Italy Odyssey Journey: Spring 2025

WITH GILLIAN SCHOEMAKER, AND VERONICA PALERI, ORAZIO LO PRESTI, FRANCESCA CARUSO

Join Gillian Schoemaker, and Veronica Paleri, Orazio Lo Presti, Francesca Caruso, on the Italy Odyssey Journey, embarking on the journey with the spirit of pilgrims, seeking to experience the mysterious pagan dream of the Renaissance humanist.

Just as Renaissance mystics, scientists, and artists found inspiration from the ancients, we too can look backward to find our way forward. What does it mean to be human? Italy provides the setting for our explorations and questions.

• Many of the “stage sets” for the birth of the Renaissance are still intact.
• We will visit gardens, museums, palaces, cathedrals, tiny cities.
• Taking Marsilio Ficino’s “Book of Life” as a guide, we will pay attention to the refined pleasures of the table, even as we ponder “On the Dignity of Man.”
• Art brings eternal truths into the world of the senses… through music, architecture, sculpture, painting, and other means, it is possible to access the mysteries of the Cosmos and its relationship to the spiritual evolution of Man and the Earth.
• Each place expresses a quality of a particular initiation process, practiced in those times within the guilds and workshops of the artisans.
• Our tapestry of experiences will include eurythmy where possible and appropriate, and the opera, as audience! There may well be opportunities to attend one of the many concerts.
• Study sessions will weave together art history and Steiner’s understanding of the Evolution of Consciousness.
• The stages planned for this Odyssey follow a natural geographical path, beginning in Venice, passing through Ravenna, and Florence, heading towards Siena and Assisi in the center of Italy, and ending in Rome, where we’ll backtrack briefly to ancient Rome, and concluding with the Vatican museum.
• We’ll follow a consistent thread – the urban theme, the museum theme, and the one related to sacred art.
• Our active presence of awareness, openness, and gratitude for what has been and still continues to live in these places can be seen as an offering of healing and respect for the earth and the Cosmos.
• We stand on the ground laid down in the past from which we walk into the future.

Click here for more information.

Contact Gillian Schoemaker: 610-455-2040, gillianschoemaker@gmail.com

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The tour leader Gillian Schoemaker, born in Scotland in 1949, was originally trained in interior design and painting at the Glasgow School of Art. She is a eurythmist, teacher, and therapist, and lives and works in the Camphill School in Pennsylvania, USA. Since 2002, she has organized and co-led Odyssey Journeys to sacred places in Greece, Egypt, Ireland, and Scotland, her native country. She is interested in the evolution of consciousness and in the relationship between the spirituality of humans, art, architecture, and the landscape.