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)

Calling All Pagans: Your Mother Earth Needs You

Here's an article, written by someone who is unaware, perhaps, of the decades long work contemporary pagans, Goddess workers, eco-feminists, and other Gaians have been doing.  Huzzah - pass it on.  He addresses what we have been talking about for so many years, the urgent and potent need to re-myth our world, to re-sanctify the Mother. 

 Calling All Pagans: Your Mother Earth Needs You

by Robert C. Koehler

 "Sadly,  we’re far more prepared to go to war than

 we are to make peace with the planet."

Somewhere between these two quotes lies the future:

“And I would like to emphasize that nobody on this planet is going to be untouched by the impacts of climate change.”

“The Judeo-Christian worldview is that man is at the center of the universe; nature was therefore created for man. Nature has no intrinsic worth other than man’s appreciation and moral use of it.”

The first quote is from Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, summing up the dire and much-discussed findings of its recent report: Human civilization — its technology, its war games, its helpless short-sightedness and addiction to fossil fuels — is wrecking the environment that sustains all life. Time is running out on our ability to make changes; and the world’s, uh, “leadership” — political, corporate — has shown little will to step beyond more of the same, to figure out how we can reduce carbon emissions and live in eco-harmony, with a sense of responsibility for the future.

"But maybe we can start learning, at long last, that we are not the masters of the universe and that “dominion” and exploitation are immature expressions of power."

The second quote is from radio talk-show host Dennis Prager, writing recently in the National Review Online. He goes on, in his remarkable rant against environmentalism, to point out that “worship of nature was the pagan worldview” and “for the Left, the earth has supplanted patriotism.” Eventually he compares environmentalism to loving wild dogs more than mauled children.

Prager’s diatribe isn’t my normal reading matter and I only bring it up here because I think it has relevance to the leadership void I’ve been pondering. The contemptuous dismissal of nature as lacking intrinsic worth — an unworthy competitor with God for human allegiance — may no longer have mainstream credibility, but, like racism, it’s part of the mindset that has shaped Western civilization.

“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”

We’re still caught up in the momentum of dominion. Thus: “. . . for all the alarming warnings generated by the scientific community and confirmed by the IPCC’s comprehensive analysis of that science,” according to a recent Common Dreams article, “world governments and the powerful private sector have done next to nothing to meet the challenge now before humanity.”

Indeed, as Elizabeth Kolbert points out in The New Yorker: “Currently, instead of discouraging fossil-fuel use, the U.S. government underwrites it, with tax incentives for producers worth about four billion dollars a year.”  We’ve got, as the IPCC report states, “a 15-year window” to start making serious changes in how we structure our world. Human society will need, the Common Dreams piece says, to “revolutionize the structures of its economies, food systems, and energy grids.”

This is not going to happen — not at current levels of awareness, concern and empowerment. This is the dawning realization I find myself less and less able to live with. Climate change and global weather chaos — droughts and fires, tsunamis and tidal waves, crop failure, undrinkable water, devastating cold, rising oceans, new levels of social turmoil — are the future we are unable to hold off. But maybe we can start learning, at long last, that we are not the masters of the universe and that “dominion” and exploitation are immature expressions of power.

My only hope is that, in so learning — as humanity finds itself increasingly entangled with environmental chaos and recognizes its utter vulnerability to nature — we will begin to transcend our isolated sense of entitlement to do with Planet Earth what we will and revolutionize the way we organize every aspect of our social structure, rethinking ten millennia of dominance-motivated social organization. Nobody, after all, no matter how wealthy and fortified, is immune to the impact of a changing climate.  We’re all in it together. We’re part of nature, not its master. This concept is the missing foundation stone of contemporary civilization.

It was in this state of mind that I read Prager’s essay, wondering if such an awareness change were possible, or whether, as the consequences of unsustainable living intensified, we’d become, instead, increasingly isolated and survivalist in our thinking.
“Worship of nature was the pagan worldview,” he wrote, sounding the note of ultimate contempt for any suggestion that environmental sustainability matters and our way of life needs to change profoundly.

Perhaps the word “pagan” embodies the most deeply embedded prejudice in the Western, civilized mindset — the first and last justification for global dominance. Pagans are the ultimate “other.” We’ve built a moral structure on this prejudice, and as a consequence the U.S. government continues to subsidize rather than tax fossil fuel production. As a consequence, we’re far more prepared to go to war than we are to make peace with the planet.

We have to undo this prejudice before it undoes us.

 Published on Thursday, April 10, 2014 by Common Dreams

Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His new book, Courage Grows Strong at the Wound is now available. Contact him at koehlercw@gmail.com or visit his website at commonwonders.com.

Artist Residency at Cherry Hill Seminary!

www.cherryhillseminary.org/

It's my privilege to be the current Artist in Residence for Cherry Hill Seminary, the only accredited Pagan and Earth Spiritualities Seminary in the U.S., and I'm delighted to have this opportunity to participate in this important Center of Learning, epitomized by Hypatia**, teacher and philosopher of Alexandria. 

In the many years that I've been involved with the Pagan movement, and diverse Earth Spirituality, I've seen the Pagan movement "come out of the broom closet", braving often tremendous religious intolerance, to become at last accepted as a valid religious path. With the advent of Cherry Hill Seminary, yet another milestone has been passed, and I'm grateful indeed to the faculty, co-creators, and students of Cherry Hill for their accomplishment, and for the wisdom and learning that goes forth from this exciting collaboration.

Cherry Hill Seminary is the leading provider of education & practical training in leadership, ministry, and personal growth in Pagan spiritualities.

Cherry Hill Seminary supports Pagans and their communities by:

• Providing an extensive education in diverse aspects of Pagan philosophy, practice, and skilled ministry;
• Supplementing existing ritual and magical skills with training for professional ministry and pastoral counseling;
• Serving as an ongoing resource for individual continuing education; and
• Providing a forum for scholarship and community

Summer Intensive - for information visit this link

**Hypatia of Alexandria was a 4th century C.E. astronomer, mathematician, teacher and philosopher of international reputation. Socrates Scholasticus wrote that “she far surpassed all the philosophers of her time: and was greatly respected for her “extraordinary dignity and virtue.” Hypatia’s house was an important intellectual center in a city distinguished for its learning. Damasius described how she “used to put on her philosopher’s cloak and walk through the middle of town” to give public lectures on philosophy. Admired by all Alexandria, Hypatia was one of the most politically powerful figures in the city. She was one of the few women who attended civic assemblies. Magistrates came to her for advice, including her close friend, the prefect Orestes. In the midst of severe religious polarization, Hypatia was an influential force for tolerance and moderation. She accepted students, who came to her “from everywhere,” without regard to religion.   (read more here) –Max Dashu

Cherry Hill Seminary gratefully acknowledges the kind permission of artist Max Dashu to reproduce her haunting painting of Hypatia. Click here to order a printed poster of Dashu’s painting. 

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