a place by women for women

“Le Campate”  was born – 7 years ago! – in 2015 with the intention of creating a place of women for women where it was possible to “cultivate”, through seminars and events, through daily life in contact with the Earth, its rhythms and its needs, a respectful approach to being a woman and its redefinition in a shamanic key. Shamanic understood as including the levels of life and its manifestations beyond the human and the material, considering ourselves interconnected, interdependent of an immense and enigmatic body: Life, Earth, Cosmos. Shamanic also in the sense of ability to communicate with the more expanded realms of the usual bodily density, joyfully anarchic and rooted in the inexorable Love, in the flowing with the cyclicality that serenely considers death, non-functioning, non-producing, non-knowing an indispensable element.

Since the first year, we have invited the Matriarchal Camp, a gathering of research among women on matriarchal modes of community organization. Matriarchal societies are organized in clans, they recognize Mother Earth as the giver (which objectively she is) of everything we have, they practice the politics of consensus and the economy of gift; they know neither poverty nor violence nor destruction of the environment and it seems that the word “war” does not even exist in their language, since they use other tools to resolve conflicts. Being able to rely on a spiritual-feminist research network that has been collaborating for years in order to propose conferences and events, our Campeggie are now a regular appointment at Le Campate, an enjoyable mix of study, ceremony, celebration, opportunity for meetings and songs, to weave and feed in the exclusive field of women. And yes, we want to offer this way, recognized and valued even in our culture until 50 years ago, of the exclusivity of the female field, we want to offer it to ourselves and to those who come to visit us. It allows us to regain possession of qualities that in the current patriarchal culture are struggling to emerge in their original power, it allows us to taste again the deep knowledge of woman, guardian of the cyclical nature of which her womb knows, dancer on the threshold between the material and immaterial. And we do it with the desire to create well-being for the Whole, to reintegrate the maternal quality of power and approach to life, convinced that an effective revolution starts from there, resting on the firm foundations of her own being, serene and connected.

We worked so hard, all the time. As many people do in the countryside. We have created a place that now has its own rhythms, its own acquired elements – the restoration of the olive grove, the easy conditions for reception and for the work of personal-cultural research, the vegetable garden, the many little big things that are needed in everyday rural life. For me (Sofie), who has lived here for 7 years, it is an immense pleasure to see how other traces, other impulses are developed on this basis, how options that needed more forces, more minds are realized, including the beautiful project of rainwater harvesting that includes the restoration of an old tank and its collection system.

From the very beginning, wwoofing has been a fundamental element: the many helping hands of the woofers, friends, acquaintances and strangers who come to Le Campate and bring their availability and their stories, their songs and laughter and sometimes even their baggage and their difficulties – we wouldn’t be where we are without this support and without these interchanges of knowledge and acquaintances. Thank you! What a wonderful community!

Le Campate participated in the “Growing with Us” call for proposals and the project submitted was selected for the three-year grant.