This experience is sold out.

Limited spots are still available for Ancestral Arts and Ninfe.

What words weave when we sit and listen inside an ancient cave shaped as an ear? What oracle awakens from both the space, and within, when we ritualize a call and response with potent acoustics, carved by indigenous hands and water herself. We open for the sound of clarity and hold space for multiple poetic truths.

What stories blow on wind while we descend within an ancient temple of the goddess, a place to worship, a place of with remnants of sacrifice, and devotional to the wild one names Artemis? What stories live within?

What prose crystallizes on our skin, our tongues, sticks to our hair, when we immerse inside the watery womb, held buoyant by Mediterranean salt? What does the salt carry? What can salt water wash away? Salt might be the spirit of memory revisions, narrative edits, poetry baptismals, protections.

What lines long to form at the foot of the Mother in a church — that both protects her and holds her captive? What prayers take form? Of worship and protest? Of grief and desire? How can writing become chapters of sorrowful and joyful mystery?

What languages of love steam from uneven baroque streets, a city known as portal of sensuality, of sticky thighs under silk sundresses, of cigarette smoke and bitter chocolate?

together we will:

Create a writing rhythm together, that involves listening, co-creating, and quietness.

Hold space for conversation, writing workshop, and reading sessions, as well as emergent writing moments as we enter in sacred and ancient sites.

Visit multiple sacred sites, soak in the sea, and meander through an ancient village.

Nourish, rest, get stimulated, be blown away, integrate, and of course, write.

Anchoring this time in the SE area of Sicily, outside of Noto and Siracusa, against the Ionian Sea.

Stay in beautiful private villa, with a local chef in the Noto countryside with farm-to-table food and wine.

Place speaks to us, when we listen.

Place undresses its layered stories, reveals paradox, raw and uncomfortable truth, and the holy oracle of body and memory.

Place is a conduit for the stories of it’s space. This conduit is available to meander within, in non-linear ways, to wake us, to support us in our own version of memoir, fiction, prose, poetry, love letter to leave behind.

A wild mixture of all. Oracle of Place doesn’t bind, contain, or label our writing. Instead it is a curated space to liberate it, and allowing it to be born as it wants to be, as oracle, as holy scripture, provocative prose, protest, lament. As a guide for each other.

Place in itself, is oracle and each writer will come together and translate oracle differently depending on what parts of their own memory, their own history, their own longings intersect with what spirits of the land push into and within them. Listening is imperative. Converting in community is gold. Being immersed in culture is a treasured gift.

Oracle of Place is a writing experience to hold space for scribes, oracles, deities, the ancestors – we listen to the particles of land, plant, water, salt, column, ruins, that they dwell within. We listen to the history and the river of the present. We listen to ourselves within the place, we are co-creators of oracles of place, and we become our own oracles as well.

During Oracle of Place, we’ll hold counsel around our own memories, lineages, life experiences, and dreams, allowing for an emergent melding, a cosmic collision of timelines.

We’ll practice weaving together and use this space as a container to form new writing, new ideas, and new ways to tell our stories — that span and intertwine time and space and bodies.

We are being invited to bring ancient narrative into modern memory.

We are being invited to hold space for the new stories to be born.

The ancientness of the land guides us into the experimental writing for the now.

Our muses will be the place of southwest Sicily, where the Hyblaean Mountains meet the Ionian Sea of the Mediterranean. Where white wines are dry and crisp, and pink flamingos roam. Where the sea is so salty, you don’t have to do a thing but allow her to hold you.

We’ll honor and respect and offer to the oracles that were so prominent to all the people who dwelled in Sicily from indigenous to present. Sicily is the land of chthonic memory, of underworld goddess, where the priestesses channeled the divine within cave and against water’s edge. Sicilia is liminal land — the place of threshold between North Africa and Europe.

We will not be there to “retreat” into writing only. We’ll be led by the island. We will listen to the voice of Medusa. We will walk the labyrinth of memory — within our bodies, but also with the people, the flavors of the food, the smell of the citrus, the depth of espresso, the complexity of the wine.

Our muses will also be each other – creating counsel and circle together.

We will nourish with conversation, food, and wine.

We’ll share space for stories and what it means to be a conduit for creation.

We will support each other in listening techniques as we wander and meander through ancient locations, sense into the mycelia, tend to the creatures of the sea, and let the story of the grapes land on our tongues.

Oracle of Place hopes to re-ignite stagnant memory, lost memory, memory that must be re-membered within your flesh. But not just from your own body, but from the lineage of oracles that you come from.

Oracle of Place is where you can practice listening within, without, underneath – and dance in non-linear time. We will co-create with space to feel the fire to push the prose forth— to channel the weird and beautiful, ancestral writing through.

places we will listen and write:

• The place of Divine worship:

  The Artemision Ionic Temple : a space dedicated to Goddess Artemis in Siracusa

• The place of the Labyrinth of Memory :

  the San Giovanni Catacombs : an underground path will lead you to discover the largest catacombs in Siracusa, and experience a climate full of the sacredness of the oracle of death.

• The place of Listening and Becoming:

  The Ear of Dionysus and the teatro greco at Parco Archeologico della Neapolis— Two ancient sites near Siracusa, one of listening and one of performance, theater, a historical place where emergent stories come through for the people of place.

• The salt place of Arethusa, Thalassa and Io:

  The intersecting water oracles of nymph and goddess— at Vendicari Reserve we will float in the salty sea, listening to the salt beings, practicing not gripping our stories, but allowing them to be clear, cleansed, revised, and baptized. We will be held.

• The place of many pleasures:

  the city of Noto arouses our senses, our tastebuds, our desires and longing, we will wander, enjoy the tastes, people, sounds, and energy of this ancient baroque city.

• The place of The Seer:

  The Church of Santa Lucia — Lucia an oracle, a seer, a healer, with eyes on her hands, was from the city of Siracusa. She is the St. Lucy of the North, and for Sicilians, she was the Light who fed her people, healed them, and brought divining and oracle through her hands. She was a protector and a poet.

Have questions? Take a look at our FAQ.

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 is not included.

Want to know more about our redistribution of money in Sicily? Click here.

What’s included?

• Overnight accommodations for 7 nights at a beautiful private villa countryside of Noto, against the Vendicari reserve.

• 20+ meals over 8 days. Breakfasts, lunch and dinner cooked by a local chef on site (there may be a street food lunch or dinner along the way as well). We promise you will not go hungry! Wine is always included.

• Licensed, insured, and legally 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 entrance fees, etc.

• Cultivated space to practice listening, awakening the senses, to explore our stories and workshop our writing together

• Focused and emergent writing workshops with MaryBeth Bonfiglio— along with creative learning circles to go deeper into the stories of the land, spirits.

• Focused connection on where ancestral healing/practices intersect our creative writing.

• 1:1 mentoring with MaryBeth during our writing hours, if needed, to help with clarity, support, ideas.

• Moral and emotional support — it can be intense to be immersed in another culture, especially if it is your ancestral land, and even when it is not. MaryBeth will offer somatic integration, journeys, and just time and space to process.

• Deep knowledge of the land, ancient and modern myths and stories will be shared

• A community for both longing + belonging to be explored. A creative community that you can tend to, forever. Those that come along with Radici, stay friends, build networks, and learn to care for each other.

• A life changing experience in Sicilia, one that you will hold, carry, and share forever. 

• Basically everything is included — besides airfare and your 15 minutes transport from the airport to the city center and a couple of meals.

• There will be beautiful surprises, too, this is Sicily after all. You never know when musicians might show up and throw us a party…

  Is this immersion a fit for you? Check out our FAQ + Community Guidelines

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