The Hedge Druid

Posts Tagged ‘winter’

As the Wheel of the Year rolls through the Winter months we reach the first major milestone on 2011 – Imbolc. This festival is the first of the year’s Nature worship moments – a time to appreciate the beginnings of new life in the land. So, what are the origins and purposes of this festival? 

Daffodils soon to appear

A good explanation of Imbolc comes from the Chalice Centre website:

“The First of February belongs to Brigid, (Brighid, Brigit, Bride) the Celtic goddess who in later times became revered as a Christian saint. Originally, her festival on February 1 was known as Imbolc or Oimelc, two names which refer to the lactation of the ewes, the flow of milk that heralds the return of the life-giving forces of spring. Later, the Catholic Church replaced this festival with Candlemas Day on February 2, which is dedicated to the Virgin Mary and features candlelight processions. The powerful figure of Brigid the Light-Bringer overlights both pagan and Christian celebrations.

In most parts of the British Isles, February is a harsh and bitter month.  In old Scotland, the month fell in the middle of the period known as Faoilleach, the Wolf-month; it was also known as a’ marbh mhiòs, the Dead-month.  But  although this season was so cold and drear, small but sturdy signs of new life began to appear: Lambs were born and soft rain brought new grass. Ravens begin to build their nests and larks were said to sing with a clearer voice.

In Ireland, the land was prepared to receive the new seed with spade and plough; calves were born, and fishermen looked eagerly for the end of winter storms and rough seas to launch their boats again. In Scotland, the Old Woman of winter, the Cailleach, is reborn as Bride, Young Maiden of Spring, fragile yet growing stronger each day as the sun rekindles its fire, turning scarcity into abundance.” (source: ChaliceCentre.net)

Last year Kal and I went to Anglesey to follow the trail of Brigid along the River Braint. It was the first time that I full realised my relationship with birds of prey, particularly hawks. They were everywhere I went that day, culminating in them circling directly overhead when were ourselves going round in circles in the village of Brynsiencyn. It was a magickal experience which I will never forget.

This year Brigid has become transformed into Cailleach the crone aspect of the triple goddess. Now we are dealing with the other end of the spectrum of life and death. Whereas Bridget was the maiden aspect, Cailleach is the old lady. Therefore, I expect that the tone of this year’s pilgrimage will be different to last year’s. So, how did we know it was Cailleach and not Bridget this year? Well, she began to present herself to us – first at Ireland where she introduced herself to Kal, and then to me as a book-buying opportunity (the perfect way to introduce yourself to me).

How will this affect the way we approach the Imbolc day? In several ways. Firstly I would expect there to be a theme of life, death and regeneration involved somewhere on our long day’s journey to Lindisfarne. Here’s a section, again from the Chalice Centre site, explaining how Bridget came to symbolise being between the worlds of life and death:-

“Saint Brigid was said to be the daughter of a druid who had a vision that she was to be named after a great goddess. She was born at sunrise while her mother was walking over a threshold, and so “was neither within nor without.” This is the state known as liminality, from the Latin, limen: a threshold – the state of being “in between” places and times. In Celtic tradition this is a sacred time when the doors between the worlds are open and magical events can occur. “  (source: ChaliceCentre.net)

As a fire celebration Imbolc has become associated with anything symbolising fire, particularly candles. I will be taking some candles with me to light on Holy Island, and we will see where the dowsing rods direct me to place them, or where a sensation of it being ‘right’ comes over me. I will also be eating dairy products and maybe dedicating a few drops of milk or crumbs of cheese depending upon where I get to each my cheese sandwiches!

One of the things I need to do at Lindisfarne is to discover what the transition means for me. What tasks and duties will I be expected to perform in order to make progress on my spiritual path? Usually, I am led to a specific place to discover these answers, and then need to meditate to connect to the spirit of the time of year – in this case Cailleach or Brigid. Of course, I will report on what happens shortly after our visit on 29th January.

Gwas.

I have spent the last two weeks or more in Canada on holiday. You may have noticed that Kal has kindly taken the reins for the last few weeks and has been busily posting regularly and with some of the most interesting stuff he has ever posted on this blog. There has been so much stuff from him that even I have had trouble keeping up with it! However, I’m back now, so I have a few tales to tell of my Canadian experiences.

I honestly intended not for anything to occur for two reasons. Firstly, I was hoping for a true holiday, a real break so that I could rest and recuperate, and not have to think about anything. The plan was to drive across Canada, go skiing with my father who had flown in from Australia, and then drive back just in time for me to have a day off for the Winter Solstice, and then back into work just before Christmas. Secondly, I thought that my druidic feelings were in some way linked to Albion, the lands of the so-called United Kingdom and Brittany, and that perhaps they only “worked” in that environment. Of course, that is ridiculous, but that was the mindset that I went away with, determined not to get drawn into doing any energetic work until I returned home.

Interestingly, despite my intentions, my clairvoyant friend Michael had told me that I would not get away with a complete break, and that my talents would be called upon to do some work whilst I was away. I had visions of having to heal painful and sore bits of bodies after skiing accidents, but tried to put that idea out of my mind. In a magickal mind what is wished for comes to pass! On this holiday I would simply be myself, and Gwas the Hedge Druid would have to take a rest for a few weeks, is what I told myself. It was not to be.

The amusingly-named Lake Minnewanka

People go to Lake Minnewanka just to have their photo taken with the information board, or at least that’s what one of the English ski instructors at Big White ski resort told me afterwards. I could believe that – I tittered a little as we drove in our hire car down the scarily snow-bound tracks towards the lake that hotel staff had insisted was a special place to visit. We were in no rush, having three whole days to traverse the Canadian Rockies before arriving at the ski resort. The lake seemed like a nice idea. My wife gripped the sides of the passenger seat the whole way and jumped out of her skin at every corner. I was doing 20 mph but it felt like 90! No-one else was daring to venture down these roads at this time of year so we had the lake to ourselves when we arrived at the car park.

Lake Minnewanka

Lake Minnewanka is known as the Lake of the Spirits. Reading that made me feel a bit funny in my tummy. Something stirred, something that I had been trying to keep a lid on for the last few days. I got out my dowsing rods and gave in to the inevitable:-

1. Is there anything for me to do here at this lake? – YES.
2. Are there any spirits around today at this lake? – big YES.
3. Am I at the correct energetic level to work with these spirits? – YES.

All very positive, so I asked the rods to lead me to a place where I could best communicate with these lake spirits. The rods began to turn back towards a small and heavily snow-laden path that seemed to lead away from the lake., nevertheless I convinced M that I knew what I was doing. She looked doubtful, but trudged along behind me as I blazed a trail through virgin snow. Five minutes later we realised that this obscure path was actually the only path the really did lead us to the lake’s edge, and if we had gone the more obvious route then we would have been unable to go far at all. Now we were standing in the most beautiful cove at the side of the lake (can lake’s have coves?) and the sun was hiding behind the clouds over the dramatic peaks before us.

A watery view

Meeting the Lake Spirits

As M amused herself with the views and paying in the snow I felt like this was a moment to make a connection. I stood still, and let my mind go as still as the lake. I tried to open out into the lake, feeling for a connection. Before anything happened I put up a little bit of protection against anything unpleasant, and then was able to freely expand my aura out into the lake’s near-freezing waters as I stood calf-deep in snow.

A strong wave of emotion overtook me – a swell of nice, warm and inspirational emotion which almost made my eyes water with its sweetness. Wow – what a welcome! I reciprocated immediately and felt a two-way flow of energy from the lake, through me and back again. This was wonderful! After a few moments wallowing in the feeling I decided to put the energy to some use. Now that we had a bond I wanted my own familiar water spirit to join in too, so I called her to come and play. I had promised her (rashly, I suppose) that I would take her to some incredible places if she worked with me, and now I was able to again fulfill this promise. I called her to join our energy flow and felt her inclusion almost immediately. Again I took a moment to enjoy the mixture of energies, the emotional flow and the immensely beautiful feeling that made every chakra point along my spine tingle with excitement. At that moment I brought all four elements and elementals together in my mind, and everything unified.

I asked the spirits if I might make a deal. Could they offer me their wisdom and protection during my stay in Canada, and in return I would offer them my life’s experience to download into the lake for them to experience for themselves? I had no idea where the idea for this came from, but it seemed like the only thing I had to offer that was personal and profound and worthy. I felt a positive agreement so I began to exchange information with the lake spirits, almost like downloading a copy of a file onto a computer hard drive. The exchange happened within a minute and then I felt the flow subside. I said my fond farewells and came back to consciousness.

I felt like I had been asleep for years. As my eyes tried to adjust to the whiteness of the snow landscape the sun moved out from behind a cloud and appeared perfectly framed over the edge of the mountains opposite. I reached for my camera quickly to capture the moment (pictured above). This was the salute of the sun that accompanied all our successful magickal encounters, and it was no surprise to me that the dowsing rods confirmed what had happened.

A deer encounter

I tried to explain to M what had happened, but I left out most of the details, simply reducing it to a beautiful encounter with the lake spirits. She smiled in a kind of “that’s nice dear” way. She had been busy looking out for mountain goats, bears, elk, caribou and moose whilst I was busy communingAn interaction with an invisible and natural sentient force that is independently identifiable, even if it cannot be named or classified. The interaction takes place at the level of a subtle amalgamation of the mind of the perceiver such that a dialogue or transference of feelings may occur between the two sentient parties. The interaction that is ‘communing’ is purposefully initiated by the perceiver for the express purpose of learning or simply to transfer feelings in a sympathetic manner. with the lake. She hadn’t seen a thing – not a human soul nor any animal. She was a bit disappointed at the loneliness of the place, but I wasn’t – I knew it was filled with beneficent spirit energies and I was beaming from ear to ear.

We trundled slowly and carefully back to the main road along the snowy forest tracks. As we reached the summit of a hill I slowed the car down…something had caught my eye at the side of the road, and suddenly M identified what it was: “Look! It’s deer! Stop the car!” she shouted. I pulled over as gently as I could, expecting the deer to start and bounce away into the depths of the forest. Instead, as we wound the window down to take a picture they actually began to approach us! Domesticated deer? Unlikely!! But here they were…looking at us in the eye. M was enraptured – it totally made her day.

A close encounter with two deer

From that moment onwards the holiday only got more delightful, as we found amazing views, got accommodation upgrades, had perfect skiing and driving weather, and generally had a fantastic time. We both felt that this was something to do with our encounter at the lake.

Gwas.

Section 7. Summary of the Year

In order to organise our thoughts Kal and I came up with some questions the answers to which we hoped might summarise the way that year has gone for us – what were the bits we expected, what exceeded our expectations, and which things arose to meet us on this path that we didn’t anticipate? Here are my answers to this year’s questions.

What did I think I was going to learn?

1. Whether specific periods of the year are more energetic than others, and whether those periods align to the calendrical eight-fold year.
2. How stone circles work in terms of their energy
3. Whether specific geology affects the energetic responses from sites

By the summer of 2009 I had already established to my satisfaction that there was a difference in the strengths of energies at the Spring Equinox and Summer Solstice. I was sure that there was more powerful sun energy (i.e. stronger male energy) at the Summer Solstice. The Spring and Autumn Equinoxes were very similar in strength, and were a balance of male and female earth energies. At the Winter Solstice the male energies were very weak, as was the Sun. The female energies fluctuated only in relation to the strength of the Moon and the input from nearby trees, again weaker in Winter.

Determining any objective means of measurement was difficult, as our own energy levels seemed to be a factor in how well we could dowse or do energy work at a site, however a scale of measurement (strength from 1-10) seemed to work for the purposes of obtaining some data that could be compared between sites. The solstice and equinox dates depended upon the quality of the Sun to determine the amount of additional energy was at the site compared to our visits to them on other dates.

The Celtic Festival dates (Lammas, Beltane, Samhain and Imbolc) in between those times were much harder to figure out. These dates seems to depend upon the position of the Moon for their effects upon ancient sites., rather than the Sun’s effect. I will be posting much more on this soon, complete with a table of the relative energy levels at various sites dowsed this year.

Further theories have emerged concerning the operation of energies at stone circles and other sites too. See the Earth Energies and Ancient Sites Summary posts for details on those.

We have kept a weather-eye on the geology of sites whilst dowsing this year. It started for me in Carnac when I discovered that the stone rows were placed along a shelf of rock quite different from the surrounding geology of the rest of the nearby coastline. We have concurred with the popular dowsing theory that geological faulting is important to the situation of ancient sites, as is often the presence of water, but we do not wholly agree with the necessity of water (or a ‘blind spring’ formation) being present at all ancient neolithic sites. Some major sites such as Stonehenge and The Rollright Stones do have this water formation, however, and we think these popular sites may have led to the popularity of the idea amongst the dowsing fraternity that such a formation is necessary to a strong energy site. We do not find this to be true.

'CARNAC: Des Pierres Pour Les Vivants' by Pierre Mereaux

What’s been the surprise?

1. Crop circles being designed by some intelligence beyond the confines of this planet – expected them to be of human design and manufacture.
2. The energetic and healing potential of running water – Pistyll Rhaeadr and Viktor Schauberger convinced me of this at different ends of the year. At Pistyll Rhaeadr waterfall my wife’s twisted ankle was healed in minutes. Later I read Schauberger’s theories on the properties of water and I understood how this could have come about.
3. A spiritual pilgrimage being worthwhile doing, and not some soulless religious historical trail as I had imagined it to be.

1. Astrology - There is a correlation, a link, between the relative positions of the stars and a human being. My natal chart is stunningly accurate in assessing my personality traits. Kal and I have also discovered that we are energetically linked to particular planets – Kal to Mercury and myself to Venus. We are more energetically ‘loaded’ or ‘charged’, and more energy work is possible, when our respective planets are visible. I have tracked this since the beginning of the year and have each dowsing response confirms this.
2. Elemental beings and cloud sylphs – I see some this year on four separate occasions and each time I was stunned by the effect – this was no mere simulacrum. Seeing faces in the clouds must be the third and conclusive qualifying factor in any signs of madness developing – that much I do appreciate, but nevertheless, they have been present at quite specific times of high energy.

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