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.)
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. )
Say not "I have found the truth", but rather, "I have found a truth." Say not "I have found the path of the soul" but say rather "I have met the soul walking upon my path." For the soul walks upon all paths. The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed. The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.
Kalil Gibran
I find myself fascinated with the stone history of England, of the British Isles. Whether prehistoric Avebury and Stonehenge tracing the Dragon Lines and the eddies and flows of the subtle body of the land, or the tall spired medieval cathedrals with their stonework carved and curved and tendrilled like vines and trees that will never wither, the stone castle I visited, once a Saxon fort, or the heavy, massive old slate roofs I find it hard to believe continue to be supported, not for decades, but for centuries. Everywhere the people of this rocky land patiently took the stones, great and small, and built everything they inhabited, whether temple, church, barn or well. These stones have songs in them, stories with almost-words. I take my shoes off, bare feet on the cold bedrock, perhaps to listen.
I think this pebbled mosaic, this quarried bedrock, these standing stones so carefully placed by ancient hands ..... speak, strangely, of constant change. All the feet that have walked here, the hands shaping, touching, shimmering.
"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."
"The deepest spiritual energies of the Red Spring relate to the future: to the emergence of a reborn and rebalanced divine masculine energy that can complement and eventually conjoin with the Goddess energy that is so venerated in Avalon. This last stage of the alchemical work, involving the balanced union of a rejuvenated solar king-god with a goddess-queen in a symbolic heart centre, such as the pool in King Arthur's court, has long been delayed by our deep neglect of the divine feminine. Since the recent cleansing of the White Spring, the spiritual and healing powers of the two springs can now manifest in a more balanced way."
Nicholas Mann and Philippa Glasson, "The Red and White Springs of Avalon"
I seem to be unable to leave Glastonbury.......my plans of travelling to Scotland, and then Cornwall, are frustrated by the fact that it's high tourist season during the month of August, and virtually everything is booked up, and the price is also doubled! I haven't been able to find a B&B, a hostel, or a hotel that had a vacancy, or that I could afford. Yet I have kindly been offered a spare room here by a priestess from the community. Many circles of my life seem to loop and complete here.....so I feel certain that Avalon is where I should be, and the Lady of Avalon has something to stir in me.
This has been a pilgrimage place for countless years...........from the Stones of Avebury to the great ruined Abbey of Glastonbury, people have come here, and they continue to come, many I suspect, not really knowing why, but drawn nevertheless. They come to touch the Holy Places that have their ultimate source in the body of the life-sustaining, mysterious, creative, deep powers of the Earth. It's good if you can do it in a sacred manner, if you can approach with reverence - but when confronted with the beauty and magic of these places, I don't know that it's necessary. You leave changed.
"The Red Spring" (Chalice Well)
Yesterday I walked to the White Spring, one of the two Wells of Glastonbury. The Red Spring is the Chalice Well, and it's waters carry red iron oxide. The White Spring leaves a white calcium residue where it runs. The White Spring is underground, and illuminated only by candles, which were tended, when I was there, by a young man who reverently changed them and kept the space. I thought of the Roman term for a priest/priestess - the "Flamenalis", the one who lights the flames, and tends the sacred flames, holds the space for others.
I entered the dark blind, and only gradually saw the interior with the help of candlelight. Ah, the intensity of that space, the sound of the running water coming from the underground spring, the big dark stone pool illuminated only candles, the whisper of a few "pilgrims" actually taking their clothes off and quietly climbing into the pool. People have set up different shrines in niches of the (large) underground enclosure, and a little Black Madonna figure is enshrined just over the Spring head.
There is a shrine for the White Lady of the Spring, who also seems to me to be the Lady of Avalon - she greets you as your eyes adjust. I don't really know that.........the painting could also be offered to Bridget, from whose name the River Brue probably derives, and also, perhaps, the very name of the British Isles, Britannia. Bridgit was the Goddess long before she became a Saint.
But I was drawn to a shrine created from twigs and branches, in the center of which was a candle lit painting of a Goddess with offering, open hands. I sat down within the shrine, and truly felt as if I sat beneath the roots of a tree, deep in the Earth.
"She will Rust us with Blossom
She will Seal Us with Her Seed."
I think, in that place, the Goddess, by whatever name you may conceive of Her, can speak to you, and in with a gentle voice that sounds like the sound of water. I used to write poetry, and the wellsprings of that seem to have dried up in me, but that, I think, would be the truer language to use when speaking about that hour of sitting within the Well.
**I have to add that I returned today (Sunday) and the space was a bit different experience (nothing could take away the sacredness of the Well), but the gracious and humble young man had been replaced with a caretaker who was possessive and proprietary, immediately informed me in an aggressive manner that photos were "not allowed", and, to make things worse, kept flitting back and forth singing what I assumed she thought were inspiring sounds for the entire 40 minutes I sat within the Shrine. She didn't shut up once, and finally, thanking the Waters, I gave up on my meditation and left. Oh well, maybe that's part of my meditation too.
I have been waiting to write about crop circles, largely because there's so much information that has been available (and a lot of disinformation as well).
Here it is, from the air on Windmill Hill site
I attended the Glastonbury Symposium, and listened to various experts on the subject, among them Lucy Pringle, whose beautiful photographs, and many years of dedicated research I have the highest respect for. She's been flying over crop circles for 30 years, and has participated in many research projects. At the Symposium she spoke about studies of subjects brain waves ( including herself) within quite a few circles - the results were surprising, showing that the circles produced a trance or meditative state in many who spent time within them.
Sig Lonegren, a famous dowser living in Glastonbury (he is also my teacher, and it was a real pleasure to meet him and his wife again after all these years) believes that some crop circles act as batteries - concentrating energies that dissipate after a while (depending on how long they have been present, and also how many people enter them) Of course he comments that many crop circles, but not all, are human made.
It is clear that there are amazing anomelies surrounding crop circles - many occuring within minutes of them not being there by witnesses, and people having experiences inside of them, including visions, healing, etc. In what they call "authentic" crop circles, there have been electro-magnetic anomilies, inexplicable white powder, and evidence that the circle was formed by short bursts of great heat, resulting in plants being inexplicably bent at joints but not broken, the joints being burst. Some plants that occured in crop circles come back larger and healthier the following year, and some , areas not so, or a "ghost image" of the circle occurs in the field the following year. Some crop circle "ghosts" can even be seen in the winter, when snow surrounds the area of the circle, but is not visible on the "ghost".
I must also add here that a great many crop circles are human made. I met a woman right here in Glastonbury, who is affiliated with the Temple, who told me that when she lived in Avebury she and her husband belonged to a group of people who made crop circles, for fun, and also because they considered it earth art. There is a famous crop circle of the Goddess that she told me they made. I see no reason to disbelieve her, and there are groups who have clearly demonstrated their ability to create crop circles, as well as earth art that includes sacred geometry. With anything that has been going on so long, and generates so much interest, is it any surprise that this should be so? Many circles include universal human sacred symbols - I do not negate them because they may have been created by humans. Why do they do it at night, and secretly? Because they can. Why not admit what they've been doing? Some have, but because destroying crops is illegal and they can go to jail if caught they tend to keep quiet. And the secrecy is part of the excitement - also, apparently there are "true believers" who refuse to believe that any crop circle can be human made, becoming hostile even when they demonstrate that they can. Here's a very funny "crop art" that happened in Wiltshire this past July of an ET smoking a pipe.
Please do not think, reading this, that I am thus negating the mystery of the circles. Indeed, my own research this summer, and attending the conference, has convinced me that the phenomenon is real.
There is a very famous analog video (made on vcr camera in 1996) that was filmed at dawn by someone camping on a hill overlooking a field - the film was analyzed in labs, and no one was ever able to determine how it could have been faked. But, as with so much of what I can determine about the phenomenon here, there is a controversy surrounding the film, as the film maker vanished without being able to locate within a month of having produced the film - perhaps he didn't like the publicity, or perhaps there was something darker about his disappearance. All of this is available in most of the books written about crop circles. Anyway, here's the famous clip:
So, to conclude, I have to say that from what I can understand, this is a great mystery, some are enormously complex and inexplicable - they don't know who made them, and could not be made by any human means, and have many anomalies surrounding their creation and presence. They are communications that, like all symbols, exist on multiple layers of meaning - like dreams, perhaps. There are also many that could, and probably were, made by people.
My trip to a Circle was with 5 people, and we left Glastonbury toward Avebury, stopping at the Silent Circle Cafe - a cafe near the town of Devizes (but out in the countryside) that features the 'CROP CIRCLE REPORT" - a map with all the current sites of circles, pictures of them, and information as to when they occurred, and whether they are still in existence. It's in the midst of "crop circle hot spot country"..... and a great place to hang out and meet people from all over the world who are pursuing the Circles. Looking out over that vast mosaic of wheat fields, and the strange march of standing stones and prehistoric barrows that are to be seen occasionally in the midst of it all.........one can well imagine this being a canvas for the "Circle Makers".
(Here's one that was made in 1999 called the "Basket Circle" - notice how the wheat is woven within this amazing circle - this is considered one that is inexplicable, and too complex to have been created in a single night by a group of people. )
The crops are currently being harvested, and so many circles are about to become bread or cooking oil (which I found kind of energetically wonderful as well). Like the sheep wandering through the avenues of Avebury, it all seems of a piece, the mysterious, the sacred, and the mundane magic of the agricultural world. it's all about the Great Mother and the true alchemy of the land.
We walked for quite a while on the borders of some extraordinarily beautiful golden fields of ripe wheat. The heavy heads of the wheat rustled in the breeze, very peaceful to be in. At last we came to the circle........walking along the lines of the tractors (left when the crop was planted) so as to not hurt the surrounding fields of wheat we entered the circles that made up a much larger circle. It was peaceful, and I confess I enjoyed lying down on the soft, swirled bed of the circle. Did I feel any special energy? No, and I confess as well to breaking some stems of wheat and feeling that my efforts didn't look very different from the bent stems I walked on. It was, howevever, and "old" circle, having been discovered on the 20th of July. Sig has commented that as a dowser, he's seen that circles seem to lose their energy with time, and depending on the number of people who visit them. I personally found no evidence of anything strange within the circle of circles, although when one considers the vast scope of it (it's huge), that is pretty amazing to everyone except, no doubt, the farmers who planted the field. I understand many of them are very angry about the phenomenon, although I suppose they are used to it by now as well.
I'll close with a trailor from a new movie about the phenomenon that I've heard many good things about. I'm glad I got to walk in one at last.
Here's something else I encountered at the Glastonbury Symposium - I had never before heard about the controversy concerning a possible pyramid complex (3 aligned pyramids, with the "Pyramid of the Sun" being the largest). If, indeed, these are, as a number of archaeologists think, man-made structures, then this is the largest pyramid in the world, far exceeding the Great Pyramid of Egypt. For anyone who has not heard of this, it's fascinating to contemplate. Here's a great article about the "Bosnian Pyramids".
"Visoko is within the catchment area of what Lithuanian–American archaeologist Dr Marija Gimbutas (1921–94) labelled "Old Europe", a civilisation also known as the Vinca culture. This culture is dated to roughly 6000–3000 BCE, and many believe that it inspired other cultures, including the Sumerian Ubaid period. Examples of Vinca statues have been found as far west as southern France. As recently as November 2007, archaeologists excavating a settlement in southern Serbia, believed to be at least 7,000 years old, announced that this civilisation had great expertise in creating bronze artefacts—a discovery that requires a radical re-dating of the Bronze Age.
Still, few have heard of the Vinca culture, and here, too, western bias might well come into play. Indeed, the old pyramid paradigm is not merely being held in place with sticky tape, but the notion that Sumer and Egypt were the cradles of civilisation is one that should have been thrown out of the history books many generations ago. In this instance, the personal crusade of Australian-born archaeologist Vere Gordon Childe (1892–1957) forced the Vinca culture to be seen as an outlying cultural entity influenced by more "civilised" forces. Childe's dogmatic stance and clout meant that the Vinca culture received only scant attention and today remains largely unknown.
So, what is the Bosnian Valley of the Pyramids? The Pyramid of the Sun, which dominates the skyline over Visoko, has been the main focus of investigations. The structure does not merely look man-made, but with a height of 220 metres it is much higher than the Great Pyramid of Giza and thus would be the tallest pyramid in the world.
As is the case with the Great Pyramid, each side of the Visocica Pyramid of the Sun is perfectly aligned with the cardinal points. Indeed, as one approaches Visoko, it is hard to believe that it took until 2005 before someone seriously pondered the notion that the hill could be a pyramid. The bottom of the Visocica Pyramid has been built upon, and the streets of Visoko are extremely steep. Most interestingly, Osmanagic was told early on in his research that several home-owners in Visoko had wanted to build cellars but could not because of a cement-like layer hidden approximately one metre below the surface. During the civil war of the 1990s, it was reported that the hill resonated when hit by artillery fire: whereas artillery impact normally produced a sound that lasted one to two seconds, when it hit the hill it created a type of echo that lasted five to six seconds. It was clear that the hill had something unusual about it.
I think this time among Avalon and Avebury is, indeed, putting me into some kind of alternate reality. I have a feeling leaving Glastonbury is going to be traumatic! I'll never be able to look a Walmart in it's parking lot eye again. I spent yesterday with my old mentor, the dowser and earth energies teacher Sig Lonegren, and his wife Karen, who is a healer. Today I went with a group to walk through a crop circle near Avebury........more on that later.**(see it below)**
The Goddess Conference here at Glastonbury ended yesterday with some beautiful rituals, and I find myself feeling at a loss to write it all, but I'll try. Having done week long ritual cycles in the past, as well as leading a few around the work of the mask, I've experienced the kind of "group mind" or entrainment that happens when one works together in sacred space and "mythic mind". That sounds pretty lame and academic - forgive me.
Imagine gathering the first day in groups of people who come from different parts of the world - in my case, from the "west". We have all brought water from our homes, and speaking of this, we pour our water into a vessel, which later will become added to a vessel for all participants. As an opening ceremony, each group approaches the Priestesses of Avalon in a barge, "rowing" to share our waters to the magic isle. This water will be joined with rituals at the "holy wells of Avalon", the Chalice Well and the White Spring. Later small vials of this charged, healing, universal "water of the well, water of the world" are given to each of us to carry back, and we will all make a procession with our banners through the streets of Glastonbury to the river (which once was a great lake, the legendary home of the Lady of the Lake) to pour some of this water into the flowing waters.
Quite a wonderful sight, to see so many blue clad, singing women and men gathered waist high in the stream, with our vessels of water, and a woven mermaid! Then a sharing of fruit, to remind all that the Goddess gives to us the fruits of the Earth, always, to share, and to receive.
The closing ceremony included a "give away" where all present exchanged gifts. And I leave with my heart open, and my vials of water to share with other waters, and to remember.
You know, I honestly feel rather speechless - moved, changed by this experience, the ceremony, the people, the place. The work is about the Goddess, and it is collective, and a field opens that is also deeply personal and transformative. A "mystery". One sees with mythic eyes, with archetypal vision, and waking life becomes a revelation. For example, at the river yesterday, I picked a branch of elderberries, finding them beautiful, and wanting to add them to the "fruits" being shared, but decided it wasn't a good idea. I wasn't even sure they were edible. Some seeing me with them in my hand told me that they were very magical, connected to the Crone and the Goddesses of the underworld. That's why they were called "elderberry". She also said they made medicine from them, and Elderberry wine.
I carried those darkly beautiful berries all the way back, thinking as I returned (wet) from the river, and pouring our waters into the worlds waters thus, about my soon to be 62nd birthday. I'll be eligible for early retirement now. I'm entering old age, and I don't know what it means - it's this cycle of my life now. Sometimes, to be honest, I feel very sad and lonely in the midst of it all. Elderberries, bearing elderberries from the river............... Crone medicine.
When I got to the cafe at the Assembly Hall, gathering for the closing rituals, the cook was saying to someone "Oh, someone left a nice bottle of elderberry wine here last night. Potent stuff. "(!)
I was amazed. since I was standing there with the same berries in my hand - so I asked her if I could try it!
And so I sat, waiting for the "gifting ceremony", with a nice glass of (like she said, potent stuff!) elderberry wine in my hand, feeling awed, and as if, on top if it all, I had some very magical "medicine" that had just been gifted to me, even before the "gifting ceremony" had begun. Elderberry wine. Healing tonic....... gifts of the crone goddess, potency.
It works that way. The huge generosity of world, and when people come together in love and ritual.........when we forgive, love, and join the waters.........
At the closing, white veils were drawn, the "mists of Avalon", and we left for homelands, bearing our vials of love, and "holy-wholly" water. From the Well of the Lady, the Well of becoming...........
