Angels in Indiana - Sacred Mounds and Camp Chesterfield

 I have been a blue salmon,

I have been a dog, a stag, 

a roebuck on the mountain,

 A stock, a spade, an axe in the hand,

 A stallion, a bull, a buck,

 I was reaped and placed in an oven;

 I fell to the ground when I was being roasted

 And a hen swallowed me.

 For nine nights was I in her crop.

 I have been dead,

 I have been alive.

....from "The Song of Taliesin", an ancient Celtic Bard

Well..........synchronicities and grace abounds on this journey!  

Camp Chesterfield

Camp Chesterfield

Enroute to a brief visit to Lilydale and Brushwood, with an exhausting drive ahead, I thought to stop at Camp Chesterfield, about 35 miles above Indianapolis.  I vaguely was heading to Lilydale to get a reading, and longed to just walk in the old growth woods of a highly energized place.  I had heard of Camp Chesterfield, another Spiritualist center established about 130 years ago, not long after Lilydale was formed.  I managed to find it, and the little town of Chesterfield, just about dusk, and realized I would barely have time to find a motel somewhere, as the old hotel was not open.

I stood there somewhat dismayed in the gathering twilight.  But when I asked directions of three friendly people where were walking the grounds, they invited me to walk with them.  In the course of the walk, one of them, a resident medium, invited me to stay at her house,  and I ended up spending the week at the home of Normandi Ellis, who, it turned out, desperately needed someone  to help with the photos for her book - which needed to go to her publisher right away.   I mentioned that I was an artist and had Photo Shop in my laptop - and in the course of the next two days we illustrated the book and off it went on time. Her publisher is Inner Traditions, and the book is about Egyptian spirituality.  Normandi got her illustrations, and I got to experience Camp Chesterfield!

Normandi Ellis has led many trips to Egypt, and is a Priestess of Isis, as well as a medium and clairvoyant, poet, teacher and author.  She knew many people I know, from the Fellowship of Isis, including my good friend Mana, and had just attended an event my ex husband was at! 

Mediums homes

I guess I was where I was meant to be, and still am, as I will remain until Monday in order to attend the opening of their season and to celebrate the Summer Solstice.    Camp Chesterfield must have had a huge following in its heyday - there are two hotels (one is not used), meeting halls,  temples, and beautiful grounds with old growth trees.  It's population has decreased, and it is not as prosperous or populous as Lilydale in New York - sadly, a number of the old summer houses are empty.  Perhaps new blood will come to revive and fill some of those old houses, because it is full of light, and the mediums I met here are impressive. 

I had a reading with Patricia Kennedy, who is a long time medium and resident of Camp Chesterfield.   She's a lovely, funny, energetic woman in her 80's.  She was amazingly right on - without knowing anything about me, she told me she saw Florence (my mother's name) with Glenn (my brother), both deceased this year, and that they were happy.  She saw my mother with flowers,  in particular roses, which was very true of her.  She was always a prize gardener, and grew up in Pasadena, California, home of the Rose Parade. 

Patricia cleared up some important questions for me, emphasizing that this year was about the end of my old life, and beginning a new life.  With the death of my mother I  am no longer a caretaker, and new opportunities open for me.  Patricia said that I had been "paying off Karmic debts", and now that time  was over.  She brought up my focus on the Earth, elementals, herbs, and my need to find balance and new commitment - which was true also.  As I drove a few days ago, I thought about my long fascination with earth mysteries, my disappointment that I will not be visiting Avebury this year, and my desire to do a series of "Earth Shrines and Reliquaries".   

Something surprising.......she said that in a past life I had been a Rabbi.  I thought immediately of how, when my daughter was born (I was 17, and like many young women of my time, had to give her up for adoption) I requested that she be adopted by a Jewish family, even though I am not Jewish.  And she was.  Strange, now that I think of it, that I would make that request..............

Camp Chesterfield

Patricia also mentioned, in her trance state, my need for Balance.  This is surely true for me personally, and I  also think of my long dedication to the arising of the Divine Feminine within  today's world  - "restoring the Balance" to the sanctity of the Earth and the human imagination.   So, I got what I came for..........a reading  that truly made me feel I was visited by my mother and brother, which gave me comfort and helps to release them and move on.  And affirmation of a new direction in my life as well.   

And I still haven't even made it to Lilydale!  Ask and ye shall receive.............

Mounds State Park  is  a very lovely Native American sacred site.  Camp  Chesterfield is  not far from the Park, and it seems to me as a dowser (and the residents of Camp Chesterfield say as much as well)  that both sites are related, perhaps part of the same sacred or ceremonial landscape.  

Remembering  Avebury and most stone circles to be found in the UK and Europe, the Great Mound here in Indiana at Mounds Park is a Henge.  It's not on the scale of Avebury, of course, but a Henge it is, with alignments apparently to the Solstices and other celestial phenomena.  It is fascinating to contemplate that this similar structure occured in America, far away indeed from the ancient ceremonial landscapes of Avebury and Stonehenge - and that the henge structure was significant to ancient Native Americans.    The land feels indeed highly energized.  Some areas, as I walked through the park, took my breath away with the sense of geomantic energy.    It's not easy to see the shapes of the Mounds as the area is fenced and also has many ancient trees growing in the site, but circling it allows one to get an idea. 

Old growth trees, Mound

 The site is about 2,000 years old, created by the pre-historic Hopewell peoples, and was apparently not a site they lived at, but rather a place they visited probably, as in many other sacred sites for ceremony and gatherings.   Like the many European and United Kingdom sites, there is no evidence that the Mounds were used as burial sites either, at least, not until over 1,000 years later in their history.  A sacred place, employing geomantic potency, revered by the unknown Native American peoples who built it so long ago.  

view of henge

It makes sense that Camp Chesterfield was built nearby.  In fact, synchronistically, I received an email from Geomancer Sig Lonegren a day ago, and reading, thought of an article he wrote in his Blog in which he brought forth the idea that the original function of the sacred sites was to amplify the effect of geomantic potency so that, in essence, the ancients could "speak with the earth and the spirit world". 

view of Henge (note snakelike form in photo - ?)

Perhaps the builders of the Great Mound were pleased to see the Spiritualist community Camp Chesterfield arise in their sacred landscape.  And I feel blessed by all of this.

ancient hieroglyphs on a tree (ha ha)

Visitations, Mediums, and a Mythic Universe......

Luna Moth at my door

"I let my life be guided by a strange language that I call “signs”. I know that the world is talking to me, I need to listen to it, and if I do so I shall always be guided towards what is most intense, passionate and beautiful. Of course, it is not always easy.  If you trust life, life will trust you."

         Paolo Coelho

You know, sometimes the best, most profound  things can't be told, hence the origins of the word "mystery", which is from the Greek, a word identified with the Eleusinian Mysteries  meaning "that which cannot be spoken".  But this is a journal, and so I'll try.....perhaps that inability to express what I experience as a "mythic"  universe has to do with the coming together at times of so many different dimensions, multiple levels of synchronicity, metaphor, and perception.   See?  How do you talk about it  except through poetry, art, or metaphor?

"There's a crack in everything - that's how the light gets in." ~~~ Leonard Cohen

Once I got on the road synchronicities and insights  have flooded into my daily life - that's what happens when you enter "liminal zones", those places, times, and activities that are transitional, that put us into the creative space of becoming.  Travel can do that, art process and meditation can do it, and critical times in our lives can do it as well.  My wise friend Wendy talks about the "shamanic initiation", those events in our lives that "crack" us open, times that challenge our beliefs and assumptions.  Painful as those times are, they are also times when door open into new vistas of perception and possibility.

In Chautauqua county, my other life floods in, along with the rain and humidity I've missed in the desert.   Lilydale's and Brushwood's  energy is high, and there is  also such joyful elemental energy there, which you feel as soon as you arrive.  Joining a circle at Lilydale, I found my old sensitivity still present, if rusty, and was able to take several "messages"  as well as receiving significant information for myself from the facilitating medium, Stephanie.  She commented accurately on my bad ankle, saying that it was to make me "slow down"......and at a Sunday service, another medium singled me out (even though I was hiding in the back row) and told me I needed to "slow down" again. Hmm.......I need to think about that.

Stopped for several days to visit Wendy, a friend I met in 2003.  Wendy is a true Medium - her sensitivity began  at 4  when she suffered kidney failure and almost died.  She was also struck by lightning as a child.  She believes these two events brought about her sensitivity.  It  took her many years, and a painful childhood, to come to grips with those gifts.  Wendy amazes me, as she lives simultaneously in two or more worlds, all day long, every day - and it's difficult for people who aren't mediums themselves, or well educated in metaphysics and the "paranormal" to understand her.  She's a successful career woman, living in a town and profession where her gifts are completely unknown to her colleagues, and she's also a medium who sometimes chooses to do readings, helps with hauntings, is an artist, and for fun, goes ghost hunting with colleagues. 

I feel Wendy has helped me to understand my own perceptions  a great deal in the course of our conversations.  To work "inter-dimensionally", as mediums do, one must learn to think in,  as Wendy puts it, "Dream Time" terms, which includes thinking symbolically and without the construct of sequential time as we understand it "in the flesh".  For her, spirits are all around, familiar spirits come to help her or just to visit, people in need of help, people who want to contact someone (usually associated with someone close to her).  Sometimes she sages the room because she has energies she doesn't want there, or just doesn't have the time.

She has a "ghost hunter" machine, a little machine that makes white noise.  I sat for half an hour with her while she asked questions, and hear the machine produce scratchy, sometimes lucid, responses, from what sounded like different voices trying to talk through a very bad phone connection.  I clearly heard "hello", "Wendy", and other short phrases.  I also smelled pipe smoke, and Wendy's face lit up.  "That's my Dad" she said.

This past Solstice there was a tragedy at Brushwood - a young woman had heart failure and died suddenly.  I remember seeing this young woman several times before the event, and being unable to stop looking at her for two reasons - she looked  very much like a very young version of my own daughter, very vulnerable, and she also "glowed" - there was a luminosity about her and I couldn't stop staring at her.  When I told Wendy about this sad event, she said that people who are dying always have a "glow" to them.  She said when she sees that in people, she knows they are getting ready to leave, because time, in the spirit world, does not have the same meaning it does here.  When I went to the area she died in, I did prayers to the Mother for her - and was surprised in my meditation there to clearly see the image of a tall woman taking the hand of a young person, and a sense of peace.  What I take from this, having talked with Wendy, is that I also saw this young woman as looking like my daughter because, perhaps, that energy of Mother, her own and the divine Mother, was what was needed to help her spirit.  I am no expert on this highly subjective experience.........

Spending time with Wendy can be intense!  I hope someday, perhaps when she retires, she'll become interested in perhaps living and working at Lilydale, because she's a powerful healer on a multitude of levels, a true shaman.   She gave me a great gift, which it's going to take me time to unfold, although my friend said that in the spirit world, it's "already done", because all time is happening at once.

We had been talking about the very convincing  documentary on Animal Planet about mermaids washing up with whales after the navy's horrific sonar testing.  It's a hoax, of course, although tragically the death of so many whales is not.  We were sitting at the table drinking coffee and Wendy's eyes misted.  She said "Excuse me, but someone is here, and I think it's important".  She said that a very tall, thin, very black man in a flat, disc like mask that was black with a white band across the eye holes and a red spot on the "forehead" was standing right behind me.  He put his hands on my shoulders (as a blessing?).  He told her he was something like "samarai" but it was a difficult accent for her to understand, and that he wanted me to help in some way.  He said that I would help to "revive Yemeja". 

Then Wendy said she perceived a large number of people, his tribe.  They were showing her images of the ocean, and offerings to the ocean, fruit, baskets, fish, and small white shells.  Tears were running down her face (Wendy says that when the energy is very intense this happens) and she said that he was thanking me.  Then they were gone.  Wendy said this was "high voltage", and for a while she continued to have tears in her eyes.  For myself, not perceiving this, I said that I was grateful, I thanked him and them, and said that I would do what I could to the best of my abilities.

I think this will unfold in the future, its meanings.  But I reflect that Yemaja, Mother Ocean, is an Orisha* originating in West Africa among the Yoruba people and perhaps others, is often shown as a black mermaid.  The destruction of intelligent life in the ocean, the whales, the dolphins, by navy sonar testing, is very real.  We are, indeed, killing Yemeja as well as the whales.   I am among many artists, mythologists, and activists who are trying to change consciousness about our living earth, to revive the sanctity that our ancestors once had.  Before it's too late.

I looked on Google for flat disc masks such as a tribal shaman might wear, and found that there are indeed many such in Africa, although I have not found one such as Wendy described.  However, I did discover that there is an extensive group of people with a long cultural history called the "Songhai", which sounds quite similar to "Samarai", and some of their domain touched the western ocean on Africa's shores.

*Orisha are Spirits  of nature and are responsible for the rules which govern nature.  Orisha are anthropomorphized with human characteristics for the purpose of understanding their essence and being able to extrapolate psychological constructs.Orisha Worship came to the Americas with the African slave trade over a period of 400 years.   In addition the slaves blended their African practice with the Catholic religion to hide their overt practices from Europeans.  In this manner, the traditions of Lukumi and Santeria were born.

Travels Part Two

Super Full Moon reflected in pond at Brushwood on Solstice night

to know the composing of the thread
inside the spider's body
first atoms of the web
visible tomorrow

to feel the fiery future
of every matchstick in the kitchen

Nothing can be done
but by inches.  I write out my life
hour by hour, word by word
imagining the existence
of something uncreated
this poem
our lives

from "Incipience", by Adrienne Rich

 I don't know why I urgently wanted to excerpt from this 1972 poem by Adrienne Rich, except that I did.  It seems to me that traveling partakes of something this poem speaks about,  life lived between "points of departure and arrival", lived by  increments, mile by mile receding and proceeding. 

Stopping for a few weeks now.  The  familiar forest, the cluttered common studio, even the moss garden I made deep in the woods to honor a lightning struck patriarch of an old-growth maple tree, even that remains much the same after 7 years of snow, melt, rain, spring and falls.........I reflect on how we exist in a different frame of time than does the land.  Max, not even born to Teresa when I made that moss garden is now 7, tall and bright and talkative.  Frank, who suffers from Parkinsons, is no longer talkative, and every word he speaks he strains to produce and others strain to hear or comprehend - I remember our conversations in previous years......and I turn away, disturbed, a little ashamed,  not knowing what he thinks behind those tired eyes, not knowing how to communicate anymore.  Here is one who should not be left mute in old age. 

"Stump Service" in Leolyn Wood, Lilydale Spiritualist Community

Travelogue  #2:

I was happy to arrive at Lilydale Spiritualist Village in Chautaqua County, New York, several days before the Summer Solstice, where I stayed for a few days.  I immediately went to walk in Leolyn Woods, an Old Growth Grove that has been preserved there, and is an important place for their "stump services" during the summer season of Lilydale.  For me, it's the true Temple,  the tall trees and deep silence of the wood demonstrating what the entire east coast was once like before it was mostly deforested.  The trees have potency, presencee - it reminds me of the feeling I've had when I was in Muir woods, or among the Sequoias in California.  To walk in an ancient grove like that, feeling keenly the elemental powers, the breath of the world being made there, the trees silent with generations of prayers invested in them.    


Lilydale, like Brushwood Folklore Center in nearby Sherman, is a kind of home to me, and both places embody the unique qualities of Chautauqua County.  I'm not alone in feeling the "burned over zone" is another Vortex area, but fortunately, it's a pretty well kept secret!

Maplewood Hotel in Lilydale

Lilydale is, for anyone who hasn't heard of it, the oldest and largest Spiritualist community in the U.S.  For many summers people have come to this charming town, with it's haunted hotels that boast large paintings presumably manifested by spirits, the Grove with its Stump Services where the mediums come and give impromptu readings, and the beautiful Healing Temple where you can experience hands on healing.   Lilydale offers many workshops, from mediumship development to native American sweat lodges, and many Circles one can join to receive and learn how to share messages from the Spirit World.  Not to mention the crew from "Ghost Hunters", SyFy's long running reality show, who also show up yearly.  Apparently, they feel very comfortable with the mediums.

It's easy for people who know nothing about the beliefs and practices of Spiritualism to call it "Sillydale", but  if you've ever spent time at Lilydale and felt the uplifting energy of the place, you would leave with a different mind.  For myself, I'm hoping I will have time this summer to work with several of the mediums here I respect.

Circle on Lake Cassadega

Memorial stones in Leolyn Wood

Registered medium's home and sign

Stones at pet cemetary

The Stump at Stump Service

And here's a few photos from the beautiful Summer Solstice, which featured a Full Moon this year, in fact, the Moon was its closest to the earth. Real magic.   And with the odd eclectic nature of this rural area, just over the hill the nearest neighbors are an Amish family, their buggy visible from the road when one drives by.   How strange drumbeats in the woods must seem to them.........or maybe not.  Different worlds coexisting here.

Well, it's 115 degrees in Tucson right now, which, no matter how used one is to it, horrifying.  I'm very glad to be here in the green conversation of the Northeast.

Drums in the Woods and dancing the Spiral Dance