WHEN WOMEN BUILD Story about how the Terra Anima CENTRE came into being In pure truth, this is a story about the power of life that brings you beyond the limits of what is possible. It’s a story about the power of animals that are creating a new world, since they were the ones who responded to the quiet simmering of the longing in our hearts and faced us with a challenge that was much bigger than us. We followed this great challenge and so now we can tell you the story:
Like many good stories, also this one begins with leap into the unknown. In our case, this was a jump over the fence: the mare Kali leapt over her fence to spend a night with her chosen stallion. Before that, she has been asking us for two years, telling us that she wishes to have a foal, but we kept telling her to wait just so long that we find an appropriate place for her, where she can lead a life as the free spirit that she is. But it is in the human nature to put off what needs to be done for our dreams, so she took the matter into her own hands, well, hooves.
Then it was not her who had the morning sickness, but us, when, after a few months, we could no longer ignore her growing belly. In addition to this, Tinka dreamt of a black and white horse that chose her to be his owner and then, seven days later, such horse came to Kali’s stable in Ljubljana.
So, there we were, three women, good friends, without jobs and savings, with two horses and a third one on the way and just three months time until he would be born. We took the challenge and probably we just very simply responded to the primary instinct of “nesting”, so we could take care our new family and also build a home for our work, something we have been dreaming about for a long time. We rented a meadow close to our homes and on that day we just kept staring at the “tabula rasa” in front of us. The intention was clear: To build a shelter for the horses, a so-called active stable that is the most suitable for their nature. But still: Women work differently...
Well, it’s us three who work a different way. When deciding on where exactly this shelter would stand, what form it would have, which direction it would be facing, how it would be built, which materials to use, which symbols, numbers and spacing to take into account... it all came together in a deep conversation between the consciousness of that space and our intention. It is important that a particular place accepts what we build there and it is even greater when it supports this and wishes to work together with us. This is why, after our geomantic analysis and an “agreement with all the goddesses of the surrounding landscape” we drew up a plan for our little stable that could be worthy of the energies held by this exceptional place where we happened to find ourselves by coincidence. In our architectural drawing, the stable looked like a goddess: a vessel – a large moon holding the sun in her lap and the sun supporting the tree of life. Back then we had absolutely no knowledge about construction and we had no idea how complicated it is to build a round structure... When women build It was not that we wanted to exclude men from our building project. Not at all. It just happened that it was three women who got together to do this. The only difference in our case was that we were not limited to a role, a notion of what a woman can do. ... Like busy bees It is such a beautiful feeling to quietly buzz (mostly that was quite a loud buzzing with the chainsaw), to do your work, help each other... When one of us could not go on, here was another one of us to help. Women are different, attentive and able to be present at several tasks at once. Sometimes we communicate without words and at other times we laugh like crazy. Since we cannot mindlessly rely on the explosive power of one muscle, we use all of our bodies to do the work, study the gravity and the other body, the log or beam, and support it, use our own gravity whenever it is necessary to make it move. We often joked that we build like the Egyptians used to when people watched us with disbelief how we moved the heavy beams all by ourselves. For us, it was a dance, poetry in movement speaking to us and all the objects we used, all that taught us new choreographies with its specific characteristics. During construction we learned many crafts through experience and we also learned about new ways of collaboration, cohabitation and harmony that we did not know before.
2 June 2011 – in the beginning, it was like this... ...then there was a stairway to heaven building the structure us 3 as we finished the paving swinging the mattock
peeling the logs working with the boards and railing bruiting what do they say – Do not cut the branch you are standing on... pillars of the temple
horses arrive on 1 August first lunch in their new home tree of life endless adjusting endless creation planing of wood in action...
...roofing hexagon in honour of the bees All of this although would not have been possible if we were not aware that we are in the service of something larger than us. On the 2 June 2011 we started to build and two months later enough of the building was standing that we could bring the two horses there. During that time, there were days from morning to night, soaked in sweat and hard work, lightened up with a friendly word or two (sometimes a friendly, but sceptical word) by people who came to see us, our future neighbour brought us croissants and coffee and they were astonished that three women are building a “mosque” in the middle of the meadow. All the doubts and fears had to fade in face of the only date that could not be delayed: the due date for the life that is coming and on 8 September 2011, Kali let us know that it is time. The new life was breathtaking, like a thank you and at the same time also a strong trust in all that lies ahead.
birth on 8 September
just to be able to see this, it was worth all of it
first steps
freedom that every little horse deserves
Spontaneous matriarchy of the modern age Let’s point out that we certainly would not have succeeded if we would have started building our equestrian centre just based on our own wishes (even if we had them since childhood), not with the conditions we had. Our story seems like a miracle today, but it was not. Such things happen when you decide to help selflessly, to give all you have to preserve and honour another being (especially a being of another species with which we as people share this planet – probably only this is where people are truly unselfish). This is how the lack of knowledge can take a leap into knowledge and become wisdom. As we were setting up the foundations for the stable (which of course had to be round like those of a temple), we were also laying the foundations of a new way of life. A dedicated, caring, harmonious life that is full of heart. This is how, without us knowing it, the wisdom of bees found its place inside of us – while they gather the nectar for their family, they create a world of abundance with a multitude of fruits that ripen because of their touch. It’s the guiding principle that we will remain faithful to all our lives, in everything we will do. So that the world we leave behind will be more beautiful and richer than the world we were born into. The little stable became a temple of the horse. People say that we were right to call it the soul of the Earth, Terra Anima, but there is still a lot of work to be done with all the projects of deep ecology. To honour the bees, we erected the hexagonal main area in the hayloft that will be like a stage, spreading their mission with everything that will be happening there. - NejaMeta
cry of a wolf for the conclusion planting trees ladder of cats
The power of female creativity is limitless, you are all invited to join us in our SOCIETY or to participate at creative workshops of the Pegasus Well, so we can together bring a new world into existence.
Špeli
Meti
Tinka
thank you for reading this
CONTACT: terraanima.info@gmail.com or 0038641 980 876 - Špela
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CENTRE TERRA ANIMA * How it was built * Opening hours & how to get here * Renting it for a good cause * Sleeping in the hayloft