Ancestral Arts Immersion| Becoming the Village
with MaryBeth Bonfiglio
June 15 - 24, 2024
Our original and beloved gathering. Deeply rooted in village tending, ancestral arts, connection, re-weaving, and re-claiming relationships with the guidance of multi-generational Sicilian artist, makers, and guides.
10 days, 9 nights
Location: Madonie Mountains, Sicilia
Cost of Experience
$4600
Per person based on double occupancy.
Limited single occupancy rooms available upon request for an additional $600.
Note: Airfare and airport transportation are not included.
Want to know more about our redistribution of money in Sicily? Click here.
together we will:
Create a circle of ancestral presence, silently pilgrimage and offer together on the volcano.
We may make cheese, bread, and weave baskets.
Maybe design and paint a traditional Sicilian ceramic tile.
Most likely harvest and cook with farmers — eat as a family in people’s homes.
We will climb to a sacred portal and meet the region’s protective Mother, Madonna dell’Alto.
We will be part of an ancient pilgrimage, and be welcomed to take part in a rural mountain village ritual with the people whose people have been doing this for thousands of years together. This comes in the form of processione for their patron saint, l'Eremita, the healer who dwells within caves. This ritual will change your life and bring us all together.
We gather together to tend to the village, each other, and our ancestors.
We gather together to witness and learn the ancestral arts of making, sensing, and being in relationship.
This is our original and beloved gathering, where we come together and allow the island and her people to lead and guide us.
Another name we call it behind the scenes is Vindiemmu Faccienu- a simple Sicilian phrase which means “we take it as it comes.” Although we create itineraries and make plans, the deeper lesson for this gathering is that we practice allowing ourselves to be held by each day, the people we meet, the soil, spirit and the ancestors of the land.
We don’t always get to control. Sometimes we have to divest from listening to the way capitalism and individualism has mapped us, deep in our bodies. Together with this intention, we can practice re-mapping through village. We become the village within the village.
In ancestral arts, the prayer is that we learn how to initiate ourselves by inviting the ancestors in to weave their good and true ways within us, tend to our longings, and help us remember the ways of being together. We pray that the exact perfect group of people come together, who want to experience what becoming the village might mean.
As we bring our longing, grief, love, joy, curiosity, cravings, curiosity to the island, we allow for the spirit of place and their people to hold us and share with us what makes them Sicilian, what they hope to pass on to those of us not on/from the island. We become good guests
We bring a curiosity to be in relationships: with each other, the village, the land, the making with our hands — making integrates and helps us re-member what our body already knows.
“Radici Siciliane showed me that ancestral remembrance is about more than grief. It’s about unity. Unity though collective and individual grief, unity through pleasure, unity through connection and re-connection. I think what Radici offers is a way to be in the collective while having the space to individually experience whatever emotion or feeling passes through us. I remember sitting with basket makers and walking in the hot sun with sheep herders or processing through village streets in honor of Saint Calogero and just watching the locals in their devotion—to god, to craft, to the land. Being in the middle of those moments, witnessing these ancient arts and skills—this made me feel alive, full of the blood of the island, in a way that I haven’t before. I made friends. I made peace with family shortcomings. I made a connection with the water and the earth. ”
Sicilia is an island of magic and superstition, of myth and mal’occhio. We’ll sit in a learning circle around the concept of Mal’occhio, and learn the deeper meaning, a collective protection, and hold that with us as we integrate together into the village.
We create time and space to integrate, rest, and float in the sea.
We share our own ancestral stories.
We eat. Drink. Move. Sing. Learn. Connect. Make. Listen. Repair.
We practice weaving our bodies back into ways of being they remember deep inside.
Sicilia is a volcano. We pay honor and respect to the one that both creates and destroys.
As we drive around, laughing, singing, being in awe of the environment, we continuously give thanks for those who welcome us; the people of the island and our ancestors.
“I have a deeper understanding and appreciation for my culture, and a better understanding of where I came from, who my people are, and where I am going; where I want to be in life. It was really eye opening to be there where my people came from, and to be able to speak a language that my ancestors spoke with people there. It was a truly life changing experience.”
We don’t do carbon copy or cookie cutter. We don’t do “tours” — so if that is what you seek (and there is nothing wrong with that) — this isn’t the right option for you. This is an immersion of village and of togetherness.
We facilitate experiences. There is always a sense of wonder and spontaneity. This is Sicily. We try to offer you the most real and alive experience that we can. We hope to allow for nuance, context, and experiment.
We become the village.
And we have a joyful, celebratory time together, learning, laughing and being with the brilliance of Sicilia.
We are blessed to be invited within real Sicilian culture and life— from food reverence to ancestral veneration to being awestruck by the people.
We will begin to sense a new rhythm forming in our own bodies.
Ancestral Arts is about getting to know each other, and Sicily, being held by the ecosystem of an ancient village, Petralia Sottana.
This area of Sicily is remote, isolated to some degree, and is proud of keeping their connection to the land, the mountains, the animals, and the ways of being from their own ancestors.
Is this immersion a good match for you? Please read our FAQ and our Community Guidelines.
we will:
Pilgrimage up Mount Etna with a native volcanologist
Take part in a village procession and festa for their patron saint, San Calogero
Learn traditional basket weaving (and make your own basket to take home)
Learn about traditional Sicilian ceramics from a multigenerational ceramicist
Make cheese on a mountainside with a multigenerational shepherd and cheesemaker
Spend time on a farm and cook with the farmer + their family
Pray and pilgrimage to the highest known sanctuary in Italy to La Madonna with a naturalist and take part in a lunch made by the keepers of the sacred space
String rosaries together
Float in the sea
Please note: This is a loose itinerary, things will change, but not much. A detailed itinerary is provided upon sign up.
Cost of Experience
$4600
Per person based on double occupancy; excludes airfare. Limited single occupancy rooms available upon request for an additional $600.
Note: Airfare and airport transportation are not included.
Want to know more about our redistribution of money in Sicily? Click here.
What’s included?
Overnight accommodations for 9 nights
20 meals over 10 days with Radici Siciliane. We promise you will not go hungry! Wine is always included.
Licensed, insured, and certified guides and drivers that are invaluable, welcoming, deeply knowledgeable. They are my good friends… and will become your friends as well.
All experiences, which includes local guides and translators
Moral and emotional support — it can be intense to be immersed in another culture, especially if it is your ancestral land.
Deep knowledge of the land, ancient and modern myths and stories will be shared.
A community for both longing + belonging to be explored.
A once in a lifetime, unique, artisanal and life changing experience in Sicilia
Ancestral healing practices and ritual anchored in body and land.
Integration with true Sicilian culture led by multigenerational Sicilians.
Creative and ancestral re-weaving guidance (the entire trip is one big ancestral journey).
Is this immersion a fit for you? Check out our FAQ + Community Guidelines.