Moroccan Tea and In Love with the Mystery

We celebrated the arrival of the book and cd In Love with the Mystery, and Ann signed dedications to all the people who had pre-ordered. Now we are planning launches in Victoria and Vancouver in early November.
I’m really thrilled about this whole project and felt truly inspired to write this reflection on it:

Ann Mortifee, A Contemporary St. Hildegarde

by Carol Sill

A contemporary St. Hildegarde whose visions find expression in an integration of the  arts, Ann Mortifee has done it again with her extraordinary book and CD In Love with the Mystery.

Perhaps her most complete and integrated expression, a natural development from the masterful Into the Heart of the Sangoma, In Love with the Mystery reveals Ann’s core of wisdom and meaning that she has found in the inner life. A mature integration, it is born of the completion of her life now with her soul mate husband Paul Horn. Through this relationship a new love of the mystery has revealed itself. But make no mistake, as a woman whose inner guidance has taken her around the world (both inner and outer) many times seeking the truth in all its forms and manifestations, Ann Mortifee herself is a force of nature.

What strikes me most is the way she seemingly effortlessly expresses the depth of humanity’s greatest aspirations and most profound seeking. She is a contemporary shaman, whose work reveals a personal integration of the world’s highest meditation teachings and new age spirituality with depth psychology and the hard-won truths of existence. Her expressions are not wishful thinking, speculation or theoretical. They are lived and breathed in the life of a woman today.

“Sacrifice all your resistance on the altar of your own becoming,” is something that she is doing each day. Her voice is the voice of experience.

Musically I compare her to Hildegarde because her inspiration comes so much in sound, and In Love with the Mystery reveals an intimacy with the essence of sound’s source and the celebration of this that music affords.

The progress of the recorded pieces acts as a complete mystery process, enabling the listener to sense and feel the divine relationship: from aspiration, to removing barriers, to contemplative silence, then ecstatic union, and knowing celebration. Each of these is expressed and explored in music which speaks to the body, heart and soul. It bears much more than just one listening. Move with it, dance with it, or sit and contemplate with it: this music opens the heart.

Her book, on which the lyric of the music is based, offers rich images to enhance the inner contemplation of each of the passages. It is a book to be opened and savored again and again, as each time another facet reveals itself.  Ann’s inspired words bring home simple truths and profound contemplations in a stunning revelation of what it means to be human in these times of profound transition and change.

To me, In Love with the Mystery ranks with the work of the great mystics and seekers: poets like Rumi who whirled and spoke poetry in his love for Shams Tabriz, or saints like Hildegarde who heard, saw and felt the Divine. The whole work is a synaesthetic feast, an offering for the Divine Beloved.

Inspiring Autumnal Air

The air changed just as we entered September, and my mind is slowly returning from the summertime haze. Its been a lovely summer and here are a few highlights – more to come next post.

Sacred Nature Article

We went to Portland for a week, dogsitting while friends of friends went to Northwest Sufi Camp.

Around that time the article I’d written while we were housesitting for my cousin at Nanoose Bay came out in Heartbeat, the Ruhaniat newsletter (published as a pdf online.)

The theme is Sacred Nature.

You can download the whole magazine here: http://www.ruhaniat.org/pdf/heartbeat.pdf or just read my article here: Our Loving Relationship with Nature.

Eskova Publishing

The In Love with the Mystery book and CD Project is now at press, with delivery in a week or so. It’s great being part of the Eskova team helping to make this project happen! We’ve put out a few newsletters with info, plus created the website for Ann Mortifee, with info on this latest project.

Here are links to the latest newsletters to date.

Keeping in Touch #1 – announcing the book project

Keeping in Touch #2 – features the new video

I Love “In Love with the Mystery”

Editorial work for Ann Mortifee’s new book and cd project, In Love with the Mystery, has been extremely satisfying and a personally deepening experience. Ever since I had the opportunity to work with curator Pavel Alejandro Barrios Sosa on the English translation of his catalogue essay on the group exhibition in Cuba, Los Artistas Majos, I have been yearning to editorially go deep into the meaning and implications of words on a poetic level. Ann’s project brought this to me, and it has been a great joy mining her words to ensure they are saying what her heartsoul was pouring out through her. Along with her exquisite inspired writing, there is also a beautiful music CD that accompanies the book, featuring Ann and her husband Paul Horn and friends.

The book is now available for pre-order, and it is absolutely beautiful. Photos by the renowned Canadian photographer, Courtney Milne are integral to the stunning design by Diane Jensen-Feught.

Find out all about it here on Ann’s new site.

Nancy Mortifee and I put together this new site for Ann’s work, giving her an updated web presence and a place that could be easily added to when her workshop and appearance schedule changes, and as the reviews and interviews happen around the book and other events. Just waiting for the video to come into place and it will be wonderful.