The Story of a Water Dragon, a Fire Dragon and a Circle of Stones #dragonlines #dragons #leylines #alchemy #arborlow #fantasyseries

On February 13, 2024 By Alethea KehasIn A Better World of Books, Travel Adventures, Warriors of Light5 Comments

On the front cover of my metaphysical fantasy book Keys to the Heart, a fire dragon descends to meet a rising water dragon over a hexagram filled with the alchemy of their union.

The front cover of *Keys to the Heart*, designed by Sierra Wheeler

On the back cover of the book, a blurb appears inside a circle of stones. The stones, if you look closely, resemble the heads of dragons. Out of the circle, the tails of the water and fire dragons emerge. The scene wrapping the book tells its origin story.

The back cover of *Keys to the Heart*, designed by Sierra Wheeler

A story inspired, in many ways, by my visit to Arbor Low in Derbyshire, England nearly seven years ago with Sue, Stuart, Deb, and Nick during a Silent Eye outing. Arbor low is a Neolithic henge monument complete with a crown of stones that sits atop a hill that is now owned by a farmer. I sometimes wonder if the caretaker, who charges a mere one pound/person to visit the ancient site, knows how lucky he is to live amongst the dragon stones.

As soon as I exited the car in the lot below the mound, I felt the pull of the stones even though I could not yet see them. Deb and I helped Nick up the crest of the hill, but when we reached the top, I released him to Sue and Stuart. Sue understood how the energy magic consumes me when I visit the ancient landscapes, and here, before me, was a scene of absolute wonder. On the edge of the mound, I stood at the gateway, letting it fill my cells with memories as time slipped through space.

The stones at Arbor low are arranged in a recumbent circle, with two recumbent stones in the center. Some people think the stones once stood, and I saw the center stones as pillars; a doorway to the stars, while the ones on the ring rose up from the mound watching, protecting. The heads like dragons in wait for the Fire and Water to reunite to seed light back into the sacred womb of Earth.

I chose my path by the pull of my cells, taking each turn between the stones as though I were walking through time. “Like a clock.” When I completed the circle of the face, I was filled with a vision of magic that felt so alive I could not contain it. I felt like a lost soul finding home, once again, in the vast sea of the universe.

It was here, in Arbor Low, where I found the essence of the narrative that had been weaving its labyrinth inside of me.

As a writer, I am often asked about my process. Usually I keep the answer simple, “I am not a plotter, I let the story guide me.” The truth is, quite often I cannot explain what I write until I experience it for myself. Images and names will come to me, and sometimes entire scenes, and I will put them on the page only to discover later, why.

Standing at Arbor Low, nearly seven years ago, my body was re-awakened to the alchemical energy of the universe. Here, I experienced the magic of natural forces concentrated in the land. An energy so strong it transcended time and space. Arbor Low, like other ancient sacred sites, is a place where the complex theories of physics and math make sense. It is a place where magic is tangible and achievable without fantasy.

By the end of the day, I understood why I was so driven to write a story about six thirteen-year-olds who were drawn into a mysterious hexagram filled with broken lines of light to save a broken planet and a broken mother. By the end of the day, during which I visited three ancient sites with the Silent Eye group, I felt the wholeness of reunion in away I had never experienced in this lifetime. Inside of me joy danced with sorrow like I had finally come home.

So while I may have written two books, with a third in process, that are in the genre of fantasy, their essence is the magic of life through the lens of my own experiences. I have a feeling this is how many stories arise through us. We may doubt their origins, but the seeds they sow thread truth in an attempt to bring us home to ourselves.

The Return to the Mundane

On May 10, 2017May 18, 2017 By Alethea KehasIn A New Earth, Gaia & Elementals, Reflections, Uncategorized1 Comment

It seems, in a way, cruel. To feel the curtains of one’s heart part without effort to enter the place of magic and pure presence, only to return to where you are used to residing. I have not re-learned what the young child already knows: to live each moment in open-hearted wonder. The ordinary often takes over my mind, and replaces the inherent magic held inside all life.

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The blades of grass on the lawn attract the eye in their uniformity and neatness, but the magic they hold is hidden unless I stop to view with fresh eyes.

pexels-photo-220859 This takes effort, or at least intention. The energy in the ordinary feels comfortable, and even flat, when compared to the extraordinary. Yet, this is the nature of life for most of us. I can’t help but think this is part of the cause of so many of our addictions. This inherent search for a “high” to escape the ordinary. When one feels euphoria, or glimpses “nirvana,” it is difficult to accept the placid.

It’s not simply the placid, though, is it? It’s not fair to say the ordinary, alone, is not enough, and the reason why we seek something more, which does not always feel wonderful. When I was in the moors, at the Raven’s Nest, I did not feel wonderful. In fact I felt a profound sadness and longing. The key, though, is that I felt this state to such an extend it opened my heart to pure connection to the Land and its Spirit. There became, for that time, no division between us. We were one being. It’s a little ironic that I would gladly trade a piece of cheesecake (which happens to be my favorite dessert), to feel this presence again, with all of the pain.

What I felt was a sense of purpose and belonging that was impossible to describe, except that it felt like I had come home. After, I should add, a long absence. For the ordinary life seems to distance oneself from this state of unfettered connection.

The real “high,” is not an artificial attainment. It is not an escape from the mundane, but rather to feel the extraordinary in the ordinary in each moment. Even if the extraordinary is not so wonderful to feel. I don’t even know if this is entirely possible to feel with such presence, all of the time. The care-takers of Arbor Low, I suspect, could not tend to their farm at its base, if they were feeling the energy of its extraordinary magic all the time. And, furthermore, does that mean that their life has any less meaning?

I am, on the one hand, quite in awe of their role as caretakers, living a seemingly ordinary life that serves to ground the energies that are so powerfully present above them. It is almost as though they know not what they protect, and that in itself makes their role all the more extraordinary. Really, how else could one reside in a place such as this?

Is the farmer living a life more, or less, real than the person who walks the stones and feels transported beyond the mundane? At some point, it seems, we all must come back to Earth. We must tend to our children and animals, clean our residences, prepare and eat meals and carry out the daily tasks of life. If we don’t, a state of chaos can take over. Messes pile up, the gnaw of hunger starves the body, bills go unpaid, and we eventually find that we have lost our handle on life itself.

Yet we keep seeking, don’t we? As though we are trying to fill a void that is infinite. We use food, drugs, cars, vacations, houses, shoes, porn, electronics, exercise…there are so many ways to fill in the blank. There are almost an endless number of things we use to try to fill the void that is ever-present. Telling us there is more to life, if we could just figure out what it was and how to get it.

Of course, getting it is the problem. There is no getting of what is already present. We look outside, instead of looking within. It’s not easy to see in the dark, so we resist the finding of the light within. To see into that place of magic that resides in all things. You. A blade of grass. A rock. The person beside you. To open that door to the extraordinary in the ordinary, and leave it open. To see the world through the eyes of the inner child, always, seems as impossible as it seem necessary.

The Journey of the Feathered Seer Part 4: The Magic of Arbor Low

On May 2, 2017May 3, 2017 By Alethea KehasIn A New Earth, Gaia & Elementals, Memoir, Reflections, Uncategorized9 Comments

I never made it to Peter’s Rock, although we passed close by it in the car, and as we did I made a vow to visit in a future trip. It is said to be a place of initiation, where one must face fear to move beyond the veil of illusion into the Light of Truth. The shaman took us there during ritual 4, and I felt I knew this place, at least in essence. But to feel its actual presence would have to wait.

During the week, I thought often of the snake I had found coiled like a sacrifice in the middle of my basement floor before I left for England. A symbol of the cycle of life that moves through birth into death in an endless repeat. I knew before I left my home that I would be going through an important phase in this cycle during my journey in England. The stones had whispered this in my dreams, and they did not disappoint.

After visiting the site where Bratha lived out her life as a Seer, the five of us refueled at a lovely pub, then made our way to the Serpent Stones. It was time to feel the enchantment of the land. Although I had heard Sue, Stuart and some of the others hint about the secrets of these stones, I was not wholly prepared for what I would encounter among them. Which is, I believe, just the way it should be. I had already discovered that stones hold the memory of the land and its children, but I had yet to experience the awesome force of their enchantment. This site, as I soon saw, is not asleep. The serpent stones are more alive than those who walk among them. It is like nothing else I have experienced before. It is, quite simply, magical.

The path to the stones, like all journeys, can be taken more than one way. The land surrounding and containing them is, without a doubt, holy ground. Here one walks the body of the goddess in all her power and glory to rebirth anew in the continual cycle of life. The guardian of Arbor Low takes the form of the living. It resides in the balancing energies of cows, chickens and the humans how tend to them below the mounded earth. Here the magic of the stones is settled into the grounding energies of daily life, neutralizing their force. The mundane nature of these seems necessary once one experiences the effects of the stones.

At Arbor Low, I discovered that when you are open to the magic of the Land, it does not disappoint. The memory of it makes me smile with shear joy, just as I did when I walked among its stones. Here is where the Light of Hope is very much alive, and has been for thousands of years. The land here is in control, protected by a force much larger than the Earth itself. Here, the sacred is not broken by human hands (at least not enough to break its magic).

There is a point, when approaching the circle from the head of the goddess-like form of mounded earth (for more on this, read the words of Sue Vincent here, as well as her piece, The Serpent Stones), when you feel as though you are reaching the threshold of something sacred. I felt the impulse to pause. To pay respect. To ask permission to go forth and enter the body of the Mother.

If you read Sue’s accounts, you will discover that many who visit feel and see the serpent energy of these recumbent stones. They face outward, but they also face inward, and their clock-like appearance tells of a time that is not linear, but cyclical. There are two stones in the center, also lying flat. “These two may have been standing at one time,” Sue told us, and I nodded my head. My inner eye saw them as two pillars pointed to the Light as it was brought down to Earth. I couldn’t help but wonder at the magnitude of the energy that must have been felt in a place that still held such power to awe and transform.

I now that I did not take a few moments to photograph the circle once inside of it, but I spent my time absorbing and witnessing the site. You can, though, find images of Arbor Low in Sue’s posts and online. Even in photographs, the images in the stones are quite clear, but they too are subject to the observer. I saw serpents in some, but I also saw other forms as I walked the stones. Sometimes they told me who they were before I could guess. “I am the face of the west wind,” the stone, which I later discovered was in fact facing west, whispered to me as I passed. It’s outward face was chiseled with strength, harnessing the force of endings. It pulled me to the center, and I walked beside it and the stone that looked like a coffin, to shed what I was ready to leave behind. I reached the center to be reborn, over and over again, as I walked their gateways. Each stone seemed to channel a different energy, which was equally transformative and magical. It was wildly exhilarating, and my smile grew with each step. Although, there was a point when my body stopped me in warning, Be careful you don’t over-do it.

Where some of the stones spoke of endings, others spoke of strength and new beginnings. Because I walked the stones as gates, I saw them as having two faces. There is an outer face to most stones (some are sunk into the ground at their ends), which is easily seen from the mound of earth surrounding the circle, and tells of the outer forces of life, which can be used to go inward. Once inside the “womb,” you can view the smaller circle of the inner world, which is akin to the soul. Here you can make out different faces of the stones, if they have faces. Again, some of the stones slope into the earth, which adds to the effect of being pulled inward when you are standing in the center. Others rear up at you, as though challenging you to rebirth yourself anew. Standing in the center of the womb, closing your eyes, you can image the light harnessed from two pillars once, drawing its energy into the Mother. Here is where the Divine Masculine joins into the womb of the Goddess. It is a site to behold and to feel. I can only imagine what it once was…and maybe still is, but I couldn’t help feeling like those center stones needed to be standing…

This was my experience as I walked the stones. A fitting end to the path I had walked through Bratha during the weekend’s workshop, which extended out to the physical body of the Land that she loved. Although I touched the stones at Arbor Low, I did not meditate upon them to learn more of their secrets. This will have to wait for another time. The storms were beginning to roll in and it was time to make our way back to the cars. We arrived at our vehicles mere moments before the storm rolled in, bringing a mix of wind, rain and snow with it. Apparently a not uncommon occurrence here, and I was not altogether surprised. Energies can’t help but be stirred when this circle is walked.

The End. For now.