In Your Heart

Here we are in March, getting on for a quarter of the way into 2019, and I’m getting a feel for what this year is all about – for me, anyway.  This seems to be the Year of the Heart.

When I first moved to Glastonbury (known in some circles as the Earth’s Heart Chakra, although I didn’t know that at the time,) ten years ago, I’d neatly packaged my heart away – stuffed it deep inside myself and decided that just surviving from day-to-day would be a major achievement.  In those early days, it was.  I’d been – I felt then – betrayed, abandoned and let down by just about everyone and everything I’d given my heart to and for the first few months, those betrayals just kept coming, thick and fast.

I remember renting a tiny annexe behind a shop with my fast-dwindling savings, rooting around in the short-dated reduced items at the supermarket and having no income, no prospects and no friends here.  It was a true dark night of the soul which lasted well into 2009.

Eventually I stopped wallowing in self-pity and reached out to others for help.  I found a lovely, intuitive life-coach who helped me to heal my dried-up, fragile, damaged heart, to begin to love myself and to expect and accept the love of others.  That turned my life around.  Soon I felt resilient, hopeful and learned to put out to the Universe for what I needed and wanted.  Paid work, new opportunities, acquaintances and friends soon appeared.  By the end of 2009, I was in a better place than I could ever have imagined and life was good.

It was around New Year of 2018 that I agreed with the Universe that I was now stable enough and ready for the next phase – for new challenges.

They arrived.

It was not an easy time.  I needed to stop sitting in front of my computer pondering metaphysical conundrums and to get up and deal with very physical problems.  It was all lower chakra stuff – root survival and safety for people I loved, followed by the gut-wrenching sacral issues connected to parenthood and the deepest emotional ties.  Depression and anxiety ricocheted around my family.  Gradually issues of power and control surfaced.  I worked to establish and maintain a safe and fair life for those who had lost everything, helping them to regain their inner sun.  It took bravery and resilience I didn’t realise I’d built up, but that’s the way life works.  We don’t get the challenges until we are ready to cope with them.

Then it was back to Glastonbury – back to the heart, in every way you can imagine.

Two people very close to me have had their lives changed by heart disease in these past few months.  In both cases it was very sudden, very unexpected and is throwing up massive challenges to their lives.  It brings up issues of mortality, of independence and dependency, of life-changing choices and ways of managing day-to-day.

At the same time, a friend and I have been working our way through Gregg Braden’s ‘Human by Design’ book and some workshops based around this.  It’s all about using the heart’s intelligence – the ‘little brain in the heart’ – and aligning it with our mental processes.

Then, as the final piece to the puzzle, I realised (as I said in my last post) that my ‘muses’ – the spirit guides, channelled messages and special intuitive humans I’d come to rely on for answers were closing the doors.  I tried one last time to contact Koimul, the Spirit Guide/s who helped me through so many difficult times.

JAN YOU CAN PICK UP ALL YOU NEED IN YOUR HEART

I was told. And when I asked why they were all moving away and leaving us alone, I was simply told,

YOU HAVE ALL YOU NEED FROM US

When I asked if they would return, there was no answer.  The crystal pendulum swung in a wide, empty circle, indicating that there would not be a reply to that.

So we lovingly took our leave of one another.  Now I need to trust that my heart and heart chakra are ready and strong enough to move me on through the twists and turns of this new chapter in my game of life.  They are, or I wouldn’t have brought myself here.

Home?

Here I am then.  Back in the strange little 17th century stone cottage I own in beautiful Somerset.

At least, my body is.  My possessions are here too – many still waiting to be unpacked as I try to remember where on earth I used to keep them.  The rest of me, though, hasn’t quite landed yet.

These two lives I’ve been living this year are so utterly different.  When I moved to the East, I had to adjust instantly; there was so much to do.  Here, there is no urgency.  The days are not planned for me.  I don’t need to be in specific places at specific times.  I don’t have a list of tasks with completion dates.  I just have Life – and I can choose how frenetic or leisurely to make it.

Then there’s the space.  My house is tiny by most people’s standards, but after seven months of single-room living I’m finding it strange to have a separate room for almost every activity.  It feels almost decadent.  I will readjust, but I haven’t yet.

Oh and the people!  I am a solitary soul by nature – quite happy with my own company.  Living alone suits me well and there were many occasions when, at the end of a frantic day with the grandchildren, I could shut myself into the little studio flat and unwind.  They were always nearby, though, and while I didn’t see them every day, there were never more than two or three days without company.  Here there are friends, and no doubt I’ll see all of them soon – when the missing bits of me have landed…

So what is it that is really bugging me?

Home.  That’s what.

‘Home is where your heart is’, so they say.  Trouble is, my heart is one of the bits of me that hasn’t landed yet.  It’s scattered in several different places.

You see, the town I’ve been living in for the last half-year is the town I called home for over thirty years.  It’s where I gave birth to and raised my three children, where I taught hundreds of others, where I forged all the most significant relationships in my life.  It’s also the place I ran from when my job and my marriage and my wellbeing became so compromised that I knew I needed a new start.

I ended up here, convinced that I’d found what I grandly called my ‘spiritual home’.  Glastonbury is a powerful place.  People say it chooses you, rather than the other way about.  Certainly, over the ten years I’ve lived here, I’ve seen many arrive with plans to make changes and give the place what they decide it needs.  Within six months, they are scuttling off, tails between their legs.  Glastonbury chews that sort up and spits them out.  Me?  Oh, it tolerates me well enough.  It shares it’s history and beauty and energy with me.  It accepts that I refuse to join any of its tribes (Pagans, Sufis, Goddesses, Christians, Buddhists, Wiccans, Alternatives etc.) and quietly plough my own furrow, but it doesn’t welcome me into the fold.

In the East, there are tribes, too, of course – the famed ‘Essex girls’ with their madly manicured nails, immaculately tinted hair, fake tans and glitzy fashion; the overweight mothers, bulging out of skin-tight lycra and screaming obscenities into their phones or at their children; the young men with smart suits and fast cars, chattering into their bluetooth headsets as they scurry hither and thither, and the cheery but dreary housewives, who have always lived there and always will, and thank providence for their uneventful lives.  I feel a stranger amongst them, too.

I often wonder if there’s a place where I’d fit – where my tribe can be found.  Certainly there are places I’m drawn to – places whose beauty leaves me gasping, and this is certainly one of them.  Is that a sufficient reason to stay here?

Well, why not?

After all, if this strange year has taught me anything, it’s that my body and my possessions will happily settle anywhere.  Maybe my heart and soul just need to float for a while longer…

 

 

 

 

Vitruvian Lines – Part 3

In the previous post, I spoke of how well the role of an ‘outlier’ would suit those who fit within the square, rather than the circle of Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man – the sensitive people who are more comfortable on the fringes of a society.

It would seem highly likely that the ancient outliers held a position of very high status within nomadic or migrating groups, since they were responsible for everyone’s safety and the success of the journey.  What happened to them, though, when the travellers decided to settle and build permanent homes?  I suspect that they retained their revered status within the tribe.  There is a small but important piece of evidence for this.

Within the last year – so I learned from a recent BBC archaeology programme – it has been discovered that Avebury – the world’s largest stone circle – originally had a building at its centre, and that building (which predates the stones) was … a house.

At first, this seems something of a let-down.  For years we have venerated and romanticised these stone structures as the site of religious rituals, meaningful astrological observation or sacrifice to pagan gods.  Are we now to believe that they went to the huge effort of building a stone circle, a series of elaborate avenues and other complex structures to honour a simple house?

I suspect that is exactly what they did.   The symbolic importance of the first settlers’ homes would have been immense.  This was the starting point for a new way of life – a new beginning for their society.  In myth, traditional stories and legend, the House of a clan, family or tribe is revered – not the building itself, so much as the dynasty it represents.

It’s hardly surprising, then, that our distant ancestors chose the site of that first home to build their stone circles as a gathering place.  The interesting thing about stone circles, though, is that they very often have outliers – stones placed at a distance from the main structure.  Often these stones mark a particular view, such as the only position from which a sunrise can be viewed in a gap between distant hills on the solstice.  They can also mark the beginning of a causeway or avenue leading to some other important place.  I think the idea of a central gathering place was hard-wired into these people, but so was the need and reverence for the outliers.

So does the structure of a settled society render outliers/ ‘square fillers’ obsolete?

Absolutely not.

In many primal societies people with this special skills-set – heightened senses, an ability to link telepathically to other times or places, other dimensions, even, and a degree of separation from the everyday life of the society – are appointed as shamans, healers and seers.  Their role can be to travel between worlds, to care for the psychological health of the group, to look into the future or past to provide the answers they need or to uncover the reasons for sickness or misfortune.  They are the psychic equivalent to the outlier – visiting regions the rest can’t reach and feeding back necessary information.

Humanity is always journeying forwards.  We have seen that these talented and unusual individuals are not particularly popular with leaders and experts in our society’s structure.  Some, though, manage to have a profound effect despite officialdom.  When they do, they are responsible for creating the huge shifts in perception that move society into new areas.  The Einsteins, the Teslas and the Newtons are able to access insights and understanding simply not available to the common man or woman.  These people work silently, compulsively, alone and – for reasons we’ll see later – are able to make huge leaps to a higher level of understanding of how the universe really works.

I’m fully aware that so far I’ve written well over 3000 words on this subject and not yet addressed the core issue I promised to discuss – an explanation of how autistic perception works.  Stay with me.  The first few sections were an overview, showing how our present Western society isn’t structured to encourage or promote autistic perception, while others apparently are or have been.  They have also demonstrated the persistence of autistic perception and touched on its value to society.

The next section will begin to look more closely at what it involves, while after that, I’ll attempt to draw in research from three very different disciplines so that we can finally examine what autistic perception is, how it works and the benefits for the population as a whole.

Talisman

I have a friend, here in Glastonbury, who we’ll call Mark.  He’s a talented wood carver and one of the most generous people I know.  Every time we meet, he has some lovely trinket or other which he wants to give me.  Apparently he does it for all his friends.  He comes into the story later, but I had to put him there before I started.

Now for the story.

There’s a lovely lady I met several years ago at a conference.  She’s a spiritual seeker, a lover of trees and nature and a very caring, sensitive person.  She adores Glastonbury, and despite living in a city in Switzerland, she comes here for short visits whenever she can.  We always meet up when she’s here, usually in town for a meal, but this time I felt a strong urge to invite her to my home.  I never question such feelings any more – just act on them.

She only had two days to spend here this time and she’d spent the first hunting for a special object that would remind her of Glastonbury and embody the spirit of the place for her when she was far off in her own country.
“It could be anything,” she said. “Maybe I’ll find it in a charity shop. Maybe it will be just a stick or something simple.”

She showed me an egg-shaped stone she had bought, carved from local crystal.  I could tell that, much as she liked it, she wasn’t convinced that this was the special object she had come to find.  Now she had a dilemma.  Should she spend the next day – her last – hunting for The Object or should she relax and enjoy the delights of Glastonbury while she could?

“Would you…  I feel bad for asking, but could you ask your Guide?” she asked.

Then I knew why I’d needed to invite her here.  She’s had advice from, Koimul, my spirit guide before.  I opened the computer and asked Koimul if it would be possible to seek advice for her.  Koimul said it would.

I typed:

“Did she find the object that will allow her to remember Glastonbury when she is at home, or should she search for it tomorrow?”

Sometimes the responses I receive come ‘out of the blue’.  Sometimes I can feel them – or snatches of them – just before the pendulum spells out the replies.  I certainly knew what the first part of Koimul’s reply would be before it came.  I also knew that it wouldn’t satisfy my friend.

MUCH OF GLASTONBURY LIVES IN HER HEART

It was true.  We all carry the essence of the places we love within ourselves and can draw on feelings and memories whenever we wish to.  In my mind – because I knew my friend wanted more – I asked for advice on an object.  Koimul was ahead of me, though.  Without pausing, the message continued and I became aware of the word ‘talisman’.  It was a perfect way to describe what she sought.

Slowly, as the crystal wheeled around the keyboard, I realised what was coming.  I started to laugh with utter delight.  My wise guide had the perfect solution!  The words that were spelled out said:

BUT IF SHE WANTS A TALISMAN IT WILL BE GOOD TO GIVE HER THE RUNE

This is where ‘Mark’ re-enters the story.  Once, he and I had been discussing Dion Fortune – a writer and occultist who had lived in Glastonbury early in the last century.  He told me he had recently been asked to cut down an overhanging branch from a yew tree which had been in Dion’s former garden, just along the road from my cottage.  He had, he said, used every scrap of this very special wood to make a wonderful set of runes and other items, because he felt that something of her presence remained in it.  He had given me a tiny pendant, carved from a fragment of the branch and hung from a leather thong. It bore the symbol for the letter I in Ogham, as well as the word for ‘yew tree’.

The strange thing is that although it had been given to me and was a lovely object, I had never felt it was mine.  I’d worn it once or twice, but always I felt uncomfortable – as if I had no right to this, and it was meant for someone else.

Koimul’s message made perfect sense to me.  This little pendant (she’d said it might be a stick!) encompassed all that my friend loved about Glastonbury.  I rushed upstairs to find it, hurriedly told her its background and joyfully handed it to its rightful owner.

When she had stopped crying, she slipped it over her head and it looked perfect.  It belonged with her.  There was just enough light left in the evening sky for me to take her down the road and show her the tree it had come from.

Another reminder of how magical life can be when we let go and allow it to gently unfold.

 

 

The Hills are Alive

The huge pyramid shape of The Reek, more properly known as Croagh Patrick, reared ahead of us as we turned out of the airport.
“Wow!” I exclaimed.
This was my first view of Ireland – and what a view. Atmosphere and distance had smoothed out the bumps and crags, showing us a smooth, straight-sided, magical mountain.  I knew nothing – at that stage in my journey – of the history, mythology and symbolism connected to the island’s holiest mountain. I didn’t need to. It’s majesty simply took my breath away.

I see the same phenomenon with my local sacred mound – Glastonbury Tor – which is a few yards down the road from where I’m writing this.

Seen up close, it’s an uneven, sprawling hill. Sometimes steep, sometimes less so.  It has grazing sheep, pedlars selling scraps of jewellery, small screeching boys with wooden swords, pagans with dreds and drums, panting tourists in Adidas tee shirts, dog walkers, portly goddesses in pink and purple frocks with floral wreaths in their hair and parties of French schoolchildren with designer backpacks.
There are neat concrete steps inserted by the National Trust, a green bin for dog waste and a couple of benches.  At the top is an empty tower – all that remains of St Michael’s Church.  Inside, it’s usually littered with a coke can or two, sweet wrappers and some withered flowers.  At what would once have been, presumably, the other end of the church is a concrete table with one of those round view-finder compass things.  Strange undulations, variously defined as medieval terracing, a ritual maze or soil erosion adorn the sides of the hill.

Don’t get me wrong; even close up, it can be a magical place if you time your visit right, or can block out the distractions.  For me, though, the Tor’s true magic is glimpsed from afar.

Travel along almost any road in the area and, sooner or later, you’ll catch a glimpse of what appears to be a perfect conical shape, topped with its tower, rising out of the flat, featureless Somerset Levels.  (My personal favourite is the view you see as you round a bend coming down Bristol Hill into Wells.)

There are hills, mountains, pyramids – sacred high places all across the globe that have this effect. It matters little whether they were created by human hand, naturally occurring or a combination of the two. What matters is the ‘WOW!’ effect.  It’s a moment of sheer awe and wonder.  It can’t be captured in words, or even photographs.  There is a deep, stirring connection between the self and the structure.  It calls to you, reaches out to you, pulls you up short and fills you with a recognition and knowing that has affected your ancestors, back through the ages in exactly the same way.  Not every high place stirs us this way; it isn’t simply the height or the shape which affects us.  In these special sites, though, there’s a palpable dialogue between you and the structure.
“Remember?” it says into your mind.
And for that brief moment, you do.

 

 

The Illusion of Ordinary Life

I wanted to tell you about my weekend.

That simple intention has taken me on a brief but fascinating journey this morning, so I’ll probably end up telling you about that, too.

Let me start by saying that both the weekend and this morning’s journey have involved little more than sitting in a chair.  As we all know, huge and wondrous journeys can be experienced that way.  We sit in chairs and watch screens, read books, listen to speakers, and new worlds open up.  Then – for the majority of us, at least – the desire to move beyond this vicarious existence kicks in, and we feel the need to head away from the chair and to once again immerse ourselves in ‘ordinary life’.

I’ve spent two solid days sitting in a darkened hall at a conference, listening to a glittering array of speakers – academics, field archaeologists, explorers and the odd metaphysician, all immersed in the study of ancient megalithic sites.  They had devoted huge portions of their lives to the meticulous observation and measurement of structures, carvings and rows of standing stones and now they had gathered to share their discoveries with us.

Again and again we watched aerial images upon which intricate patterns of geometry had been superimposed.  The golden mean, perfectly dissected circles and squares, Pythagorean triangles and Platonic solids hung ethereally above and within structures created – who knows how? – in times at least as far distant from Pythagoras and Plato as those gentlemen are from us.  We were shown how only by building at that exact latitude could this or that angle exactly mirror the one created by the sun, the moon or some other significant heavenly body with the Earth at a given time.  We marvelled at the accuracy, the deliberation, the sheer effort made by our ancestors to achieve this perfection, only now clear to us thanks to the devotion and vision of the researchers, aided by Google Earth, drones and sophisticated software programs.

I was hunting for a title for this post, and found it in the name of a fine art card I’d purchased at the conference – a sublime piece of artwork by one of the speakers, Nicholas Cope RCA.  I’d love to reproduce it here, but didn’t gain permission, so please momentarily click on The artwork to take a look.

This beautiful image sums up the content of the conference I’ve been discussing here rather well.  However it was the title which intrigued me even more.  It encompassed an idea that had been tugging at my consciousness – just beyond reach of words – throughout the weekend.  ‘Where does the idea come from?’ I asked myself.  That led to this morning’s journey.

I typed ‘The Illusion of Ordinary Life’ into the search engine and found myself reading an article by V Susan Ferguson, based on the work of one René Guénon.

Yes!

I’d never heard of him until today, yet here was this French Catholic, turned Sufi, metaphysical intellectual, writing back in the 1940s and encapsulating the very idea that had been nagging at me:

We are devoted to measuring the endless surfaces of what we imagine to be solid matter.

The full article (well worth reading) can be found here.  I suspect I’ll be getting better acquainted with Monsieur Guénon over the coming weeks.

You see there were hints – tiny subtle numinous ones – throughout the weekend nudging me towards that utterly obvious idea.

There was the speaker who marvelled that many of his measurements of an ancient artefact came out at an exact, and significant, number of centimetres. (Did the ancients use centimetres??)  There was the story recounted by one of my companions of a sarcophagus in Egypt which – she’d been there and experienced it – despite being solid granite was an exact fit for everyone in their party who lay inside it, from a guy 6ft 5 tall to a lady of barely 5ft and all in between.  There was a symbologist who  showed a dizzying array of connections between words and symbols from widely different cultures and time-frames which could be meshed together to create a perfect whole, with each element adding greatly to the gestalt so formed.
“What’s real,” this lady told the audience, with a knowing smile, “is the space between the forms.”

So, if I can tear myself away from the magical information technology that seamlessly brings me together with concepts, images and ideas from other times and places via electromagnetic waves in the aether, I’ll head off to the garden, to ground myself in the ‘ordinary world’ – the sensory feedback that is integral to my physical experience.  As I do so, though, I won’t fall into the trap of pondering the wonders I’ve been shown in the past two days in terms of physicality alone.

We have far more gnosis available to us, far more ways of connecting to the Ancients and their megaliths than with software, tape measure and protractor.  Just as the archaeologist’s meticulous drawing of a ground plan gives us only a limited idea of the 3D structure, so that physical structure, as we perceive it in terms of length, width and height, gives only the smallest hint of its full conception and significance.  For that we have to relinquish our addiction to the illusion of the physical and move into realms that are not governed by time and space; move into realms more like the ones we connect with on our computers, yet very different.

O Brave New World

I love the Flammarion engraving.  Its an image that feels hard-wired into my mind.  It is, quite simply, my mission statement.

Yesterday I sat for many hours with a dear friend, engaged on one of those rambling metaphysical discussions that sometimes go round in circles and sometimes find a new, untrodden path.  I’d like to share what happened with you – my wider community of dear friends – and would welcome your comments and ideas on the implications of what was suggested…

So, specifically, we had agreed on several points:

• That there are certain places on our planet – sacred sites, as they’re commonly known, and certain artefacts – usually behind glass in museums – which in some mysterious way hold a key to piercing that veil (see picture above) and accessing the akashic realms.
• That it’s possible to enter an altered state and reach this akasha in the presence of these places or objects, but equally possible to be totally unmoved by them.  It appears to depend on your state of mind.
• That the ideal way to approach these sacred places and objects, should you wish for the enlightenment they may facilitate, is what’s known as ‘A-thought’ (see here for a fuller explanation of this concept) – the state of mind we enter when following synchronicity or remote viewing, for example.
• That it’s difficult, sometimes, to enter that state at will, as we so easily get sucked back into the ‘common sense’ world of cause-and-effect and logic.  That’s why so many seekers have used ritual, psychotropic substances, drumming, dance or sensory deprivation to jump-start such an experience.
• That we could do with a bit of guidance before we next set off to hunt down the hidden realms and the treasures lurking there.

“We could try asking my Guides,” I said.

Koimul, the guide I can sometimes channel, has, as regular readers will know, taken a recent interest in my explorations of metaphysical realms.  It felt like the right sort of question to ask.

As we’d hoped, Koimul was right on the case and happy to discuss our questions.  It soon became clear, in fact, that Koimul had been tuning in to our conversation and made several references to it in what followed.

We were told that certain sites we’d considered visiting  ‘WOULD ATTUNE YOU TO THEIR ENERGY’ and provide ‘ESOTERIC KNOWLEDGE FOR REACHING WHAT [YOU] SEEK.

We asked for a definition of what – exactly – we were seeking. (It’s so easy to get mired in obscurity when discussing these numinous ideas.)  Koimul called it ‘MAWDEN’ and defined it as ‘REALITY BEYOND FOUR DIMENSIONS’.

Next we asked about the ‘sacred’ sites and artefacts.  I’d read in Seth’s books that no place is, of itself, more sacred than any other, but is made so by the energy placed there by those who use it.  I’d always wanted some clarity on that, as certain places certainly ‘feel’ more special than others.  So were these places and objects some kind of ‘tool’?

‘NOT OF THEMSELVES,’ Koimul explained, ‘BUT THEY LEAD YOU TO THAT WHICH YOU SEEK’.

Okay, so how, exactly did that work?

We were told, ‘VISIT THE SITES.  LEARN WHAT THEY HAVE TO TEACH YOU AND FOLLOW THE PATH THEY LEAD YOU ON VIA SYNCHRONICITY’.  Koimul explained that the sites were not sacred or special in themselves, but that the knowledge that humans can’t always access is encoded or – literally – crystallised within the stones or artefacts in these places.  It becomes possible for us to access them if we are in the right frame of mind – that A-Thought state we had already identified as important. 

With amazing clarity, Koimul went on to tell us how each member of the group who will be going on this trip has particular abilities to contribute and added ‘COMBINE YOUR SKILLS WITH WILLIAM’S SIGHT TO MOVE TO YOUR GOAL’.

That was unexpected.  William, my remote viewing partner, will not be joining us in person, but he usually gets involved remotely and views places we visit, sometimes seeing things we don’t.  This time, though, Koimul had a new role in mind for Will:  ‘WILLIAM WILL VIEW THE SITES IN ADVANCE AND HE WILL LEAD [YOU] TO THEM’.

The more I think about it, the cleverer Koimul’s idea sounds.  It seems to me as if what we’ll be doing is reversing cause-and-effect.  Normally I go and hang out somewhere and give Will the time or location (the cause).  He then views where I am (the effect).  Reversing it, though, means the effect – what Will ‘sees’ – is established before the event that ’causes’ it – us going there – has occurred.  We only arrive there because he says we have done so, even though it won’t have happened at that point.

Have I got that right?

Koimul appears to be preparing us to enter whichever locations emerge, having by-passed time and cause-and-effect and having neatly defied logic.  That should certainly put us in the correct frame of mind to be open to whatever synchronicity unfolds…

 

Of Giants, Archaeologists and Magicians (1)

For the last two weeks (such a pitifully short time, but all I could afford for now) I’ve been immersed in explorations of some of our world’s oldest buildings.

Guided by Kate, a great friend whose intimate knowledge of the tiny Mediterranean island of Mallorca and keen sense of what is sacred and worthy of note have proved invaluable, I’ve walked in and amongst elaborately carved caves, megaliths, settlements and mysterious ‘talayots’ – towers found only on Mallorca and Menorca with walls so thick they make Norman castles look like plasterboard, tiny entrance ways and huge columns rising from the centre of the internal space.

Faced with a structure like the one in this photo, fitted together with jigsaw precision and formed in antiquity of huge stones, there are – to my mind – three ways of explaining how they came to be constructed.

The first was dominant for most of the last 2000 years.  People would stare in awe at these ancient places and pronounce that they had been made by gods, giants or the devil.  Elaborate stories often grew up around them: stone hurling contests between rival giants, perhaps, or cauldrons and punch bowls created magically for the devil’s personal use.  Even on my recent trip, a local visitor to one of the talayots was heard to pronounce, “Well that wasn’t made by humans!  My family do plenty of building and that just wouldn’t be possible.”

The second form of explanation is more recent, but has become almost universally accepted.  Visit almost any prehistoric structure and you will probably encounter a carefully illustrated information board with drawings of hairy men in even hairier underwear hauling on ropes and log rollers to move gigantic stones into position.  Grubby children run with pigs and goats while women crouch beside cooking pots to complete the scene.  It’s comfortable, seemingly logical and familiar.  We can identify with these ancestors and imagine their primitive, simple lives.

Strange and incomprehensible items, such as the grave goods shown here, will be explained away with labels suggesting:

Probably for ritual use

Careful archaeology, a database of similar sites and finds around the world and a general agreement on how ‘primitive’ societies function feed into this bank of information.  As tourists, we tend to blindly accept the word of these experts.

Kate and I, though, wanted to delve a little deeper.  We could accept the historians’ explanations of the domestic settlements, with their wells, hearths and doorways, peer at museum displays of grey pots and animal bones, admire the skills of the dry stone wall builders, whose works had stood the test of time.  Here we had human-scale homes where people lived, worked, reared the children, tended their livestock, picked figs, olives, lemons and pomegranates from the surrounding trees and generally lived a good life.

There was more, though – far more.

Dotted around these comfortable villages and elsewhere on the island were structures of a very different kind: the talayots with their huge building blocks and walls several metres thick; the strange caves and chambers with niches, ledges and benches carved out of the rock; the standing stones and the plethora of channels and square, rectangular and circular holes cut deep into the bedrock.

The descriptions offered for these by the experts didn’t seem as convincing.  Some of their attempts to forge logical explanations appeared little short of vandalism.  On one site – a natural stage rising above the island’s central plain – had been found thirteen standing stones.  An initial drawing (see right) of their positions remains.  However the archaeologist who worked the site decided there had been an aisled building here and the magnificent, quartz-veined stones were roof supports.  He took it upon himself to have twelve of the megaliths moved, drilled through so that steel rods could be inserted and replaced in neat rows, each two stones high, in order to fit his hypothesis.

So forgive me if, in my next post, I throw caution and logic to the wind and investigate a third way of interpreting such magical places.  I won’t rule out the giants or the gods, the ‘meeting rooms’ or the ‘lookout towers’ suggested by others.  I’ll place them neatly to one side and attempt to link to the timeless knowing of All-That-Is, to the dreams and thoughts and intentions of the ancestors and provide an interpretation which – though perhaps fanciful – may be no less so than some of those I have described today.

 

 

Celebrating Solstice my way

 

Living as I do in Glastonbury, there are endless ways in which to welcome these turning points in the year.  All day today there have been and will be meditations, retreats, activations, celebrations and gatherings.  Robes will be donned, headgear dusted off and worn; drums will be hit and fires lit.  Invocations will be said to ancient gods and goddesses and dances and rituals will be solemnly performed.

 

The diversity of beliefs and observances is wonderful and adds to the magic of this unique place, but I have not joined in.

 

My pictures are grainy and blurred, but they mark my own personal Solstice celebration.  I don’t follow the angelic or shamanic paths.  I’m not a pagan or a druid.  I simply AM and I walk my own path, happily and with humility and gratitude for being a part of this wonderful game of Life.

 

Yesterday I welcomed the longest night of the year by watching a beautiful sunset across the Polden Hills as I painted the walls of LIME Cottage’s study.  What a glorious back drop for such a mundane task!  (No photos of that – I was far too paint-spattered to risk touching the i-Pod 🙂 )

So today I headed out early and admired the mistletoe-laden apple trees on Chalice Hill as the sky started to lighten.

Further along the road, the Tor came into view.  The angelic light to the left came from a street lamp, by the way – at least I think it did…

Usually I – and many others – head up to one of the hills.  Today, though, I decided to take advantage of my first solstice spent living just above the edge of the Somerset Levels, so I took the Old Butleigh Road and wandered down to the fields and rhynes below the town.

By now morning had broken, so it seemed very fitting – in an Eleanor Farjeon kind of way – that a blackbird began singing in a tree right next to me.  You can just see him – tail in the air – in the lightest part of this photo.

Away to the left, across fields that are already heavy and clogged with water, the clouds had parted enough to let in some dawn light.  No sunshine, but certainly an ending to the longest of nights and a promise of the return journey, with days gradually lengthening at the turn of the year.

So no drums, robes, bells or whistles for me as I headed back uphill along the gloriously-named Cinnamon Lane (pausing to greet a pair of sheep who had somehow strayed into the children’s playing field there and were grazing gratefully).

I felt grateful too, to have witnessed and welcomed the solstice dawn in this beautiful place at this very magical time of year.

In homage to that blackbird and with seasonal greetings to all who read or follow my little blog, I send this with a wish that however you mark or celebrate the turning of the year, you may have a peaceful, joyful and memorable experience and find something to enjoy as each new dawn arrives.  Meanwhile, I’ll return to the painting 🙂

 

 

 

Living Here

“Can you tell us a little about the area where you live?” I was asked by somebody based on the Northwest coast of the United States recently.

So I did, and as I described this place, I was reminded how impossibly lucky I am to live where I do.

“Probably luck had little to do with you ending up there,” a friend remarked, and yes – she’s absolutely right.

From my perspective of belief, it’s the result of a heady combination of manifestation, agonising choices, hard work and the benevolence of an abundant Universe.

I’ve spent many years in, let’s say, less beautiful places.  I had, back in those days, security and comfort.  They came at a price.  I dare say that’s true of all of us.  The job paid well, but as politicians forced my profession down routes I didn’t want to follow, I became rebellious, dissatisfied and disillusioned.  My marriage had its good points, many of them, but here too, there were compromises I wasn’t happy with and the general feeling was far from good.  I told myself I was needed there – by my kids, by those I taught and mentored.  It was only when I found that someone else in my life needed me a whole lot more that the tipping point was reached.

My two youngest were off at university.  My oldest had her own home and life.  As for the school kids, well there would always be more, wherever I was.

Mum was frightened.  She and her encroaching dementia lived alone.  She was usually lucid and bright but there were the confusing times; the times when the ‘other lady’ – the sad, terrified person she tried to comfort, but who wouldn’t talk back or accept any help – would stare at her from the mirror at the top of the stairs.  She could not accept that this person was a facet of herself.  The ‘other lady’ made toast for breakfast seven or eight times a day, but left other food rotting in the fridge.  The ‘other lady’ went for bus rides at two in the morning, to destinations she couldn’t remember and was gone for hours at a time.

That was the tipping point.  I burned my bridges, turned my back on all my comfort and security and moved in with Mum and her other lady.  It was not an easy choice to make.  It was not an easy life to live.

The time came when Mum had all but morphed into her other self.  I wasn’t able to manage the 24/7 care she needed alone and the next choice came.  No point in going back or staying where I was.  It was time to move on again.

“You’re in freefall!” someone commented at that time.  “Where you land is entirely up to you.  What a gift.”

It didn’t feel that way to me, but looking back, I can see that she was completely right.  I followed my heart, came to the place I loved the most and risked all to own LIME Cottage.

So this is where I am:

The view from the back of my cottage is to the beautiful Polden Hills.  Usually, as I look out on misty autumn mornings, there is a second, ghostly, grey-purple ridge of hills rising behind them, built of clouds.

The beautiful  near-perfect hemisphere of Chalice Hill rises just behind the cottages across the road from me at the front.

Turn left, and it’s a ten minute walk past the ruins of the abbey to the centre of this quirky, bustling little town, filled with exciting indie shops and larger-than-life characters.

Turn right and within a minute or two you come to a steep, tiny lane, where the waters of Glastonbury’s two famous sacred springs rise.  The white spring to the right and the red spring – supposedly stained that colour by the blood of Christ from the Holy Grail buried beneath it – in the beautiful Chalice Well Gardens to the left.

These two watercourses once ran openly along my road, feeding the abbey and town with fresh water.  Now their waters are piped below the pavement and our drinking water comes from elsewhere, but we’re free to collect bottles of the original supply from the pipes in the lane.

Above all this towers the famous Glastonbury Tor, capped by the tower of St Michael. This brilliant video will show you just how fortunate I am to be here, even if it isn’t down to luck: