New Spring, New Hope

Yesterday, I caught myself actually thinking seriously about getting my fingers into the earth again. With everything that’s happened I’ve felt heartsick, totally unconnected to the ground, not even willing to go and look at the garden that was once my be-all. I managed to leave it behind me, ruined and uncared-for, at my old house. It is totally wrecked, a grande-dame once beautiful and now run wild and straggled, effort wasted. But I’ve relinquished it. It was dormant and unworked when I inherited it; we worked together awhile and now it’s gone back to the earth again… asleep and not dead, waiting for someone to love it and rebirth it anew.

My new garden actually has grass, an amazing thing. It’s also only the size of a modest room and has high fences and walls. I have a plan for it. I find myself leaning against the corner of the window of my room, staring down on it like a plan of itself, and whiling away time dreaming of it full of light and colour. In fact, the majority of the flowers will be white, in honour of the Goddess; they will glow in the dusk and fill the air with scent, and I will sit amongst them, and bathe under the Moon, and feel renewed.

A dear friend has given me a hanging basket full of the most beautiful begonias – one of my favourite flowers. They’re not up yet, but I know they’re on their way. Ready to hang outside my door as a constant reminder of the Summer to come and good times…

I know my heart is healing and becoming quieter now that I’m allowing the calm and the green sappy balm of plants to infiltrate and soothe me. Thank the goddess, it’s about time!

A Pagan In Somerset

Andy’s back with us!! Hooray!!

Air-Plasma-Flight

This was the first phrase that sprung to my mind. I opened the blind in my mother’s kitchen this morning at the exact moment that millions (must have been) of starlings poured in a liquid torrent over and around the house. Even through the walls I could hear the sussuration of their wings and I could barely breathe as they moulded the flock around the house, each bird a set distance from the others, of one mind, internally connected as a cloud, a super-entity with a million brains all working in tandem.

It was as if they arrived, enveloped the house in pressurised air, and by so doing removed all the vestigial pain and discontent, the lack of equanimity and the suppression of hope that I’d been feeling; dragging it away with their wings and clicking beaks. I felt washed clean.

After they passed, a line of eight lone starlings came over, the rearguard, four passing each side of the window, a salute to me, to show the job had been done, and done well.

Some natural magic, awesome in its power, to greet me and speed my day. Thank you, Goddess.

The Supernatural in the Natural

Marya at A Spell In Wales has been discussing this phenomenon recently, through the medium of Welsh poetry. In her inimitable and evocative style, she brings to life a Wales long gone, but with us in spirit, never far away, liminal and almost tangible, but removed from us physically, never to return. It is a tantalising picture.

When we’re flying around like paper kites, getting in the way of others and having others cross our paths, we feel stultified, despite the extreme speed at which we’re travelling. REM put it well; ‘…so fast, so numb that you can’t even feel’.

Tess over at Anchors and Masts has written a great post exploring the premise that if you don’t believe you will see beauty, then it is forever a closed door to you. You need to know what you see contains beauty, to feel it in your heart, and to seek it out. She writes:

“…you will not see beauty unless you believe in it. If you believe you will see ugliness and despair, then that is what you will see.”

 How right she is.

Even the unluckiest of us has the chance to see green things growing, see ancient architecture, see water, watch the weather. These are the very most basic elements of the divine in the mundane that we can avail ourselves of. And perhaps, they are the elements to which we should turn if we ever forget what it is we’re about. The building blocks, if you like, that form the basis of the bridge between our everyday lives and the realisation that we live in the midst of a miracle.

Look closely at the perfection of the rain on a leaf; think about the ages and the rain and the peoples that have come and gone around the oldest building in your town. Feel the years in the rocks, and at the circles and in the woods. Know you’re part of it; you don’t own any part of it, but rather, it owns you. We do not ride on the back of this world, it carries us because it can.

The worlds that went before, the worlds embodied in other languages and prayers, are there for us to feel if only we can shut up for long enough and allow the impressions to sink in. Fast, numb, and missing out. Such a world out there, all for the stopping and listening!

Highgrove’s Goddess of the Woods

I was lucky enough, this week, to receive an invitation to join a party who had tickets to Highgrove, the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall’s private garden. This garden has only been in construction since 1980, but it looks as though it has been there over 100 years.

What I hadn’t fully appreciated, and what was brought home to me by our guide and by the garden itself, is that this intensely spiritual man speaks not about his beliefs; he builds them into his garden.

There are Green Men, leprechauns, sympathies to Nature everywhere. There are sympathies to all religions, if you look hard enough, but the Prince is a supporter of Temenos, an academy and bank of thinkers whose essential ideal is that, at the base of the pyramid, our feelings about God are widely differing; but as we near the apex, we can come to realise that we are all worshipping the same essential God; ‘…consonant with Plato’s view that all branches of knowledge lead to the same eternal truth’.

One garden spoke to me especially; well, it would. You approach it through a shady, cool and waterlogged garden area full of hostas, water, ferns, sculpture, shade and tranquility. Under an oak is an astonishing, photorealist statue of The Goddess of the Wood – who I take to be Hecate. Carved in banded marble, She sits, every hair of Her pubis and head visible, Her scalp worn smooth by the hands of supplicants deliberate or undeliberate; staring at the temple to Her left. Her hands are square and capable; a gardener’s hands.

I loved Her as soon as I saw Her, and I understood that there’s a gradation between the moderate, old-fashioned Christianity practised by people countrywide and the religion that I follow. It doesn’t necessarily have much to do with evangelicalism; but that’s ok. It has a great deal to do with old-fashioned respect, leaving well alone and a caring for the countryside around.

The garden combined nature and culture; earth, air, fire, water and spirit; wilderness and artifice. All together, such a superb, harmonious and whole whole. I remarked to the guide that the man worships through his garden and she didn’t disagree. 

If you can stand beside a tree planted by the hand of the Dalai Lama himself, and see it flourish, if you can stand in a meadow which the experts confidently predict will take 100 years to come to fruition, if you can look at a statue and feel your Goddess calling you, you have stood in a garden that works.

This is real magic.

 

 

Midsummer Blessings

To all my dear friends, blessings, for the Midsummer times are here.

We light the fires of the Summer sun upon the Earth; we sing of the green and the darkness under the trees.

We give thanks, for the cool waters, for the waters from the sky and the waters under the Earth. Thanks for the fires of the Sun and the fires we kindle on the ground. Thanks for the cool air, that lofts the birds and the scents of Summer. Thanks for the warm and fertile Earth, that bears our weight and the life we depend upon.

Goddess, I hail you; triumphant queen of the Midsummer night. You are the subtle moon past full, the silver grasses before the wind, the whispering oak. Lead me out to know the dark and the life you hold so gently by. Cradle me in the stillness at your centre; help me know.

God, I hail you; glorious king. Stand upon the Earth, crowned by the Sun. Now one with your Goddess, spring forward and lead me, Lord of inspiration, fire and feeling. Show me new paths. 

As the year burns and the wheel turns, guide us all in love and care; help us fight and be valorous for what is good. Give us the power and the heart to choose the right path, no matter how hard it is to follow.

So Mote It Be!

Bright blessings to all this Midsummer’s Eve. 

This beautiful thing…

A friend, whom I have never even met, has made this amazing gift for me. She would take no payment.

I really wonder at the goodness of the people I’ve met on my Path; I’m just going to have to work harder on paying it forward and spreading the wealth a little!

It is an altar top for my temple, and it fits precisely into the frame I already possessed for it. I have yet to stain and lightly varnish it; it’s so wonderful and perfect that I’m almost afraid to.

When I opened the parcel, it filled the room with the smell of smudgesmoke and incense. Truly, amazing.

I love the grain on the wood, it looks like clouds around the tree. Marie – I thank you from the bottom of my heart.