Bratha left the Raven’s Nest with the gifts of the clan. Now cloaked with the wisdom of a seer, she traveled with her guide to speak Truth to those who sought knowledge. I had a day to process my experience at the Nest, which followed the weekend’s workshop with the Silent Eye School. If you read Part 1 and Part 2 of my journey, you will know that it was a transformative experience that was difficult for me to put into words. To play the role, and then travel the landscape where a seer once walked to share the wisdom of the Light, feels like both a gift and a burden. It is not my intent to sound dramatic, but there is the question that always begs to be answered, What does one do with an experience such as this? 

It is intensely intimate and personal, yet it is also, I feel, one to be shared. Bratha’s need to seed the magic of the land and the truths of the Universe is also my own. It is the inherent longing in all living beings to know Home.

Leaving the Nest was difficult for me, as I imagine it must have been for Bratha and others who have known its presence. Feeling my heart open to the raw and beautiful truth of my unseen guide, and the magic of a now troubled land had stirred a deep longing inside of me. It made me acutely aware of how latent my own senses were, and how separate we often live from Truth. I had never felt such a connection to the Land and to those who have loved it so fully and completely, and whose presence can still be felt in its stones.

There is a safely to the Nest, but the fledgling is born for flight.

As I walked down from the hight of the Nest, as Bratha once did, I carried with me the feeling of sorrow and longing. In the hours that followed, each time I attempted to process my experience into words, I wept the abuse of this sacred Earth that is both our home and our mother. When we focus on the life we have grown accustomed to living, it’s too easy not to feel the inherent connection we have with our Earth Mother and with all beings who reside within Her.

The Light of Hope, though, was also within me, as well as its tangible presence in the form of a handful of stones of different colors, charged from the collective energy from the weekend’s workshop. There were many others who would be planting these seeds to help “re-enchant” the land and repair what mankind had broken. And, there was the knowing that there are so many beings who reside on this planet who are doing their part to seed the Light within and without.

After a day in Bakewell touring more recent, but still old sites, my traveling companion, Deb, and I got into our car once again to drive to the moors. This time we were following Sue, Stuart, and Sue’s son Nick, to the site where Bratha lived out the end of her days as a Seer of Truth.

Once again, the weather on the moors was blustery and cold. Perhaps worried I would wander again, Sue kept pace with me, and I, a little reluctantly, reigned in my urge to explore alone. As we walked the paths through the heather, I realized my heart was at peace. The land here does not feel distrubed and broken, and its energy is not the same as the high cliffs of the Nest. It is a place where one goes to pay respect for the Land and those that tended the Light within.

A stream runs through the hills where, thousands of years ago, people dwelled in harmony with the nature, and sought wisdom from the seer. In the land of the dead, where cairns mound gently above the heather, a circle of rocks rises out of the earth. At its entrance a larger stone stands out from the rest, and the ground dips on both the outer and inner sides of the circle.

I traveled through the cairns near the stone circle before I paid homage to the Seer’s Stone. Here, in the land of the dead, I felt strangely comfortable and at home. The sense of peace was ever-present, as well as an atmosphere of reverence for the departed souls. I was walking upon sacred ground that seemed to be protected by those who had walked before me. My eyes, though, often turned toward the river valley that divided the living from the dead. Sue, reading my thoughts, asked if I wanted to visit the waters that held the memory of Bratha in their song.

The tears, this time, were gentle, as I broke a path through the heather and made my descent. My companions stayed near the top, as though knowing I needed to walk alone as I stepped, once again, through the tenuous layers of time. I headed downstream, and then gradually made my way toward the fork that brought water down from the land of the living, taking in the energy of the stones I passed along the way. Above the stream, large rocks jut out of the side of the hill and take on the forms the past. The whale stone carries the memories of waters much deeper than those that are now no more than a gentle brook.

Even the plants hold faces, and sometimes they join with the rocks. Before the fork in the river, a large arrangement of stones topped with bracken that looks like a mane, give the sense of another guardian protecting something sacred.  It follows the slope of a hillside, where mourners once gathered to pay homage to a feathered seer whose ashes returned to the land she loved.

The peace I felt at this place of rest was a stark contrast to the energy I experienced at the Nest where the skulls of a sacrifice defiled the cycle of life. After a short visit, I was ready to return to the land of the dead, up the hillside where Bratha welcomed those who sought her counsel.

At the circle of stones, I found offerings from travelers, perched atop and around the divination stone. Hair ties mixed with Earth’s flowers, and I gently untangled the natural from the unnatural. The stones, I have learned, do not wish to hold offerings that do not decompose, so I pocketed the ties to throw away later.

As I sat with my back to the divination stone, I felt the memory of Bratha’s presence in its body. It is no wonder that those who pass by pay homage to this stone even without knowing, perhaps, its purpose. Facing outward, toward the land of the living, one can imagine the Seer sitting in wait to those who sought knowledge. The power of the inner, the unseen, courses through your back.

When you step inside the circle, the outer seems to disappear. The silent voice of the soul guides your thoughts, and the inner realm where darkness dwells amid the light of the soul’s truth takes over. All answers must come from this place. This circle holds an inherent magic, as all of them do, and its small size against the much larger landscape surrounding it can defy the eye that chooses to think in limitations. Like other sacred sites, this one seems to be a microcosm inside of a macrocosmic landscape that threads the Web of Light throughout Earth. It carries the light of the stars and the heavens; the light that weaves through each being and connects us all back to Source. It carries Peace and Hope for a world ready to awaken once again.

To be continued…