The Hedge Druid

Posts Tagged ‘psychology’

Changes with The Moon

My wife had a friend. She has worked with this friend a long time ago and they used to have happy times, but then her friend began to succumb to the stresses and strains of working in the mental health profession, and rapidly began to suffer from the very symptoms she was trying to cure. Friendship became strained. Honestly, her friend has never really recovered properly. and now, perhaps cruelly, her name is often accompanied by the prefix “Mad…” Everyone who knows her expects a whirlwind visit near to a full moon. Oh yes, despite what sceptics say, experience has taught me that this so-called myth is very true – people affected by the moon are prone to lunacy when the moon is full.

One night I heard a knock at the door. My wife was away and it was 8pm. I opened the door and Mad Lady walked straight in, chattering about seeing our cats, and 101 other topics within a ten-second burst. Definitely “hyper”! She is a buddhist and spotting an ornamental buddha perched on our fish tank she began to bow to it in little fast bows, hands clasped in prayer, and muttering incomprehensible mantras to herself and her deity. I calmly asked whether she would like a cup of tea, if she was staying? To my surprise she said yes, so I began to prepare the necessaries. All sorts of thoughts were going through my head. Mostly, “What am I going to do now?“. To be honest I had always let me wife take the brunt of her behaviour and had taken every excuse possible to slip away.

Sounds harsh, bur this lady has a lot of issues and she is a vortex of negative energies. She is a “taker”, but when well is equally a “giver”, so you just have to know when to catch her right. Sadly, she visits people most often when she’s in need, and in “take mode”. Tonight was clearly such an occasion, and this time there as no escape. this time I would have to deal with her on my own. The test was obvious to me. She was going around in circles with grief, stuck in a time loop, weighed down by the grief and guilt that accompanied the suicide of a former lover. She is spiritually and intellectually active but I know that very few of the people that she encounters are prepared to deal with her frantic and overpowering curiosity combined with such a strong neediness. People often are willing to help, but she is like a vortex of neediness that people get quickly depleted.

This time, however, the test was mine and mine alone. I prepared myself.

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When I think of Rorschach I think of that fantastic character from The Watchmen comic and film, however, it was the less than fictional Dr. Hermann Rorschach who invented the famous psychological inkblot test in 1921. Why am I telling you this? Because it prefaces the idea that human beings have a tendency to distinguish facial features in seemingly random or natural patterns and textures.

Recently Kal and I have been noticing that particular stones in stone circles have almost human features, faces that can be made out of the undulations and imperfections of the rock. Here are some examples for you to consider that come from our recent excursions to megalithic sites.

Nine Stones Close

In the rock pictured above I can see the right-facing profile of a bearded man. The man is wearing a skullcap-type helmet not unlike the one worn by Nicol Williamson in his depiction of Merlin in John Boorman’s Excalibur film – a picture I have featured in previous posts, but here it is again:

Of course it’s nonsense. However, this is not the only face in the rock we have seen recently. We don’t take pictures of all of them because they appear so regularly. Here are a few interesting ones to compare.

Stanton Drew

If you let your eyes un-focus you can clearly see a well-defined face in the lichen. When you catch it right you’ll see a skull facing to the right with head slightly tilted down. Another face with down-turned eyes and an open mouth can be seen facing you as well, but this is more contrived than the skull, which just pops out once half-focus your gaze.

Lligwy Chamber

I’ve posted this photo before, but now I can put it in context with others too. Here’s one from last year. He’s cute!

Black-eyed face

Glastonbury Abbey

Even in the hallowed sanctuary of this ancient abbey lurks a face in the rock that is possibly the easiest one to distinguish, but that many tourists seem oblivious to. If only they could make their gaze less intense, widen the searching beam of their stares, then perhaps they could also see the face of Gog in this stone in the Abbey’s museum:

Can you see that one? No? Ah, it must just be the cider or the summer heat affecting my tiny brain!

Gwas

Facing up to the fact that it’s a rock. Nothing but a rock.