The Hedge Druid

Posts Tagged ‘clouds’

This short post is motivated by the incessant occurrence of a single topic of conversation related to the British people’s favourite subject: the weather. One of the popular topics amongst those who fail to keep track of life is the wail against the weather spouting from every mouth like some Romanesque fountain figure: “Why is it so wet this summer? Isn’t it awful?”

To understand why it is so wet do we need do no more than cast our minds back to the end of the last summer. In the middle of 2011 the weather was pretty awful too – June and July were very wet, but then things began to clear up and from then on – for almost six months until the middle of May 2012 – we have unseasonably dry weather. Remember? We weren’t snowed in. There wasn’t endless rain through the Winter. There were no Autumn storms. It was calm, placid, and particularly and peculiarly dry.

Looks at the pretty grey clouds – ah, summer!

Then, in early Spring, we had news reports where farmers and Water Board representatives were being interviewed about how they feared crop failure this year because the water table was so low. Reservoirs were almost drained. Water Boards put a hose-pipe ban in place at an unprecedented time of the year – normally they don’t issue restrictions unless there’s a particularly dry June and July.

Then we got to the middle of May and the rains came. And they didn’t stop! We have had almost two months of solid, strong, huge downpours of rain. Constant rain. Never-ending rain.We’re sick of the sight of grey clouds.

Yet, when we come to complain about this spoiling this event, or postponing that one; when we hear of floods in low-lying regions and flood plain housing estates; when we wonder whether we ought to take up foreign holidays again just as we were getting used to holidays in this land….let’s remember that to truly balance things out we should have another four months of rain. I don’t think that’s going to happen, but we ought to count our rain-soaked drowning blessings!

It’s not awful – it’s Britain re-balancing.

Gwas.

When Kal suggested a visit to Gop Hill on a fine late Winter evening my first thoughts were “A feminine site on a full moon night? I’m supposed to be working with male energy and Light!”. The scenario seemed contrary to my supposed direction this year, so I had to re-shape the proposal. How could I take advantage of this wonderful opportunity, and still fit in with my directive? I pondered a while and came up with this – what if I tried to speak to the energy form known as Merlin, and to ask him whether he could assist with with spirit release work? I am currently reading Sue Allen’s book “Spirit Rescue” and in the current chapter it has been talking about Merlin being an excellent resource to call upon to help with Spirit Rescue.

As we navigated through the darkness without torches we were ‘lucky’ not to trip or stumble. I guess we have become accustomed to walking in such conditions now. You would have expected that the Full Moon light would have guided us, but the moon was nowhere to be seen. We sort of felt cheated, but then realised that there was currently a great deal of solar activity (an X-Class flare was blasting our ionosphere at the time). The fullness of this solar energy seemed to balance the fullness of the lunar energy, and this night felt like a good night for working. We reached the hill and I stopped to ask for entry. Granted. We walked to the top of the hill.

On the top of the hill we suddenly were made aware of the strength of the wind. Up to that point I can’t say I noticed it, but on top of Gop Hill the air was roaring around us. Kal lay down and mentioned that the wind was much easier to deal with lying down. I lay down too and the wind just…well…stopped! I could hear it roaring above me, but there was nothing touching me at all. I looked left and right – no barriers or crests on either side of me – so how was….? I switched off my rational train of thoughts. The rational part of my brain was now beginning to get in the way.

I sat in the power centre that I had found for myself with the wild wind stilled temporarily as though deflected by a pure glass dome that I couldn’t see. The space I was in was warm and comforting – I was in the bosom of the female spirit of the hill, I felt. Yet, my quest at this time was to meet with a male force, so I turned my attention to that instead. I connected by grounding and centring myself into the hill and around it. The connection came easily with all the energy around that evening. I began to send out the intention that I wished to communicate with the spirit that I recognised as Merlin….

..there was a sharp and noticeable gust of wind that managed to find its way into the stillness centre that I was lying in, and it made itself known to me. Rational Brain began to pipe up, “Just a gust of wind; could have happened at any time; maybe will happen again if you wait; can’t get meaning out of that; it’s just wind….etc.” I fought to turn the dialogue off again. Honestly,the rational brain is like some kind of geyser – when the pressure of silence has held it down for too long it has to blow in a gush and a rush of babbling nonsense disguised as a logical thought process. I went back into meditation again, concentrating but not concentrating on being still and quiet.

I had encountered coincidental gusts of wind before. They were usually a sign (not always, but often). Taking the gust of wind as a sign that Merlin was around, I then asked if he would join with me and my spirit guide to help us at some future point should we need to do some spirit release work, returning energies to a state of equilibrium and harmony. I’ve been listening to some talks by Christian Kyriacou recently and I am coming around to his idea of re-balancing energies in the “energy matrix”, rather than the traditional approach of sending spirits to the light. The series of podcasts published by the British Society of Dowsers is a good starting point for understanding this point of view.

In response to this request for assistance my right ear got a short blast of air. I took this as an answer, but was it a YES or a NO? I asked another question to which I knew the answer was a definite no, and the short blast resounded in my left ear this time. I therefore knew that the first answer was a YES. Always testing.

Pareidolia for Pagans

Soon after I began to emerge from my meditative stare. I half-opened my eyes, looked straight up into the darkening sky and noticed the cloud formation directly above me. There was a definite shape to the one cloud that had any distinctive elements to it. There was a man in a pointed hat sat at a desk reading a book. It was Merlin! Of course we always make the amorphous shapes of clouds into shapes that we recognise. I understand that. I have experimented with such things on many occasions both as a child and as an adult. I know how this works – there’s even a psychological terms for it – pareidolia. More often than not there is no discernible shape to any cloud, and it takes a monumental feat of imagination to form one into anything even remotely similar to a recognisable shape. Yet here – almost upon request – was the shape of a bearded wizard figure reading a book. There it was. Unchanging. unmistakable, unique and probably only for me to see.

Of course, all this is a manufactured coincidence created within my febrile mind due to lying about on a cold hill in early March. Yet I came away from that evening with the feeling that I had gained an ally in my inevitable future work with healing sacred places.

Gwas.

It was the evening of the new moon, July 22nd. I set about going for a walk in the small town in Germany’s Rhine Valley where I was stationed for two weeks working away from home. I set about exploring my new environment, seeing what the town had to offer by walking out towards the outskirts, past the old church dedicated to St.Lambert. Incidentally, the church has a spiral pattern formed in small tiles outside the church’s west-facing front door.

Then I wandered into the local park, past the thermal baths, and out beyond the rows of old people’s homes that formed the eastern-most extent of the town. I had no idea what compelled me to continue walking through the fields of crops, but something was pulling me onwards.

I was enjoying the late evening sun and relaxing after a day’s work. The sun was still warm and the apple trees that lined the wheat fields seemed to form a guard of honour inviting me onwards. I was looking for something, but I didn’t know what it was. Then I found it. In the middle of a field stood an old gnarled pear tree. The views of the setting sn that it offered made me sit down and snuggle into the tree’s welcoming root structure and I lay back and dozed amongst the rustling ears of wheat and the light buzz of fruit flies.

In the darkening sky I could see cirrus clouds streaking across my view, and the light dappled through the twisted branches of the old pear tree. I tried my hand at meditating, but the old pear tree was determined to prevent this, occasionally dropping a pear with a thud that startled me out of my trance – each pear getting closer to me! Soon I gave up and simply observed the sun descend through the trees that  bordered the fields.

 Have you every tried that child’s game of making shapes out of clouds? We humans can anthropomorphize almost any form into an animal or face, and it seems to be a psychologically innate feature of humans. But try it yourself – pick any day where there are clouds in the sky and try to see shapes or faces. Actually, when you try, you’ll find it’s rather difficult to get anything meaningful at all. I know.

I had been trying to see something in the clouds ever since I had taken an interest in air spirits that we call “sylphs” traditionally. It’s harder than it may seem.

One guy on the internet has a page that he claims shows bird-like or angelic patterns and he calls these sylphs, convinced that they exist in the sky, and that they are up there trying to deal with the ‘chemtrails‘ and air pollution that we humans throw off into the air. I had seen his site and was less than convinced at his evidence, but was intruiged by the idea of such forces of nature.

Perhaps cloud sylphs were on or in my mind. Perhaps the old pear tree was trying to tell me not to waste my time trying to meditate.

 Anyway, I stood up and began to walk back to the town slowly. For some reason I looked back, and upwards into the evening sky above the pear tree, and this is what I saw:

This photo doesn’t really do justice to the level of definition that this cloud had. Cameras cannot bring the level of differentiation oflight, shadow and depth that the human eye can.  If you struggle to see the face in the picture above, slightly un-focus your eyes to bring about more contrast. Move up and down a little. Watch it suddenly appear as clearly as I saw it that night. Now imagine it in three dimensions for the full impact.!

Let me tell you that I stopped, stared and then almost fell to the ground in disbelief. There, looking down from behind the tree, was a very clear face. By the time I realised that perhaps I should photograph this phenomenon it was already mutating slightly. But it held its form for several minutes, whilst all around clouds nearby moved slowly with the evening breeze. This form did not move or dissipate in that way. It simply evolved.

I had seen a cloud sylph. Yet again my world view was spun around and I was reeling with the implications. What a strange but fascinating moment!

Gwas.

Seeing things as usual