The Hedge Druid

Posts Tagged ‘sunset’

In the last two posts I told of how I had been guided around the Isle of Iona by an errant though form named Sarah. Gwas and I had climbed the hill known as Dun I (pronunciation pending) and as Gwas moved off to work on his quests I edged further and further west. The Atlantic ocean was calling me and with a fabulous sunset in the offing, how could I refuse?

Of course I couldn’t. As you will know, there are two power points in the day that have been recognised from the Fakirs of the East to the Shamans of the West, sunrise and sunset. A sunset over the Atlantic ocean is an amazing prize to behold. Thus I was sat upon the western most part of Dun looking out at the ocean.

As I enjoyed the view the thought form Sarah materialised besides me (yep, I am seeing things). So far she had been a constant companion, showing me the energy centres and finding the Dragon for me. Now she wanted to claim her part of the bargain.

I want off this Island she said to me. I have been here for so long and I have explored its length and breadth. Now I want to leave. Weird huh? A though form with dreams of travelling? It wasn’t what I expected to be quite honest. I had the rather nostalgic notion of it wanting to be dissipated or disintegrated.

Interesting isn’t it, that even a thought form doesn’t want to die. I sat and pondered this request and as I did so the Dragon from earlier awakenings came into focus on a far off islet (can you see the small island in the middle distance above? There!) I sent a thought off to the dragon, would it take the thought-for… (er) I mean Sarah off the island. It acquiesced. Excellent.

I watched as the dragon flew over me and whisked the energy form away and into the west. I honestly felt a bit sad at her going, she had been a companion for a day and a remarkable one at that.

The remainder of the early afternoon and sunset I pondered interesting (to me thoughts). For example I wondered how I knew that Sarah was a thought form rather than a shade and my intuition eventually provided an answer. She didn’t suck energy from me. I am loath to say the words ‘as a rule’ but in my experience a quality of shades is that they are inherent misers of energy. Grab grab grab is the watch-word with them. They can talk a good game and can often have some useful knowledge but whilst they are feeding you that with a spoon, they are feasting on your energy.

With Sarah, I felt a lightness of energy, ethereal one might say. Perhaps it was because she had been given energy, unintentional as it may seem. She was a wisp, a waif, a cloud, a feather. Gentle is a word that I would also use. In the time we spent together she had never stole any energy from me nor had asked for any. Odd that.

Another curio that I wondered about whilst facing the enormity of the Atlantic was that Sarah had seemed aware, conscious, intelligent. How come? Where had that come from. Again my intuition was filling in the blanks. Perhaps if a container is created it will be filled with awareness? As is always the case, our adventures to answer questions only give us better (and weirder) questions.

So concluded our first (yes first) day in Iona. The second had more adventures in store.

Kal Malik

In the final part of my Spring Equinox posts for this year I have a small tale to tell that demonstrates how following your path leads to results even in the face of adversity and seeming inactivity. It’s a tale for those to whom perserverence is a watchword. The story follows directly from our encounters in Dove Dale. You may remember that I had met The Lady of the Dove at Lover’s Leap rock, high above the River Dove in the late evening sun. I had requested her help to know the next part of my journey and she had offered her help, but had told me that such knowledge would not (indeed could not) be given at Dove Dale. I already knew this, as I had dowsed that I would need to visit Parwich Hill in order to find such an answer.

Prangs for the memory!

We drove the few miles down the A515 then down a small country road to the village centre. From there we would have to find our own way to the hill depending on how things looked when we arrived. On arrival the village was surprisingly busy. There were narrow streets, parked cars, people milling about, and most surprisingly a coach was trying to reverse down the road that I thought we might need to go up to get to the hill. I looked across to Kal and reminded him of Imbolc when such blockages had been a sign not to visit a particular place with bad energies. Was this another bad omen? As I thought that I reversed to make space for the coach to come out into the main road and managed to back my car into a low wall. A sickening crunch and scrape noise was heard from the back of the car. Although startled, I reckoned it didn’t sound too bad and resolved to look at it later. For now we needed to find a place to park before the sun went down completely. We still had the hill to climb and we had done a lot of climbing and walking already this day. The closer I could get to the hill the better.

We parked and I looked at the scratch. It was bad. A paint job definitely – this wouldn’t wax out! Never mind. I just hoped it wouldn’t sour the visit. We found a footpath up the hill and began our final climb of the day. Ten minutes of burning calves later we were on the top of the hill looking out over the village and the surrounding countryside. I appreciated all the work I had done in the last year on getting fit! In the late evening sun the view was beautiful. We headed for a clump of trees on the summit and wandered around inside looking for the best place to meditate.

The copse on Parwich Hill at Spring Equinox

We knew where we wanted to sit, and when I found the best spot – sunlit and between two mature trees – then we settled there in order to absorb the day’s last rays. Kal sat against one and I was against the other, and each of us did our own work in the fading golden light. We had again timed it just right because the place where we sat was only now in sunlight, and when we arose it was in shadow again. We had picked the perfect time to be in the most obvious meditation place. We confirmed our intuition with the dowsing rods, but this was a formality. We already knew this was the bets place to be.

Now began to meditation to discover the purpose of my journey for the next several weeks until Beltane.

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 June 19th, 2010 – Glastonbury, Somerset.

As we did last year, Kal and I travelled down to Glastonbury to enjoy the strong sun energies that seem particularly strong around that town at this time of year. Events had conspired to come to a point for me in particular. I have been finding out what each of the stages of the seasonal year mean for me (see this post for some background on that). The result of this progress meant that I had two tasks that I wanted to achieve: firstly, to conclude the ‘current’ eighth-part of the year, and secondly to determine what the next part would be about.

The first task was to conclude the current quest. The trail of information I had been following through meditations and dowsing at various sacred sites was as follows:-

• Beltane to Solstice was a period to learn about the chakras
• The chakras consisted of seven points within the human body, fed through five pathways from the aura through to the body
• There was a way of integrating the seven chakras with the five channels to form a fully-functioning twelve-fold energy form

By working through the chakras, energising them, cleansing them, balancing them, and getting to know how they worked, it should be possible for me to integrate that knowledge into a unity, a “twelve” that was both a sum and a symbolic reference to the totality of influences over the human etheric energy body. Of course, twelve also has astrological significance, but I will come back to all this in a later post when I want to tie that into some other information related to sacred number. For now, let’s just say that the first task was to discover how to integrate the seven and five into a twelve, whatever that meant physically or spiritually.

Walking the Tor Labyrinth

We would make three trips up The Tor during our stay in Glastonbury. On the first of the journeys I felt the urge to go up barefoot. This has been something that has been happening to me more and more lately. It’s a very hippy thing to do, I realise that! I really felt, however, that I should go up barefoot. Kal of course mocked me relentlessly and pointed out that the “connection with the land” thing would be totally ruined by the concrete steps set into the sides of the hill providing an easy walkway for tourists. What he hadn’t reckoned with was the way that the “urge” would circumvent this. As I began to walk up from the ‘back’ edge – the steepest side coming from Stone Down lane – I got to a decision point. I was letting one dowsing rod guide me with one instruction: “Show me a path with a heart“. This is a reference to a phrase used in the Carlos Castenada novels that both Kal and I have read avidly as a guide to shamanism. There may be some dispute over their anthropological accuracy, but there can be little debate over their usefulness or the impact they have had upon our work now. This directive to find a path with a heart was at the core of this shamanistic philosophy, and right now I couldn’t conceive of anything being more appropriate to my intentions.

The main path went up steeply, but as I tuned into the energy path I should walk I was feeling an urge to go along the right-hand side, along one of the Tor’s labyrinth paths that headed slightly down the hill along its flank. As Kal climbed upwards straight for the top the rod indicated that I should take an alternate route. I veered off along the side path, now beginning to sense an element of danger as I realised the path was laden with thistles and nettles. I put a plea out to be guided safely through the foliage and trusted to hope that I wouldn’t dearly regret my decision to walk ‘connected’.

In the picture above you can see the outline of the path I took. You can just make out two more ridge paths above, too. The interesting thing was that the “way” I had to walk was downwards, not upwards as one might expect. Having spent time walking labyrinths and mazes recently, especially energetic ones, I was familiar with the idea that to make progress one often has to go the long way around and away from the path the your rational mind insists is the most efficient. So, I carried on until my path curved suddenly upwards to meet the main path along the spine of The Tor – the main path from the Chalice Well end.

I hope for some relief by being able to climb the main path, but very soon I was taken around the quiet side of the Tor along its other flank. This time I was rising swiftly, following what seemed to be an animal trail. To my eyes the way was clear. To Kal, who was sitting high above me just down from the top I must have looked ridiculous and random. I climbed steeply at the end to quickly reach the top. Where would the path end, I wondered, now that I was on the top? I crossed the top pat of the path I had started on, curving slowly in a Fibonnaci-style curve until I ended at the eastern wall of the church building. It was exactly the same spot where I had ended my climb last year! For a moment I was stunned. Then I also realised that I had walked up the entire hill and not been stung or prickled once by the thistles or nettles. But how….?

Mouth agape I leaned back against the supporting wall – well, either I had done something right, or something was looking out for me!

Working with the heart chakra – The Sun and Sunset

Looking back now I realise that this walk was the first part of my work with my heart chakra. Standing on that spot at the top looking out across the Somerset Levels, feeling the powerful ley line running through me – these were the preparatory steps for what was to come. This was the stage of cleansing, and a test of “heart” – was I prepared to endure the hardship of the walk up the Tor in bare feet? Could I overcome the fear of being stabbed and stung? I did. I was ready. We walked down again (this time with shoes on) in search of some food. We would return later as the sun was setting for no reason we could discern.

Hours later, now with a fantastic meal in our bellies from the wonderful Hundred Monkeys cafe on the High Street. Intending to walk around the Tor and back to our accommodation for the night, instead we happened to follow a footpath that took us over fields and towards the Tor. Unintentionally we arrived at its slopes again and decided that, seeing as the sun was about to set and the moon was out too, wouldn’t it be delightful to watch it set on the horizon? Yeah, us and fifty other people!!

We climbed the Tor again, this time with shod feet and by the fastest route. Something magical was about to happen and we wanted to be part of it. Quickly – let’s get up there! We suddenly realised, without saying anything, that we were in the right place at the right time again. At the top we settled for the sunset. Gaggles of Spanish students gabbled relentlessly throughout, which somewhat took the sheen off the moment. However, someone had thoughtfully brought a drum and was beating out a hypnotic rhythm for us to meditate to. As the sun slipped away with its warmth Kal was on one side meditating with the Sun, whilst I was on the other, holding both the Sun and Moon in view and thinking about the integration of my heart chakra energies. All very esoteric and hippy-ish, for sure!

The crack between worlds

For me, the moment was about integration. Holding the two celestial objects in view required focus, but an un-focused focus, if you know what I mean. If I concentrated on either I would lose sight of both. If I didn’t hold them in view with an intention of mind then I would not be actually doing anything. It was a balance. The act itself was the meditation. I found the balance point between meditation and concentration, between sun and moon, light and dark, and at that moment something happened within me – the drum became my heartbeat, and my heart integrated sound, sight and site. All became one.

We descended to tell our respective tales to each other. This didn’t feel like then end of this work, but in one day two powerful episodes involving The Tor had shown me that I was in the right place, that it was the right time to be here, and that I was in the right frame of mind for this integration work with the heart chakra. Still, there was one more thing to do, I knew. Would it involve this incredible powerful place again tomorrow? Indeed it would.

Gwas.