May Recapitulation

The May Queen is crowned and Bel, Celtic god of Fire, the Sun and of Summer has arrived, at least temporarily! It's from his name that we get the word Beltaine. 

By his side walks Bridgit, Bride; she has reclaimed the year from The Winter Hag, The Cailleach, and will rule over the light half of the year. She's here, in the flowers, and the smiles of the bearers of those flowers. 

Perhaps it's him in particular that we honour with this symbol of the masculine. Also symbolic of The World Tree, the Axis Mundi, central pole between the three lands of the Otherworld.

May's blossoms have been spectacular, the orchard has been drenched with the smell of fruit trees in blossom, it makes my heart sing and a small corner of my busy little human mind has already started plotting all the delicious things that can be made with fruit and stored for winter, whilst another corner of that same mind mutters about counting chickens and hatching. 

And speaking of singing and hatching; there have been some strange and beautiful and sometimes sad sights here recently. The strangest has perhaps been this young female blackbird who took up residence on the bench and was not to be moved. She was there for some of every day for a week, standing her ground. She's gone now, hopefully having found less obvious places to sit. There are plenty of cats here, each of my three neighbours has three cats, so sitting on a bench in broad daylight is probably not the wisest course of action for any avian. 

There has also been one VERY successful male blackbird strutting about the garden; every time I've seen him he's had his mouth full. I'm pretty sure that he's been one among many, but perhaps they've all been successful at different times and I only notice each of them when they are emanating pride and 'look at me I'm a savage hunter feeding my babies with my trophies' vibes. 

There have clearly been some nests that will not be producing any more birds this year; always a poignant reminder of the tiny tendril of light that is life, so easily extinguished.

As are empty eggs with yolk marks in them, a sure sign that they were emptied by a predator, rather than the emergence of a fledgling. Although obviously if this was a blog read by badgers and foxes this would be a delightful sight telling tales of happy full bellies and a good night's endeavours.

I found a blackbird fledgling by the side of a wall, a bit discombobulated after his first flight. Luckily the cat's hereabouts didn't find him before he remembered he could fly. 

Perhaps this was his egg? It's broken open on the side you can't see and as clean as a whistle inside. 

All month the hedgerows have been full to bursting with good things to eat for everyone. 

Sorrel (above) and Wild Garlic (below) being two of my absolute favourites. 

They make a wonderful addition with Pansies, primrose flowers and Violas to a really beautiful and delicious salad. 

 At the end of May Day's celebrations here, when everyone has gone home and the quiet comes back to the valley

After the hilarious duck race, 

Fergus and I bimble home, up thought the woods. 

past the Wray brook on it's way to join the River Bovey, 

along a well worn path, by bluebells, taking care not to offend the fairies by picking any. 

Under the roof bosses of the cathedrals of trees. 

 Past the unspiraling of Spring in all her glory. 

Out into the yellow and green fields of summer. 

And then home. 

Where there always seems to be a reminder - that there is so much to love in the world, so much worth protecting, so much worth taking into consideration with every choice we make. 

May Day Fire Festival

Beltane blessings to you, and "Up The May!" - the cry goes out across the land, the fires are lit, the flames are jumped and the wheel of the  year turns.

I brought cakes

and managed to get in quickly enough to actually eat one before the many children saw them, at first feeling slightly triumphant but that was followed by feeling just-plain-mean as it was clear that I hadn't made enough to fill every belly that had a cake-shaped hole in it.

It poured with rain, hailed, and nearly put the fire out. The word Beltane means 'bright fire', so it was a close run thing, but the day was saved!

I've been thinking about fire a lot lately.

To the Celts the clearest way to convey the 'shaman's map' was (is) to say that our world is made of three realms; Land, Sea and Sky.  These are often expressed (all over the world) as being like a tree: the Trunk is this world, the Middle World, The Land. The branches spread out into the Upper World, The Sky, and the roots delve down into the Lower World, The Sea.

This idea is also very beautifully expressed in the Triskele. This potent ancient symbol carries many meanings simultaneously, but more than anything else it expresses the Triple Nature of all of reality as the Celts saw it and continue to see it.

In fact the image of the triskele is far older than the culture that we call the Celts. One of the earliest examples of it in the west is carved into the stone at the entrance of the passage tomb at New Grange in Ireland - about which I have many stories, but I think I'd better save them for another time, as I've already somehow strayed from the point.

So - Fire - first out of the Void I'm told; the creative spark, the beginning of everything. Our world is a place between two great fires - the Sun herself and the fire at the centre of the earth. Why is it not present in this map? Where is fire in the world which is Land, Sea and Sky?  It seems to me that it's everywhere, because it is inherent within everything - it is the heart of the matter. Strike flints or crystals together and you will get a spark, turn a hard wood inside a soft wood and you will soon kindle a flame. Fire is perhaps the clearest metaphor we have for Spirit. When we want to invoke the sacred we light a flame. So when we light the fires at Beltane, we are bringing the Fire that is inherent within everything, bringing The Spirits, right into the heart of what we are doing.


May heart and heart align and bring forth the Spirit Fires, may these enlighten the bright half of the year for you. Happy Summer, Happy Beltane.
Up the May!

Sprung Springing

What a year it's been so far; its as if I've been on some crazy circus ride that's had me spinning round whilst jumping up and down, whilst juggling, twirling a hoop on my left ankle and breathing fire! At least no-one's made me wear a sparkly spandex suit - yet.  Perhaps a more appropriate analogy would be that I feel like one of these lambs, dashing about the field; jumping, leaping, prancing, skittering, whizzing around for no good reason other than that the sun is shining, their bellies are full and it's fun!

Really what I've been doing is making, making, making. Beautiful things for people who describe exactly and precisely what they would like,

or things for people who let the Spirits decide what's right for them. I love this one - it was an epic, a Green Man on the face of the drum and Celtic knot-work all around the side. Fergus really excelled himself, The Green Man was an image he'd been wanting to put on a drum for a long time and although this is the best picture I've got of it, it in no way conveys the power of the image or the gravitas of this particular drum when you are in a room with it. It was made for a man who, it turned out, is a true Kelt.

I have also sometimes made beautiful things just because they need to be made, or at least I need to make them. This is the shed skin of an grass snake I think, although I'm ashamed to say that I can't actually remember, it was a gift given many years ago and the details have faded.

I've been running workshops too, where participants have made some extraordinarily beautiful things; like this little hand, burned into the inside of the wooden hoop of a drum with a pyrography tool,

And this rattle; the creator amazed by how proud she was of what she had made. I love it's simplicity.

I've been teaching workshops in a new venue, which I also love. Green Hill Arts in Moretonhampstead is a great place to work; lovely room, lovely people, lovely location. The room I use is beside and above the actual gallery (which is well worth a visit). To get there you walk through the church yard, lovely in it's own right, which is next to The Sentry, which is a field belonging to the people of Moretonhampstead. It's for playing and fairs and story tellings and whatever else you want to do in a field, and it's adjoined by other fields and a labyrinth of footpaths and bridleways that lead all around the beautiful green-that-is-getting-greener of Dartmoor.

And at the end of the day, I've been gardening in every spare second - outside each night until it gets completely dark.  If you are a regular reader of this blog you will know that this (and every other) season, is my favourite season of the year.

All the tidying and planting has been overseen by my faithful old helper.

I rediscovered some old steps, they only lead up to a hedge, but I've cleared away years of fallen leaves and transplanted a rose (which I'm happy to say has survived the experience and seems really happy in it's new home) and we can now sit on the bench in the morning sun. This is the first part of the garden that the sun greets as she rises and I have had a few blissful morning cups of coffee surveying the newly tidied and planted scene below me before I get to work.

The windmills are there to keep the marauding crows and pigeons and probably a few others off my peas! And yes, if you are a proper gardener, you will have noticed that my pea sticks are too fat, but they were what I could find last night at about 7.30, so they'll have to do!

Among the many who flitter among the hedgerows at dusk, my heart is a blackbird; singing. For the purposes of blog-continuity I should be saying that it is a starling - just because it's been a starling who's been filling the garden with his effervescent cadences for the last few days; this fine fellow has been standing in the branches of the maple tree, puffing out his chest and positively hollering out his repertoire of strange bird folk songs, hurling hymns of joy and courtly hankerings into the warming air, morning and evening, sounding as if he is attempting to seduce the sun herself - "stay a moment longer, stay that I may sing to you, stay" - but I can't be a starling, because I am a blackbird.

I have loved every kind of black bird my whole life and have felt their presence always; it was no surprise when we moved here to discover that our house shelters a little way down a hill, most of the way up which stands Raven's Tor.  Named so because it looks like a raven's head, but also it is the site of a raven's nest. The ravens fly around the valley kronking and kraaking, their wings making a rushing-of-feather-in-wind noise as they fly past. I know no other sound like it, it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and my singing blackbird heart erupt into a joyful cacophony.

This morning as I sat on my newly positioned bench I heard the first cuckoo far off in the distance. Yay, it's official, the swallows are here, the cuckoos are calling and summer is a-comein' in. Which means that when it snowed this afternoon, turning all that I could see of the high moor white, it felt a little disconcerting. Here in Britain we're on about the same latitude as New Foundland, it's only the Gulf Stream that keeps us so warm usually. As the ice melts in the Arctic the Gulf Stream is cooling. Sad and Strange times.

Spirit of The Drum, Words of The Pythoness

THE PYTHONESS

I am that serpent-haunted cave 

Whose navel breeds the fates of men. 

All wisdom issues from a hole in the earth: 

The gods form in my darkness, and dissolve 

    again

From my blind womb all kingdoms come,
And from my grave seven sleepers prophesy.
No babe unborn but wakens to my dream,
No lover but at last entombed in me shall lie.

I am that feared and longed-for burning place
Where man and phoenix are consumed away,
And from my low polluted bed arise
New sons, new suns, new skies.

- Kathleen Raine

It is a well known fact that the beating of a drum, between approximately 4 and 7 hertz (cycles or beats per second),  has the potential to alter our state of consciousness and that when we align honed intention with this altered state of consciousness we can step out of this reality and behind the 'veil' that separates this world from The Other.

In short, with a drum in our hands, we can find the door to the house of the spirits, we can open that door and go in. We can communicate with those we meet there, listen to their wisdom, receive their teachings and healings, and if we are of a particular type, perhaps give voice to those spirits in this reality,  This is the work of the Pythoness, Pythia or Oracle.

It is a partnership with Spirit.

"The drum was the means our ancestors used to summon the goddess and also the instrument through which she spoke. The drumming priestess was the intermediary between divine and human realms. Aligning herself with sacred rhythms, she acted as summoner and transformer, invoking divine energy and transmitting it to the community." Layne Redmond

Plutarch, the Greek Philosopher and writer who was himself a priest at Delphi (AD 46 - 120) wrote in his 'Moralia' (De Defectu Oraculae 51 - On The Decline of Oracles) of the Delphic Oracle: "Whenever, then, the imaginative and prophetic faculty is in a state of proper adjustment for attempering iself to the spirit ... inspiration in those who foretell the future is bound to come;"

"In some lands, the prophets - Merlin or Moses, Thorbjorg or Fedelm - operated independently of any setting, but in the Mediterranean, the emphasis was on the oracular site and the deity who resided there. Although we know the names of a few of the men who served as priests at Delphi or thespodes at Claros, the prophets and pythias themselves remain anonymous. What mattered was the origin of wisdom, not the channel through which it was received."  Diana L Paxson 'The Way of The Oracle'.

All are agreed though, that the crucial preparation for the Vate, the Pythia, the Pythoness, the Oracle, is to "Know Thyself" (as was written above the entrance to the temple at Delphi).  Whether one's service was to a particular liminal location, a deity, or a tradition, the first steps of the journey must include becoming a man or woman who knows exactly who they are (particularly necessary so that they may also recognise when they are who they are not), to become balanced, whole, so that the connection to the Divine, the Spirits, may flow through unhindered. Here again the drum can help us, being the primary tool for a practice of shamanic journeying which can indisputably help us speedily along the path to gnosis.

The great oracles of the past have been silent for many generations, their sacred sites reduced to tourist traps, their teachings unheard. But right now it seems that the moment for re-connection has arrived. In her wonderful book 'If Women Rose Rooted' Dr Sharon Blackie tells the tale of the demise of the Well Maidens, initially through the rape of one of them by the King. "It was his duty to keep the well-maidens safe, for they were the Voices of the Wells, and without the wells the land would lose it's heart. But Amagons wasn't much of a man for duty, and the day came when he broke faith". She then sends out a cry, one which is echoed all around the world at the moment, in many voices. "We were the Voices of the Wells, we can take up that old mantle. We can take up our golden grails again, and offer their life-giving drink to the world."

I have been working with a small group of women for some years now, bringing the oracular, vatic, pythic services of The Pythoness out from behind the veil, out to where she can be of service.

In this work, the drum is my ally and friend. "There was drumming in the hills around Edinburgh. A 1684 account published in London to prove the existence of witches and spirits describes a lad named 'The Fairy-Boy of Leith in Scotland' who took his drum every Thursday night to a hill between Edinburgh and Leigh. Here the 'boy of the fairies' beat his drum while men and women passed through invisible doorways into another realm.." - Tom Cowan 'Fire in the Head'.

So I thought I would share some of them here with you, in the hopes that you might be inspired to take one up too. If we remembered "that once upon a time we sang with the tongues of seals and flew with the wings of swans, that we forged our own paths through the dark forest while creating a community of it's many inhabitants, then we will rise up rooted like trees." (Sharon Blackie, 'If Women Rose Rooted')

And if we rise up rooted in Earth, then who knows what wonders we can bring about - speaking on behalf of those who currently have little voice, or those whose voices are not being heard.

The Invitation

It doesn’t interest me

what you do for a living.

I want to know

what you ache for

and if you dare to dream

of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me

how old you are.

I want to know

if you will risk

looking like a fool

for love

for your dream

for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me

what planets are

squaring your moon...

I want to know

if you have touched

the centre of your own sorrow

if you have been opened

by life’s betrayals

or have become shrivelled and closed

from fear of further pain.

I want to know

if you can sit with pain

mine or your own

without moving to hide it

or fade it

or fix it.

I want to know

if you can be with joy

mine or your own

if you can dance with wildness

and let the ecstasy fill you

to the tips of your fingers and toes

without cautioning us

to be careful

to be realistic

to remember the limitations

of being human.

It doesn’t interest me

if the story you are telling me

is true.

I want to know if you can

disappoint another

to be true to yourself.

If you can bear

the accusation of betrayal

and not betray your own soul.

If you can be faithless

and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty

even when it is not pretty

every day.

And if you can source your own life

from its presence.

I want to know

if you can live with failure

yours and mine

and still stand at the edge of the lake

and shout to the silver of the full moon,

“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me

to know where you live

or how much money you have.

I want to know if you can get up

after the night of grief and despair

weary and bruised to the bone

and do what needs to be done

to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me

who you know

or how you came to be here.

I want to know if you will stand

in the centre of the fire

with me

and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me

where or what or with whom

you have studied.

I want to know

what sustains you

from the inside

when all else falls away.

I want to know

if you can be alone

with yourself

and if you truly like

the company you keep

in the empty moments

By Oriah © Mountain Dreaming,

from the book The Invitation