Another Circle...........

I have to say, everything they say about Glastonbury is probably true. As an artist and mythologist, "truth" to me is a subjective and relative business, full of circular way ways of seeing, so "geomantic intensity", "genus loci", "grace" and the Lady of the Lake and the Springs can all be equally true and potent. And in some way that I leave to far more scientific minds than mine to explain, intention has a lot to do with it as well.  My intention was to make, as so many have before me, a Pilgrimage to Glastonbury - and walking forward into the experience with that intention was like opening a door for the holy to come in.  And "holy", like "wholly" means to me experiences that expand circular vision, that reveal the "wholeness" of things.  A place of pilgrimage, and an intention of pilgrimage, open such doors of perception.   Circles, like the Vesica Piscis, sacred symbol of the Goddess, that caps the Chalice Well, Circles within Circles.

Circles!  And the Circle has no end.  I think, when we find ourselves in those "holy places and holy times" (which doesn't mean it always has to be "aesthetic" and "beautiful" - sometimes profound beauty is, like the power of the Goddess Kali,  terrible, terrible to behold.....) 

Circles within circles, like the ripples on the holy waters of the  springs, everywhere I turn.  The night before last I went to a talk by a local author, and was handed a program from the organization he was speaking for - in it were two articles, one about Sedona, Arizona, the other by a woman named Patricia Cota-Robles, who lives in Tucson, Arizona (where I'm from).   How likely is that?  But it got my attention.  The talk was much about centering...........and finding the holy where you are.   Places like Avebury and Glastonbury are sacred indeed, but we can also make a shrine in our backyards, our studios, we can bring the sacred into how we receive and are nourished by the food we eat, how we prepare it for a friend who's come to dinner.

(It also got me to thinking, as a feminist, as he talked about the transformation of consciousness, how few people talk about the huge transformation of human consciousness taking place now with the infusion of women's mind, voice, values and spirituality.  That is also what the return of the Goddess means to me, the balancing of the human psyche.....but more on that later.) 

Photo by John Haxby

So......another Circle for me was to finally meet again my mentor Sig Lonegren and his wife Karen.  Sig, in some ways, set me on my path of wondering about sacred places, and he taught me how to dowse for the subtle energies of place.  That was 30 years ago, when he taught in Vermont,  and I shall always be grateful for the catalyst.  Another powerful catalyst, for me, was the poet and bard, Robin Williamson, whose music and stories I have carried with me for many years.  It began at the Unitarian Church in Tucson, when I heard him perform.  Well, guess what?  It's my last Saturday here, and he's performing at another church, this time St. John's right here in Glastonbury!  I can't believe it, but, blessed be, here's another Circle.  So I'm taking the liberty of sharing again a post and story on video about Robin I wrote earlier this year.

Robin Williamson captured my mythic imagination with narrative poem "5 Denials on Merlin's Grave".  Here the Bard tells a shorter tale, but a very, very good one, with  Silbury Hill in the background (by Glaznoz. )