Forest of Grandmothers: Red Madonna 13 Moon Sisterhood

"We believe that our global community of over 10,000 women is threaded through with thousands of Grandmothers and Matriarchal women. We at Musea seek to create a sanctuary to honor and uplift the voices and images of our Elder's present and Ancestors' past. Let us honor the voice of the women in the Forest of Grandmothers, an imagined sanctuary, a red tent both ancient and futuristic that makes a sacred space for our mother tongue to be revealed. Let us gather at the hem of her garment as we have since Red Madonna began." ~ Rev. Shiloh Sophia

We are all sourced from the Divine Feminine as expressed through the Mother of Mothers, the Grandmother; all the stories, wisdom and healing She brings from the beginning of time and all the ways She lives in the elders, human and other than human, and within us.

Through our sisterhood, we enter the visionary created space of the Forest of Grandmothers, a temenos for exploring sacred and deep connection, prayer and alchemy, to explore, vision, share, awaken, and create art, writing and ritual that open to the healing wisdom of the Grandmothers.

The Red Madonna Sisterhood is a Spiritual Creative Path of Devotion. Gather with women throughout the world to celebrate, explore and let this 'virtual sanctuary' become a place to play and create. Together we work with the sacred power inherent in Intentional Creativity when we focus it towards intimacy with the Divine.

Join us as we gather to cherish, nourish, embody, and honor the elders of our sisterhood, and inhabit and celebrate the Forest of Grandmothers in Circle.

Your investment is a tithe for the Red Madonna Sisterhood and the majority goes towards the women leading you, this is a resource well spent.

For thousands of years, women have gathered together to paint, pray, play, and support one another on our creative spiritual path. If you are feeling called to explore how Intentional Creativity can inform your relationship with the divine, this is for you.

TOGETHER WE WILL:

Develop your creative spiritual practice with Intentional Creativity to create a Living Temenos
Explore the roots of the Tree of Life
Gather with the grandmothers in our community and honor the ancestors
Intimately connect with the Divine Feminine
Gather to create a space for women starting the mid-life journey
Activate and express your own Wise Grandmother Archetype
Create in layers of meaning a major, deeply inspired painting over 13 moons
Create, in our 13 moons, spiritual poetry and drawing to be gathered in a book
Develop rituals and practices to live an inspired and spiritually-connected life and honor transitions

Letter from our Red Madonna Leader, Havi Mandell

Dear One,

I am so excited that you are here considering being a part of this journey and this amazing sacred sisterhood. I have been involved with Red Madonna since its inception and have been blessed to witness the power of intentional creativity as a spiritual practice, the blessing of a safe and sacred sisterhood to be free to explore our spiritual path, the blessing of praying together and being there for each other through all life brings, and the deep healing, spiritual connection and transformation that happens here.

I am especially excited about this year as the spark and space to gather a community of sage and wild elders together to step into all that they are and to share their gifts, their wisdom, their stories and their experience with those not yet in their elder years, and to create long-lasting legacies for the benefit of those to come; for children, women, men and for the planet.

I imagine grandmothers sitting around a warm fire in the forest, sharing healing stories with mothers, fathers, young adults and children.

The voices of the grandmothers have been strong and building. The time of the grandmothers is now. Our voices matter, our wisdom matters, our vision matters. In these increasingly difficult times, it is time to listen to the elders and it is time for grandmothers to gather. And it is time to celebrate aging and our grandmother years.

I will be taking you on a 13 moon Intentional Creativity painting journey to delve into the wisdom of your ancestors, to bring alive sacred landscapes, symbols, and grandmother archetypes in all their juiciness, to paint the grief and celebration of aging and cycles of life, to step into your legacy, and to create a living temenos for your Grandmother Spirit, the mother of mothers. We will pray in paint as well as words, and invite a living relationship with the Divine Grandmother.

Mary Ann Matthys will weave story, poetry, movement, metacognitive creative processes and ritual as she invites us to explore our personal gnosis through the archetype of the grandmother, the wise woman. Together, we will examine the stories we carry in our bones and bring them forward to share with each other and future generations.

Red Madonna is the dedicated sanctuary for the Intentional Creativity® community and a place to discover the power and miracle of a devoted creative spiritual practice. I believe that all of us are seeking an intimate, heartful relationship with the Beloved, a sense of true belonging and connection to and with all of Life, and a desire to make our lives a blessing.

I invite you to start with that first intentional mark on the canvas and let the wisdom, beauty and miracles flow.

With so much love and joyful anticipation,

Havi

We are an Intentional Community working through a Sacred Feminine Archetype we call "The Red Madonna". The Red Madonna is She who appears in your heart and on your path. The Divine Mother in her many forms has appeared all over the world for tens of thousands of years. We like to imagine that her next appearance is in your own heart. We explore Her and our relationship with Creation through devoted common practices including prayer, poetry, painting, rest, ritual, circle and tracking the phases of the moon through our delivery of teachings. We have gathered every moon since December 2011 focused on different themes and frameworks.

Our Theme: Forest of the Grandmothers

Our theme this year, Forest of Grandmothers, is a contemplative creative practice honoring and exploring Creation, our co-creative capacity here and creating a ‘living temenos”. The Greek word Temenos is the sacred space surrounding a temple or altar. By creating a ‘living temenos’ we will not just speak about, but deeply experience the ways we inhabit and are a sacred container for the Divine; the unique ways that we are an expression of the Divine, based on all we are and gifts we are here to share.

This sanctuary is for women who are ready to dive deeply within to explore their inner landscape, hone their unique gifts, embody their empowered expression of the Divine, connect with the Feminine, and weave their threads into inspired action. Live your magnificence as a living temenos and blessing for the planet and as she who sources the Forest of Grandmothers and carries and shares the gifts of the Grandmothers, meaningfully claiming her place in the lineage for the coming generations.

We invite you to welcome the wisdom of the Grandmothers and the calling of your soul to inhabit a life filled with sacred artistry, activism, adventure, affection, authenticity and amazement and to embrace the grandmother archetype and energy within you.

The focus on Forest of the Grandmothers flows out of a deep awareness and appreciation of the importance of Grandmothers as holders of powerful generational wisdom and stories, generators of steady and always-present love, teachers weaving what was with what can be, and those who have the breadth and depth of experience to bring perspective, play, offering, ritual, and sage presence and support to our lives and our world. Many of us are grandmothers in some way and all of us carry within us the gifts and messages of our grandmothers: physical, creative, and spiritual. In the intentional creativity community, we honor Caron McCloud, Sue Hoya Sellars, and Carmen Baraka as our intentional creativity grandmothers, and Shiloh as the Great Mother, Creator, and lifeblood of intentional creativity.

What is Temenos?

We love the idea of Temenos - it makes us feel deeply connected to a sacred home, a womb, for soul work, a place of inner wholeness and sanctuary where we can access and make conscious our deepest knowing and alchemize, illuminate and create meaning from this space. We think of all the sacred containers that we inhabit and can choose to create: our archetypes, our metaphors, “our rooms in the house of being” (Heidegger) where we know and grow ourselves, and the intentional choices we can make to create and inhabit a sacred space in any moment and to make any moment a sacred space.

“The temenos is the place of meeting your unconscious....The Temenos originated in Greek culture...as a piece of land cut off from common uses and dedicated to a god, a sanctuary or holy grove of trees. So the space we create together is not of everyday commerce and the daily round, but an opportunity to think the deep thoughts and sink into the deep waters of the soul…

C.G. Jung relates the temenos to a protected space in which inner work can take place...The Tibetan sand mandala represents the squaring of the circle and the temenos. The squared circle, for contemporary seekers of the inner life, represents an encounter with the unconscious. The temenos is a safe holding place where these unconscious contents are consciously examined.” ~ Kay Gersch, Ph.D.

A Temenos can be a….

Sacred Container
Sacred Grove or Garden
Inner Archetype
Lived Metaphor
Shero Story
Alchemical Crucible
Sacred Landscape
Ancestral/Cultural Container
Instrument and Embodied Expression of the Divine
Visionary liminal space and time

We enter the SPACE of the Temenos and TIME in harmony with the natural cycles of the moon, equinoxes, solstices, and sabbaths, creating rhythm, rituals and relationships in tune with the earth.

Develop a Powerful Lifelong Creative Spiritual Practice

When we intentionally approach our canvas to paint, we invite a gateway for communion and dialogue with the sacred from a right-brain, intuitive space. The path of the Grandmothers is the magnetic path. It is the path of call and response, opening to the Universe. Intentional Creativity ® painting is that Grandmother path. Deep wisdom and healing are sourced in the process beyond what we could ever imagine we could access or know. When we weave embodied practice, ritual, the dance of word and image, and attunement to the cycles in nature together, we create meaningful and very personal spiritual practices that are in rhythm and harmony with All Creation and open a powerful channel to discover and express our spiritual wisdom and gifts and empower our sacred work in the world.

Connect with a Loving Spiritual Sisterhood

This community is truly exceptional in its safety, support, respect and honoring of each of our spiritual paths, and friendships that are authentic, loving and sharing in laughter and tears. It is a place to be seen, heard and valued, a place to feel free to explore our spirituality and spiritual path safely. In all the years we have gathered, the level of care, compassion, creativity and connection have been such a blessing, a true sanctuary for the soul. The friendships and community created are deep and lasting.

Gather and Honor a Community of Elders

Our deepest desire is that Forest of the Grandmothers launches and gathers a community of Elders, and that this will be a space for the Elders in the community to share their wisdom, gifts and stories with each other and with those in their younger years, empower each other, celebrate the beauty and grace of aging, and create a legacy that will continue for many years to come. As Shiloh wrote, "Let's grow old together across the world. Let's make it romantic that we have a global community growing up and older together".

Create a Major Painting and Body of Writings

We will be creating a large (4' x 5') Intentional Creativity painting over the course of 13 moons, journeying through sacred symbols and landscapes, our unique gifts and expression of the Divine, grandmother archetypes, the wisdom of elderhood, and the legacies we are here to share, culminating in a painting that is a living temenos and expression of the Mother of Mothers within us.

We will also be engaged in ongoing writing practices of poetry, inquiry, and exploration, creating a written body of work of our inner journey, revelations, and soul expression.

The healing circle is based on work our Founder Shiloh has been developing in working with women for over 20 years to create changes through Intentional Creativity and dedicated healing practices.

This meditation, prayer, healing circle will focus on our relationship with our body and field and how we communicate with our cellular and energetic structures. We will practice this every month, without fail for our community to explore the impacts and potentials of working this way as a group.

Join us to explore Intentional Creativity as a healing practice and be provided with tools you can use every time you need healing personally or to share it with others. Journey to the heart of hearts with the energy of the Red Madonna.

Readings will be selected from Dr. Wil Gafney's new book, A Women's Lectionary for the Whole Church as well as Rachel's Bag by Caron McCloud as well as teachings from each of the women authors.

Sophie Strand: "I said recently that I’m much more interested in ensoilment than ensoulment. I want to have actual roots. I want my spirituality to have fur, pheromones, funk. I want it to live in a specific place. And I want it to teach me intimately how to be dynamically present and useful to my ecosystem. And I want to tell people that healing isn’t about completion. And it isn’t about lightness. It’s about the mixing bowl where nothing is exiled, everything is included. In order to grow a garden, you need manure. You need compost. In order to heal the soil, you don’t clean it, you add to it: fungi, ferment, bacteria, woodchips.

Researching Rabbi Jesus/Yeshua for my ecological reimagining of the gospels I realized the folk magician’s real teaching was not purification. He ultimately even rejects John the Baptist’s water immersions. In a time period when people were traumatized by Roman imperialism, diseased, and obsessed with purity rituals, he offered something radical. His offering was to brush the question off “Who cares? Come and eat with me. Come and share a meal.” He purified not by cleaning, but by including. Everyone was invited. No one was exiled."

Tuition for this 13 moon spiritual journey is $750 if paid in full or 12 payments of $69.

If you have taken Red Madonna during any prior year, use code sisterhood and save $100. The price will be $650 or 12 payments of $60.

We offer a 100% Money Back Guarantee if you do the course and do not experience a transformation in your story.

Question about tuition? Contact support@musea.org

You can view our refund policy here.

Continue reading for the schedule and materials list.

About scholarships: Those who can afford the regular price make it possible for us to offer tuition support to those in need. Red Madonna involves a full staff of team and faculty members, mostly women, who are compensated through the income we receive. We are happy to support those called to study Intentional Creativity who have a financial need. To inquire about an extended payment plan or partial scholarship please contact support@musea.org

Upon registration, you will receive access to our private community Sanctuary and meet the women you will be in sisterhood with. In Red Madonna there is plenty of flexibility to go at your pace and choose your level of participation. All of the materials are here for you in your own timing.

Weekly Teachings

Shabbat Meditations: Havi will share her beautiful Shabbat Meditations again this year inviting us to deepen our sense of the sacred each Friday

HearthFire Conversations: Mary Ann will invite us to deepen our personal gnosis through invitations to step into active awareness, embodiment, flow and synchronicity through poetry, writing, and creative processes each Monday in the Red Tent.

Honoring Sabbath: Perhaps most important, is the Sabbath. A day to rest. What day will you choose? Havi will provide a teaching on this as we go along but we would love for you to book days off on your calendar now. A traditional Sabbath will begin at Sundown the day before and last until Sundown the next day.

Monthly Teachings
Plan for a minimum of 1.5 hours per event, 2 hours to work with the teachings

Full Moon: Havi will share the painting process around the Full Moon. Havi will weave a depth of spirituality and love of the ancestors into her teachings as we enter a spacious living temenos in the heart of the Forest of Grandmothers.

New Moon: Mary Ann will share teachings as she invites us to deepen our spiritual journey, step into Mystery and Come to the Wildwood within the Forest of Grandmothers.

Sisterhood Circles: These are video calls through Zoom with the community, guided by Havi Mandell and Mary Ann Matthys that include meditations, prayer and connections. They take place the first Wednesday of each month alternating between 6pm and 10am PT.

Healing Circles with Rev. Shiloh Sophia and Anasuya Isaacs: One time per month gather with Intentional Creativity Curator and the Founder of Red Madonna Shiloh Sophia. And her guest facilitator, long time Red Madonna Member, the vibrant wisdom-keeper Anasuya Isaacs for a healing circle. They take place the third Thursday of the month alternating between 12pm and 2pm PT. Best attended live but will be recorded.

All Zoom Circles are recorded.

Creation Materials

Easel or hang your canvas on the wall or have an art table to paint at
As large a canvas, as you are comfortable with. No smaller than 16X20, and as big as 4” by 5’ There may be additional canvases for other bonus paintings so get another one or two.
Palette: glass or plastic plate or stay-wet palette (Masterson’s makes a good one and Sue Hoya Sellars used a flat, plastic wet wipe container... like parents have in their diaper bag)
Spray water bottle
Water jars
Charcoal sticks (soft or medium)
Paper towels and/or cotton rags
A drop cloth if you don’t want paint on your floor
Brush cleaner (official ones at the art store or I love Murphy’s Oil Soap (also helps get fresh paint off of clothes)
Palette knife
Liquitex gloss medium
Pencil and Eraser
Journal and or Sketching supplies 9” x 12” mixed media or watercolor notebook, pencils, assorted marker

Paints

Golden fluid acrylics are recommended. They are more expensive but oh so worth it. Nova Color Paints and Matisse fluid paints are also good and come in a number of cool colors. Use what works for you.

Particular paints we love

Quinacridone magenta
Phthalo Turquoise
Quinacridone nickel azo gold or transparent red iron oxide
Quinacridone Crimson

Some suggested other colors (get a rainbow of colors)::

Titanium White
Diarylide or Hamsa Yellow
Pyrrole Red
Cadmium or Pyrrole Orange
Phthalo Green
Phthalo Blue or Ultramarine Blue
Van Dyke Brown
Bone Black
Metallics (gold, silver, copper, bronze, you pick but get at least one)

Some other cool colors:
Cobalt Teal
Green Gold
Dioxazine Purple
Buff Titanium
Naples Yellow
Burnt Umber
Yellow Ochre
Payne’s Grey

BRUSHES:

Sash brush
Assorted filbert, rounds, and flats (make sure to have some bigger ones)
Some scrubby brushes (hog bristle or other rough brush). Michael’s has these cheap.
Foam brushes
A brush use video will be provided by Shiloh Sophia for you to practice brushes. Good to have another canvas for this.

Additional items for painting:

Print out images of your physically elevated ancestors in your matriarchal lineage (mother, grandmother, great-grandmother…). These are ancestors that you feel connected to or want to feel connected to. If you have a lot of trauma from one of them, you may choose not to include them)
A few printed out images of women who you experience as being a part of your spiritual lineage (otherwise women who have inspired and nourished you, authors, artists, teachers, spiritual leaders, or other leaders who you feel a deep sense of connection)
List of those in the Red Madonna Sisterhood (to be provided)
Tools and a few heavy-bodied paints to create textures (palette knives, Princeton Catalyst wedges, found materials such as dirt, leaves, branches, rocks)

Access to a computer is necessary.

"The Red Madonna Sisterhood became one of the treasures in my life. I experience love, beauty, depth, wisdom, knowledge and sharing with a deep sense of acceptance. For me it is like a place by the fire, where we gather to share our stories, our worries, our joy wrapping it in prayers and psalms of devotion to the divine, to the Mother - whatever this might mean to each woman. I am very grateful for this gift in my life, guided by women of a heart of wisdom and compassionate love."

~ Anna Maria Michalski

Red Madonna is a dance with the mother: yours, mine, ours; a dance on the canvas floor, back rubbing against the heart walls of our yearning to feel our divine mother's pulsating passion pouring through our hands, feet, and tongues. We reclaim Her, one intentional stroke at a time, and She renames us by her star-lit sighs, an orgasm of delight at our homecoming, our coming home to the truth of who we are: hers.

When we go on this journey called: Red Madonna, we are going on a pilgrimage to the holy temples to the Mother in the desert of the faraway places in our soul we were never taught existed, but knew... they had to, be. The terrain can be unforgiving ~ we have been prodigal daughters for too long ~ yet the rewards... ahhh! The rewards for such a pilgrim, for such a daughter are... to be discovered, for all who make it before the altar of the Most Holy Womb have been sworn to secrecy about such a blessing. All I can say is

"I am not the same.

Thank Goddess.

Go ye and be transformed in the crucible of her love."

I gift you Blessings for your journey!

~ Anasuya Isaacs

There is something profoundly powerful about women gathering together in Sisterhood. Sisterhood has been essential to women in community since ancient times in the red tent and a foundation of the women's movement. The loving bonds, the nurturing, the empathy for every experience, the safety, the deep sharing, the encouragement to fully show up as your authentic self and live your truth, and the ways sisterhood empowers each woman to claim her sovereignty and to come together in inspired action is a gift beyond compare.

Our Sisterhood is about connection and belonging and has been formed over many years to be a loving supportive space in which to cultivate your inherent wisdom and explore your own journey within a supportive sisterhood.

Our wonderful team will be here to guide you on your path. We will be inviting you into the classroom a few days before we begin - in between now and then, make a date with your calendar and the art store. We invite you to get a cuppa tea and watch a welcome video with Shiloh Sophia, to celebrate this 13 moon path you have chosen for yourself.

Registration for Red Madonna is now closed.
We invite you to explore other musea events visit musea.org/school.
Red Madonna will open again in September 2022.

MUSEA
Center for Intentional Creativity®
presents

The RED MADONNA SISTERHOOD
Our 10th year as a virtual community

FOREST of GRANDMOTHERS

An Intentional Creativity practice to explore Creation, our co-Creative capacity, and to create a 'living temenos'

We are all sourced from the Divine Feminine as expressed through the Mother of Mothers, the Grandmother; all the stories, wisdom and healing She brings from the beginning of time and all the ways She lives in the elders, human and other than human, and within us.

Through our sisterhood, we enter the visionary created space of the Forest of Grandmothers, a temenos for exploring sacred and deep connection, prayer and alchemy, to explore, vision, share, awaken, and create art, writing and ritual that open to the healing wisdom of the Grandmothers.