The Mysteries of Chartres
I do not recall now how I first came across the New Chartres School and the Wisdom University. It might have been through a link from Carolyn Myss’s website, as I had been reading and working with some of her materials, and she was on the faculty of Wisdom University for this particular initiative. But the idea really grabbed me. There was a millenium celebration in Chartres, the cathedral town in France which I had visited as a twenty-year old student of Architecture in 1971 – not seeing or feeling any of the mysteries of the cathedral at that stage.
One thousand years ago, the Chartres School offered a programme of study of the seven liberal arts. In 2006, Wisdom University was proposing a recreation of this programme, which would take the form of a series of annual intensives over the next seven years. The first intensive, ‘Gramatica’ would take place in July 2006, and I signed up as an ‘auditor’. This would be followed by ‘Dialectica’ ’ and ‘Rhetorica’. I was particularly attracted to the intensive on the fourth liberal art, ‘Musica’, scheduled for 2009. I was sure that it would be important for me, and I had some time to explore the metaphyscis of music in the context of Chartres – at least some of the mysteries in the actual building of Chartres and its proportions had to do with harmonics.
According to the programme description, each intensive would focus on a specific mystical spiritual tradition in addition to the particular liberal art. In the first intensive it was to be Sufism along with ‘Gramatica’. What a line up of thinkers and opinion-makers for the first intensive in Chartres. Wisdom University was the original brainchild of Matthew Fox and Jim Garrison. The creative sparks behind the idea of the New Chartres School appear to have been Jim Garrison and Andrew Harvey, but the full team who would be there for the first intensive included Carolyn Myss; Alex Grey, the visionary artist; Rupert Sheldrake, the well-known scientist on morphic field theory; Lauren Artress, the founder of the labyrinth movement; Kabir Helminski, a Sufi master; Apela Colorado, a native American shaman and coordinator of the programme on Indigenous mind; and Lynn Bell, an archetypal astrologer who would keep track of the cosmos during each intensive.
I had enrolled, not as a student, but as an ’auditor’ which meant that I was not expected to produce a paper. I could just absorb it all, and the fee for this privilege was in fact half. I was very excited at the prospect of meeting up with people from across the globe and sharing this seven-year process. It felt very significant as it would be leading up to and be concluded in the auspicious year of 2012.
Chartres was in the same region of France as Pommereau but with a different train route from Paris. Perhaps only an hour by car separated the two. Approaching Chartres, the countryside was golden with wheatlands, and from the train window I saw the hugeness of the cathedral dominating the flat open space surrounding it.
Arriving in the small town, I made my way to St Yves, the one-thousand-year-old seminary where we would be holding the intensive and I would be sharing a room with two other women. Americans, as eighty percent of the participants turned out to be. But there were also representatives from Australia and new Zealand and a handful from Europe. I was the only person from Africa.
There was an air of excitement, a real buzz amongst us all. We learnt during the orientation meeting that each of the seven days would contain an ‘initiation’. We would be honouring the mysteries of this amazing cathedral through ritual and ceremonies. The first‘initiatoin would take place directly from the plenary session and would be conducted in a secret garden.
We filed out and walked in silence in single file through the stone-walled corridors of this old building. Slowly, with dignity, aware that we were commencing something important, which we would be sharing together as a group over the next seven years. The process of silent meditative walking created a ‘field’ of some sort between and around us. We eventually started the descent down a steep stone staircase, twisting down to the outside where the sheltered private secret garden was overlooked by the room windows of the seminary. Our arrival into this space was certainly other-worldly.
Stepping across the stone threshold and onto the ground outside, I found myself moving between persons standing on either side. They appeared to be witnesses to the initiation unfolding for each of us, and I recognised some of them as faculty and staff of Wisdom University. The final person conducted a purification ritual at the entrance to a beautiful silken tent suspended? in the trees. She was Apela Colorado with long braided hair, dressed in ceremonial garb. After standing before her and receiving her blessing and the droplets of water whisked from a bunch of greenery, I turned to face the opening in the tent. The tent was made from exquisitely painted silk panels, which were later hung ceiling-to-floor in the seminar room throughout the week.
I breathed out and the silk cloth parted as I stepped into another space. A tall woman in a long magenta velvet robe stood before me, very close. The connection was electric. ‘State your name’, she said simply. I had been reflecting on this on the walk down as we had been briefed about some of what to expect. I had decided to use my esoteric name ‘Tone’, as this seemed the most appropriate in this setting and with the symbolism. So it was that I responded Tone’, loud enough for her to hear the single syllable quite clearly.
She was holding a small bowl in one hand and dipped the index and middle finger of her other hand into some perfumed ointment which she placed gently on my forehead. Slowly, with ceremony and gravitas, she said ‘I anoint you Antonia’.
I felt myself flustered. She had not heard me! I had said ‘Tone’. She got it wrong!
I moved across to the next person waiting to give me an object. It was a lump of moist clay. I moved slowly out of the shady tent and was guided by someone to take my place in the circle seated on the grass. I started working on the clay, moulding it with my fingers and pressing it between my palms. It is difficult to express the confused feelings I had in these minutes as we sat in the late afternoon sun while the last of the participants went through the process and joined the circle.
How was it possible that she had ignored my utterance of ‘Tone’? WHERE did Antonia come from? And then with the lump of clay becoming a delicate little vessel under my fingers, it suddenly dawned on me. Antonio Centi had been present in the field, and this presence had stepped forward and she sensed him. Lauren Artress, this extraordinary woman, had simply read my field and acknowledged Antonio, giving me the feminine Antonia in her benediction.
And this was just the first day!
I cannot return to the content of that first week from the here and now! It was so intense, such an initiatory experience. Each day held more and I sat like a sponge absorbing, soaking up everything I was being offered. It was nourishing soul food. Complex. Incredibly, all the contributions from these teachers, all masters of their material, wove together to provide a pot pourri of stimulating and state-of-the-art information from the realms of science and spirituality.
Each night I looked out from the window across the secret garden below to the vast plains rolling gently into the distance, with the moon waxing to full mid-week and waning as we concluded our first intensive of the new Chartes School. I reflected on the fact that there I was, from Cape Town South Africa, part of this creative and transformative experience and I literally thanked my lucky stars!
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