How a gathering becomes a place: the money, plainly

Nothing on this site is for sale, so how does the land get paid for? Festival, retreats and ceremonies, a fund that can only buy land, and open accounts.

There is nothing for sale on this website. No tickets, no course, no membership, no donate button. That is deliberate, and it raises an obvious question: how does a circle of people with a manifest and no land turn into a circle of people with land? This is the answer, in plain words, with the parts we will refuse as well as the parts we will do.

Where money enters

Money enters through the gatherings, and only there. Three kinds.

The festival: a few days, a few hundred people, all ten pillars at once, on borrowed ground. Tickets. It is the loudest thing we will do and the one most people meet first, and it is where the largest surplus comes from.

Retreats: a week, a small group, one pillar deep. Sound and silence, ecology and building, ceremony and integration, a parents-and-children week. Fees. Retreats are how the circle earns through the year rather than in one weekend, and how the people who will hold the land learn to hold it.

Ceremonies: small, frequent, held by people the circle trusts. Sometimes free, sometimes a contribution. They keep the circle warm between the larger gatherings, and they are where the land’s rituals will come from.

Where money goes

Every gathering pays its own way first: the land hire, the crew, the food, the safety, the people who hold ceremony and play music. Nobody is asked to work for free who is not choosing to. When that is paid, what remains goes into one place.

The land fund. It has one purpose, to buy and hold the land, and its rules stop it being spent on anything else. Not on a website, not on a salary, not on a nicer stage next year. It sits and grows until there is ground.

The accounts are open to the circle. Not a summary in a newsletter: the numbers, the whole sheet, readable by anyone in the circle who asks. It is one of the twelve principles and it is the one that keeps all the others honest.

Who holds it

When the land is bought, it is held by a foundation or a cooperative belonging to the circle, in whichever legal form the country allows. Not in a person’s name, ever. The form has a lock built into it: the land cannot be sold for profit, or to anyone outside the purpose, by anyone. If the circle dissolves, the land goes to something with the same purpose, not to the highest bidder.

The money we will refuse

This is the part that will make it slower and it is not negotiable.

We will not take money that gives someone control over the land. No investor with a seat and a return. No loan secured on the ground from anyone who could foreclose on it. No donor whose gift comes with a say over what happens there. The reason is simple: every project like this that has died has died the same way, with the land ending up in the hands of whoever put the money in. Patience is cheaper than that.

We will not sell anything on this site until there is something honest to sell. When the first gathering has a date, it will be announced to the circle first, by letter, and tickets will exist then and not before.

Why no date

People want a year. We understand. But the speed of this depends on how many people join the circle and how many of them hold gatherings, and we do not know those numbers yet. A date on a website would be a guess, and every project that guesses spends the next year apologising. What we promise is the order: the circle, then the gatherings, then the ground. The first is happening now. It starts with an email address.

Photo: Alexander Nadrilyanski via Pexels. Places shown are not Spiritual Land; the land has not been found.