Reflections from The Silent Eye’s June 2018 workshop.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.