Upcoming Events
Regular Community Events
- Monthly Movements Classes
See the Calendar for details. - Work Weekends
See the Calendar for details. -
Thursday Night Inner Work – 8:00pm.
Currenty being held on Zoom.
Join us to explore the spiritual side of Gurdjieff’s work. We work collaboratively to share our experiences, our personal journeys, and to reflect on the readings and practical exercises. All are welcome, but please, contact us for details. -
Morning Meditations & Sittings 6:30am – 7:30pm.
Mondays – Fridays, Barn Community Room.
Sit with the community and be a part of our daily practice. Some mornings are guided meditations or sittings, others are on your own. Interested? Contact us!
Full Calendar
April 18-21, Work Weekend at the Barn with a theme of Sensing, Sound, and Silence.
Relaxation and sensing can help us hear what we need to hear from inside ourselves and from Above. Chanting of aspirational phrases can help us interrupt automatic and habitual thoughts and feelings – especially the negative ones – toward a state of inner relaxation, openness and receptivity. During this spring weekend, let’s take a break from busyness of mind and heart and open to the beauty around us.
This weekend will combine some familiar 4th Way practices with zikr (chanting and dance) from the Mevlevi tradition. Time to listen to silence and to resonate with the beauty of spring at Claymont. Time to open to what we need to hear, what we need to receive, and perhaps even Grace.
The seminar will be led by Hardy Mason. Hardy is a Mevlevi Sufi sheik and long-time student of the Fourth Way.
Note: Participants on the March work weekend at Claymont studying sensation may find this gathering a useful follow-on, but no previous experience is required.
The weekend will begin with dinner at 6:30 pm on Thursday April 18 and end after lunch on Sunday April 21. All activities will be at the Great Barn.
Suggested donation for the weekend is $195 if you are staying overnight at Claymont and $95 if you are not staying overnight at Claymont. However, do not let the cost prevent you from participating, financial assistance is available.
For more information and to register please contact, the registrar, Amy Silver at Claymontgathering@hotmail.com.
For more information about the Claymont Society go to www.society.claymont.org
Exploring Gurdjieff’s Sacred Dances
DOWNLOAD FLYER for full info
May 16-19, 2024
In this seminar, three diverse but kindred spirits – Deborah Rose Longo, a well-known teacher of the Movements; Elan Sicroff, a pianist who has worked extensively with the music of Thomas de Hartmann; and Anthony Blake, writer and student of J.G. Bennett – who was a leading exponent of Gurdjieff’s ideas – will come together to ask questions, experiment and encourage a fresh exploration of many different aspects of the Movements.
The seminar will be held in the historic Claymont Mansion and begins with dinner at 6:30 pm on Thursday May 16, and end after lunch on Sunday May 19.
The cost of the event including meals and lodging is $495. ($450 if registered and paid before April 1.)
For participants not staying in the Mansion, the cost is $340 ($325 if registered and paid before April 1.)
For more information and to register please contact, the registrar, Amy Silver Claymontgathering@hotmail.com
Annual Movements Retreat 2024
Annual International Movements Retreat to be held at Claymont Court.
For more information and to register, please visit the website: https://movements-retreat.org/
Higher Energies Workshop at the Barn led by Joe Naft
DOWNLOAD FLYER for more info
The workshop will be led by Joseph Naft. He is the author of www.innerfrontier.org and of seven books, most recently Light on the Way. He studied with J.G. Bennett at Sherborne, England in 1974 and has led Fourth Way groups since 1976. Deborah Rose Longo will teach movements, along with Joe.
The workshop will begin with dinner at 6:30 pm on Wednesday July 10 and end with lunch on Sunday July 14.
All activities will be at the Great Barn. You are cordially invited to join us in our work and exploration. Participants must have experience in Fourth Way groups or courses.
Suggested donation for the workshop is $400 if you are staying overnight at Claymont and $220 if you are not staying overnight at Claymont. However, do not let the cost prevent you from attending, as financial assistance is available.
For more information and to register please contact Amy Silver at Claymontgathering@hotmail.com.
What are we to make of Gurdjieff’s assertions about music and sacred dance? In his writings he states that there is an ‘objective music’ that will have the same effect on all people regardless of culture, type or taste; that seekers in the past read sacred dances in the way that we now read books; and that wise men in Babylon inserted “lawful inexactitudes” related to the Law of Seven, into various art forms, in order to transmit information to initiates of future generations.
In this seminar we will uncover underlying principles that govern rhythm, melody and harmony in music. We will explore the ways that composers insert meaning into their work, identify lawful inexactitudes in Gurdjieff’s sacred dances, and then interpret their meaning. We will also bring the music and the dance together, to discover how they support and inform each other.
The dancer Alexander Sacharoff, with whom de Hartmann and Kandinsky worked on the “abstract opera” Der Gelbe Klang (The Yellow Sound) around 1910, once said, “I don’t dance to the music. I dance the music.”
Conversely, in relation to the Movements, the musician must “play the dance.”
Additional activities will include exercises in listening, meditation on sound, and inner exercises based on the teaching of Mr. Gurdjieff and Mr. Bennett.
There will also be a lecture-recital about Thomas de Hartmann: his life, the music, and the ideas that inform it.
The seminar will begin with dinner at 6:30 pm on Thursday May 11 and end after lunch on Sunday May 14. Suggested donation for the event is $495 if you are staying at Claymont, and $275 if staying off-site. However, do not let cost prevent you from attending as financial assistance is available.
Elan Sicroff attended the second, third and fourth Basic Courses at Sherborne under the direction of J.G.Bennett, from 1973-1975 — first as student and later as director of music. Between 1975 and 1979 he studied with Mme. Olga de Hartmann, widow of the composer, focusing on the music that de Hartmann composed in the classical idiom. He performed many recitals under her auspices, and in 1982 toured the United States.
Elan has worked with the Gurdjieff/de Hartmann music for 50 years, and has released 3 recordings: A Journey to Inaccessible Places (1987), Sicroff Plays Gurdjieff (2002), and Laudamus… (2010). He accompanied Movements classes for 40 years. Since 2006 he has been Artistic Director for the Thomas de Hartmann Project, which aims to bring de Hartmann’s music back to the listening audience, after many years of neglect.
The Mindful Enneagram
A Five Day Retreat At Claymont Court
September 18-22, 2024
The Buddha emphasized three core foundations of mindfulness practice – of body, feeling, and mind – to free us from “dukkha,” unnecessary suffering. The Enneagram can be a powerful map of nine particular ways we are deeply conditioned to lean on either instinct, feeling, or thinking – a fundamental imbalance between our three centers that keeps us caught in dukkha.
“If a man desires sincerely and seriously, and out of no mere curiosity, to attain to the knowledge of the way leading to Real Being, and if he fulfills to this end all that is requested of him and begins, in fact, among other things to aid indirectly, and from his very first step, the attainment of this by others, he will, by this act alone, become as it were the forming ground for the real data contributing to the manifestation of objective and actual Good.”
Appropriately, from The Herald of the Coming Good.
Mr. Gurdjieff, in some of his early writing indicated that people working together in the sense of being could become sources of good in this world. The obstacles faced by Mr. G in establishing his work are well-known and well-documented.
Through the work and sacrifice of countless people over the years we have been able to participate and benefit from the above-mentioned good. It is with deep gratitude that we look to acknowledge and celebrate several significant milestones that are rapidly approaching us this year.
Our founder and teacher, J.G. Bennett, in the midst of his Sherborne residential project, looked to the future. With great cost to himself and with the help of numerous others, he managed to find and acquire the Claymont property in 1974 for the establishment of a community firmly centered on the work that Mr. G transmitted to him and many others. Mr Bennett’s vision, profound and far-reaching, was left in the hands of others, as 1974 would also mark the end of Bennett’s ‘planetary existence.’
This year, 2024, marks fifty years since the founding of the Claymont Society as well as fifty years since the passing of its founder. There have been countless challenges along the way, and no one claims to have fulfilled The Call for a New Society. We are now fifty years into the project and it is up to us how it is to unfold for the years during and beyond our lifetimes.
This, therefore, is a great time to come together, acknowledge the events that have occurred along the way, celebrate the greater present moment in which we find ourselves, and consider the possibilities for Claymont’s future.
We are calling out to all who have taken part in the past as well as all those connected inwardly and outwardly with our core practices and aspirations to come together from October 16th to 2oth 2024 for an event marking the 50 years of the society.
Please take an active part. We are interested in your input and ideas. We have volunteers locally who are working with the details of preparation and planning. However, we view and sense this event in a larger context and hope that others will be active toward it in a positive way and will contribute time, care and thought into bringing about an event worthy of the Occasion.
The event will begin with dinner on Wednesday October 16 and end after lunch on October 20.
Lodging and activities will be at the Great Barn at the Claymont Society in Charles Town, WV.
The cost for the event is $495 including meals and lodging. However, do not let the cost prevent you from participating, financial assistance is available.
For more information and to register please contact Amy Silver at claymontgathering@hotmail.com.