The Hedge Druid

Posts Tagged ‘mary caine’

Well, I see that Kal got his summary out first. Still, “if you can’t beat them…”

Generally, what type of year it has been? Dis-jointed, slower than last year’s breakneck speed, measured, with lots of deep synchronicities. When I come to review the year I realise that I still made lots of progress on the various tasks that I was lead to perform in order to progress along my path of Druidry.

Below are the main topics that I have picked out from this year’s blog posts. I have tried to keep the explanations to a minimum, so have included links back to the original postings if you want the detail for each of the topics. What I thought was a quiet year has actually turned out to be incredibly packed and busy. The topics are in no order whatsoever, which kind of fits with the way that the year’s learning has come about – seemingly haphazard, but all threading into and through itself like some kind of cat’s cradle whose overall pattern will only be known when the final moves have played out.

26 topics I have been involved in this year:-

a) Healing – Most of the year has been spent developing healing skills, whether that was using remote energies, balancing the chakras, healing with the hands, or with crystals. I have realised that I am more attuned to healing places than people currently, but that is changing. The healing energies can be attuned to different colours for particular effects. To work with these energies I need to understand which “colour” is missing from a site and then call upon the energies of the local living entities to gather together to create this missing colour and thus heal the site. [related posts: My Five Healing Rays, Healing Rays Explained]

Also, in conjunction with my friend Mike, we created a new healing centre at The Bridestones in Cheshire. [related posts: A New Healing Centre]

Chakra colours, energy frequencies and healing may be linked

b) Re-discovering the bard - Discovered great new music (and that I like the new forms of folk music) at The Green Man Festival, and saw Roy Harper in concert in London. This year music has really connected with my heart and stirred great emotions. I have written more poetry this year than in other years too. [related posts: Green Man Festival, Roy Harper]

c) Astrological links to Venus, Orion’s Belt and Sirius affirmed at almost every site. Also Scorpius, astrological links to Arthur and the Great Bear constellation. The constellations of Serpens, Corvus and Perseus have been especially meaningful to me this year, guiding me along a very meaningful path from one end of an energy ley to another. [related posts: Serpent at Castlerigg, Arthurian Archetypes of Corvus, The Berth and Death of Scorpius, The Three Stars of Fertility, Absorbing Orion at Lud's Church]

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My Beltane quest, to be completed before the Summer Solstice, is the “See with the eyes of The Hawk”. That was the message from the ever-useful Llangernyw Yew tree meditation that I did within the hollows of one of its ancient branches. Whilst trying to interpret this information I had tried to elicit a bit more information from the other sites I had visited that Beltane day on the 1st May and had found out that the vision was an ariel view of a landscape figure showing a hawk in flight.

Whistlebitch Well

The starting point to find this figure in my locality would be a sacred spring or holy well somewhere in Cheshire. It didn’t take me long to draw up a list of the 20+ wells in the county and then work my way through them with the help of the dowsing rods to eliminate all but the last – Whistlebitch Wellnear Utkinton. Seemingly, at one time this was a much-visited attraction, but its whereabouts are much harder to discern today. I went out one evening in the fading sunlight to try to find it. If it still existed then perhaps I could try to get in touch with the spirit of the well and reveal some more information about my quest?

I passed a gentleman walking his dog in the woods close to the well and asked him if he knew of it. He knew of many of the features of the surrounding woods, having spent thirty years walking the area, and was able to show me pictures of many of the features too! He was unsure about the well, though, unless I meant the old St Stephen’s Well that was close to where we stood chatting? That must be its alternate name, I said, there was only one well in the area. He said he thought it was connected to the stream we were standing on top of, so I bade him a kindly farewell and followed my instincts to walk through a field next to the stream. Then I heard what sounded like a water source in the damp ditch next to the field. I gingerly waded through the nettles to find the remains of a signpost and a square iron cover – just like the pictures on the Megalithic Portal – this was it!

Whistlebitch Well near Utkinton, Cheshire

After having uncovered the well and washed my crystals in its waters I laid them our around me and meditated to the sound of the trickling waters. Soon I was in contact with the spirit of place, a male water spirit, who was very glad that someone had visited and more so that they were being respectful of the place. I asked the spirit what he knew of The Hawk of May, but he was unable to expand upon that concept. He was only a lowly Nature spirit watching over this well, and who did not go anywhere else or meet any Hawk of May spirits. I would have to figure this one out alone.

The Landscape Figure

Back at home I began to investigate maps of the area around Whistlebitch Well. Would anything reveal itself to me about the outline of roads, paths, tracks and rovers in the area, or be revealed in the names of places? I had experience of reading about Katherine Maltwood‘s Glastonbury Zodiac figures, and Mary Caine‘s subsequent revival of the concept which she then began to apply to the Kingston-Upon-Thames area too. I knew what a landscape figure might look like, but could I find one in a modern map?

After several hours of scrying, this figure appeared:

The figure is formed primarily by the crag ridge of Willington village, and is centred on the village of Utkinton. It extends as far as Cotebrook at its east side, and Duddon to the west and Boothsdale to the north. At its northern extent is the natural feature of Primrose Hill, and within that is Whistlebitch Well. A road extending from the hawk’s beak seems to tether it to the village of Clotton. [full size map here].

The shape of the figure was suddenly so obvious to me that I started to get excited. What could this mean in terms of my current quest? Now that I had identified a possible landscape figure, what next? I was at a loss as to what to do with this information, and when in such a situation I tend to turn to a favourite divination tool of mine – the tarot.

Tarot reading about the quest

It just so happened that a friend of mine had gifted me some tarot cards that they didn’t want. They thought they would use them, but actually they weren’t suitable, but they thought that they would be perfect for me to use. I already have the Druidcraft Tarot, and was perfectly happy with the success of this deck, but nevertheless I decided to try out the “new” deck – The Tree Angel Oracle – to see how effective it might be. I must admit, I was slightly put off by the “Angel” reference and wondered if they might be a bit too “New Age” and “airy fairy” to be useful.

I would start simply – a three card draw to answer three simple questions about how I should interact with this Hawk of May and the landscape figure.

1. What gift should I bring for the Hawk? Card = The Pear – the gift should be intuitive.
2. How will we interact? Card = The Yew- in silent meditation, possibly at a yew tree, crossing into the Otherworld to meet The Hawk of May.
3. What will I gain? Card = The Sycamore – “Precision of the eagle”, “Clarity of the blue skies”, “The power of lightening” and “Breath of the winds.”

This is remarkable considering the reading was about my quest for “Meeting the Hawk of May”. Did this mean literally control of lightening and wind? I asked a psychic friend to interpret these symbols for me, and he told me that it was more to do with the wind symbolising the concept of sound, a sweeping away of barriers, and that this would signal the rise of a clairaudient ability. The lightening flash, he said, was symbolic of the ability to control these new druid powers that I was gaining. I was a little embarrassed by this, and the proof of it remains to be seen.

Soon I will recount the tale of meeting the Hawk of May and how prescient and useful these tarot card readings would be!

Gwas.

Glastonbury Pilgrimage Notes – Summer Solstice (June 2009)

On June 20th and 21st Kal and I went down to Glastonbury to begin a spiritual pilgrimage. That wasn’t our intention initially, but very quickly that’s what it turned out to be! We had no set agenda, other than a starting point that I had identified after reading Mary Caine’s book about the Glastonbury Zodiac in which she had revealed that the Girt Dog of Langport may have been the first place that initiates to the ancient druidic colleges and mystery schools landed by boat on the Isle of Avalon, the only high ground in the flooded Somerset Levels. This first contact was at Burrow Mump at Burrowbridge. So that was where we started too. From that point onwards I was hoping for some guidance from elsewhere as to the path I should take.

Little did I know quite how successful that approach would be! What follows is an account of how we were lead through the Isle of Avalon, each site opening at least one of my chakras, to profound effect. Follow me now as I show you the trail and the experiences I had – truly a solstice to remember.

Stage 1: Burrow Mump – Throat Chakra

We started the morning looking for the nose that formed the Girt Dog of Langport. Having read Mary Caine’s book about the Glastonbury Zodiac I was interested that she considered it to be the entrance way for the initiate into the Isle of Avalon and the Mystery School transformation process. Not that I was going to subject myself to some sort of masonic ritual! I believe the tradition to be far older than that, and to have been a spiritual initiation of the kind that is symbolically referenced in ancient Welsh bardic texts. Certainly, now that I am recounting this story I feel as though it is the transformation that you seek for yourself that you find, and nothing to do with arcane and involved rituals. Just time, patience, endeavour and a willingness to try.

I was not convinced as to the existence of all 12 of the zodiac signs in the Glastonbury landscape (13 including the dog) despite Mary Caine’s well-argued case. I felt that some of the signs were older – especially the incongruous Girt Dog, which equates to the dog Dormarth – the companion of Gwyn ap Nudd. I am starting to formulate the idea that there may have been only five original shapes – the original fixed zodiac signs and the dog, but that’s an argument that I will spell out in another post. The Girt Dog fitted with the Gwyn ap Nudd tales, but was out of place with the zodiac signs, many of whose shapes I feel were a bit ‘forced to fit’. Nevertheless I felt there as something in the Dog, and that it would form a good starting point, as I hadn’t visited it before on previous visits. We bought an Explorer Map of the area and located it.

The Church of St.Michael

We followed dowsing rods to locate the most energetic paths for ourselves to the top. As usual, Kal’s solar path weaved a little but was almost direct, whereas my lunar-oriented path wandered around ascending at intervals and circling around each of the trees on the slope’s southern side. Then we arrived at the ruins of the St.Michael’s Church on the top of the Mump. If you’ve been reading our posts on this site for a while you’ll know the significance of St.Michael – the archangel of Christianity who pins the dragon energy, or Dark forces, under his sword of Light. However, another way of seeing it, as I saw it that day, was that the Archetype of Light was dominating the natural balance of energies. There ought to be a constant battle between Light and Dark, as is the flow of the forces in Nature. To dominate and subdue the dark forces throws the human world into a state of imbalance. This is how I felt standing in St.Michael’s Church on Burrow Mump – the earth and radiant energy forces were being subjugated by the design and designation of the church. The design channelled the energies, whilst the designation ensured that generations of believers would imbue the site with their dedicatory energies, maintaining the imbalance in the name of the Light (the Sun, the Male force).

Is not Christianity just such a religion? Does it not promote The Light and seek to eradicate The Dark, vilifying it as “evil” and un-holy? Has it not tried to associate all the worst aspects of humanity with the forces of darkness, of night and of magic? The result has been 2000 years of what Terence McKenna would call “the dominator culture“, promoting masculine ideals, favouring male energies, denigrating and subjugating the feminine. Only now is the tide slowly turning in the last hundred years as we slowly transfer alignment to the new Aquarian age from the Piscean. For the established Christian Church trying to maintain masculine sun energy exclusively in the face of this turning tide will bring about the dissolution of these established institutions – unless they can change.

Dowsing The Mump
The St.Michael church was of course aligned East-West. It could hardly fail to be so. Having read Ross Nichol’s article about the layout of churches in the selected collection of his works called “In The Grove of the Druids” I knew that this ancient Sun alignment was important, as was the structure of the church, which also conformed to the divine proportions and layout of almost all early Christian churches. It also happens to be on the St.Michael ley line that the late John Michell re-discovered, and which was popularised further by Hamish Miller and Paul Broadhurst.

We set about discovering the ley lines and earth energy formations of the site. We immediately identified a strong and powerful ley line consisting of neutral, male and female energy lines. It travelled all the way through the large empty windows set into each end of the ruined church. We quickly found our respective power centres – on opposite sides of the church’s North-South walls. Mine was to the south, and consisted of female and neutral energies, whilst Kal’s was directly opposite on the northern side and registered for male and female energies. I took the picture below whilst standing in my power centre, and Kal’s was just through the arch on the opposite side.

There was also a power centre slap bang in the centre of the church. This was very interesting indeed – we learned something new here. The three types of energies coming into the church along the East-West axis was hitting a female earth energy point in the centre of the church. As it did so it split into two rays that were channelled by the church’s walls outwards in North and South directions, effectively forming….a cross! To the south this extended through my power centre as a female and neutral line. On Kal’s side (north) the line was refracted as a male and female line. What we don’t know is how the power centres at those points affected the constitution of those lines, but perhaps we can leave that for someone else to determine until we get back there another day?

As Kal will no doubt relate he was wearing a bracelet of blue stones. An unusual thing for him to do, as I had never seen him wear it before. Turns out I needed it. I dowsed for which of my chakra points this Burrow Mump energy centre would affect and got a response for the colour blue – the throat chakra. I didn’t have any context for what that might mean, but Kal decided to offer me his blue bracelet. He felt it may help my meditation, so I took it.

I used the L-rods to find the point at which I should meditate (something we are getting accustomed to doing now). A point was detected about ten feet away from the central crossing point. If you consider that the church’s design is an elongated cross resembling a human being with outstretched arms (see Ross Nichols’ essay on church design and human proportion) then this point would have equated to …you know what’s coming, right? The throat of course. I only realised this once I came to write this post. My higher self is obviously a lot more intelligent than my normal self.

From that spot I could see a visible earth energy line flowing across the landscape to the south-east. It was like a line I had seen before when I ascended from Llandrillo stone circle late one night. A softly-glowing overlay on reality. Quite beautiful and mesmerising. I saw it snake across the Levels towards a hill in the distance. It curled around the hill and out of view but I felt that this hill was the next place to visit. At this point I knew not why – Burrow Mump was our starting point but there was, as yet, no sense of any journey or purpose to our weekend visit. Oh, how that was about to change!

When we checked the map to determine where the line went (based on my description) it was pointing at Wearyall Hill (instinctively I knew which hill it was even though I’m not familiar enough yet with Glastonbury’s local geography)! Kal had been meditating on his power centre and had seen a new power centre forming at a spot that my imaginary line crossed, at the south-east corner of Burrow Mump. Kal located it with his rods, and shortly afterwards I did the same. However, the moment we had both recognised what it was, it disappeared! We decided to head for Wearyall Hill and see what we could find. Again – no agenda – no preconceptions. Just following our lines and intuitions.

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