PREPARE FOR THE MYSTERIEs
PREPARE FOR THE MYSTERIEs
The Greater Mysteries GATHERINGS at Widow Jane Mine are rooted in the tradition of ancient initiation rites, most notably the Eleusinian Mysteries of Greece. These rites, which lasted for nearly two thousand years, were designed as a process of transformation. A key part of their structure was not just the central ritual itself, but also the preparation of participants’ bodies and souls beforehand, and the integration of their experience afterward.
In alignment with this lineage, Greater Mysteries programming includes:
Preparatory Offerings – Experiences offered in advance of the performances that help participants attune their bodies, minds, and spirits. These offerings are intended to open the space for transformation and deepen the audience’s engagement with the two-night ritual-performance.
Integration Offering – A closing experience that takes place after the performances. This is designed to support participants in weaving what they have received back into their lives and communities, completing the arc of descent, transformation, and return.
The goal is to create a container that mirrors the structure of ancient initiatory practice—preparation, immersion, and integration—so that the performances themselves can be received as more than concerts, becoming instead part of a holistic rite of passage.
New This Year: The Mystai Pass
For the first time, we’re offering a way to experience the full arc of Greater Mysteries.
The Mystai Pass is for those who feel called to go deeper, joining us not only for our culminating gatherings at Widow Jane Mine, but for the two weeks of programs leading us there.
In the ancient Mystery traditions, mystai were those who entered into the Mysteries. Our Mystai Pass is an invitation to do the same: to move through the Fall cycle as a whole, following the journey from threshold to descent to return.
the Mystai Pass includes both nights at Widow Jane Mine, September 25 & 26, plus complimentary registration for every program in the Fall cycle, September 11–26.
Come for the whole journey.
SEPTEMBER 11
Stone Mysteries: Ancient Skies and Sacred Landscapes of the Hudson Valley w/GLENN KREISBERG
The 2026 Greater Mysteries fall cycle begins with an evening of exploration, inquiry, and conversation. Archaeoastronomer, author, and researcher Glenn Kreisberg invites us into the remarkable world of Hudson Valley’s ancient sacred sites and the sophisticated cosmologies that shaped them. Drawing on decades of research, Glenn reveals how our ancestors aligned Ceremonial Stone Landscapes (CSL) with the movements of the sun, moon, and stars, creating places that were consciously attuned to the rhythms of the living cosmos.
Arts Society KINGSTON
Kingston, NY 7pm-9PM
SEPTEMBER 12
location shared upon registration Woodstock, NY 10AM-1pm
Lewis Hollow Ceremonial Stone Landscape Walk w/Glenn Kreisberg
The morning following our Opening Gathering, we invite you to continue the inquiry with an intimate educational hike led by archaeoastronomer Glenn Kreisberg through Lewis Hollow, one of the Hudson Valley's most remarkable Ceremonial Stone Landscapes (CSL).
Over the course of this guided walk, Glenn will introduce participants to the manitou asunal ("spirit stones"), carefully constructed stone walls, cairns, and other features that have been identified as part of a Native American Ceremonial Stone Landscape. Together, we'll explore what these places may reveal about Indigenous relationships with the land, the sky, and the sacred, while considering the broader role that landscape itself has played in humanity's spiritual imagination.
This is an opportunity to experience a place of deep cultural and ecological significance with someone who has spent decades researching these extraordinary sites.
SEPTEMBER 16
TENDING ENDINGS: Body mapping across thresholds w/CHRISTIE Jordan Barron
What becomes possible when we allow the wisdom of the body to guide us across thresholds?
Tending to Endings is an embodied exploration of thresholds as a series of becomings, Guided by somatic educator, Christie Jordan Barron, we will generate a space of curiosity through somatic practices, Sense Writing foundations, movement and ritual.
In exploring our relationship to endings, inviting imagination as a pathway toward connection, body as resource, community as witness and a place for collective dreaming, we get to turn toward life with fresh eyes.
Rather than asking us to understand attachment from the top down, Tending to Endings invites us to experience it from the bottom up: to listen for what the body already knows about letting go, crossing thresholds, and beginning again.
TEMPO KINGSTON
Kingston, NY 6pm-8pm
SEPTEMBER 18
Thunder perfect mind magazine launch celebration with the bridge
An evening of conversation, ritual, music, and poetry celebrating the launch of Thunder Perfect Mind (▼), a new print magazine devoted to the goddess.
By Goddess we do not mean a deity so much as the intelligent, pulsing power of life itself.
Lately, She has been thundering through the collective psyche via dreams, art, and psychedelic trips. Coincidence? We think not. This is a magazine-shaped altar for Her.
Join The Bridge founder Nicole Nyhan in conversation with Thunder Perfect Mind Editor-in-Chief Cassady Rosenblum as they explore the inspiration behind the magazine, the resurging relevance of the feminine divine, and what it means to cultivate a living relationship with this archetypal force today.
The evening will also be held in ritual by Mary Evelyn Pritchard, with live music by Kelli Scarr, and readings from the ancient Coptic poem Thunder, Perfect Mind, the enigmatic text that gave the magazine its name and continues to inspire its vision.
Part dialogue, part ritual, and part communal celebration of the inaugural issue of the magazine, this special evening invites us to encounter the many voices of the goddess and the creative power She awakens within us.
The bridge
Kingston, NY 7pm-9pm
SEPTEMBER 20
THRESHOLD BY CANDLELIGHT: Presented in collaboration with the Mid-Hudson Valley Threshold Choir
This candlelit, compline-inspired offering invites participants to gather in the dark to collectively tend grief and receive comfort through song. Rooted in the tradition of night prayer, the evening acknowledges the loneliness and vulnerability that can linger at the threshold between winter and spring.
Songs from the Threshold Choir’s non-denominational repertoire will be offered as a gentle act of care — not performance — providing a sonic container for listening, rest, and reflection in the reverberant church space at Tempo in Kingston, NY.
This FREE offering creates an opportunity for community healing through shared presence and loving attention, while also offering an introduction to the work of the Mid-Hudson Threshold Choir and the service it provides to individuals and communities in times of transformation.
TEMPO KINGSTON
Kingston, NY 6PM-8pm
SEPTEMBER 22
TEMPO PERFORMING ARTS CENTER
Kingston, NY 7pm-9pm
Underworld Journeys with Mythologist Dr. Catherine Svehla
Journeys to the underworld, what the ancient Greeks called nekyia, appear throughout mythology and continue to shape many stories today. They offer a powerful lens through which to understand the losses, struggles, and transformation that are part of every life.
In this richly illustrated evening, mythologist Dr. Catherine Svehla invites us into the symbolic landscape of the underworld, exploring the myths, images, and archetypes that illuminate this imaginal realm. Together we will consider the underworld as a living dimension of the psyche where endings become beginnings, identities dissolve, and unexpected forms of wisdom, creativity, and renewal reside.
Whether you are reflecting on a past passage or navigating one in the present, this gathering offers an opportunity to deepen your relationship with one of humanity's oldest and most transformative mythic landscapes.
SEPTEMBER 23
TEMPO PERFORMING ARTS CENTER
Kingston, NY 7PM-9pm
The Sumerian Myth of Inanna: Storytelling and conversation with Mythologist Dr. Catherine Svehla
One of the oldest recorded stories in the world is the Sumerian myth of Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth. This fascinating story describes the cycle of transformation in terms that speak to us today, and is the mythic backdrop for Greater Mysteries.
Join mythologist Dr. Catherine Svehla for a live telling of this powerful ancient story, followed by a community conversation exploring its enduring meaning and the place it occupies in our lives.
SEPTEMBER 25 & 26
Greater Mysteries at Widow Jane Mine
As daylight wanes and autumn begins its quiet turning, we invite you to gather inside the extraordinary Cave at Widow Jane Mine to explore this timeless cycle of transformation through an immersive evening of music, myth, and ritual.
Inspired by the ancient Mystery traditions that helped generations of people navigate life's great thresholds, Greater Mysteries reimagines these rites for our time as living practices that invite us to meet our own moments of transformation with greater presence, courage, and imagination.
Unlike a conventional performance, the evening unfolds as a carefully held container for collective experience through original music, storytelling, movement, and communal participation. The natural acoustics of the cave, the intimacy of the gathering, and the absence of phones create conditions that are increasingly rare in modern life: sustained presence, deep listening, and genuine encounter with ourselves and one another.
Created by composer Kelli Scarr in collaboration with ritualist Mary Evelyn Pritchard, mythologist Dr. Catherine Svehla, and an ensemble of extraordinary Hudson Valley musicians and artists, Greater Mysteries brings together months of creative preparation and the work of dozens of collaborators to transform the cave into a living ceremonial landscape for just two evenings each year.
We also welcome the addition of artist Koyoltzintli, whose work explores the relationship between breath, sound, clay, and the living intelligence of the natural world. Drawing from years of research into Pre-American ceramic instruments, her presence deepens the ceremonial landscape of Greater Mysteries, inviting you into an even more embodied experience of listening, resonance, and connection with the more-than-human world.
Following the cave experience, you are invited to continue the conversation around shared fires beneath the night sky. In the weeks that follow, everyone who attends will also be invited to a community integration gathering and will receive a professionally recorded live album from the performances, allowing the experience to continue unfolding long after the evening itself.
Attendance is limited to preserve the intimacy of the experience. Last year's gatherings sold out, and many participants described the evening as one of the most meaningful artistic experiences of their lives.
Together, we continue to explore what becomes possible when music, myth, ritual, and community meet in a place shaped by deep time.
Widow Jane Mine Rosendale, NY 6pm-10pm
Date TBA
Hudson valley
INTEGRATION OFFERING w/Mary Evelyn Pritchard & Kelli Scarr
A closing experience that takes place after the performances. This is designed to support participants in weaving what they have received back into their lives and communities, completing the arc of descent, transformation, and return.
A Note on REGISTRATION AS Reciprocity
Greater Mysteries is made possible through the care, devotion, and artistry of dozens of musicians, artists, educators, and community partners who bring this work to life.
Your registration is an act of reciprocity. It not only supports your own participation, but also helps sustain a creative ecosystem in which artists are fairly compensated and contemporary practices of gathering can continue to flourish.
While many members of our community generously volunteer their time to help these gatherings unfold, we believe the artists and skilled collaborators whose lives are devoted to this work deserve meaningful compensation. We are committed to building a culture where generosity and artistic sustainability exist hand in hand.
We are also deeply committed to making this work as accessible as possible. For our Cave Gatherings, we offer a range of ticket tiers so that those with greater financial capacity can help make lower-cost tickets available to others. We are also pleased to offer complimentary registration for Hudson Valley farmers in recognition of their essential, yet often underpaid, role in tending the land that nourishes us all.
Our workshops, Presentations, and other gatherings are intentionally priced as affordably as possible. If the cost of participating in any Greater Mysteries offering presents a financial barrier, please email us at hello@greatermysteries.com. We never want cost alone to prevent someone from participating, and we will do our best to ensure that anyone who feels called to this work can attend.
If you are in a position to do so, we invite you to choose a higher ticket tier for the Cave Gatherings, visit our Support page to learn other ways you can help sustain this work, or consider volunteering. We are currently welcoming volunteers for our Fall 2026 season, and we'd love to have you join us. You can learn more and sign up through our Volunteer Interest Form.
For much of human history, communities understood that rituals, artists, and cultural traditions flourished when they were collectively supported. We see Greater Mysteries as part of that living tradition. Together, we are cultivating a culture of reciprocity where artists, participants, and community all thrive.
This is an ongoing practice of listening and learning. If you have ideas for expanding access while continuing to sustain the artists and collaborators behind this work, we'd genuinely love to hear from you at hello@greatermysteries.com.
Thank you for helping make this work possible.