August Newsletter

August 2024

The Realm of Primal Forces

What we choose to fight is so tiny!

What fights with us is so great!

If only we could let ourselves be dominated

as things do by some immense storm,

We would become strong too, and not need names.

~ Ranier Maria Rilke

The multiple crises of the world – each challenging in itself – crowd upon each other like clouds piling up into a towering thunderhead. We sense a storm approaching; and the need for major transformation presses upon us. Change is never easy, always disruptive, while continuing as we are feels impossible or irresponsible.

The great myths of humanity tell us the second stage of the heroic journey requires leaving home and entering a field of powerful and primal forces. The heroes and heroines have to bid farewell to all that’s comfortable and familiar – the sphere of habit, routine, and cultural consensus – and immerse themselves in this novel and numinous realm.

Fantastic and frightening, this Realm of Primal Forces appears as a dark forest, the underworld, Oz, the labyrinth, the ominous and surging sea. It brims with magic and wonder, darkness and delights.

Filled with dangers and obstacles, tests and ordeals, our protagonists climb mountains, navigate through impenetrable fog, explore uncharted territories, set sail across dangerous seas, and journey to the underworld in search of some prize, for the answers they seek are never at home in the castle, town, or village. This important and prototypical undertaking always requires a departure to somewhere else.

For 35 years Circles of Air and Stone has guided people on their heroic journeys, helped people to listen to the call to adventure, to fall in love with the unknown, and enter the realm of primal forces to explore the depths of their psyches and… free from consensus, culture, and judgments and opinions about the world and themselves… find their key to what they seek – a magic potion, the blessing of the gods, the wisdom of the ancestors, the lifting of a curse, or (like Dorothy and Odysseus) simply finding the way home…

What is your heroic journey? If a program we offer speaks to you, consider joining us!

UPCOMING PROGRAMS...

VISION QUEST

GREEN MOUNTAIN FOREST, VT

SEPTEMBER 12TH - SEPTEMBER 22ND

Along the lake shore, swirls of mist lift from the water with the morning sun as islands emerge from the fog. Leaves are turning gold and crimson as geese splash down to rest on their southward journey.

The forest offers a thousand treasures in miniature kingdoms of moss, fields of mushrooms sprouting from mossy logs, and water splashing through boulder-strewn streams... all amidst the brilliant palette of autumn leaves.

VISION QUEST

GILA WILDERNESS, NM

OCTOBER 8TH -

OCTOBER 18TH

Mountain, desert, and river ecologies blend together in a rich and diverse intermingling. The first designated wilderness in the world, this is an area of stunning variety. Incredibly rich in animal life – deer, mule deer, turkeys, wild boar, and elk are common.

Birthplace of Geronimo, it was once home to the Apaches as well as ancient cliff-dwelling peoples who mysteriously disappeared 800 years ago. Evidence of their stay remains, their energy palpable. Hot springs and geothermal energy abound.

2024 WORKSHOP & VISION QUEST SCHEDULE

MYTHIC WARRIOR PROGRAM

8-MONTH TRAINING ADVENTURE FOR MEN

This fall, we again offer the Mythic Warrior program, an 8-month training for men who want to stand on their own ground, explore their own lived experience, and discover a sacred sense of themselves and masculinity free of the stories imposed on them by their pasts or the culture of today.

Meeting one weekend a month for 8 months, beginning November 8, 2024, our group will enact a modern-day hero’s journey. Weaving together depth psychology, ritual, initiatory activities and powerful group processes, we identify any parent-child conflicts that remain with us, and move beyond adolescence, reaction and dependency.

Reframing their lives as a quest for vision, men cross the threshold of the sacred. Within a community of nurturing, healthy masculinity, men find and claim the power to create and nurture a foundation of trust and empowerment to support and guide them through life, and help heal themselves, their families, and communities.

The testimonials below are a few among many who have had their lives changed by the program.

LEARN MORE. . .

WRITING | (Books, blogs and more). . .

THE KNOWN + UNKNOWN (I)

The Great Mystery is not to be Solved!

Carlos Castaneda applies a simple and elegant distinction to reality: He divides the field of action and awareness (the world) into two spheres — the known and the unknown, the right side and left — and associates corresponding practices with each. These practices are called stalking, the art of handling ordinary reality (the known) in non-ordinary ways; and dreaming, the art of entering and participating in the fluid and magical world of the unknown, the non-ordinary reality.

We’ve been taught that learning comes from thinking, study, analysis, and deliberation — the act of reasoning — and that knowledge holds the keys to power and will open doors to success. Our educational system promotes this primarily intellectual process, where neutral, non-participatory observers study separate and disconnected objects and events that make up the world. Applying scientific analysis and method to the challenges of physical existence has radically transformed the material, social, and psychic reality we live in. But mesmerized by the considerable powers of thought, we often substitute and confuse this disconnected and disembodied intellectual process with the process of life itself — “I think therefore I am.”

Castaneda’s system heads in another direction and leads to different conclusions than those taught in our schools and social institutions. In the magical and enchanted world of Castaneda and his cohorts, the depth, richness, and quality of your life has much more to do with the nature of your relationship to the unknown than how much you know in the world of ordinary, consensus reality. And a “man of knowledge,” or seer, is one who molds his character and refines his personal mastery in order to explore those fluid and magical landscapes outside the borders of the known.