becomes one with his creation. ‘ Erich Fromm
The word Poiein in Ancient Greek (ποιεῖν) means making. It is where the word Poetry comes from. Plato had pointed at the connection between craft-making and poetry, calling us to gaze at the rich worlds of form and meaning that come to life when we take raw material from our landscape and create with it. It is possible, when we look at a handcrafted object, to appreciate the emotion and soul life that the maker had infused in it.
Sefrou is located in the heart of the middle Atlas. Traditionally, a market town located amidst fertile farming lands, it is known for its fruit orchards, cherry festival and the large Jewish community that lived there up until the last century. Sefrou is still home to a large community of local artisans, metal smiths, woodworkers, weavers and button makers. Though the community is still thriving, few are the ones of the young generation who wish to learn these skills.
Visiting local crafts people in their workshops, we will learn about their work and daily lives as a way to get a sense of the place through the people and their working spaces. An orientation of the city from the inside out hosted by Culture Vultures, will lead us into a deeper relationship with Amazigh women who spin and weave and we will participate in a hands own textile workshop.
We will be introduced to ‘The Loom in Local Rituals’ and how women used the loom as a sacred medium for protection. On Sunday we will make a day trip to a mountain market town in the Middle Atlas where the wool comes from, to meet women who practice unbroken textile traditions in the region.
Alongside these visits our work will consist of listening to the stories that emerge from our activities, as well as engage with traditional stories from around the world to bring into clearer focus the role of craft-making in the life of the Soul. On our last day we will share these stories in a storytelling evening (no previous experience necessary). Daily shamanic practices will help us access ancestral knowledge and seek healing for modern day’s rupture between skill and community, craft and Time.
Praxis Mundi
A collaborative psycho-magical act of healing and
metaphoric redistribution of power along the 0º Meridian
KARMIT EVEN-ZUR
I wanted to be an ecologist. I was ready to set out, equipped with binoculars and maps, on scientific expeditions in aid of the Earth and her ecosystems. So in my early twenties I went to study marine conservation at College of the Atlantic in Maine, but as we sailed off the shores of that magical Mount Desert Island in the school’s research boat, I realised I was more interested in listening to the songs of the whales than recording the salinity of the water. So I jumped overboard and started swimming. I did not know which way the shore was and the sea was rough. I was scared. But armed with the courage to observe Me, I dived inwards, inside my own waters.
In the depths, I asked about the new direction I was taking. I wanted to get a new job description, to know where I was heading, but the only thing I was given was a clue; a blessed recognition of my hands.
'They are your tool, your path, your treasure', I was shown. 'Use them.'
Well I didn’t know how to use them so I went looking for Rick the mechanic. Summoning up my courage sails, I drove to the other side of the Island, to his workshop. ‘Pablo told me you might be able to teach me to weld’, I said, sweating my embarrassment in the snow chilled wind as his fishermen buddies looked me up and down.
‘I’m no good with my hands’ I confessed and we became good friends.
He taught me to weld, melting steel with electric lightning flowing down the rods in my hand.
Later that year my hands took me into the metal sculpture studio at the school of visual art in New York. They made a small figurine that had an uncanny resemblance to the Venus of Willendorf, I was told, though at the time I had not heard of her or about that primordial force called the Divine Feminine. In those days of blind research, my hands parted the trembling veil for me to have a peek into the invisible realms.
Curious about these invisible realms, I found teachers who taught me how to sense into them. Feeling the energy between my hands, scanning a person's energy body and tapping into the energy of a place. Intrigued by the fact that invisible structures were so palpable to me, I let my hands become my ears, my eyes and my mouth. Years later, apprenticing within a European shamanic tradition that works with the wisdom of bees, I also learned how to invite fire into my belly, thawing parts of me which had been frozen for lifetimes. I was waking up from a lifelong slumber. My body becoming a finely tuned tool through which I could summon lightning to melt steel hard pain, blocks and distortions in people's memory bodies and in invisible structures of the land.
“It's time to get the maps and binolculars and all the other tools you have gathered and be the ecologist you wanted to be.”
I knew which tools those were. Tools of perception into the earth's multidimensional layers, the tools of the Shaman who weaves anew the bonds between people and their environment. Remembering what its like to communicate with nature and to tune in to the consciousness of the living Landscape.