HISTORY OF SPIRITUALITY IN EUROPE
WITH GABRIELA GUTIERREZ
A workshop with guest expert Gabriela Gutierrez to journey through the deep spiritual history of Europe to see what can be recovered of the diverse religious worlds that preceded Christianity.
Thursday 10th September
8.30pm UKT / 3.30pm EST
Exchange - £25
Can’t join live? Enjoy the recording.
Why learn about our spiritual history:
We are missing large parts of our spiritual past in Europe, our classic education schools us around royals, battles and the movement of power over the centuries. But what about the history of belief, how the sacred developed throughout history, and why are we in this position of fragmentation, which leads us to travel to far-off places seeking lineages which survived the brute forces of colonisation?
When speaking to many of my peers, I often feel we are living without context, without understanding of the experiences of our ancestors and how to start to reignite the traditions of the old ways which once pulsed through the lands of Europe. It can feel bewildering to know where to start. Therefore, I have created this workshop in collaboration with writer, poet, mythologist, ritualist, and scholar of ancient religion Gabriela Gutierrez to offer remedy, to fill the gaps we have in our spiritual past and to offer us the grounding of context, from which we can start to develop a devotional relationship with the land and our ancestral oral traditions.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
Gabriela will be taking us on a journey through the deep spiritual history of Europe, from the Palaeolithic and Neolithic worlds to the pre-Christian cultures of the historical record. Drawing on archaeology, mythology, ancient texts, folklore, and landscape, we will explore what can be recovered of the diverse religious worlds that preceded Christianity.
Including:
Prehistoric evidence for ritual and religious imagination, including caves, burials, animals, ancestors, and relationships with the more-than-human world.
Entering the Neolithic, we will consider how agriculture and settled life transformed relationships with land, fertility, death, ancestry, and seasonal renewal.
Bronze Age and Indo-European migrations, including the increasing prominence of warrior, sovereign, and sky gods, and the ways older earth-centred, local, and goddess traditions persisted and transformed within later religious worlds.
What happened to the old ways through Romanisation and Christianisation, asking what was lost, transformed, or survived.
Challenging the enduring idea that prehistoric and pre-Christian Europe belonged to a primitive spiritual past that we have outgrown, Europe’s spiritual history instead offers a rich ancestral inheritance from which there may still be much to learn.
“I have found Gabriela’s work vital in finding grounding to place, land and lineage. I believe this work is key for us to rebuild the custodianship of our locality.” Alice McCready
About Gabriela:
“I’m a Spanish-Welsh writer, poet, mythologist, ritualist, and scholar of ancient religion. My work moves between two primary ways of knowing:
the scholarly study of religion, animism, and prehistory
and the lived, embodied realm of ritual, imagination, direct sense experience, and altered states of consciousness.
I give equal weight to scholarship and to the somatic, symbolic, and experiential modes of understanding that once shaped human life. I explore how these older meaning-making systems — the mythic, animistic, and imaginal — can help us navigate the personal and collective complexities of our time.”
WORKSHOP DETAILS
Mark Your Calendar
Thursday 10th September
8.30PM UKT / 3.30PM EDT
After registering, you'll receive your confirmation email with class details.
Live & Interactive
This is a live workshop where Gabriela will be drawing on archaeology, mythology, ancient texts, folklore, and landscape to explore what can be recovered from the diverse religious worlds that preceded Christianity.
Replay Access
Can’t make it live? No problem. Register and you'll receive a replay link after class, available for a limited time.
