lesser mysteries
lesser mysteries
We’re delighted to share that Greater Mysteries returns this spring with a new cycle of Lesser Mysteries programming.
What is beginning?
What wants to be born through us?
What are we dreaming into being?
These questions are at the heart of Lesser Mysteries. Together we practice the art of bringing the unseen into form — remembering that the world our hearts know is possible begins in community.
We are living through a profound collective turning. Old paradigms are breaking down, and we are being asked to grow our capacity to witness these endings. This work is essential. So is our devotion to what is breaking through — what is being born from the compost of the old.
As Spring arrives in the Hudson Valley, you are invited into a series of gatherings designed to gently tune your inner life to the season of rebirth. Through music, myth, and ritual, we affirm together that endings are also beginnings.
After a winter of listening and tending the quiet embers of our fall cave gathering, we’re honored to share this spring’s Lesser Mysteries — a season of music, myth, and ritual as living practices.
From the New Moon on April 17 to the Full Moon on May 1, we’ll gather across the Hudson Valley to sing, listen deeply, and prepare the soul for deeper descent in the fall.
We look forward to communing together in honor of SPring’s return.
GREEN BURIAL WORKSHOP
April 17
Kingston, NY
A workshop on death, design, and devotion to the living world
Presented by Greater Mysteries & Ash Scribe
This workshop introduces green burial as an ecologically meaningful way to die. We’ll ground ourselves in the practical realities of what green burial is (and isn’t), while tracing how post-industrial customs have distanced us from death, decay, and communal care.
Through the mythic underworld of Ereshkigal, queen of decay and gestation, we'll get to know death as a creative force.
Together, we'll reimagine death and dying in the Hudson Valley, drawing on design thinking and the work of regional death innovators. This workshop invites reflection and conversation on returning our bodies and rituals to the Earth.
Threshold by candlelight
april 19
kingston, NY
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 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.
Participation is free. Registration requested so we can prepare the space accordingly.
Psyche’s quest
april 24-26
woodstock, NY
Psyche’s Quest is an immersive weekend workshop with mythologist and storyteller Dr. Catherine Svehla, inviting women to explore the Heroine’s Journey through the ancient myth of Eros and Psyche. Through story, reflection, journaling, and shared inquiry, participants map the arc of their own lives and uncover what is being asked of them now. The workshop will take place April 24-26 at a private residence in Woodstock, NY; for more information, click register.
The Problem of the return
April 29
Kingston, NY
New Self in the Old World: Integration and the Problem of "The Return" An evening of storytelling and conversation with Dr. Catherine Svehla
You've gone through a transformative experience. How do you bridge the gap between the new you and your old world?
This the final challenge in the cycle of transformation, what mythologist Joseph Campbell called "The Return" in the hero's adventure. Although every adventure is unique, myths and old stories offer models and clues about how to meet the challenge of bringing your new awareness to your community. Sharing the gifts and possibility of renewal.
Come listen to a story, gather ideas, and be part of the conversation.
Seeds for a living score
april 30
Kingston, NY
Step inside the creative process as a living score begins to take shape.
On April 30, composer and vocalist Kelli Scarr invites a small audience into the rehearsal room for an open session with members of the band Moonraker, whose last concert took place more than two decades ago. This intimate gathering offers a rare glimpse into the collaborative practice that underlies the Greater Mysteries project.
Part rehearsal, part listening ritual, the evening allows participants to witness the early stages of musical emergence—when fragments, improvisations, and shared intuition begin to form the seeds of a performance.
These musical ideas will continue to evolve and ultimately bloom the following night at Opus 40, where the ensemble will perform a fully realized improvised living score within Harvey Fite’s monumental stone landscape.
For those curious about how music grows—from first impulse to collective expression—this offering opens the door to the quiet, generative moment before the threshold is crossed.
Lesser Mysteries
May 1
Saugerties, NY
This spring’s Lesser Mysteries culminates at Opus 40, where participants move together through Harvey Fite’s monumental stone landscape In ritual, Guided by music and the land itself.
The evening unfolds as a processional journey. We begin in quiet, attuning to the forest, then arrive within the earthwork for a shared passage, opening into a deep encounter with a former site of extraction transformed by hand over 40 years into a mythic place of creation.
A living, improvised musical score, performed by members of Moonraker, reuniting for the first time in over two decades, alongside Hudson Valley duo Miyaxx and a constellation of regional artists, takes shape in real time, responding to the space and those gathered.
Together, we mark the arrival of spring as our ancestors once did, through music, movement, and communal ritual, turning our attention toward the questions at the heart of Lesser Mysteries:
What is beginning?
What wants to be born through us?
What are we dreaming into being?
As the Full Moon begins to rise, something starts to gather. What awaits is held for those who arrive.