It’s been awhile since I’ve participated in Sue Vincent’s #writephoto prompts. Life has been busy and has included a trip to this land that feels like home.
Photo Credit: Sue Vincent
Crossings
I looked at the bridge framed in green
To that faraway place where I felt I belonged
Wanting to step through an image that looked like home
“But you are already home, my child”
The voice inside felt like comfort
Soundless to the ear, but not to the heart
I knew it to be mine,
but not wholly mine
So, I went inward to walk beneath the bridge
I painted the water with my toe
and watched circles
spreading rings outward
like the voice inside
I knew to be home
If you would like to participate in Sue’s weekly #writephoto prompt, please click here.
Crossing the land upon which the Abbey of Cerne Abbas had once stood, our party split into two groups. The more adventurous went to climb a hill. Having climbed it once before, on the hottest day in memory, and without hats or water, Stuart and I joined the more sedate party that skirts the bottom of the hill. We knew too that although the view across the Dorset hills was well worth the climb, the gentleman we had really come to see could only be viewed from a distance…or from the air.
We had come to see the Cerne Abbas Giant… for us an old friend, but for the rest of our party, this would be their first encounter with the great figure carved into the chalk. Our secondary quest, though, was for a crop circle. We had heard of one ‘in a field below the giant’ and there…
We wandered the summit of Cadbury Castle, each of us alone with our thoughts before gathering once again at the centre to speak of archaeology, history and legends. Now, legends are all very well, but many a place has adopted a lucrative tale, just to pull in the tourists. The monks drew in pilgrims with dubious saints and relics, and it is no more than economic sense to capitalise on something that will help the local economy. But there are a few crumbs of fact, as well as the legends, that might place our vision of Camelot at Cadbury, even though the Arthur we think of first did not exist before the medieval romances.
Who is Arthur anyway? Is he just the hero of the medieval romances or something more? Was he the historical war leader mentioned in the oldest texts? Was he a giant? Certainly there are enough ancient…
It is early. The streets of the Dorset village of Cerne Abbas are quiet as we make our way through the hush of morning to a place of perfect peace. The churchyard attached to the old Abbey has been planted with a row of young yews, marrying Christian tradition and an older paradigm and carrying the past and the present into the future. Old stone bears carvings of angels and the abstract images of lichen and there is something very appropriate about walking through a place of the dead to a moment that marks a new beginning.
Our destination in a green temple… a grove through which a pure spring flows, sheltered by stone and with a colonnade of living trees arching overhead. These linden trees are known as the Twelve Apostle by locals. It…
Like the best of ideas, it begins with a partly-seen ghost, the glimmer of an edge of something that will work…. Ideas are great, but, unless something is practical and consistent on the day, its value is limited to fuelling a ‘greater’ idea that will.
And then the right idea expands, filling out, not linearly, but with emotions that billow like a spinnaker on a sailing ship, catching a wind that is not of the individual creator’s making. If the goal is a spiritual one, then that catching of an inner wind has the taste of something that will have a shared effect on a group of people who have come to experience transformation.
The setting for the September 2018 weekend workshop ‘Castles of the Mind’ is the beautiful coastline of historic Northumberland, the border county between England and Scotland, the home of the terrible land-pirates known as the
Paper Towel – 2-4 weeks
Banana Peel – 3-4 weeks
Paper Bag – 1 month
Newspaper – 1.5 months
Apple Core – 2 months
Cardboard – 2 months
Cottn Glove – 3 months
Orange peels – 6 months
Plywood – 1-3 years
Wool Sock – 1-5 years
Milk Cartons – 5 years
Cigarette Butts – 10-12 years
Leather shoes – 25-40 years
Tinned Steel Can – 50 years
Foamed Plastic Cups – 50 years
Rubber-Boot Sole – 50-80 years
Plastic containers – 50-80 years
Aluminum Can – 200-500 years
Plastic Bottles – 450 years
Dsposable Diapers – 550 years
Monofilament Fishing Line – 600 years
Plastic Bags – 200-1000 years.
Pls go ahead a share this… for this will create awareness amongst people that plastic is one of the major reasons related to the Global Green House Effect.
Every workshop needs a place to start, and with companions arriving from as far apart as Cumbria, London and America, you need to meet somewhere that is easily found. We knew full well that if we converged on the village pub and started talking we would never have time to visit the place we had come to see, but instead of meeting at one of the most intriguing places, where mystery, history and legend come together, we decided to meet at the church.
Old churches are interesting places. They provide not only a window on the social history of an area, but a snapshot of the growth of their community. You can get a real feel for a place by visiting these little churches that have grown with their congregation over the centuries, and often they reveal glimpses of a far distant past, much more ancient than Christianity.
Full Circle? – Finding the way home… Penrith, Cumbria Friday 7th – Sunday 9th December, 2018
Home. It is an evocative word. The images it conjures are different for each of us, yet few other words touch heart and mind in quite the same way. Birth and death, laughter and love, longing, fear and aspiration… the cycle of human life plays out within its walls.
For many, there is another ‘home’ beyond the physical confines of this world. That too may seem different for each of us and the path to its threshold is shaped by dreams. Few places illustrate this as clearly as Castlerigg, an ancient stone circle ringed by mountains and one of the most spectacular sites in the country.
The people who have walked this world before us have left traces of their lives and belief, written in stone upon the landscape. From church to stone circle…
The land pulls the blood from my body prematurely, just as it did two years ago when the white goddess appeared at the foot of my bed as I took the role of Guinevere. Three in the morning is an uncommon time to wake, but there is significance to this number. We are working with lines that join into triangles.
Found in a Dorset church
Sometimes I think I have strained limits, but my mind tells me I have not returned to the feel of the womb again to sleep. Birth is inevitable. My skin protests darkness and shuns the heavy wrap causing the release of sweat when I try to sleep. There is an alchemy of fire and water going on within and without.
Maumbury Rings in Dorchester, England have a distinctly feminine shape. Inside its womb-like enclosure, you can feel the dull ache of its violent past.
I walk the Maumbury Rings after descending Maiden Castle where I felt the stabs of its violent past covering a land that once held magic. Yet, there is still heat to be found if you sit in silence in the place of the ancient temple. It radiates gold and feels like a powerful peace.
The size of 50 football (soccer) fields, Maiden Castle holds a turbulent past as an Iron-age fortress. Yet, the land holds the memory of magic that can be felt in areas such as the site of an old Roman Temple (seen in this image), perhaps built over an ancient sacred site.
In the distance, the land mounds into peaks that draw the eye to patterns formed thousands of years ago. Miles from this structure, in a small town in Somerset, there is another hill named for a castle that no longer exists in solid form.
I walk the perimeter of Cadbury Castle, pulled toward the path to Glastonbury. The Tor, 21 miles away, can be seen from here.
Cadbury Castle feels like a test. This is where we gather for the start of the workshop, and before we ascend the hill, we visit a church that feels like a shadow below. My companion tells me she smells blood inside its walls and I find it difficult to breathe its heavy air. Outside and inside its walls I feel the haunting of a past that seeks to be reconciled by light.
Crows abound here and leave their feathers under the ancient yew tree as though purposely placed. I will find their feathers throughout my week’s journey in the ancient landscape of Albion.
An ancient yew holds the secrets of time here beneath Cadbury Castle. The ground surrounding it was littered with crow’s feathers, and the birds called me toward the fairy woods at the base of the hill.
There are cow guardians on the hill of Camelot. They own the rights to the land now, but the forest you must pass through holds its secrets. I have grown familiar with haunted woods, yet each one holds a different story I feel I must decipher. The woodland spirits seem to recognize my link to Guinevere and draw me into the press of trees. In these places one can easily become lost to time.
It is always with reluctance that I pull away and return to the mind’s calling. This hill feels troubled to me. Below the grass, I sense the rocks seeking to be revealed once again. Feathers mark where they have become partially exposed, and I can read a piece of their sacred past, which continues to pull me twenty-one miles away to where the Tor rises over the sacred heart.
Glastonbury Tor rises above the landscape 21 miles away.
As I walk the land, I see in my mind’s eye two triangles converging to form a star, which covers the expanse of the hilltop. The exposed rocks along the perimeter mark its points, and I imagine lines of energy flowing to places like Glastonbury Tor. I find it difficult to resist the desire to remove the dirt that seems to hide this sacred form.
I walk the right perimeter of Cadbury Castle following the jut of stones and feathers that seem deliberately placed by an unseen hand.
There is a meditation read by Sue Vincent, and my mind starts to wander to another time. I lose track of her words as images form of their own accord. There is a crownless king with long hair. His head removed from his body. A serpentine energy rises instantly to wrap the land in protection. It ripples to the left, away from the Tor and when I open my eyes I can see its pattern in the waves of grass where the cows graze.
The left side of Cadbury Castle wears a wave-like formation of earth, which is where I saw the serpentine energy wrap the land.
Once again, I am drawn to the heart. To the center, even though I can feel the lines broken by the hands of a false power. I will feel this each time we visit the points on the star spread wide across the land at sites once holy without mortared towers. I want to pull down these false alignments of power and watch as the stones return to the body of Gaia. There is still too much force of will here. Phallic forms created by the hands of man boldly rise at the entrances to the carefully constructed vesica pisces where people have prayed for thousands of years in obedience. I want to birth them new again. Holy unto themselves, aligned with the stars and Her body below.
An imposing tower guards the entrance to a church placed on a ley line of energy. Inside, the “womb” of these churches resemble vesica pisces with their curved ceilings.
There is an erect giant on a hill in Cerne Abbas. He overlooks the village in a landscape that is aligned with a belt of stars in the heavens. Each time I look at him, I see his too small head removed from his body, exposing the unobstructed pathway to the heart. I also see power, and it feels conflicted because of time. He seems to be impregnating the mound he stands upon, but with what now?
From the bottom of the hill, below the giant, only his bottom half is exposed.
Circles in the Earth appeared three weeks before our arrival, perfectly aligned with the giant and with the symbols we are working with. One year before, another pattern in the earth showed the goddess inside a vesica pisces as though impregnated by the energy of a giant aligned with Orion in the heavens.
I remember how I felt the goddess rising strongly against my back on the top of Maiden castle as I sat inside what felt like a holy site. There was the peace of balance. The sun energy radiated around me and up through the Earth. A sacred joining with the goddess. I, the child glowing inside the impregnated womb.
The wheat begins to grow back to its original form in the May 2018 Cerne Abbas crop circle. Aerial images can be found online. I felt like a trespasser even though the energy had dissipated (with the aid of other trespassers before me). My opinion is that these circles are not meant for human intrusion.
I think of the world I was born into, and my own children. These are, without a doubt, turbulent times. Yet there is hope. My mind clings to its vision of a riderless horse galloping effortlessly up the hill of Cadbury. Pure white, like the stars still aligned with our Earth. I feel their energy running back through Her veins. I think of the circles and lines in the crops barely visible during my visit to them. Rays on the wheel of time draw in the sun over crescent moons. I think of Horus and Hathor. A union of energies within and without merging back to the center where I sit for a moment and wonder what we will birth into the future.
Beautiful wildflowers that wear the colors of the crown chakra crow on the hillside where the Cerne Abbas Giant resides.
The Light Behind the Story 