I crossed a continent, an ocean and an island and now that I stood
at last within the unthinkably ancient ring of stones reared
by my forgotten forebears, all I heard in the well of my own
soul was the echo of the well-cover when I drew it back. I hitched
up my pack, struck my crude walking stick against the wet grass
and headed for the little local museum.

Stepping inside, I found I could proceed no further. The Avebury
museum was manned by an elderly gentleman in a dark blue suit.
His white hair neatly slicked back, his face arranged in an
expression of professional hospitality, he was attempting to
elucidate the exhibits for an American couple. Since my fellow
Americans blocked the way, I could no nothing but pull off my
mist-dampened slouch cap and wait.

Looming over the English curator, the elderly American demanded through loose lips, “What’s so special about this place, huh?”

“Well,” smiled the curator, “Avebury is the largest stone circle in the world…”

“Saw it. Is this the whole town?”

“The modern town of Avebury sits entirely within the ring of …”

“What’s the museum for?” The American angrily shook England’s October chill from his Hawaiian shirt. His voice dripped with contempt that the country’s temperature did not fit his tourist’s uniform.

The curator replied patiently, “We house a small collection of artifacts discovered…”

Out thrust the American’s finger. “What’s this?”

“I’m glad you noticed that display. This…”

“It’s a rock. We have rocks at home. We don’t build museums for ‘em. Do you have anything good?”

Before the curator could indicate his prize display, the tourist declared, “I’ve seen it.” The Ugly American turned his back and shoved past me out the door, his wife remora-like at his side.

The curator turned his eyes on me, propped up his smile and nodded in greeting. I admired his resilience — something I had long lost.

“Is there anything I can help you with?” he asked, glancing over my army surplus ski-jacket, weathered jeans and
rough shoes.

I took off my glasses and polished the mist from them. Not trusting contact lenses on a rough trip, I wore an old-fashioned pair of sturdy black frames. I had stopped shaving the day I quit my job and it suddenly occurred to me that I had not seen another bearded man since I had arrived on the island — as if I needed an appearance guaranteed to distance me further from those around me. But I was not thinking of appearances when I withdrew my savings, tossed a few things in an old army backpack and flew away over the great Californian desert, across the wide states and over the rough Atlantic, reversing the course of my westward-driven forebears.

Embarrassed at seeing myself through the curator’s eyes, I was about to demur, but considering the brush-off the man had just received, I changed my mind, saying, “Actually, yes. I’m particularly interested in the excavation of
the West Kennet Long Barrow.”

The curator’s smile became genuine and he swiftly ushered me to a series of photographs of neatly stacked finger bones and skulls within the Long Barrow. The more questions I asked, the happier my white haired acquaintance became.

Consequently, it took me three hours to complete my examination of the small room’s treasures. We had long since introduced ourselves. Eventually the curator apologized for keeping me so long. I assured him that it was I who had taken his time and that I was delighted and grateful for the information. I pulled out a small wad of bills to poke into the museum’s donation box.

The curator caught the tiny hesitation as I swiftly calculated how much I could afford to put in. He asked, “You’ve
been to a number of archaeological sites?”

I had scarcely talked to anyone in weeks and was in no mood for confidences, but my countryman had been coarse and this man kind. I affirmed, “I have many more to see before I return.”

“You’re not exactly an archaeologist, are you?” asked the curator, subtly eyeing my travel-worn clothing. “But
you’re hardly a doss, either. You seem well read on my favorite subject.” “I’m not trying to discover something for science. Just for myself. I want to walk the hills my ancestors walked.”

My journal pressed uncomfortably against my chest. I adjusted it, and the man glimpsed the small, black-covered volume. Perhaps he thought it was a Bible, as he asked, “Are you a spiritual person?”

“I prefer not to define myself,” I said uncomfortably.

“Yes, but are you? Are you on some sort of pilgrimage?”

Awkwardly, I pieced together what answer I could, though it is not easy to explain to a stranger that you feel derailed, that your locomotive is on the grade spinning iron wheels in gravel, that a lifelong dedication and a quarter century of work seemed like maybe they had some weight in your hand and then vanished without a trace. But I let him know I felt a need to stand where my ancestors left their bones.

The curator absorbed this with a crisp, unmoved, English smile. “You were in the Sanctuary, earlier, weren’t you?”
he asked, referring to an ancient structure once connected by a stone causeway to the Avebury ring.

I was a little surprised. “Yes, I meditated there awhile.”

“People will do that occasionally. Not much goes on here without we know about it pretty quickly.” He eyed me.
“Are you staying in the area?”

I replied carefully, “I want to spend several days here. There’s a lot to see.”

“It was pretty early when you were in the Sanctuary.”

“Yes, I have a limited amount of time — and money — and a long way to go.” There seemed no point in not admitting the financial pressure he had clearly deduced.

“Are you staying under a bush somewhere?” he asked lightly.

“Pardon me?”

Though amused, his smile was friendly. “You don’t have a car and you were at the Sanctuary before the first bus
into town. You must have slept nearby last night, but you’re not staying with anyone.”

“I’m…I’m trying to find…”

He interrupted smoothly, “You know, the nights here do get rough.”

“I’ve managed so far.”

“There’s a bit of weather coming in, and if you are sleeping under a hedge somewhere, it could be unpleasant.
We do have a hotel, of course, but if that is out of the question, you are welcome to sleep in…. Well, I am just a bit hesitant, because…”

He took a deeper breath, knit his brows a trifle and peered into my eyes, asking, “You aren’t bothered by dead
people, are you?”

“I…can’t say I ever have been,” I replied, “but I’m not really sure what you’re asking.”

“You would be welcome to stay in the church,” he told me, “if the weather gets bad. It’s only that it is an old church, you understand?”

“I’m not sure I do.”

“There are people interred inside, you know. That wouldn’t bother you?”

“Not at all. It’s just that a church is…well…”

“It’s there to help people. Not just people of the same faith. It’s warm and dry and never locked. No one will be there on a weekday evening. The rector comes in at six in the morning. If he should find you there, just tell him I
said it would be all right. We can’t have any old doss sleeping in there, you understand, but you will be welcome.”

Seeing that I did not know what to say, he added, “It’s there if you need it.”

Then he shook my hand and went out to tend to other business, as did I.

I searched the spectacular stone circle, perhaps secretly expecting to find my lost self around every corner. The contrast was striking. In the middle of my life I found an end, while my unwritten forebears had banded together in such numbers and with such inspiration that they had raised this vast ring of standing stones. Each monolith was huge, more massive than the trilithons
of Stonehenge. The ditch surrounding the ring, even half filled by millennia of erosion, was still deep and steep. What had moved the ancients to mark out this vast ritual space, so large that not only the chieftains who had attended the ceremonies at the more famous Stonehenge, but an entire people could meet for a mass communal ritual, a sharing of the same experience, the same emotions, on a grand scale?

Walking along what remains of the megalith-lined causeway connecting the vast stone ring to the Long Barrow, I sought some echo of the spiritual bond that had, so long ago, inspired men and women armed only with antler picks and reindeer shoulder blades for spades to heap up an artificial hill called Silbury, raising it from the flat ground like the monumental green breast of their beloved earth mother. There it stood, a thousand generations
later, and what had I built? A castle of sand.

The causeway ended at West Kennet Long Barrow, a sort of turfed over tunnel that once served as a burial chamber. Several tall, flattish boulders once sealed the mouth of this structure, but the National Trust had set these stones back a pace or two from the entrance so I could actually duck into the dry-stoned interior as the incoming storm began to break. Struck by the din of rain sheeting down, I looked up at the low ceiling and found that the Trust had installed thick glass-brick skylights in the stone roof to light my way.

I crouched my way down the long passage. I knew that the ancients exposed their dead to scavenger birds in lonely places set aside for the purpose, as other forebears of mine in the Americas were still doing a century or so ago. Unlike the Native Americans, however, once the bones of the ancient Britons had been picked clean, they were collected and their skulls and index fingers were stored here in the Long Barrow, to keep the spirits of the dead close.

I thought of Ezekiel preaching to the dry bones and bidding them live again. Perhaps in a place of ancient wholeness I, too, might find renewal. My emptiness being curable by no rational means, perhaps the irrational could help me.

I burned the rest of the day’s dim light photographing the ancient complex, as best I could in the worsening weather.

By nightfall the storm was harsh. Well wetted from my day’s excursions, I could not face sleeping again tucked under a hedge in a water-resistant sleeping bag wrapped in a tarp.

The Avebury church seemed larger in the dark. The big, point-arched door was unlocked as promised, and passing in, I found sanctuary indeed, after the cold whipping walk back up the causeway and into the great circle. Feeling my way through near complete darkness to the rear of the pews, I found an empty place on the stone floor, laid out my sleeping bag and prepared for bed.

Stone is not a good mattress, and a wild British storm is no calming lullaby, but long walks and a yawning cavern in the soul make it possible to still the mind until consciousness sinks beneath the waves, and eventually I floated into otherrealities.

I woke with a jolt. Someone was there with me. Or sort of a someone.

I sensed an awareness without form or substance. I could no more describe this feeling to one who has never had it than I could describe sound to one born deaf, but whatever sense it was that had seized my attention, I felt that presence as clearly as I felt the stone beneath my body. There was nothing to see, no sound really, though I was vaguely aware that thestorm still swept and pattered at the church walls. I had been trained to believe that such things did not occur. Yet there the presence was, as focused on me as I was on it.

It wanted me out of there.

Its antipathy was inexplicable, tremendous — and growing in intensity. It wanted me out. Out into the night. Out into the storm. Out and as far away as possible.

I had little idea what to do. There was no question of convincing myself that it was not there, or of getting back to sleep. A roaring man would have been easier to ignore, and less upsetting. Perhaps, whether or not I could make sense of it, I could treat the presence like a person. Talking seemed unnatural in that dead quiet, yet I might, in a sense, press my own feelings back against that alien presence pushing at me.

I concentrated, projected my reasoning: “Yes, you make me feel awful. Yes, you fill me with dread. But I’m not
going out in that storm. Look, if you are some discarnate person interred here, you must have been here since the Middle Ages — no one’s been buried in a chapel floor since then.I’m here for one night. I’ll be gone with the dawn,
never to return.”

The hostility swirled about me, worse than before, incredibly unpleasant.

“I mean no disrespect,” I insisted, “but I need shelter. And I was offered it. Look, I don’t know if I can ever afford to come back to this country, but I do know I can’t afford to get sick. I’m not going out in the storm.”

The more reasonable I became, the more the disembodied outrage swelled. I felt besieged by a spiritual storm as buffeting as the weather outside.

“Stop…pressuring me. Stop with the vibes, already. I won’t go out tonight, storm or no. I don’t like being pushed, psychically or otherwise. Leave me alone. Let me sleep. It’s been a long, hard trip, damn it, and stone
floors are uncomfortable enough without you getting in my head. Get out, yourself! Get out of my space, get back in your crypt.”

The pressure became almost physical. I found myself leaning against it. This was too much.

A friend and teacher had given me an ancient symbol of wholeness, cast in polished pewter. She had taught me its history and symbolism and how to meditate upon it in times of trouble to still the mind while holding unwanted influences at bay — usually meaning one’s own bad memories, destructive thoughts, or pressure from actual living people. I had never expected to use this meditative discipline to protect myself from the hostile awareness
of someone who had died six hundred years before. But it was time to muster whatever defense I could. Though I carried little with me on this quest, I had brought this little symbol across the sea. I groped in the dark for the pocket of my backpack, within easy reach.

The symbol was not there.

I had put my glasses in the same pocket and the symbol had been there then — it must be near at hand. I patted my palm about the floor and bedding, blindly searching, finding nothing but stone and cloth. I could accept the existence of a ghostly presence sooner than this disappearance of a familiar object. I refused to admit to any trepidation, but fear began to seep into the fringes of my consciousness.

My hand found the edge of the rolled jacket that served as my pillow, slid underneath to feel about. Nothing. Where could it be? I had to have it — it was my only defense.

The more I concentrated on finding the symbol, the less I concentrated on pushing back the hostile presence and the more my fear began to rise.

I picked up the coat and shook it, expecting to hear the pewter expelled from some fold to clink against the stone floor. Nothing. Instead, the pressure of the unseen entity swelled to such unimaginable power that I actually felt as if great hands reached underneath the edge of the sleeping bag and started to lift me up and push me back.

My heart pounded, adrenalin shot through my system, my limbs flung themselves out to the sides, trying to hold on to the stone floor.

I awoke, disconcerted.

I had felt so awake already. No dream in my life had ever felt so conscious as this — none had allowed me to think so clearly — and none had ever so completely reflected my waking experience.

Because there I was in the pitch-black church, now wide awake, and there was the same presence I had felt in my dream, still wanting me out, out and away, gone for good. The same pressure was there, but no longer overwhelming, no longer physical. While I had been unknowingly asleep, the force had grown stronger the less I focused on holding it at bay. Now that I exercised the full power of my conscious mind, the pressure exerted by
the hostile entity was greatly weakened.

I groped for my pack, found the pocket and pulled the symbol from its resting place. I ran my thumb across the smooth metal, feeling its shape, picturing the symbol in my mind. Doing so held the hostile presence at bay. There was no escape from its relentless pressure, and it prevented me from sleeping, but it could do no more.

I lay for hours in the utter dark, cramped on the hard stone, picturing the symbol and pushing the entity to the edge of my awareness. At last, I felt the change when night invisibly but palpably shifts toward day. With the change in the air, the presence faded and at last I could drift into exhausted sleep.

When light filtered in from the high windows, I woke. Quickly packing my few belongings, I saw on the floor not three feet from me, a human outline, a flat effigy inset in the stone. So many feet had shuffled over it that the brass had been worn smooth. All that remained was the featureless metal silhouette of a knight.

I caught the bus and traveled onward, filling my empty eyes with new sights of old things. But in my dreams each night, I dreaded the return of the hostile entity, and when, sometimes, it did return, I felt terrible waves of raw fear — a horror of…I knew not what.

Dread wore on me. I had to understand this experience and to bring it to some resolution.

There was a woman I had loved and lost. Not that Nichole had ever loved me (except, I believe, as a friend). What I had lost when she left the States was the joyful agony of seeing her face by candlelight over the occasional dinner while hearing her stories of her vibrant Italian kin. As her replies to my letters grew less frequent, I realized that even that last insubstantial literary contact was fading into absolute absence. On my long bus ride north to Eryri, I reached out one last time, wrote to her of Avebury and posted the letter at the next stop.

I passed through Wales and stopped for a night at my brother-in-law’s
house below Hadrian’s Wall, intending to go on from there into Scotland for another week before returning to London for the flight home. Brother-in-law John had taken his family to visit relatives in Texas but had left me a key and, to my surprise, a letter forwarded from my parents’ address in California.

The name on the return address struck a pang through me. I tore open the envelope. Nichole, perhaps because my tale was so odd, had replied. She gave me a London contact number for one Reverend Sam Stock.

Owen, she wrote, I want you to talk to this man. He deals with things that you and I were taught to believe cannot be, but are, anyway. Nature is so inconsiderate that way. Sam is a good guy. He was trained by the Berkeley Psychic Institute. Don’t worry, they aren’t like those telephone ‘psychics’ with bad accents you see on late night commercials.

I trust Sam because he helped me. When my plane was flying in to London, I had a sense of coming home, even though I have never been here before, and a sense of misease at the same time. As soon as I set foot on English soil, I felt an awful pain in my back. I thought for a moment I had been hit by something, but I hadn’t.

It wouldn’t go away, and it was hard even to walk. It went on for days, until Sam came to London to visit Bob and
me and I told him about it. Sam told me that in a past life I had been an outdoorsy English squire. I was crippled in a fall from a horse and could never deal with the fact that I had been thrown after priding myself on my skill as a sportsman. Returning to England a lifetime or two later brought it all back, in the form of physical symptoms. Sam had me concentrate in accepting that kind of blow to my pride, and I felt the pain lifting. After a few minutes I was fine and have had no problem since.

It’s too bad you can’t come see some shows with us, but our schedules just wouldn’t mesh…

Rev. Stock met me at dusk outside the empty church in the great circle of Avebury. I am not sure what I expected, but it was not this man. Stock was blond, bland of face and build. His eyes never seemed to focus on anything around him, because he was always focused on things just past the surface, things I could not see.

We introduced ourselves and he cracked crude jokes and laughed at them, establishing his credentials as a normal guy in all things but his specialty.

“Shall we go in?” he asked.

I nodded, opened the wide church doors and led the way into the deep gloom. We made our way carefully to the spot where I had lain. The brass silhouette of the knight was barely visible as the last light receded behind heavy November clouds. Sam did not produce a flashlight. That made sense, I supposed, as there was nothing really to see.

Sam spoke calmly of relaxing. We sat on the stone floor and let the darkness deepen, keeping our minds clear. I do not know how long we sat there, Sam exercising his psychic disciplines, whatever they may have been, and me drifting into semi-dreams, then starting back to normal consciousness, trying to empty my mind, and drifting again.

Then the presence was there, pressing at me, trying to drive me away with wave after wave of palpable hostility.

Sam spoke quietly to it, asking, “Why are you here?”

The Reverend sat very still, drawing in some response.

“That’s not it,” he said. “Look deeper.”

I winced, as a wave of horror hit me, suffused me. Terror shook me, body and soul. Images flashed through my mind: a village in a grassy hollow, remote, isolated from the larger world, steeped in ancient ritual. A knight in dully gleaming armor restrained his restive war-horse, looking down on the village. Lances bobbed and weaved on either side of him and distant glints of steel flashed here and there on the hills beyond the village — the settlement was surrounded.

The nameless knight watched a man in long robes, his care-lined face stretched thin with sorrow and fear, trudge out from the village to stand before an incredibly broad, stocky knight on an irritable charger. I could not make out the actual words, but I understood that this stocky commander’s troops had been sent by some distant religious authority to enforce conformity to their sect.

The long faced man tried to explain that the villagers’ creed joined them in spirit with the land on which they dwelt,
and which they regarded as a living thing — joined the m with the life-giving waters that flowed through the land, with the animals dwelling on it, with the birds of the sky, the fish in the rivers, the trees, the crops. All was conjoined. The long faced man explained that these people could no more betray their way of life than they could condemn a beloved spouse to destruction alone at the hands of her enemies.

The whole village had met in council. They understood what the invading church meant to do to any who resisted, but the village had decided as one that it would be better to die as one with the land, than to eke out a spiritless survival as serfs to those who betrayed the trust of ages.

The stocky commander was unconcerned. He let the old man walk all the way back to the village. The stocky man calmly drank a stoup of wine, then tossed the flagon to his page and sent him behind the lines. The commander flung up his metal sheathed hand and…

All hell was loosed.

The knights rode down any they found in the streets. They spitted men and women, while the foot soldiers tore down doors and slaughtered cattle.

The nameless knight whose trampled silhouette still lay on the floor of the Avebury chapel, killed busily with the other men, and as their own unopposed violence drove them to frenzy, as if searching for an act so awful it would force the doomed villagers to fight back, the nameless knight let slip all bounds.

A small child ran through the streets, heart pounding, breath catching, running blind. Steel clattered behind him, torchlight flamed, a huge, steam-breathed horse cut off his path. Terror jangling every nerve, the boy darted through an open door into an abandoned home. Coals and dying flames in the hearth cast wavering light on an empty bed. The boy dived under it, huddled against the wattled wall, looking back the way he had come.
From under the bed he saw a knight dismount outside the doorway, the whipping torchlight unable to reach the face within the open visor. The boy saw the great, metal-cased feet tread heavily through the doorway, across the room, straight to the bed. The straw and wood covering was heaved up and away across the room, leaving the child curling, exposed, in the corner.

The jointed metal gauntlet reached down from the towering figure, seized a thin arm, yanked the child up and flung him to the floor. One iron boot came down on a small shoulder, pinning him. The great gauntlet flexed its metal joints, reached to the knight’s belt and drew a dagger. The knight knelt, faceless in the wavering light, aiming the dagger-point at the boy’s belly.

My limbs quivered and jerked as wave after wave of horror crashed through me — a tidal wave of terror and dismay so sweeping that I was screaming without inhibition.

Shockingly bright after-image colors flared in my eyes and the village was gone. I was back in the church with Sam. I was not cut open, not a child, not screaming, only shivering a little in the dark. Sam was talking calmly with the presence, the nameless knight.

“It was one thing,” Sam was saying, “to get caught up in the collective madness. It was something else to live with it. Isn’t that right?”

There was a pause while Sam listened and I gasped, willing my hammering heart to slow.

Unseen in the dark, Sam addressed the knight again, “Your leaders told you that you were absolved from any crime you committed against unbelievers. But you knew better. That night haunted you all your life. Especially the face of the screaming boy. Then you died. And you knew where damned souls go. You didn’t dare pass on, did you? You stayed here, stuck in the floor of the Avebury church, hiding from judgment behind other people’s
piety.”

A wave of hostile energy buffeted me, an image appeared in my mind’s eye of a death’s head of dull gray metal like a helmet, on a vast armored figure hooded and cloaked.

“Get out of my head,” I muttered angrily.

Sam told the knight, “Stop that. We’re not interested in any death imagery you can throw at us. I’ve had worse,
believe me.”

“I won’t give in,” I told the presence. “I didn’t give in then. I’m not a child anymore and no violence, no oppression, no cruelty has ever made me conform. I won’t get out. You see that child’s face in me? As long as you and I are in this world, you’ll see it still. Face me — I can face you.”

Sam spoke to me this time. “He’s stuck. Time isn’t the same for him, but still, he’s been here too long. He’s a weak character or he never would have done those things. He can’t go on unless you give him the power to do it.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“If you forgive him, his hold on this plane will weaken, and scared or not, he’ll eventually lose his grip and move on to face the consequences of what he’s done.” “Forgive him,” I repeated, incredulous.

“Or you can not forgive him,” said Sam dispassionately, “and he’ll stay stuck here as the centuries go by.”

I took a breath.

“You pitiful monster,” I said, “six hundred years is long enough to be stuck in a church floor. You wasted one life being weak and vicious. The only way you’ll ever redeem yourself is to live again. It’s not up to me to even this score — it’s up to you. I forgive you. Go on to your next life. And do better.”

The dread eased. There were no more ugly images, no pressure to leave. The sense of a presence dwindled. He was not yet gone, but his hold had been weakened. He receded to absorb what had happened.

After a moment, Sam said, “He’s still afraid to go on. He knows he hasn’t paid all his dues yet. You’re the only person on this plane he can contact, and the only connection he has with you is terror, so it may be pretty unpleasant. But you can comfort yourself with the knowledge that sooner or later, he’ll slip away. We might as well go, too.”

We groped our way to the doors and slipped out into the night. Sam shook my hand.

“That’s really all I can do for you,” he said.

I thanked him.

He gave me his card, adding, “Sometimes I give classes. Look me up sometime when you get back to California. Or forget the whole thing, if you’d rather.”

“Thanks again. Give my love to Nichole.”

Sam hesitated just an instant, just enough that I knew he was aware of my doomed love and that he would not be passing on any expressions of affection when he spoke to Nicole. I nodded and he walked to his hotel room while I hiked out to my hedge.

My time, health and traveling money gave out at once. To get to the airport I had to borrow a few pounds that good old John had left at his house for me. Back in the States, the last of my American money bought me a bus ticket to my parents’ house on the western coast. I could sleep on their library daybed until I found another job. They welcomed me back, not sure what to make of the gaunt, exhausted relic of their son.

The day after my arrival, the phone rang. It was Ambrose Douglas, an actor with whom I had once worked. He told me, “I’m working at the Robert Semple Theater and I told them you’d be perfect for this part. It’s not much money, but it’s a good role and a good company.”

“It’s a start,” I said.

So if that time comes to you — if you hear the road call your name because you feel that if only you can drive far enough, there’s somewhere you will arrive — I can tell you: so you will. When you’re lost at sea, remember: if there’s no way to keep your foundations solid rock, there’s no sea either without shores.

At the Winter Solstice, we celebrate Children’s Day to honour our children and to bring warmth, light and cheerfulness into the dark time of the year. Holidays such as this have their origin as “holy days”. They are the way human beings mark the sacred times in the yearly cycle of life.

In the northern latitudes, midwinter’s day has been an important time for celebration throughout the ages. On this shortest day of the year, the sun is at its lowest and weakest, a pivot point from which the light will grow stronger and brighter. This is the turning point of the year. The romans called it Dies Natalis Invicti Solis, the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun.

The Roman midwinter holiday, Saturnalia, was both a gigantic fair and a festival of the home. Riotous merry-making took place, and the halls of houses were decked with boughs of laurel and evergreen trees. Lamps were kept burning to ward off the spirits of darkness. Schools were closed, the army rested, and no criminals were executed. Friends visited one another, bringing good-luck gifts of fruit, cakes, candles, dolls, jewellery, and incense. Temples were decorated with evergreens symbolizing life’s continuity, and processions of people with masked or blackened faces and
fantastic hats danced through the streets.

The custom of mummers visiting their neighbours in costume, which is still alive in Newfoundland, is descended from these masked processions.

Roman masters feasted with slaves, who were given the freedom to do and say what they liked (the medieval custom of all the inhabitants of the manor, including servants and lords alike, sitting down together for a great Christmas feast, came from this tradition). A Mock King was appointed to take charge of the revels (the Lord of Misrule of medieval Christmas festivities had his origin here).

In pagan Scandinavia the winter festival was the yule (or juul). Great yule logs were burned, and people drank mead around the bonfires listening to minstrel-poets singing ancient legends. It was believed that the yule log had the magical effect of helping the sun to shine more brightly.

Mistletoe, which was sacred because it mysteriously grew on the most sacred tree, the oak, was ceremoniously cut and a spray given to each family, to be hung in the doorways as good luck. The celtic Druids also regarded mistletoe as sacred. Druid priests cut it from the tree on which it grew with a golden sickle and handed it to the people, calling it All-Heal. To hang it over a doorway or in a room was to offer goodwill to visitors. Kissing
under the mistletoe was a pledge of friendship. Mistletoe is still forbidden in most Christian churches because of its Pagan associations, but it has continued to have a special place in home celebrations.

In the third century various dates, from December to April, were celebrated by Christians as Christmas. January 6 was the most favoured day because it was thought to be Jesus’ baptismal day (in the Greek Orthodox Church this continues to be the day to celebrate Christmas). Around 350, December 25 was adopted in Rome and gradually almost the entire Christian Church agreed to that date, which coincided with Winter Solstice, the Yule and the Saturnalia. The merry side of Saturnalia was adopted to the observance of Christmas. By 1100 Christmas was the peak celebration of the year for all of Europe. During the 16th century, under the influence of the Reformation, many of the old customs were suppressed and the Church forbade processions, colourful ceremonies, and plays.

In 1647 in England, Parliament passed a law abolishing Christmas altogether. When Charles II came to the throne, many of the customs were revived, but the feasting and merrymaking were now more worldly than religious.

Here in Nova Scotia outdoor coloured lights play an important part in the local celebration of the mid-winter season. With the day turning to darkness so early in the North, it is cheering to look out into the cold and dark at lights sparkling and glittering in the crisp air.

Our celebration of Children’s Day is inspired not only by the pagan celebrations of mid-winter but arises also out of the Japanese holidays of Boy’s Day and Doll’s Day, which are two separate days in the spring, when boys and girls of a certain age are presented to the temple and honoured with special gifts. The Shambhala Children’s Shrine is modeled after the display of ancestral dolls traditionalin homes on Doll’s Day.

Our sangha is our village, our clan, our family. Our children belong to all of us, and are bright reminders of the future of Buddhism. We celebrate them and the Great Eastern Sun together at the darkest time of the year, with open-hearth parties and cheerful festivities.

The Unconquered Sun first appeared as an article by Janet Shotwell in The Karma Dzong Banner (Vol III, No 11, December 1991, Halifax, Nova Scotia).

“The winter solstice is the longest night of the year and a turning point, after which each day thereafter will become imperceptibly a little longer. It celebrates the returning of the light and the deepest reaches of darkness.
I remember the winter solstice that I stayed awake the whole night long with people who were mostly strangers and yet as we went around the circle and each person spoke, we recognized kindred souls. It was an inner time of winter solstice, especially for the man in whose honor we had been invited to come. He was ill, and some close friends feared that he had given up. They hoped that this night could be a turning point for his spirit. Outside, it was a dark, cold, moonless night. We were at a ranch in the foothills of Northern California in a round, tall-ceilinged building, lit only by candles. During the night, each of us went out alone to take a turn feeding and tending a large, intense fire whose coals would later be raked into a firewalk. Standing watch by the fire invited thoughts and prayers. I think that
we each must have wondered if we had enough faith and courage and what it might mean if we did or did not walk across those glowing coals when the time came.

Each person in the circle seemed to be at a transition point in his or her life, and some felt that they were going through the dark night of the soul–which is hardly ever appreciated as the transition it usually is. Individually acknowledged were the symbolic deaths–of former selves, work and relationships. These are the transitions when we are in-the-dark, when old
assumptions have died and are no more, and we don’t know what will happen next. This is when people seek therapy and since this is the work I do, I often see people for the first time when they are in a winter solstice phase.

While the night of the winter solstice is always over at dawn, we don’t know how long we will remain in a winter solstice phase, and many fear while in the midst of it that there will no light at the end of their tunnel and that dawn will never come. When help is sought, that very act is an expression of
helplessness and hopefulness; an admission that we can’t get through this on our own and hope that with help, we shall. Often this is the turning point.

I think of the elements that came together that night at the ranch as metaphors and examples of what is needed. The round room was a physical container that separated us from ordinary life, and being in a circle of people where it was safe to “tell it as it is” was another container that held what was said within. We were in a temenos, which is a Greek word for “sanctuary”. No container formed by two or more human beings is perfect,
but those in which soul work is done are sacred sites. It is where something greater than persona or ego is welcomed. In Jungian work, the central archetype is the Self or archetype of meaning, and the task of individuation is to find and maintain a connection to the Self. Then life has meaning and authenticity, and there is a sacred dimension to how we live and what we do. The symbol for the Self is the mandala, a circle with a center. The circle of strangers who met on a winter solstice unintentionally enacted this symbol by placing a candle at the center. It is the underlying invisible shape of recovery groups that call upon higher power, and the spiritual form taken by women’s spirituality circles and support groups of all kinds that have a spiritual center. A circle with a spiritual center makes meeting together a sanctuary for its members, a time that nourishes the soul.

In the midst of a winter solstice phase, help does come through relationships, but there is also a deep need for solitude to know what matters to the soul, and wonder if we have the faith and courage to do whatever we must do. To go outside the safe circle of supportive others, into the cold night and face the possibility of going through the fire. Major life transitions, especially when others do not understand us or want us to behave differently, call upon us to do this.

Our friend who was dying did not chose to do the firewalk and he was at peace about it. When it had been my turn to tend the fire, I thought that I would not do the firewalk. Several months before, I had done a firewalk as a symbolic act and had learned that there was a physical reality to walking over hot coals. A few “sticky” coals had clung to my feet and I had had some painful blisters to show for my hubris. I was not feeling heroic anymore. The transition I was in was of my own doing, and now I could not see where I was going. Yet at a soul level, there was something that felt right about being where I was.

When the time came for the firewalk, I felt content to watch others and lend support by my presence and prayers. The heat that radiated from the hot bed of coals was so intense that it was impossible to stand too close. One at a time, many made the walk, and then to my own surprise, it was my turn. It must have been a body-soul decision; it certainly was not made by my head, and willing myself to do it played no part. This time, there was no sensation of heat at all, the glowing coals under my bare feet could have
been crunchy Styrofoam peanuts.

When morning came, ordinary reality was back. Nothing had changed overnight in “real life.” It was very much like awakening from a powerful dream that would stay with me and contribute to a perspective I have about life. I know that there will always be winter solstices to go through, times when we are in the dark and in transition, and if we look around at everyone else we know well, we realize this is so for them, too. Everyone has his or her share of descents into the darkness; suffering is part of what we encounter by being human, and sometimes what we seem to bring on ourselves as well. Yet if we are spiritual beings on a human path rather than human beings who may be on a spiritual path (which is how I word what my soul knows), there must be a reason for an immortal soul to become a vulnerable, limited human being. Might there be value to be found in the dark as there is in dreams? Both are sources of soul knowledge,  and after many cycles we do learn that dawn always comes.

A short time after the winter solstice, our friend made the last transition from this world into the next. As for my unplanned firewalk in which my feet and soul made the decision: this was the beginning of a phase of my life in which I learned to trust my body-soul perceptions. I learned, for example, that to know something in my heart was not a poetic metaphor, it was a sensation I felt in the center of my chest. When it comes time for me to make my final transition. I will not be surprised if my feet and heart know when. Nor will I be surprised, if there is light on the other side and insight into what we came to do here.”

This is a reprint of an article Dr. Bolen wrote in 2000 for Gary Zukav’s site.

“If you’re reading this post before lunch, be prepared to work up an appetite–or at least a very strong craving for salmon! Today J.S. Dunn is here to talk about what a winter solstice feast would have been like in ancient Ireland. I’m fascinated by this for several reasons, but not the least of which is that I’d been led to believe that the ancient Romans and Greeks didn’t use butter, using olive oil instead. If the ancient Irish were using butter, I wonder what accounts for this difference in ancient culture? Read on for a delicious recipe on a Juniper Reduction!” ~ Stephanie Dray

Food is important in Bending The Boyne for a number of reasons. Ireland
separated from the Continent earlier than Big East (the UK’s isle) hence it has relatively fewer flora and fauna species for its food chain. Add to that Eire’s capricious weather, and even as of the 1840s the climate + food supply was a recipe for disaster: Famine with a capital F.

What did the ancient Irish eat at 4,200 years ago? And, what about the peoples in what is now Portugal/Spain, the Costa Verde, and up the Bay of Biscay to the Loire/Morbihan coast? At first, researching prehistoric foods for this tale looked daunting.

The Dindshenchas, the medieval text that provided myth fragments for Bending The Boyne, has clues to the early diet: the sacred salmon of knowledge, the hazelnut which also imparts wisdom,cereal grains for porridge, and various berries. The ancientsused milk and butter from their herd animals. To this day, well-made oak casks holding Bronze Age butter turn up at digs in the bogs.

Domestic meats of sheep and cattle, and cuts of wild deer and boar, show
in the bone counts from archaeological digs. Fish were trapped in wattle river weirs long before 2200 BCE, and shellfish consumed in coastal regions per remains in ancient shell middens.

An ancient prohibition on killing swans, a geis, provided material for the plot. There is evidence that swans were indeed eaten for food, and swans winter at the river Boyne in great numbers. The prohibition re: swans was perhaps politically motivated—this novel shows a plausible reason for that geis.

The ancients’ knowledge of edible seeds, roots, and herbs would far exceed our own based on paleobotany surveys at excavations. They collected and dried the wild apple in the Isles, and berries.

In warmer latitudes like ancient Spain the Bronze Age people began to cultivate the olive and other fruiting shrubs. There is evidence they knew which acorns to collect, and ground those into flour. Spain’s meltingly tender acorn-fed ham shows up in this novel, for that may have begun in antiquity given their early use of abundant acorns.

Ultimately many passages about food became a joy to write to show the richness of the environment for those who well knew how to utilize it. For these ancients, a feast probably was literally a sacrament of life. The reborn winter solstice sun showed the ancients that spring’s bounty would return.

Boyne Solstice Feast

Smoked salmon, smoked haddock
Dried apples stewed with fresh or dried swan
Wild boar, venison, joint of beef ; boiled or roasted
Meal cakes of finely ground hazelnuts, seeds, and grains, sweetened
with honey
Soft white cheese, sweet butter
Mead* and herbal infusions

*
“Mead distilled sparkling, its praise is everywhere.”

From Welsh myth, Song to Mead

Juniper reduction sauce for modern roast wild game:

Here  is a simple (and relatively low-fat) reduction sauce if you
happen to be serving wild boar or venison for winter solstice
or a more modern holiday. Juniper berries impart a flavor like
rosemary with a citrus hint. The berries should be dried and
crushed before use. Note, buy in a shop—don’t try
to harvest your own; some juniper varieties are toxic.

Roast or sauté the meat, keep warm. Deglaze the pan with around
½ cup of red wine (or Calvados, or Guinness, or whatever!),
and simmer that mixture in a heavy saucepan until the essence
reduces by half in volume. The sauce should coat a spoon. Add
one chopped shallot ( or wild garlic shoots if you have those
at hand ) and 8 fluid ounces of beef consommé ( not bouillon)
and reduce again. If desired, butter (3 tbsp) can be added for
a smoother, shiny sauce or to correct overcooking! Add the crushed
juniper berries when almost ready to serve the sauce. 4-6 portions.

About The Author:

J.S. Dunn lived in Ireland during the past decade, on 12 lovely acres
fronting a salmon river. From there, the author researched and
traveled the Atlantic coasts of Wales, Brittany, and Spain,
while completing Bending The Boyne.

Bending The Boyne reflects the new paradigm that Gaelic culture
and Gaelic language arose in the early Bronze Age rather than
the Iron Age. See also the works of William O’Brien, PhD,
and Barry Cunliffe, PhD, archaeologists; and John Koch, linguist;
eg, Celtic From The West (2010, Oxford Press).

Website

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– print 350 pp, and Kindle/app version

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When harpers once in wooden hall
A shining chord would strike
Their songs like arrows pierced the soul
Of great and low alike
Aglow by hearth and candle flame
From burning branch of ember
The mist of all their music sang
As if to ask in wonder
Is there a moment quite as keen
Or memory as bright
As light and fire and music (sweet)
To warm the winter’s night?

So the shortest day came, and the year died,
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive,
And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us – Listen!!
All the long echoes sing the same delight,
This shortest day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, fest, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!!

Ubelluris,
Blue is your face
Of countless mornings
In time
White are the clouds
That rest on your shoulders
Today and tomorrow
For all of your days

You hold
up the sky
The western sky
Of my people
Though I never see you
I know my step is firm
For you do uphold me
I know my fields are strong
For you do uphold me
I know that my future is blessed
For you do uphold me
For all of your days

Ubelluris
So quiet in your labours:
It is what you do
From the beginning to now
The earth is a child
Under the sky
Blue and ancient
You are my foundation
And I thank you,
My Lord
For all of your days

Ubelluris,
Blue is your face
Of endless mornings
In time
White are the clouds
That rest on your shoulders
Today and tomorrow
For all of your days

©2011
for the Ogmic Press
All Rights Reserved

In today’s society, we see Irish art, dance, and food, but
how much of what we have experienced is truly Celtic? If you
ask a person from Ireland if he or she is Celtic or Irish most
of the time their response will be Irish. So how does one know
what is truly Celtic and what is not? Unless one could time
warp back in time, there is no way to know. However, this essay
will attempt to correlate and reveal some traditions of the
Celts and Irish that may have affected culture through modern
times.

Ireland’s rich cultural heritage has ancient roots and
human habitation in Ireland dates back almost 10,000 years;
when Mesolithic-era hunter-fishers occupied the island. Following
came Neolithic peoples, people from the Mediterranean region,
known in legend as the Firbolgs, and later came the Picts. The
arrival of Celts, about 350 BCE, introduced a new culture to
Ireland, one that would have a lasting historical influence.

The Celts are the people who spoke and still speak languages
of Indo-European origin, though it is argued that the Celtic
race itself no longer exists. They flourished as an identifiable
culture beginning around 700 BCE. Celtic influences reached
England around sixth century BCE, characterized by techniques
of iron working with the resulting improved weapons and agricultural
implements which gave greater efficiency to warfare and land
use, making the settlers far superior to the indigenous peoples,
of whom little is known. Between the third and first century
BCE, they came to Ireland, where they settled and flourished.
From 43-85 CE the Romans invaded Britain, which remained occupied
for 360 years, however, as the Celtic nature of the Britons
was displaced; it flourished in Ireland, where the Romans never
conquered.

Out of the Celtic tradition developed a singularly important
aspect of Irish life, the bardic school, which was to have a
direct impact on daily life in Ireland for about 1,500 years.
The studies of the students in the bardic schools were chiefly:
history, law, language, genealogy, and literature. The history
was that of Ireland, the law was that of Ireland, namely the
Brehon Law system; the literature was that of Ireland and through
the medium of the native language, all subjects taught. After
Christianization, some vestiges of the Druid cult survived in
them as the pagan sensibility did until modern times. When the
schools did at last become Christian, they did not become monastic;
and they are not to be confused with the famous monkish schools.

The Bardic Schools were lay, officered by laymen; and existed
side by side with the great schools of the clerics. The bardic
schools, as a separate institution to ecclesiastical schools,
lasted until the smashing of the Irish intelligentsia in the
seventeenth century. From these schools, the poets, the historians,
the Brehons, doctors, and other professional people graduated.
The education in these ‘lay’ schools ran parallel to education
in the monastic or ecclesiastical schools. Ireland, unlike most
of her neighbors, such as England, therefore had an educational
tradition outside the church. Irish Brehon Law was an independent
indigenous system of advanced jurisprudence that had fully matured
by the eighth century. The law of the Irish Celts derived from
a complex set of customs and practices, handed down orally from
generation to generation. The Brehon Laws, as we find them today,
may be attributed to the Irish Golden Age. “The fierce
and restless quality which had made the pagan Irish the terror
of Europe, seems to have emptied itself into the love of learning
and the love of God: and it is the peculiar distinction of Irish
medieval scholarship and the salvation of literature in Europe
that the one in no way conflicted with the other.”

Nowadays when one thinks of Celtic art they tend to direct attention
to tattoos, but Celtic art is more than body decoration. Celtic
art flourished and developed in Ireland long after it had disappeared
on the European mainland. In contrast with the realism and natural
beauty preferred by Greek and Roman artists, the imaginative
art of the Celts delighted in symbols and intricate patterns.
A new flowering of this art occurred as Irish monasteries became
more prosperous, particularly in the seventh and eighth centuries.
The monasteries produced illuminated manuscripts, the more beautiful
and detailed being the Book of Durrow and the Book of Kells.
Many of the finest Irish products of this period have been found
on the European mainland, carried there by wandering scholars.
Historians have coined this era the ‘Golden Age’ of Celtic art,
an age rudely terminated by the Vikings.

When discussing Ireland, one is obligated to mention Irish Celtic
mythology. These sagas are necessary read for anyone attempting
to practice a Celtic spiritual path. Not only are the stories
a gate to the historical beliefs, but also they provide lessons
for life that are woven with morality and honor. These sagas
come in four major groups of stories, or cycles. The Mythological
Cycle deals with characters that were once gods, and with the
origins of the Irish. The Fenian Cycle concerns the hero Finn
mac Cumaill and his band of warriors, the fian. The Historical
Cycle, otherwise known as the Cycles of the Kings, includes
stories of legendary, and semi-historical Irish kings from pagan
and early Christian times, and the oldest and greatest cycle
is the Ulster Cycle. These mythological stories deal with the
adventures of hero’s such as Cú Chulainn and Finn
mac Cumaill. The God/Goddesses of the Tuatha de Danann like
The Dagda and Morrigan, and the telling of Lugh and Balor. These
sagas are still told and reenacted to this day much as the Celts
would have done centuries before.

Celtic influence is still alive and kicking in Ireland today,
although one would have to look very hard for true traditional
Celtic practice, it is there. It is blended into the daily practices
of the people, practices that are ancient in concept and were
even inclusive to other cultures through assimilation. In modern
history, we see the spiritual practices of the Celts even though
Ireland is now mainly Christian. We see laws in Ireland and
throughout the world that were influenced by the Brehons. We
see Ireland and other countries that have benefited from the
colleges that developed due to Druidic and Bardic philosophies.
The world may have changed and the ancient Celts and Druids
may have passed on to the Otherworld, but to this day we are
able to experience their greatness and find their influences
imbedded in today’s society.

References:
Book(s): The Celts by John Davies
Websites: http://www.Uaitudhaltripod.com/lllaw
and http://www.bbc.co.uk

We  acknowledge the Three Fires
that give light, warmth, and life to all:

First, to the spirits of the land and this place;
Be with us and guide us,
Be our hospitable hosts as we are your gracious guests.

We acknowledge the second fire:
The fire of the ancestors, of blood and of culture,
That we carry in our hearts and thoughts;
Be with us and inspire us,
Be our excellent exemplars as we are your devoted descendants.

We acknowledge the third fire:
The great fire of the gods and goddesses,
The powers and inhabitants of the otherworld;
Be with us and enlighten us,
Be our perpetual patrons as we are your constant clients.

To the Three Fires—may we kindle you at all times, and
may you never be extinguished!
Bendachta Dé ocus An-Dé foraib—
the blessings of the Gods and the Non-Gods be on all of you!

~~ Source Unknown ~~

Another had been found, another ocean on the planet,
given that our blood is just like the Atlantic.

~ Modest Mouse, “3rd Planet” ~

Everybody knows we’re mostly water. But I remember the kind of mystic revelation that hit me the first time I read that scene in J.D. Salinger’s short
story “Teddy” where the ten-year-old describes watching his little sister drinking milk, how he suddenly saw that she was God and the milk was God, and “all she was doing was pouring God into God.” David Suzuki echoes this startling but simple truth when he writes in his book TheSacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature that “we are intimately fused to our surroundings and the notion of separateness or isolation is an illusion.”

Our physical being weaves us intimately into the world of air, water, soil and sun, and as Suzuki says, “these four ‘sacred elements’ are created, cleansed and renewed by the web of life itself.” When faced with the overwhelming tragedy of pollution that continues to seep into our rivers and oceans even while millions of people live in poverty without access to clean, potable drinking water, we can remember our place in that web of life and the lessons of connection and flow taught to us by the element of water.

Water, Water Everywhere

When we eat, we participate with Spirit and the gods in a dance of growth, death, decay and rebirth, as even our waste returns eventually to the land to nourish and enrich the soil from which our food grows. Plants transform the energy gifted to them by the sun into forms that can be absorbed and exchanged, and when we work, we release that energy again through the efforts of our hands, legs, mouths and minds to shape the world. Our breath
is the breath of our ancestors, but also of the atmosphere and the weather, the winds and storms that encircle the planet and rustle the leaves of the tree just outside the window. And when we drink of those waters that well up from the earth — blessed, guarded and sustained by the gods and goddesses of the oceans and the holy springs and the caves of the underworld — all we are doing is pouring god into god.

Druidry recognizes this sacred truth in its reverence and appreciation for the four classic elements of earth, air, fire and water, those threads that weave together our bodies within the greater fabric of the universe and entangle us in the numinous dance and song of the world. These four elements are the “building blocks” of all matter and life, the basic stuff that compose us the way notes make up a melody. Yet Druidry also has its own three elements or aspects: calas, gwyar and nwyfre. Of these, gwyar (pronounced GOO-yar) is commonly said to correspond to the classic element of water, and yet in Old Welsh the word gwyar literally means “blood.” While we might think
of water the element as one kind of note within the Song of the World, gwyar is that aspect of flow or fluidity which connects one note to another as the song moves and changes. The element of water might take the form of a solid, liquid or gas, of rivers, oceans, streams, wellsprings, mists, clouds, rain, glaciers or blizzards — gwyar is that aspect of transformation from one to the other. Gwyar is the quality of flux, movement, connection and exchange. While we can see this best with water itself in all its myriad forms cycling through the circulatory
systems of the earth, gwyar exists within each of the elements. All those ways in which the four sacred elements connect us to our ancestors and our gods, weaving us into the physical world and binding us to one another — this is gwyar.

It makes sense, then, that gwyar means “blood.” Our blood flows through our bodies, carrying not just water, but nutrients, hormones, proteins and waste products as well, providing oxygen and fuel where they are needed, and removing harmful chemicals or leftover byproducts where they are not. Our blood is the agent of exchange, connection and transformation
within our bodies. Yet, Suzuki points out that although we live now on land, we were originally creatures of the sea and our bodies have their source there — and so the blood and other fluids in our bodies are like a kind of internal ocean, being constantly cleansed and renewed and carried with us wherever we go. “These fluid connections result in another aquatic habitat on land, an internal sea flowing between living things” that spans the entire world in a network of give and take from body to body, organism to organism. While our blood is a kind of inner sea, we can also think of the oceans themselves — as well as the rivers, streams, springs, groundwater, rain, runoff, atmosphere and all the forms that water can take — as the blood of the earth, carrying the elements along, circulating and keeping them in a dynamic balance. Once again we see the close relationship between the element of water, and the aspect of gwyar as a principle of exchange and flow.

But Not a Drop to Drink

So it’s no surprise that the general numbness and disconnection of our modern culture — our alienation from gwyar as the expression of sacred connection and exchange with the planet and its many beings and gods — can be poignantly seen in our damaged and dangerous relationship to the element of water. The tragic poisoning of our oceans, rivers and lakes with pollution, refuse and oil spills; the almost one billion people across the planet without access to clean, safe drinking water and basic sanitation; the wasteful and exploitative use of water in well-off countries, where people carry around artificially-flavored “vitamin water” in trendy plastic bottles that ultimately end up in landfills leaching chemicals into the earth, or floating  in a huge continent of trash in the middle of the Pacific… All of these are just some examples of how the illusion of our separateness from the earth and the other beings who live here with us lead to relationships of disharmony, imbalance, sickness and harm.

Yet to redress this dis-eased relationship, it is not enough to imagine clean water as a finite resource that must be equitably allocated throughout the human population, as though it can be manufactured, packaged and shipped in discreet bundles to where it is needed. Water — the blood of the earth — has its own vital part to play in the circulation of the other elements, and it would be as foolish to disrupt or override this process of movement and exchange as it would be to try to reorganize our own internal organs in the hopes that we could do without our liver or kidneys. Such an attempt would be to completely miss the lessons of gwyar, to ignore the deeper implications of connection, relationship and flow. Gwyar teaches us, for instance, that the problem of clean water is also the problem of clean air, as wind currents carry our smog across the oceans or fall in polluted rains into our rivers and lakes. The problem of clean water is the problem of clean energy, as our oil spills coat the seas with a film of sludge and new technologies like hydrofracking  inject poisons into the skin of the earth in order to extract
natural gases, leaving waste-water thick with chemicals to leach into the groundwater of the surrounding landscape. The problem of clean water is, too, the problem of clean soil, biodiversity and balanced ecosystems, as our petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides covering miles and miles of monoculture crops run off to taint our drinking water, and natural habitats like wetlands that once helped to filter out and break down harmful chemicals
are being overwhelmed or destroyed by over-development.

And finally, the problem of clean water is also the problem of clean spirit, a spirit open to honorable relationship with the rest of the world, a spirit which can acknowledge other living creatures as equally valuable and worthy of life as human beings. This is, perhaps, the hardest lesson that gwyar asks
us to face: the fact that the fresh water that we so desperately need to survive is also the rarest form of water on earth, with most of it locked away in glaciers and ice-flows. The fact that there just may be some places on this planet where human life cannot thrive and flourish as we seem to think is our birthright, and that our efforts to dominate and domesticate every inch
of the earth, every landscape, ecosystem and bioregion, cannot ever free us from our intimate participation in the greater ebb and flow of life which does not privilege us, or owe us anything.

How to Quench the Thirst

So what can we do to help? Here again, we can remember the penetrating
and transforming insight of gwyar: we are all connected, we all participate in the dance and song of the world. When we have so much evidence of how our small, everyday actions can cause such extensive harm, it can be difficult to remember the corollary. But even a small act of restoration can have long-reaching  effects that cumulate and ripple outwards in many unexpected ways. I have no cut-and-dry list of tips to give you — that would assume that the solutions are going to be the same  for everyone, everywhere, and that just isn’t true. But I do have one simple piece of advice: learn to reconnect. Spend some time meditating upon the lessons of exchange, fluidity and connection that gwyar has to share, and how they manifest in your life and in your relationships with the earth and its
ecosystems. Examine your lifestyle for ways in which you can better honor your connection to the world. Pay attention to cause and effect. Study the science and politics of ecology and environmentalism, and stay informed about how larger global trends express themselves in your local area.

And then, embrace change as a sacred aspect of life, and commit yourself to participating in that change in ways that are healthy, harmonious and balanced. Change your life in myriad small ways — water your lawn from a rain barrel, give up plastic bottles and switch to a reusable thermos instead, participate in community stream and wetland restoration projects, take shorter showers, trade in your old washing machine or dishwasher for a water- and energy-efficient model. Then take it a step further. Find the courage and strength to make the changes that may be difficult or frightening — move to a new home that’s closer to where you work, commit to buying only local, organically grown produce, incorporate gray-water recycling into your home water use… Remember, everyone will come up with different solutions depending on their needs, means and abilities. Working together in community provides a place for the on-going exchange of ideas, resources, support and inspiration, and that too is a sacred expression of gwyar.

And last but not least, read The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature, by David Suzuki. Take it along with you on a walk in the woods, and sit in the sunlight, palms pressed to the earth, breathing deeply of the delicious air and feeling the blood pulsing in your veins — and know that you are holy, you are god pouring
into god.

Source: No Unsacred Place

Alison Leigh Lilly’s BLOG

The land of dreams,
the shadow land of forgotten knowledge
that lives deep in our soul weaving a way back through
time and space to connect with the life we have now.
The roots of our own life
being the connection to the ancient ones
where we carry their mystery, their magic, their blessings
and their pain in our very bones and blood.
The inter-connection of all life,
past and future to the very moment of now.
The inter-connection of all life and each other,
In the universal web
that weaves and connects the many layers of the many worlds.
Alone and together, empty and full,
the empty hearth of love always here, but to know her fullness
Is to step into the fire.

~~ Pippa Bondy ~~

Anderson, CA:
No news this season…we are on hiatus…

Website

Blessings
of Summer,
Tiffiny /|\
ArchDruid, Grove of the Manzanita, RDG

Contact info

Although it’s not a “Grove”, the NoDaL still qualifies as an “autonomous collective” of the Reformed Druids of Gaia, and consists of all the 3rd Order Druids therein. The purpose of the NoDaL is to provide a space for Archdruids of the RDG Groves and Proto-Groves to discuss the many aspects of running a group of Druids, and provide advice and support for each other. They also act as the “legislative” branch of the RDG – creating policy as needed.

In January 2011, the NoDaL voted to make some changes to the degree
system used by RDG. The 1st, 2nd and 3rd Degrees will henceforth be called “Orders.” In regard to members of the 3rd Order, it is henceforth a requirement that members of the 3rd Order participate in the NoDaL debates and votes, which are done in within an internet group.

Philadelphia,  PA:
Currently meeting in the lush emerald woods of Fairmount Park in the city of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection (commonly know as Philadelphia), Aelvenstar Grove honors Mother Earth. The grove was formally founded Beltaine, 2004 and is a proto grove of the Reformed Druids of Gaia/Order
of the Mithril Star and the Reformed Druids Of North America. In addition, we are associated with other pagan organizations such as Per NTR Sesen and Temple Harakhte.

Looking to our ancestors and the ancients, Aelvenstar Druids respect all life and receive inspiration from Nature and the heavens. We believe it is the natural state of Mankind to live in harmony with Nature. and that it is our responsibility to respect and protect the Earth. As activists, it is our responsibility to do our part collectively and individually to heal the environment.

Emphasizing development through the practice of Druidcraft, focus is placed upon personal growth through the development of body, mind,
and spirit. Through study, discussions, rituals, retreats, fellowship, and meditation, a spiritual framework is provided through which Druids may further develop themselves.

Aelvenstar Grove holds eight celebrations a year, on the solstices, equinoxes, and cross quarter festivals. We sometimes meet on other occasions for outings and initiations. Online meetings and initiations are held too, as some members live a distance away.

We welcome new members of all backgrounds who love nature and seek
spirituality permeated in the divine beauty and wonder that
surrounds us. Nature is groovy!

Courses available: Reformed Druidism 101

Website

Contact info

Live Oak , FL:
No news this season…

Blessings,
Ann Feather

Contact info

Roots Rocks and Stars
RDG “Proto-Grove”

Albany, OR:
Roots Rocks and Stars currently consists of three humans and two canine companions. We people are all college students, one in natural resources, one in Literature, and one in history. We live together in a small apartment in Corvallis Oregon’s north end. We are all ethnically descended from British Isle and French folks (some Native Canadian/American ancestry as well) and this colors our rituals. We are primarily dedicated to Cernunnos, Epona, Brigid, and Cerridwen but actually tend toward an abiding devotion to nature and spirit without too much investment in names and images. Our rituals tend to involve home-cooking and plenty of beer.

Contact info