The intensity of these times require an expansion of our capacity to be with strong emotions, including grief, fear, and rage, as well as to anchor into experiences of joy, gratitude, love, and awe. Bringing presence to and bearing witness to the falling away of the old world is a tremendous honor and responsibility, and requires the cultivation of greater inner resourcing and spaciousness. As obsolete structures collapse and fall away, we are tasked with forming new flexible and expansive containers to hold ourselves and each other, vessels which can withstand engulfing emotion within a cosmoethic perspective — “a grand story that speaks of the universe as a shared home in which every being (human, non-human, more-than-human — is a vital character and where no story is left out.”

In his book In the Absence of the Ordinary, Frances Waller describes what he calls “the art of vesseling,” tending to containment for the alchemical process of transformation which requires clarity, strength, and relationality. He writes, “The vessel, strengthened by our attention and devotion, becomes capable, over time, of containing it all. In fact, that is one of the central goals of the work. It is not about resolving our issues or repairing the past but becoming more spacious and capable of holding all that psyche and life bring to us.”

The Cauldron is an intentional, relational container in which we come together to practice vesseling. Through mythopoetic modalities including story, dreamwork, and astrology, somatic and meditative practice, and co-creation of ritual, the Cauldron is an emergent communal space to hold individual and collective process of vesseling within a cosmethic perspective.

Taking place over a six week period, the timing of the Cauldron has been astrologically elected to occur during a series of Grand Water trine formations, a period conducive to working with emotions and expanding our containers to allow flow. In this way, we practice surfing the waves, with plenty of self-compassion and grace for imperfection.