Matriarch Lodge and Grandmother’s Den

The Matriarch Lodge is where the backbone and keel of the gathering are held. Here the wisdom of gathered years pours into the community to nourish, teach, steady and guide the youngers. Here are the weavers, weaving the context and storyline of where we come from and where we are going. This is the place of the Matriarchs, Grandmothers and Elders. During meals, you will find Listeners holding gentle heart share circles to integrate and hear what is alive for you. It is the place where our full village ceremonies and rituals are woven. A few steps away from the Matriarch Lodge is the Grandmother’s Den. This intimate ‘listening lodge’ is held to offer you a place to be heard, receive guidance, share stories and life lessons, and be met by a Grandmother’s deep wisdom and heart.

 

Hearth and Temple of the Mother

The Hearth is the anchor where the threads of the village come together, a meeting point, and a pillar of support to the community. At the Hearth life gathers and remembers itself. It is the heartbeat, and within it lives the Temple of the Mother – the source of nourishment, where warmth is felt through presence, tenderness, and deep belonging. It is a place to be held, to be nurtured and where joy is remembered in the body. The steam of hot teas and the smoke of sage surround this space so you may soften and may rest into the arms of compassion The Hearth listens. It holds stories, laughter, tears, and silence alike. Within this temple, mothering is honored in all its forms and being mothered is reclaimed as a birthright. It is an intentional soft landing, a place to melt into the layered truths of motherhood: its grief, its beauty, its sacred weight, and its quiet joy. This is a space for all women, in all seasons of life. A place to gather, to witness and be witnessed, to soften the edges of isolation. Here, we call in a way of living rooted in support, nourishment, and collective honoring. We move away from carrying too much alone, away from being stretched thin by the illusion of the lone superwoman. At the Hearth, we remember the truth: we are a woven web – strong, soft, and sustainable. Held together by care, by presence, by love in motion. It is both an anchor and a spark, grounding the village while igniting connection, resilience, and renewal.

 

Artemis Temple (Maiden Camp)

We are inviting our daughters who are in the midst of adolescence, at this precious and tender time of first budding, to come together to be embraced by, and woven into, the larger community. This is an opportunity for our girls to be supported and celebrated as they claim their power and birthright as women. The maidens will have the opportunity to see themselves and find their place within the greater context of the woman’s soul journey, and to orient to the specific tasks and gifts of their particular stage. We will welcome these young ones into the mysteries, teaching them the ways in which their Sacred Self is a temple that contains and expresses the same rhythms and power of Gaia herself. Our girls will begin to learn the arts of tending this temple, inside and out, with reverence and devotion. Threading the themes of womb wisdom, intuition, social belonging, sexual self-knowledge, confidence and personal sovereignty- our maidens will receive an awareness of the magic and medicine inherent in this time of blossoming. Maidens are encouraged to camp out at the Artemis Temple for the weekend to bond more deeply in sisterhood if they choose. We will have focused offerings for both the younger maidens, (ages 11-14) and older maidens (15-17) woven throughout the village.

 

Children’s Village

The sacred seeds of the future, growing here & now alongside us. Here lies the hum of children & kin: sharing songs & stories, immersing in the elemental experience with this sacred land, playfully connecting with curious presence. This microcosm offers respite for families & children under 10 to be beyond the central buzzing. With offerings for all ages, and some unique to children over 5 who feel comfortable being away from their parents. This space is a short walk away from the Hearth for mothers, and an easeful meeting ground for fathers coming from Family Camp. At this meeting ground, both mothers & fathers are welcome here with boys up to 6 and girls up to 10.

 

 

Temples of Mystery and Learning

The temples are not based on age but rather gifts and mysteries of the feminine we feel are essential to presence and cultivate.

 

Lover’s Temple

Lover’s Temple is a living sanctuary devoted to awakening the Lover within, where sensual aliveness, relational artistry, and heart-consciousness uplift a culture rooted in love. We commit to reweaving the relational blueprint, shifting from disempowerment and domination into one of sovereign intimacy. Here, love is approached as a mystery school, initiating us through life’s many thresholds with fierce truth, guiding us into deeper devotion and embodied wholeness. Within the Temple, we both soften and strengthen, reclaiming the essential wisdom of the body and heart. Together, we become vessels of love co-creating with life and meeting its mysteries with pleasure, passion and presence.

 

Forest Temple

The Forest Temple is for those called away from the buzz of the village, to the outskirts, to the edges of the known, the liminal places between dark and light, following the whispers of Gaia into Sacred lands, to fall into the wellspring of Deep Time, following our longings for Soul, for our truest belonging, for our most embodied way of being with the all that is. This is a mysterious place of descent, of transformation and unraveling, where we court the in-betweens, the unseen, the feral, deep power and truth within.  Here we allow ourselves to unbind, dissolve and let go of old roles and identities. In this space you will be invited to feel your untameable, unnameable wildness, the transition you are in, the medicine within, and wisdom of the Sacred others in the forest. You’ll be guided to shed what is dying or no longer true and open into deeper knowing of yourself as a mythic being.  This is the place of transformation, of falling into the portal to the underworld, and turning toward Soul’s call!

Pre-gathering Vision Fast
New this year, held by the Forest Temple keepers, is a pre-gathering vision fast offered in the days leading up to the gathering. This is an opportunity for women in transformation to be held by experienced guides through a 48 hr solo time on the mountain before the gathering begins. This fast will take place on the mountain at Sacred Nectar, Sunday, July 26 through Thursday July 30th and will be guided by Jonah Roberts and Tracey Forest with support from Gia Neswald.
Learn more about the Pre-gathering Vision Fast.

 

Earth Temple

Earth Temple space will be for the Guardians of Gaia.
The earth temple will be a space to honor our mother nature as a spirit to revere and as a being in need of our service. At a time on the planet when many have forgotten to respect the consciousness of Pachamama, come to this temple to be in reciprocity with Her and to learn about the ways in which we can be guardians for the elements, the land and the animals. You can honor your ancestors and loved ones who walked here before us at the altar and commune with their spirits for guidance. You can attend workshops about connection to our earth and how to be in right relations with all life we share this planet with.

 

Sanctuary of the Healing Arts

The Healing Sanctuary at Forest and Village is a sweet, soft yin space ~ a place to come home to yourself whenever needed, to be heard, to be seen, and to be held. Here, you’ll find offerings that are both deeply restorative and inspiring, supporting and empowering your journey as it unfolds within you and through the collective. This sacred space is of service to the whole, providing herbal remedies to uplift and support your experience. Within the sanctuary, you will find a central altar and circle space, an apothecary filled with carefully curated plant medicines, and cozy nooks for bodywork, energy work, and other healing modalities. Come for tea and reflection, to process and integrate, or for first aid if needed. A wide array of remedies will be available, with a special focus on nervous system support. The sanctuary is lovingly held by Alyssa (lyssy) Holmes, along with other incredible women offering their healing gifts.

 

Temple of the Ancient Arts

This year, Ancient Arts evolves into a two-fold temple of creativity and remembrance: one wing devoted to the expressive arts, the soul-song of the village, and the other to the tangible arts, a sanctuary of slow, ancestral craft. Here, we court the muse, surrendering to the ancient rhythms of drum, dance, and ritual theatre as prayer; while hands shape altars, ritual tools, adornment, and objects of beauty from earth and imagination. It is a space where creativity unlocks devotion, where craft becomes ceremony, and beauty carries sacred meaning. Ancient Arts tends the inner embers of the timeless artist, kindling a fire that extends beyond this gathering into our homes, our bodies, and the quiet rituals of everyday life.

 

Temple of the Muse

Enter the Temple of the Muse, a temple of sacred expression where we embody the soul-song of earth-based culture through the ritual arts of drum, dance, adornment and enactment. Here we tend the sacred spark of creation, offering our bodies as living instruments through which the muse may play and pray. From the depths of the cave, we commune with inspiration at its source, and emerge weaving the stories of the village into intentional ceremony, enacting the soul of the culture we are here to remember and rebirth.

 

Moon Lodge

The Moon Lodge, a Lunar Temple of Light and Shadow, is situated at the crossroads between the village and the forest. This is the space where the individual journey meets and merges with the greater turnings of the cosmic cycles. Here, we can remember ourselves as cyclical beings, aligning the microcosm of our own bodies with the rhythms of nature as expressed through the phases of the moon, the seasonal wheel of the year, and the mythic stages of the feminine soul journey. As women, we are each an embodiment of the Divine Feminine, invited to move at the pace of the Earth, attuning to Her tides of ebb and flow, creation and destruction, life, death, rebirth and all the nuances and potentialities in between. This temple honors every phase of womanhood, in reverence and devotion to the deep medicine of each facet of our ever revolving and evolving nature. This space contextualizes the finite Self as a reflection of the Infinite, a space of devotion for the temple of our unique forms that house, and can harmonize with, the energies of the whole universe. This is a temple to find rest and reflection during your bleed, to honor and offer your blood back to the earth. The Moon Lodge holds the biological rights for the phases of womanhood and provides a nourishing yin space for bleeding women.

 

Fae Temple

The Fae Temple is a gender expansive healing space, learning space, and playspace rooted in relationship with the sacred feminine as a living, evolving force—one that cannot be fully defined, only experienced. It invites radical and ecstatic confrontation with the instability that can arise from centering the margins, opening pathways for deeper truth, connection, and reimagining. Within a held and facilitated container, women and nonbinary folk assigned female at birth (afab), are invited to explore their own relationship to gender identity, spirituality, and belonging while engaging in strong, accountable community building. Gender-expansive experience is recognized here as profoundly sacred, reflecting paths of courage, transformation, and alignment beyond conforming to systems of power. The space makes room not only for exploration, but for witnessing, repair, and the naming of harm, including the impacts carried through language and culture. Offerings are for the whole village, with occasional closed spaces for gender expansive afab people when necessary to support safety, depth, and care.

 

Shrines

The shrines are tended spaces to pray together and alone.

 

Grief Shrine

Grief, Death, and Transformation: Your grief is the precious gift of your open heart. Each human heart holds immeasurable grief because it can hold immeasurable love, and everything we love, we will lose. In this time of Great Turning, we are faced with incomprehensible loss. Our hearts are being called upon to hold space for Grief as magnificent warriors of peace. In order to transform this grief into praise and right action, we must come together and create spaces where the energy can move and be transmuted by Gaia. We are devoted to ancient technologies and modern insights that help us take grief out of the shadows and place it back into the heart of community life. At Forest and Village, all of our grief, rage, and love is welcome. There will be altars and shrines set up for us to visit at any time, while the tendril of Grief-tending will spiral through our different Temples throughout the weekend. Because Grief is so central to our love and embodied right action, we recognize the ways it touches us at every stage of Life. During Forest and Village, we will allow the dance of Grief to swirl with the other Temples, and moments to drop into Grief, Death, and Transformation will present themselves in mysterious ways.

 

Water Sanctuary

Forest and Village is one sacred cell in a web of connection that crosses all space and time. At the center of the village lies the sacred pond, where we gather in devotion to the waters of mother Earth; the waters that flow to all water everywhere. We gather as loving witness to the divine currents, singing into the basin, infusing our love, gratitude, tears, and laughter as we vow to protect what is sacred. Come connect, rejoice, grieve, play, and flow as we listen to the voices of the waters deep beneath the surface, the Rio Abajo Rio. This sanctuary is an invitation to let the waters carry, cleanse, and rebirth you again and again. We emerge washed, witnessed, and woven together with our own inner tides, each other, and with the sacred connected waters that sustain all life. Enter to immerse in ceremony, dance embodied movement prayers, commune with living altars, or gaze into scrying portals. Come bring your sweet little ones to be soothed by gentle song and sound, or to play splash in the shallow pools. Come adorn and freshen your body temple, while being surrounded by gentle prompts to connect you with your aliveness and unique prayers. We invite villagers to bring a small vessel of their homeland sacred waters to add to our collective water prayer vessel, which we will infuse throughout the gathering and give back for the healing of all life.

The Village Commons

Our central spaces for ceremony, information and feeding.

 

Wisdom Fire

The Wisdom Fire is at the center of the village and is where we hold full camp ceremonies in the evening.

 

Honey Bee Info Hive

This is a place to find out what is happening around the village and serves as our information relay station.

 

Temple of Taste (Kitchen)

Our kitchen is rooted in co-creation and collaboration with the land to bring deep nourishment to the village to fuel our prayers, our tears, our ceremonies and our becoming. The kitchen witches will be humming with juicy abundance and love to provide a rainbow of offerings to nourish all of your senses with healing care and joy infused in every dish. We will be serving vegan gluten free meals with dairy and gluten sides.