*
‘I have gathered myself together,
Like the beautiful Hawk of Gold.
*
Ra enters in
Day by Day
To hear my words.’
*
mystery
Mimir’s Bubbling Head…
*
We seem to have finally lost the Hawks.
The day feels somehow empty.
But for Wen the day is still young and she is keen to introduce me to another chalk figure. This one is much later than the Uffington Dragon and, I have to say, a lot less impressive. The chalk does not even appear particularly white just a sort of dirty grey colour. It now seems to depict an equal armed cross surmounting an upward pointing triangle but Wen thinks it may have been a phallus and keitis in its earlier days. One thing is for sure it is clearly visible from the road. When we get up onto the top of the hill the sky has darkened with cloud cover and the earlier highs on Hawk Hill are beginning to feel like a hallucinatory lapse in time. Happily there are a couple of burial mounds on the hill which reinforces Wen’s contention about the antiquity of the place if not the figure. It is a nice enough spot, if a tad exposed, and Wen finds a landscape feature which could well be a naval. It seems beyond doubt that the ancients did this type of thing. Seeing bodies in the earth or seeing the earth as a series of sleeping bodies needful of awakening to animation. Two ravens land simultaneously on the top of the barrow which reminds me of Castle Rigg when two ravens did something similar as we approached the entrance stones and that in turn reminds me that Wotan’s birds were ravens known has ‘Memory’ and ‘Mind’… Nine nights he hung there and he sacrificed an eye in order to comprehend occult wisdom… I wonder if it was pecked out by the ravens… or whether that is merely a clever blind for spiritual insight and make a mental note to re-read the story and meditate on it. I wander out to the edge of the hill just past the scouring poles and my heart leaps. On the plain below walking across a field two figures are discernable and just above them quite close to their heads a Red Kite circles, although the figures themselves appear to be totally oblivious of the bird above them.
“It’s not only us they follow,” I point out to Wen with some satisfaction.
“It probably thinks they are us” says Wen as the hawk keens, wheels, turns and heads directly for our position on the hill. They do appear to have phenomenal hearing as well as their legendary eyesight.
“It cannot know we are here,” I say with total conviction as the hawk labours to climb towards our position.
“It cannot know we are here” I say with less conviction as the hawk showing no inclination to alter its course is now two thirds the way to our position and is still working terribly hard to reach us.
“It cannot know…”
“Wound round the hanging tree…I sacrifice… myself… to myself… and now seek wisdom’s word from the breach in Mimir’s bubbling head,” says Wen as the hawk flies directly above our standing position on the hill-top and then screeches, loudly.
The ravens cackle in unison fly up and off from the barrow and head into the tree cover, their wings moving in lazy unison.
“How do you do that?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
That’s a reference to Yggdrasil, who is an eight-legged horse but also a tree spanning the three worlds and I was just thinking about that very story how do you know all this stuff?”
“I didn’t know I knew it until a moment ago, it just sort of emerged,” Wen smiles apologetically.
“It’s only the same as you and the birds, how do you do that?”
“I don’t do anything, it happens naturally.”
“We must be chosen ones,” says Wen as an icy blast of wind gusts over the hilltop.
“… or frozen ones,” I reply, zipping up my jacket and heading back to the car.
*
Quest for a Quest: The Initiate’s Story
Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire
17-19 April 2020
A Living Lore Workshop.
Contact us at Rivingtide@gmail.com for more details. Click below to
Download our Events Booking Form – pdf
In Hack-Pen Hedge…
*
Animism
1. Doctrine that the soul is the vital principle of organic development.
2. Attribution of conscious life or spirits to nature or natural phenomena.
3. Belief in the existence of spirits separable from bodies.
*
“There’s a large stone in that hedge…”
“Correction, there’s a large head in that hedge.”
“A pity then that hedge derives from edge and not from head.”
*
It is a recurring question and one which crops up every time we visit ‘circles’ of stone.
Are the forms which we ‘see’ in them in us or in the stone?
Are they merely subjective projections or do they inhere in the stones themselves?
From experience we know that different people see different things.
From experience also we know that these forms change, constantly.
Among other things they are affected by;
1. Distance.
2. Angle of approach.
3. Atmospheric conditions.
*
Would that the flickering blaze of flame
In the moonlight
again illuminate these forms…
The beat of a drum
A flare from the sun
When will they in unity thrum?
*
They deal then with perception and perceptions.
If all one sees are silly things
Is one a silly person or merely being silly?
Is it likely that stones would be chosen for their similarity to animals or beings which have never shared their environment?
Do we know for certain which fauna shared their environment?
Context too is important.
If we have an idea of what these sites were for,
then we may be able to find a correlation in the images in the stones.
Or is that simply more projection
and hence an even greater error of interpretation?
*
The ‘new circles’ can be instructive.
Apart from the obvious fact that for the most part they are not situated correctly, and thus do not feel ‘right’ or indeed feel ‘wrong’ and do not function at all on an energetic level, the choice of stones also leaves a lot to be desired.
These stones are ‘dead’.
Individually they appear too regular and too square to hold any forms,
not that a square or regular stone could not hold such a form, mind.
Collectively they do not ‘speak’ to each other, or as a whole.
*
Whatever else the people responsible for ‘Our Stones Circles’ were or were not, they were certainly artists of an exceptionally high degree of accomplishment, as well as consummate surveyors and engineers.
And that is not to mention, supreme organisers and masters of matter in motion.
These skills were probably not compartmentalised or regarded as separate.
One possible function of this artistry and science could have been in order to facilitate ancestral contact.
*
I just wish I’d moved the grasses away from the other side of the stone and taken a peek,
and then gone into the adjacent field and done likewise. Time…
*
Hidden Avebury: Seeking the Unseen
Avebury, Wiltshire
12th – 14th June, 2020
*
A Living Land Workshop
Almost everyone knows of Avebury, the great stone circle within which a village was built. A World Heritage site and one of the most incredible sacred complexes of prehistory, it is justly famous for its beauty and mystery. The site attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors every year but while most simply walk in awe amongst the majestic standing stones of the Circle and Avenue, there is far more to discover for those who will walk the paths less travelled.
Join us in June, 2020, as we explore some of the hidden corners of this amazing landscape, ranging beyond the boundaries of the Circle to seek a deeper understanding of what our ancestors hoped to touch by building this earthly temple to the stars.
Based in the landscape around Avebury and beyond, this weekend will entail some relatively easy walking. There will be time during the weekend to explore Avebury and its stones.
The weekend runs from Friday afternoon to early Sunday afternoon, and costs £75 per person. Meals and accommodation are not included in the price and should be booked separately by all attendees. Meals are often taken together at a local pub or café. For those arriving by public transport, we are able to offer a limited number of places in shared vehicles; please let us know if this would be required.
Click below to
Download our Events Booking Form – pdf
For further details or to reserve your place: rivingtide@gmail.com
Twinkle, Twinkle…
*
…St Lawrence on the Hill finally yields to our belated scrutiny after two unsuccessful attempts at entry and proves something of an enigma. On the one hand it is an old church on an ancient site and the energies of the place must still be operating as of old because the Red Kites, as we know only to well, are simply all over the place, and yet the interior of the church, on first glance at least, bears absolutely no resemblance to a church at all. It looks more like an eighteenth century drawing room replete with ornate gildings and renaissance and baroque type works of art.
My mind presents the images of Dashwood attached to one of the tunnel entrances in the caves directly below; the dandified libertine raising his glass of wine and the pious candle holding monk in his habit…
The living room of the nave is the epitome of those two images for on closer inspection all the trappings of the church are indeed there including a rather splendid Bishop’s Chair which Wen and I cannot help laughing over and an incredibly well fashioned font in the form of a serpent twining its inevitable ascent around a pole. The place is also liberally festooned with doves and these are not discreet doves either like in some of the St John the Baptist churches… they are full on, in your face representations and really quite endearing.
I have to wonder about Dashwood, his reputation is appalling and yet, his use of symbolism is rather refined…
*
…We do not spend as much time in St Lawrence’s as we would have liked and undoubtedly would have done had the place not been teeming with other folk but as those people entrusted with its care have decided to only open it to the public on one day of the week inevitably the public will be present in large numbers on that day. Now, I have nothing at all against folk per se it is just that a silent communion with the spirit of a place is not really possible with hordes of people milling about, however, I have seen enough of the churches ‘decoration’ to suggest that Dashwood is worth keeping an eye on. At this point he does not appear to be directly connected to our investigations but he is not all together unconnected either. I remember from my research that St Lawrence was regarded as a ‘Saint of Jester’s’ largely because of his comment on the grid-iron about being turned to give an even roasting. And that, if you recall, is the grid-iron that he probably never actually lay on anyway. It is hard not to smile when observing his depictions with cumbersome grid-iron to hand. Once again legend and life seem to have become inextricably meshed and the ‘Jester’s saint’ as dedicate of Dashwood, the pious libertine’s church could not be more apt…
*
Quest for a Quest: The Initiate’s Story
Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire
17-19 April 2020
A Living Lore Workshop.
Contact us at Rivingtide@gmail.com for more details. Click below to
Download our Events Booking Form – pdf
Found Mounds: Silbury’s Little Brother…
*
‘…One of the stops we did manage to make on the way to our second ‘official sojourn’ in Glastonbury was, Merlin’s Mound.
Now, Merlin’s Mound you might have thought would be a well-known tourist attraction boasting hundreds of thousands of visitors a year just like its Big-Sister Mound of Sil-Bury Hill, so called because late legend has a king called Sil buried there along with his treasure, a golden horse.
Not so.
Quite why this is not the case it is difficult to fathom although one possible reason is that Merlin’s Mound is hidden within the grounds of Marlborough College which is a private school.
Of course, there is nothing actually buried in Silbury Hill because it isn’t a burial mound at all and the Golden Horse is far more likely to refer to the sun which, knowing the folk responsible for its construction, probably set behind the hill when viewed from one of the other sites in the area, or seemingly rose from it, and I did not learn that at any school, private or otherwise…
“Which would make it Sol-Bury Hill, anyway,” says Wen.
…Now, I was lucky enough to come across Merlin’s Mound because I attended a conference in the grounds of the college and I have to say I was astonished to learn of its existence but not half as astonished as I was to learn of its size.
In fact for a long time I was fairly sure that although Silbury Hill was regarded as Merlin’s Bigger Sister, size wise, there was not an awful lot in it.
“Silbury Hill is much bigger,” says Wen.
“I’m not so sure.”
“Much bigger, Merlin’s Mound only looks comparable because it dwarfs the buildings that currently hide it so effectively.”
“I don’t think there’s much in it.”
“What does Silbury Hill have to give it scale?”
“No, there’s not a lot else in the vicinity is there.”
“This is one reason why accurate measurement is so important.”
But anyway, and more importantly than accurate measurement of any kind, work is currently ongoing in the renovation of Merlin’s Mound and we are able to walk two-thirds the way around its newly refurbished spiral path-way and I have to say although it was something of a disappointment not to be able to get all the way to top in other ways it was not such a bad thing after all for just getting two thirds the way up was giving me a rather ‘heady’ feeling.
“I know,” says Wen. “Me too. What’s the line in, ‘A House on the River’ when Aeth’s troop, in all their glory, is approaching the strong-hold of Aillil Silver-Tongue and Sweet-Mouthed Maeve?”
“My head may as well be in a vat full of wine…”
“My head may as well be a vat full of wine,” laughs Wen, and I laugh too.
Although, to be strictly accurate in our comparison, the experience is far, far better than drinking or indeed, being wine…
*
Hidden Avebury: Seeking the Unseen
Avebury, Wiltshire
12th – 14th June, 2020
*
A Living Land Workshop
Almost everyone knows of Avebury, the great stone circle within which a village was built. A World Heritage site and one of the most incredible sacred complexes of prehistory, it is justly famous for its beauty and mystery. The site attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors every year but while most simply walk in awe amongst the majestic standing stones of the Circle and Avenue, there is far more to discover for those who will walk the paths less travelled.
Join us in June, 2020, as we explore some of the hidden corners of this amazing landscape, ranging beyond the boundaries of the Circle to seek a deeper understanding of what our ancestors hoped to touch by building this earthly temple to the stars.
Based in the landscape around Avebury and beyond, this weekend will entail some relatively easy walking. There will be time during the weekend to explore Avebury and its stones.
The weekend runs from Friday afternoon to early Sunday afternoon, and costs £75 per person. Meals and accommodation are not included in the price and should be booked separately by all attendees. Meals are often taken together at a local pub or café. For those arriving by public transport, we are able to offer a limited number of places in shared vehicles; please let us know if this would be required.
Click below to
Download our Events Booking Form – pdf
For further details or to reserve your place: rivingtide@gmail.com
Devil in the Detail…
*
St Dunstan, so the story goes,
once pulled the devil by the nose,
with red-hot tongs,
which made him roar,
that he was heard three miles or more…
*
Another story relates how Dunstan nailed a horseshoe to the Devil’s foot when he was asked to re-shoe the Devil’s cloven hoof.
This caused the Devil great pain, and Dunstan only agreed to remove the shoe and release the Devil after he promised never to enter a place where a horseshoe is over the door.
*
Have you ever wondered about the nature of truth and its relation to story-telling,
or about the true nature of time and its ability to foreshadow eternity?
Join us in April as we embark upon the Quest of Quests…
*
Quest for a Quest: The Initiate’s Story
Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire
17-19 April 2020
A Living Lore Workshop.
Contact us at Rivingtide@gmail.com for more details. Click below to
Download our Events Booking Form – pdf
Virgin of the Ridge…
*
…Come together in this countryside, where so much has lately gone undone,
Come armed with wisdom and intelligence, together we shall utter the words of truth,
which heaven’s saints are wont to hear and they will come down amongst us…
*
…We are now clambering back into Wen’s low slung car. “I have much higher hopes of the next one.”
“Which is?”
“The Virgin of the Ridge… Twelfth-century construction or earlier… presence of wall paintings…”
“Sounds promising. The presence of wall paintings seems to be particularly germane, don’t you think?”
If the church sounded promising, it looks even more so when we catch our first glimpse of it, when cresting a rise in what appears to be the forested heart of the whole area.
The Virgin of the Grove perhaps… and on closer inspection, it does indeed stand upon an idyllic spot, another raised mound surrounded by trees and fair bristling with bird song.
With a growing sense of expectation, I once more take up my role as opener and hasten into the porch. The door yields and swings inward to reveal the first of the wall paintings, which is… a scroll?
“Oh dear, someone’s obliterated the wall painting with a scroll, with a number of scrolls in fact… The tree over the arch is quite nice… but it is still… ”
“…part of a scroll. Oh Don, I had such high hopes for this place.”
“I know, me too. What are the colour readings like?”
Wen consults her camera, “There are traces of blue light, particularly in the nave area, but they are only very and I mean very faint traces…”
“Where there’s life and all that.”
Wen has now moved into the centre of the church. ”I can feel a definite energy transfer here. It moves from hot to cold quite radically. ”
“It is odd to have the tower in such a position in the church.”
“They’ve obviously added a bit at a later date. I would say that the warm bit is original and then they’ve added the altar space and completely messed up the energies of the place.”
We move into the altar space. “That is an impressive enough window, though,” I say, admiring the Shepherd of Souls. There are a number of screens arranged around the walls depicting scenes from the ‘Stations of the Cross.’ I can see Wen eyeing them distastefully. “Well, we are still at the back end of Easter, but I know what you mean. It has never really sat particularly well with me either. This obsession with the crucifixion to the exclusion of all else… it’s akin to bad news television.”
“Regulation Fear!”
“And yet… it is not so much different than celebrating the beheading of saints. I mean, the paintings on the wall of Our Blue Chapel in all their original glory would have been, well, quite gory really… but that doesn’t seem to bother me the same, I don’t know why.”
Wen sighs, “How long have you got?”
“As long as you like, but let’s go outside.”
We reconvene on a bench in the churchyard of what, despite our various disappointments, are still idyllic settings for a church.
“Actually, it won’t take that long really. I think I can answer that question in one sentence.”
“Answer that question.”
“Anyone can become a Saint but no one else can be Christ.”
“You’re right, that is a sentence. I can hear the prison doors clanging shut.”
*
Quest for a Quest: The Initiate’s Story
Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire
17-19 April 2020
A Living Lore Workshop.
Contact us at Rivingtide@gmail.com for more details. Click below to
Download our Events Booking Form – pdf
Getting engaged…
Some places just seem to have a timeless quality. Almost exactly seven years after our first visit, ‘our blue chapel’ looked the same… still as beautiful and serene as ever. We sat on the rickety bench that is still there, basking in the sunlight of a perfect spring day, in a churchyard decked in flowers and with the obligatory hawks in abundant attendance.
It is not really the same, though… change is the one constant in life. The churchyard was not full of snowdrops on that first visit… there are more graves, more memorials and a different generation of birds watched over us, less elusive and less camera-shy than their forebears.
The biggest change, though, is in us. It is not just that we are seven years older, or that the then-nascent friendship has gone on to produce books and workshops inspired by what we have learned from our adventures in the landscape. There is a connection to the land here that was lacking before… an odd feeling of being welcomed when we revisit old haunts.
It is difficult to describe…and goes deeper than memory or familiarity. I had known this area well for many years and before we began to explore it together, it seemed to have nothing to offer except beauty and history. While I believe that both of those are to be cherished in their own right, the living presence of the land had never caught at my heart in the way that my northern hills have always done.
I had looked at and appreciated the green fields and chocolate-box landscape but I was closed to it; I never reached out to it or allowed it to touch me. I had taken a good many friends out in the area too, to show them how pretty it is here… so it had to be something more than the simple act of sharing the landscape that made the difference and finally made me feel, after twenty years or so, a sense of ‘home’.
The one thing that had really changed was that instead of looking at the landscape, I was engaged in learning from and working with it. Seeing beyond the surface prettiness to the thousands of years of human history and reverence that it has known, learning to see and recognise the regional quirks and differences of the human quest for the sacred that spans the millennia and defies the labels that separate belief systems… or the borders that humankind has imposed. Such engagement makes the relationship with the land, its creatures and its history both intimate and personal.
Perhaps it is simply that paying attention opens doors in the mind. I doubt we have ever been out on a foray in this familiar area without seeing, learning or realising something new… or finding a speculative theory backed by something we have seen any number of times, but never really seen.
On this sortie, we were reconnoitring the upcoming workshop. Places that we know like the backs of our hands. And the well-known sites changed what we had planned quite dramatically… while our little blue chapel managed to reveal a secret, hidden in plain sight, that we have studied and photographed… and yet, its full mystery was not unveiled until we were ready. It is moments like that which make ‘playing out’ in the landscape a constant delight.
Quest for a Quest: The Initiate’s Story
Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire
17-19 April 2020
A Living Lore Workshop.
Contact us at Rivingtide@gmail.com for more details. Click below to
Download our Events Booking Form – pdf
Our Blue Chapel…
*
…Wen and I are discussing plans for the morrow over supper.
I for my part am keen to spend as much time in Our Blue Chapel as humanly possible and to that end have come up with a task that can be performed there. We were supposed to have a system of Oracle Cards in place for the launch but since we will not actually be utilising them in the lessons until the second year, work on them has been temporarily put to one side. However, since the weekend’s events I have been itching to try out the new energies for divination and since the year one glyph gives scope for the utilisation of twenty-two personality types all told it makes sense to try to map them onto the Major Arcana of the Tarot…
*
…The door swings open.
It is like stepping into a warm bath.
We take another tour, slowly examining the new discoveries and soaking up the atmosphere of the place as we go… noticing yet more depth to the wall paintings, including a depiction of Catherine’s beheading and a couple of stray heads… which do not seem to belong to any personage in particular. Whatever the deeper meaning of the ‘head theme’, it does not seem to have fazed the local populace, they almost seem to be celebrating its existence… It is with some reluctance that we finally set too on our respective missions…
I had not really thought too much about mine beyond the actual idea itself and it suddenly strikes me that this could be a mammoth task and worse, that the two systems might not map onto each other at all…
Undaunted, I start at one of nine… Ego-Resentment or ‘The Queen in winter’ whose negative aspect is… The High Priestess and whose positive aspect is… Strength.
Two of nine… Ego-Flattery or ‘The Proud Physician’ whose negative aspect is… The Hermit and whose positive aspect is… The Star.
Three of nine… Ego-Vanity or ‘The Famous Dancer’ whose negative aspect is… The Universe and whose positive aspect is… The Hanged-Man.
Four of nine… Ego-Melancholy or ‘The Tragic Actor’ whose negative aspect is… The Devil and whose positive aspect is… The Lovers.
Five of nine… Ego-Stinginess or ‘The Jewel Merchant’ whose negative aspect is… The Blasted Tower and whose positive aspect is… The Chariot.
Six of nine… Ego-Cowardice or ‘The Fugitive’ whose negative aspect is… Judgement and whose positive aspect is… The Sun.
Seven of nine… Ego-Planning or ‘The Chancellor’ whose negative aspect is… The Hierophant and whose positive aspect is… The Emperor.
Eight of nine… Ego-Revenge or ‘The Tyger-Lady’ whose negative aspect is… The Moon and whose positive aspect is… Temperance.
Nine of nine… Ego Indolence or ‘The Exiled King’ whose negative aspect is… The Wheel of Fortune and whose positive aspect is… Justice.
For a reading the above eighteen cards should be shuffled and the top four then placed as a cross around a circle starting at North for the Ascendant, East for the Upper Mid Heaven, South for the Descendant and West for the Lower Mid Heaven.
The indicator cards below should then be shuffled with one of them being placed in the middle of the circle.
The Indicator cards are as follows; The Fool for matters of the Soul, The Magician for matters of the Intellect, The Empress for matters of the heart and Death for worldly matters…
*
… “That didn’t take long.”
“I know. It proved to be ridiculously easy.”
I hand Wen the eighteen personality cards to shuffle.
“So, what’s the question?”
“What heals here?”
Wen hands them back to me and I pass her the Indicators…
…And start to lay out the cards:
Ascendant: Negative Ego-Resentment or, ‘The High Priestess’.
Upper Mid-Heaven: Negative Ego-Melancholy or, ‘The Devil’.
Descendant: Positive Ego-Cowardice or, ‘The Sun’.
Lower Mid Heaven: Negative Ego-Stinginess or, ‘The Blasted Tower’.
Wen places a card in the centre of the cross:
Indicator: Matter of the Heart or, ‘The Empress’.
Reading: The Chapel in the Vale of the Sun emotionally heals personality types four, five, and six.
*
*
Quest for a Quest: The Initiate’s Story
Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire
17-19 April 2020
A Living Lore Workshop.
Contact us at Rivingtide@gmail.com for more details. Click below to
Download our Events Booking Form – pdf
