From Fire to Vision
In the early hours of a cold, rainy Tuesday morning, our family watched our home and ceremony space burn to the ground in less than half an hour. Everything we had ever owned, all the things we had carefully curated over the years, an entire collection of sacred musical instruments, all our sentimental treasures, photos, letters… all gone in a moment.
The song “Give it to the Fire” was written in the aftermath of grief and displacement. It wanted to be a lament. Instead, it became an anthem – a refusal to let destruction have the final word. From the embers of sorrow, a new tomorrow demanded to be sung into existence. Not just for us – but for every leader, builder and visionary who knows in their bones that something more is being asked of them right now. This song was written for everyone who has suffered a significant loss – the kind that strips you bare and demands that you start all over again.
The vision for the Phoenix Sanctuary is what rose when we stopped focusing on what we lost and started giving our energy to what was calling to be born: a family home alongside a sacred sanctuary that will become the heartbeat for our healing ceremonies and community gatherings.
The plans are approved. The Phoenix is rising from the ashes of the fire.
A huge and difficult journey lies ahead, and we need all the support we can get. But we aren’t looking for charity. We are calling in our village. We are seeking co-creators, patrons, enrollers and world-builders to help us raise a monument to rising from the ashes. Each contribution, however big or small, becomes a literal brick in the wall of a sanctuary that will offer solace, connection, awakening, and healing for many, many people. You are not just investing in the creation of a building, but in the legacy of transformational work that will unfold in this space and in the many lives that will be deeply touched and forever changed.
And perhaps one day, you will find yourself embarking on a journey within these very walls.
If this song or our story has moved you, I want to invite you into this journey with us. Please don’t leave this page without adding your energy to the Phoenix Sanctuary in one (or all) of these three ways:
- Pour into the foundation: Make a contribution to the build. Whether large or small, your investment is the material that will bring this temple out of the ground.
- Leave your mark: Sign our guestbook with a message or a prayer. We want to know exactly whose energy and love is standing behind us as we build.
- Fan the flames: Forward this song and our story to someone who needs to hear that destruction doesn’t get the final word.
This story is still being written. We want you in it.
From Vision to Intention
The Phoenix Sanctuary was not planned. It was forged. When our former home – the Sun Temple – burned to the ground, what rose in the aftermath was not just a building project but a fierce and deliberate vision: to build something more permanent, more intentional, and more necessary than what came before.
The sanctuary is built around two distinct but inseparable chambers. The first holds our family – our daily rhythms, our children’s world, the private life that roots and sustains everything we do. The second opens outward: a dedicated space for ceremony, medicine, music and the kind of gatherings that don’t simply inspire people but fundamentally change them. Spaces genuinely willing and able to hold this quality of work are rare – and the container must be as strong as the work itself. It needs to be built for the full spectrum of what it means to be human: the breaking open, the releasing, the darkness before the dawn, and the sudden, irreversible arrival of light. This is precisely what the second chamber is being built for. These two chambers are not separate – they breathe together. The family feeds the work. The work feeds the family. This is not a venue for hire. It is a living organism with a heartbeat.
Built for autonomy and in deep respect for the land it stands on, the Phoenix Sanctuary is being raised as a monument to one irreducible truth: that what is destroyed can rise into something greater – and that the rising is always worth the fire.
The Family Heartbeat
My name is Hymnj – father to a beautiful, wild girl called Gaia and a son called Prayer. Their names are a bold declaration of who we are as a family and what we are here to do. My wife and I do not perform this work from a safe distance – we live it, on this land, in this community, with our children. Both Gaia and Prayer were free-birthed, not as a fashionable trend, but as a radical and fierce statement of sovereignty and our devotion to nature’s intelligence. My path as a father, elder, contemporary medicine man and spiritual teacher flows as one river, and it is to awaken that burning consciousness and sovereignty in every person I hold space for and guide. The music I create is the capsule of my teachings. This is the nature of our commitment.
We cannot ignore that we are living in deeply significant and tumultuous times, where integrated world-builders, visionaries and quiet revolutionaries are being summoned to rise from passive observation to active expression – to face a future we can barely contemplate or anticipate. Phoenix Sanctuary is our home base and our act of stewardship: a physical anchor where leaders, artists, activists, influencers and decision-makers can come as they navigate difficult life transitions and rediscover their fundamental responsibility and authorship in this world.
At the heart of this sanctuary is Wake Circle – our living, breathing community of seekers, builders and medicine people who have been gathering, growing and doing the work together for years. Phoenix Sanctuary will be its permanent headquarters: a dedicated home for the ceremonies, gatherings and deep community connection that Wake Circle was built around. While this space will hold many kinds of work and many kinds of people, this is its central pulse – a place where a tribe can return to itself, again and again.
So this is not another generic spiritual centre where people come to escape the world and feel good about themselves. We urgently need spaces where personal and collective sanity can be anchored and embodied, where we can find ourselves amidst mass distraction and misdirection. It is a space to do the work and face ourselves in the most honest, vulnerable and pragmatic way. If you feel this calling within you, we ask you to be part of this story and this creation.
The Phoenix Sanctuary is not just a home – it is a living prayer, in a time when prayer is sorely needed.
The Phoenix Sanctuary Patron Circle
If you have read this far, something in you already knows. This is not a call for charity or passive support – it is an invitation to step in as a founding builder of something rare and necessary.
The Phoenix Sanctuary Patron Circle is our inner circle – the people who have made a deliberate decision to walk this journey with us and to ensure that these walls go up and this roof goes on. It is a small, intentional community of leaders, healers, artists and world-builders who believe that spaces like this do not just happen – they are willed into existence by people willing to put their name and their energy behind what matters.
Some patrons contribute financially. Some contribute skills, labour and expertise. Some open doors, make introductions, and carry this story into rooms we cannot reach ourselves. What unites every patron is not the nature of their contribution but the depth of their commitment: an active, ongoing, vested interest in making the Phoenix Sanctuary a physical reality.
This is the distinction we draw. Anyone can donate – and we are deeply grateful for every contribution. But a patron is something more. A patron doesn’t give and walk away. A patron stays. A patron shows up – whether that means swinging a hammer on site, guiding us through a building process, sharing our story with the right people, or quietly and consistently ensuring there is fuel in the engine when the road gets hard. A patron has skin in this.
In return, you do not simply watch from a distance. You belong to this story. You receive the overflow of everything created here – the music, the medicine, the gatherings, the teachings – and you carry the quiet knowledge that when the moment called for something real, you answered. The world needs more people like that. We are building this for them – and with them.
If that is you, in whatever form your contribution takes, we would love to hear from you. This is how a sanctuary gets built – not by one family alone, but by a village that refuses to let the vision die.
Leave Your Mark
If you have read this far and you are still here, but the Patron Circle is not your path – there is still a reason you kept reading. Something sparked. A curiosity. A recognition. Honour that.
You have come this far, so do not leave this space without making your mark in some way. Send a donation. Leave a message on our guestbook. Listen to the songs. Share this story with someone who needs to hear it. Do one thing before you go.
From the bottom of my heart, I thank you – for your time, your attention, and whatever moved in you while you were here.
My blessing for you is this: may you live a life of extraordinary presence and awareness. May you really be in every singular moment of it – the difficulties, the triumphs, the initiations, the expansion, and even the contractions. May you reach the end of your days having truly experienced and lived the full width and breath of your capacity – to have loved and to have been loved, to have built and to have lost. This human journey is an extraordinary thing. May you experience it in the deepest way possible, and may the story you write on the parchment of your soul be the one that is truly timeless.
Deepest blessings, Hymnj
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Special Thanks
There are so many special humans who have stepped in to support, guide and help us along in our journey from that fateful day till now. Each name weaves a thread of our dream, and in time, once we are through to the other end, we will be able to reach out to everyone individually to thank you. For now, please know you are in our hearts with such gratitude and love.