A few months ago, I came across an article that said middle-grade and YA readers are now seeking stories about strong friendships rather than romance. Perfect, I thought, because the bond of friendship threads through my middle-grade Warriors of Light series. It is, you could say, a rather non-traditional love story. The six young protagonists are driven by their philial love for one another, as well as their filial love, and their love for Earth.
A giant in the land that helped to inspire the character Albion inKeys to the Heart. Photo taken at Jordan Pond, Acadia National Park in 2018
A year after visiting Arbor Low, I journeyed back to England for another weekend of Silent Eye adventures, and to partake in my graduation ceremony. “You need to come to this one,” Sue had urged me. “It’s all about the ley lines and the hexagram star.” Once again, while exploring the ancient landscapes of England, I would discover more insights about the stories that had been whispering their secrets onto my pages.
These sacred waters were the site of my graduation rites
We spent a very busy day following the ley lines (aka dragon lines) in the pattern of a hexagram star, hopping from church to church to feel into their energy. Many of the ley lines/dragon lines in Earth follow geometric patterns and connect to sacred sites. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, churches were frequently, and probably not coincidentally, erected atop ancient sacred sites and dragon lines (it makes one wonder about religious images of dragons being slain or “tamed” in paintings and church windows). Truthfully, the day for me was mostly unsettling. To me, the energy of the land beneath these religious edifices feels not so much sacred, but deadened in an attempt to exert power and control.
Sue standing beside one of the churches we visited that is situated on a hexagram of ley lines
So when we journeyed away from the churches to visit ancient sites that still feel alive in the landscape, I felt much more at home. One of our stops was to visit the chalk giant embedded into a hillside in the Cerne Valley. Legends tell that the Cerne Abbas Giant, with his erect phallus, was a fertility god of sorts. Couples would (and perhaps still do, although it is now fenced in) flock to the hillside to make love in the hope to conceive.
The fertility giant in the background of a “Hardy” sign.
But I was more interested in the idea of a love story about the land itself. The carne giant, as well as a giant I saw a month later in the landscape of Acadia National Park (see above photo), helped inspire me to created the character Albion (whose name is derived from an old name for Great Britain) who appears in book two of the Warriors of Light series. The giant Albion, whose body is comprised of the British Isles, holds within him the heart of Earth. So Albion became part of the love story I was writing. A giant whose body is a part of the body of Earth. The two, like the yin and yang energy that exist inside all of us, cannot live without each other. Keys to the Heartis not the love story of romance novels, but about the love that threads the life into the veins of Earth and all of her children.
On this day, one month ago, I suddenly declared to the friend I was soon to visit in London, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we found a crop circle?” It was one of those things that just popped into my head. I hadn’t been thinking about crop circles, which is a bit surprising, as I’ll confess I’ve always wanted to see one, but suddenly I felt an almost desperate urge to find one on this particular trip that I was to leave for within a matter of hours…
Sue’s account of the circle can be found here. And I had promised her to write about my visit, and other happenings during the trip soon as well. I’ve only managed to get one post out though. I have kept myself very busy, so even though it’s now my bedtime and I have an early morning yoga class to teach, I find there is no better time than the present.
Maybe I should start by telling you I drew the Mercury card for our Giant and the Sun Workshop weekend. The card for magic…
I didn’t know the circle was sitting in a faraway field in Cerne Abbas until I got there, and I didn’t know the full breadth of its significance (I probably still don’t) until I sat inside of it on the last full day of my visit, days after the events of the workshop had passed.
My traveling companion, Larissa, and I were rather desperate to find it once we knew of its existence. It felt like an opportunity of a lifetime. You know, one of those things you really can’t pass up because they may not offer themselves up again. But it was not so easy to locate…
Contrary to some popular beliefs, crop circles are not always easy to find or access. And, as I discovered, seem to be rather deliberately placed not for our amusement, but for our edification. They are, I believe, both a test and a gift. The real ones anyway.
When one of our companions, Helen, discovered this particular crop circle we were searching for was aligned with the Giant aligned with Orion and encased in a hexagon, I knew I had to find it. As Sue noted in her post, it was easier said than done. Rather like my search for the Nine Ladies two years prior, the land seemed to be testing me/us. Time played with us and stopped our first attempt. We found the general location from the road with the help of some rather kind, albeit skeptical locals, but didn’t realize the trek was a good thirty-minute walk at a brisk pace.
Close to, but not the entrance we were looking for
So we waited nearly a week, and with some urging by Sue and Stuart, we promised to give it another go on our return to Dorchester. Time, we found, was our friend that day. We had, it seemed, just enough.
This time we found the unmarked place to pull over easily, following Sue and Stuart’s directions, it was just feet down the road from where we had initially stopped.
We were the only ones there. The site was unmarked from the road, and as we would later discover, unmarked completely. All good signs in my opinion. This was not meant to be a tourist attraction. So we walked, and walked, me probably a little faster than Larissa would have liked, as the flies swirled around us.
I found I was more nervous than excited. I had that feeling of being tested, but not quite in the same way as I did at the Nine Ladies Stone Circle.
The cell tower was bothering me. It was both a marker of sorts, but also a mar on the landscape. Too easy to locate, but not the sort of power center I tend to prefer. We passed some farmers chatting by their equipment. I’m pretty sure they saw us through the trees but didn’t say anything. They were laughing over their meal, or perhaps at us…
No one stopped us though, so we kept walking until we got to the stone…
A rather conveniently located stone nearby the field we were looking for (the arrow is not pointing toward the circle)
I would have liked to have spent more time with the stone, which seemed to be a guardian. I sensed it had many stories to share if I was willing to stop and listen. Instead, we passed by, paying our brief respects as we did.
The circle, when we found it, was nearly unrecognizable. Three and a half weeks had passed since it had been put down and the wheat had grown back quite a lot in most areas. The center, though, felt a bit barren and abused. By the time we reached it I was starting to feel more than a little uncomfortable about the impact of our presence, and those who had come before us.
The earth was parched and exposed in the center and there were many fragments of rocks that looked like lava stones exposed
It was clear that others had found this site, even though the farmer was not advertising it and had allowed the crops to grow in. It was on the Crop Circle Connector website, though, so I was not surprised, but still alarmed…
These circles are not meant to be walked…
I kept hearing this phrase inside of my head, but still, I walked myself, with a feeling of guilt and a bit of self-disgust.
The energy is already deadened…
I also heard these words. And it was true. It felt, almost, like any other place. Any other farmers field of wheat, but not quite…
Grass bent precisely at the nodes, never broken in the circle
“Take your pendulum,” Stuart had urged me. “And ask these questions…”
I wore it around my neck. I even took it off and sat in the center. Something wasn’t right. So I moved off to one of the circles in the rays. It was nearly grown in but felt less tampered. I put the pendulum back around my neck, sat down and closed my eyes.
The words came through me almost immediately. Questions that were posed during the weekend were answered, and speculations confirmed. I saw the giant in the field without a head and a pattern in the stars called Orion. I felt a presence that felt both powerful and like Love. The words rose up through the ground and down through the crown of my head and for the first time I felt it was okay for me to be there. Just this once. To listen and receive.
I vowed never to return again. Not to this circle, or to another. For once you step into the patterns, a disruption occurs. A disruption of an energy, I have come to believe through what I received during my meditation, is not for us to walk through, but to honor as a part of the dance of energy that is Life, but not life as we are accustomed to living it.
I have read that you can tell authentic crop circles by the way the blades of the crops are bent. As I walked the over-grown lines I looked closely at the wheat and noted the perfection of the patterns that had been laid down weeks before. Thousands of strands of wheat were bent at perfect angles and never broken. The tractor tracks, in contrast, were filled with double lanes of trampled and broken wheat.
As Sue revealed in her post, this particular circle is in alignment with the sacred geometry and ley lines in the land. It appeared just weeks before our arrival, and after the workshop was planned, but before it took place. This, I believe, is not a coincidence. The words that flooded my consciousness while I sat in the wheat spoke of a purpose much greater than our individual footsteps, our individual beliefs, and our individual existence. They spoke of the sacred dance of a Universe sophisticated and intelligent. A dance of energy that used to be infused in the land I now sat upon, and in all land on Earth. I could feel it as a trickle of magic below me, spreading down into the land and through its veins. The artificial tower loomed in the distance as an interruption, and I felt both sorrow and hope.
This is not an accident, the words spoke inside of me, It was placed here for a purpose.
Questions found answers inside of me as I opened myself up to the land’s secrets, and a depth of clarity arose within me. I did not record what I learned, nor do I feel it is my place to share it all here. It is likely some will, and would not believe my words, and that is okay. I used to live in that state of doubt as well. I do not claim to have the definitive answers for the existence of crop circles, but there now exists inside of me a core of hope and awe for the power of their creation and intention. A confirmation, if you will, that Life is so much greater than what we see with our eyes. And that within us and around us there is a dance of energy that is Life itself. All-knowing and intelligent. Searching, always, for our presence.
The Light Behind the Story 