Oshra’s Rite of Unmarrying

By Vivien Claire

Vivien Claire has a passionate interest in the creative use of ritual in healing and spiritual formation. For more than three decades she has been offering symbolic gesture and poetic speech as potent resources for finding ways through life crises and thresholds of growth.

Vivien sees life giving rites as a sacred art form and a deeply intuitive creative practice. In writing Oshra’s Rite of Unmarrying, Vivien draws on this wisdom to find a fitting rite of passage in a personal crisis.

“Vivien has crafted a thing of beauty distilled from pain and self-confrontation awaiting grace... a tour de force of capturing a journey facing the darkness and coming through the other side.

There are no rituals prescribed for divorce and the rite of ‘unmarrying’ goes a long way to remedy that. When the fabric of our world and connecting through intimate belonging, is torn and ruptured, some ritual enactment of release, ending and containment is important.”

- Rev Peter Fox, Pastoral Clinician and Life Ritual facilitator SA.

“Oshra’s Rite of Unmarrying is a complete guide to the ritual passage of uncoupling. It is a thorough and rigorous consideration, but also hidden in its pages is both the license and encouragement to take any painful life event and to ritually recontextualize it.”

- William Redfield, Wisdom School and Wisdom Work mentor USA.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vivien Claire
• Release date: Jul 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005767921

Book preview

Oshra’s Rite of Unmarrying

Creative Resources for Intimate Crises

Oshra’s Rite of Unmarrying

Creative Resources for Intimate Crises

Vivien Claire

Copyright © 2021 Vivien Claire

First edition 2021

Published by Vivien Claire publishing at Smashwords

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system without permission from the copyright holder.

The Author has made every effort to trace and acknowledge sources/resources/individuals. In the event that any images/information have been incorrectly attributed or credited, the Author will be pleased to rectify these omissions at the earliest opportunity.

Artwork by Jolene Cartmill - The Love Picture Company

Published by Vivien Claire using Reach Publishers’ services,

P O Box 1384, Wandsbeck, South Africa, 3631

Edited by Aj Corton for Reach Publishers

Cover designed by Reach Publishers

Website: www.reachpublishers.org

E-mail: [e-mail]

Vivien Claire

[e-mail]

For Her

In thanksgiving for being given eyes to see

in a crisis of intimacy, a rite of passage

and a poetic voice to lament and bless.

With thanks also to those who have held me in a circle of hope.

Table of Contents

1. An Introduction – from the Beginning

2. Midwifing Difficult Endings

3. Wisdom in Lamenting

4. Songs of Lament

5. Wisdom in Dialogue

6. The Forgiveness Dialogues

7. Embracing the Crisis

8. Wisdom in Blessing

9. Costly Blessings

10. Wisdom in Ritual

11. What Happened on the Night of the Super Blue Moon

12. Oshra’s Rite of Unmarrying

13. The After Rite

14. Continuing the Dream

15. An Appendix of Resource

An Introduction – from the Beginning

Just before waking, a figure of a woman stands before me, holding me in her gaze. Her presence is more powerful than anything I have ever experienced, and the love flowing from her into me is of a distinctively penetrating and tender quality. She is both completely ‘other’ to me and yet instantly recognisable as the one I have always known. She is both young and old, utterly real and clear yet veiled. I cannot see her face, but my attention is riveted by her naked breasts. I am shocked when her left breast is suddenly completely sliced off in one blow by some invisible force. She does not move. I see that the energetic outline of her breast remains visible and the intensity of its energy is increasing. For a second time, the pulsing life of her breast is severed – and the life intensity is magnified even more. This happens a third time, and I am overwhelmed and folded into the loving radiance coming from her heart area. No words are said.

Receiving the dream

This was the numinous dream given to me at Eastertide on a visit home to South Africa. The timing was exquisitely right. It was a foretelling – a word from the depths that came before a significant personal crisis. Five years later, this vision is still alive for me. The woman of my dream was there at the beginning of things – and all the way through.

My first response to the dream was to ask: Am I willing to enter into this intensity of living and this costly way of loving? As sincerely as I knew, I said ‘yes’. This yes was outwardly affirmed on an early morning climb – saying it out loud as the sun appeared over the purple mountains of the Overberg. Having given my consenting trust to the next stage of life, I found that life as I knew it rocked on its foundation. There was the upheaval of returning permanently to South Africa after 15 years, and shortly after that my 40-year marriage came to a sudden and traumatic end. This ‘yes’ was inwardly confirmed with the slow realisation that this crisis of intimacy was potentially an initiation into an inner rite of passage. Unwittingly and unconsciously my dreaming self was anticipating this and preparing for a dangerous soul passage.

Finding a soul narrative

At the heart of this personal soul narrative and creative resource is a poetic rite of passage – Oshra’s Rite. The name Oshra was given to me in a dream and the meaning here is ‘one who follows her intuition’. Oshra’s Rite is a poetic piece that distils and describes the dream-like healing sequence of a midnight ritual that unfolded slowly and inwardly. The story of the rite was fed by my night-time dreams and ongoing inner listening through sacred texts and icons. My instinct was to write poetically, using traditional sacred art forms to write my way through this critical soul passage. The four universal and ancient poetic forms I used are laments, blessings, dialogues and ritual. In different ways, all four are genres of human speech that re-imagine and help speak into existence the potential of deep movements of healing and change.

But re-imagining and writing is only a preparation for performing and acting out rituals in physical time and space. When I was ready, Oshra’s Rite of Unmarrying was indeed performed. Two extraordinarily wise women, both well experienced in holding transformational rituals, participated with me in an extended rite of passage one summer night. It was both rehearsed and spontaneous, intensely intimate and presided over with great inner authority and integrity. At a later stage, the creative process unfolded further and an audio recording of Oshra’s Rite was made.