A Chakra Meditation.

A Chakra Meditation.

I've just had a vibrant discussion with friends about chakras. I wanted to share a meditation with them, ask them what they thought.

I love to journey. This involves allowing your inner mind to float away into the spirit world and witness – through images, sounds, symbols…many different things – what is there. In my books, j
ourneying is not the same as meditation, although with both, the practitioner needs to be able to enter a trance state. Meditation is, in my definition, allow the thoughts to still sufficiently to experience an exulted state of being…enlightenment, some would call it, I find that harder to achieve. 

The way I find easiest, and most delightful is this chakra meditation. It is all about colour and it is bliss, and as a lover of Reiki, I find it easier to get into.

Slowly, moving through the spectrum, one fills oneself with colour. I start with the base chakra, the earthing part of your body, and visualize red...as red as red

can be...a concentration of the red chakra energy that is said to be contained there. Oddly, I found this far easier than I thought I would, and the purity and strength of it meant I could stay with a single colour for ages. 

There are seven chakras and seven colours in the spectrum. This can't be coincidence...there are seven notes in an octave too. Vibrations of life. As you move up these concentrated, invisible whorls of energy, which correspond (mostly) to endocrine glands, the spine and the parasympathetic nervous system, the colours slowly change, as subtly as a rainbow…orange for the sexual organs, yellow for the solar plexus, green for the heart, blue at the throat, violet, the fastest of colour vibrations, at the third eye. Chakras are invisible, of course, so no one can prove that they’re there, but for millennia yogis have used these energies to achieve enlightenment by opening up each chakra in turn until reaching the crown, which, when opened, fills with white light.

In my meditation, this white light pours out and coats my body. Whether this only happens in my imagination or in reality is probably not as important as how it makes me feel – a combination of opposites – filled up to bursting but as empty as an egg shell – peaceful yet animated – a tender joy ready to transform into whooping glee.
I’m delighted to find a way of remaining quiet and blissfully thoughtless for more than a split second at a time. For me, that’s a breakthrough.
   

Merry lockdown Midsummer to you All

Gors Fawr picnic, Midsummer 2019

Midsummer in lockdown, not so bad if you've got garden, country paths and a clear view of the rising and setting sun, I suppose. 

We can't join with other pagans this year, so for the first time, won't be holding a ritual in the Gors Fawr Stone Circle in Pembrokeshire (see this link for information on that).

Instead, we are joining with a lot of others to create a weekend retreat online, with The Way of the Buzzard. This small Mystery School for pagans interested in British shamanism is run by Nicola and Jason, who described lockdown as 'a crossroads', saying This global pause is giving us an opportunity take a deep breath and reflect on where we are and where we would like to go, both as humanity and also in our own approach to life. But how do we get a sense of direction as to where we are collectively and individually going now? And how to we forge that new path? 

We're already really enjoying their Solstice Retreat; I've had a couple of amazing journeys in which I met a new guide as  I drifted down the River Teifi in a coracle. She told me she was the 'wife of Hafan' one of the gods of summer. I've written a poem during today's meditation practice, which I was able to read out on the Zoom connection with all the other participants  several of us read, and the poems were utterly fantastic...and straight off the pen. You can find my poem below. The theme of the weekend is 'finding your tribe'. I've been doing some work with my ancestors...see my blogpost here...but in my visions this weekend, I've met with some of my more ancient Welsh ancestors (hence the coracle) and observed their way of life...catching salmon and sewen trout, making a fire with flint, and their lovely settlement with warm, welcoming beds of layers of skins. I asked them what was important to them...food, comfort, safety? They replied love; to receive it, of course, but more essential, to give it away, liberally.

This afternoon we looked at just how much we miss the richness of natural life; we pass it by every day, not stopping to see the patterns of ash leaves and keys hanging above our heads, or the fortitude of the weeds that plague our tidy borders.

Tonight, we will be drumming the sun down and tomorrow will crawl out of bed to see it rise.

So if you can't get out, or have access to the countryside take a leaf (literally) out of the Way of the Buzzard, and see what you can see...a tree in a park, a flower in a garden, a weed between the cracks of the pavement.

Here's my poem, a memory of a solstice sunrise twenty years ago.

Glastonbury Tor Midsummer 2000

Even as we climbed the Tor,

Soltice night coming down in waves on us,

Wave after wave,

Like the black sea,

I knew it would be spoilt.

Too many people, climbing, climbing,

Taking up the precious space on the flat Tor top, 

Ceaselessly wandering the grass, looking for a place to lay the sleeping bags.

Ceaseless drumming echoed round the tower,

it would go on all night, boring into my head, filling my mind, Never-ending noise.

And men, screaming out,

"ANYONE GOT ANY E?"

The sun dipped and dipped again,

Waving a red glove.

And was gone.

Clear sky, black and star-glittered.

On our back, with cool grass beneath us, 

We picked out the constellations as they

roared silently above us.

But it was still spoilt, with men passing packets of pills, 

Passing and passing again,

And the girls, valiantly fighting off their new best loves...

"It's the solstice, let's just dance..."

The drums powered on, entering our pours, our hearts, and spirits, 

Until we danced with the girls who didn't want loveless sex 

Not tonight, we'll dance until dawn.

We slept, even though the air was bitter as pills

until, through the dew and blankets, there was light,

Coming in wave upon wave

Like the bright sea

and we got up and welcomed the sun

On Midsummer day

And it wasn't spoilt at all.

This weekend retreat will be an opportunity to explore all of these questions. Together, from our own ho

Although it's too late to join this retreat, you can find out a lot about the Way of the Buzzard from their website mes, we will immerse in the energies of the ancient landscape of the upper valleys of the Yorkshire Dales, under the watchful gaze of Ingleborough, a sacred mountain to our distant ancestors. 

Held over the weekend of the Summer Solstice, we will be working with the Solstice energies of power and strength. We will envision what this new world will look like and find ideas on how we can begin to live this now to find our sense of direction, and we will work with tree spirit medicine and the message that Ash has for us as the tree of knowledge and equilibrium. 

There will be a healing drum bath as the Solstice sun sets in the sky, immersive meditative videos of the wildflower meadows and waterfall and streams around Ingleborough. There will be shamanic journeying, creativity time, reflective time and nature time, as well as a ceremony to set your intentions going forward at the end of the weekend

Living with the Gods

The Lion Man

Not all art tells a story, but for me, the overarching theme of most art  suggests that from its very beginnings, the story that the artist wants to tell, is that of the gods. This led me to recall the programme I’ve been listening to on Radio 4, Living With The Gods, a 30-part series of fifteen minute talks, written and presented by Neil MacGregor, a former director of the British Museum. To run alongside, the British Museum have an exhibition of some of the artefacts MacGregor is using to illustrate his talks.

Taranis

 Throughout the radio series MacGregor draws upon objects and curatorial insights from the British Museum to talk about daily and weekly religious practices, festivals, pilgrimages and sacrifices, power struggles and political battles between beliefs across millennia. He uses the artifacts, some thousands of years old, to illustrate and explore how the human race has lived with gods. This week, he took an earthenware cooking pot, about 1,750 years old, discovered to contain many little bronze statuettes…a household Roman god, two tiny birds, perhaps a raven and a dove which are often found in pre-roman societies in Northern Europe to symbolise deities,  plus some gods of more import – the Greecian god Minerva, the Roman God Jupiter, god of sky and thunder, and a spoked wheel, a symbol of Taranis, a Celtic god worshiped in Gaul and Britain. As Taranis was also a god of thunder, the Romans and accepted him alongside their own Jupiter.

The Roman Baths, Bath

MacGregor explained how the Romans exported their gods to the newly conquered lands, but were also able to ‘go global’ and assimilate the gods they found there, building temples to new and old, such as the Temple of Sulis Minerva at Bath in the UK. The Romans seemed to understand that if you honour other peoples gods, they become less strange. As McGregor says…The Romans will change, and so will they. It was an approach which allowed the Roman Empire to become a long-lasting multi-racial, multi-faith state. As the Roman Senate is recorded to have written; “The Immortal Gods are the same everywhere.” This allowed them to live on good terms with very many very different peoples, absorbing many cultures into what became a world view.

MacGregor explained that polytheism –  the worship of many gods – has had a bad press which has left us almost blind to the fact that across the span of human history, multi-theist one god systems have been the exception rather than the rule. And in the very distant past, the acceptance of what other people believe, or what previous people believed, was possibly stronger than it is today.

http://cadw.gov.wales/daysout/parclebreosburialchamber/?lang=en

It’s not just in Bath, at the Roman baths, that I’ve understood this fact for myself.  There is a wonderful landscape on The Gower, in South Wales, called Parc le Breos. This is a Norman Deer park with a hunting lodge you can stay at if you have sufficient readies. It is also a walkers, climbers and campers paradise, and it contains not only a  many-chambered passage grave, but also a cave, called Cathole, high up on a cliffside, which hides an exciting secret.

Cathole has recently been discovered to hold a prehistoric carving. It’s a reindeer, scratched in with a sharp flint too, to expose the redness of the rock below. It may be 14,000 years old – the oldest rock art yet found in Britain. I’ve been to Cathole many times, climbing up a steep, wooded path through the gorge to reach it. There are inner and outer chambers, and although it’s not that deeply cavernous, there are parts that are very dark indeed. So, despite my exploration of the cave, I’d never spotted the carving, and neither had any of the parties I’d been with. Since it’s official discovery, the cave has been gated, to prevent the public entering, so I’ll probably never see it now. 

http://www.stone-circles.org.uk/stone/parclebreos.htm

Thirty metres scrabble down into the valley of Parc le Breos Parc is an even older monument to ancient peoples; a  Neolithic chambered burial tomb over 5,500 years old. Locally known as the Giant’s Grave, it was partly restored in the 1960s, which is sad in a way as it no longer looks as it did when discovered, but it does mean we can have a reasonable idea of how it might have been (minus its capstones, which were plundered, probably for a 19 century building project). The layout is perfect for the games we liked to play in such places. The Giant’s Grave, or Parc Cwm, as it’s properly called, was where we fought off Tolkein’s Wargs as members the Fellowship of the Ring, and became a brilliant crossing place over the River Styx, on our way to Cathole, an even more brilliant Hades.

Inside the tomb, the human bones of at least 40 people were found. Examination showed that the women were all petit, the men all big and burly. Like many Neolithic sacred sites, it was used for almost 1,000 years – generation after generation – each passing down the stories of what this tomb meant to the people. There is a link to Cathole, too; it’s possible the cave was used to dry out and expose the bones of the dead before they were placed in the tomb.

Those people lived long before Cathole was used again. Then, during the last Ice Age, the people who came after the hunter-gatherers buried their own dea there. In the Bronze Age, it was used again for ritual burials. People came back to Parc Le Breos time and again, for over 3,000 years, to use the landscape, and especially the cave, time and again. 

McGregor gives a very ancient example of ‘more gods work better than less’ – he explains how the story of Noah, in the Bible, is echoed by a cuniform tablet from Mesopotamia, ‘The Epic of Gilgamesh’,  which tells the exact same story of a flood and an arc. The difference, apart from the names of the characters involved, is that in the Bible, only one God, Jehovah, orders the flood and drowns his disobedient people. In Gilgamesh, there is a council of the gods in which the main god, in a dictatorial move, orders the flood. However, mankind is saved when one whistleblower god secretly tells a local family to build an arc. After the flood is over, the gods understood that the flood was a wrong decision, and too much power can be bad, even for gods. 

It would be nice if we could all listen to that Roman advice that The Immortal Gods are the same everywhere, and try to accept other peoples' belief systems, while never trying to impose our own upon anyone.

You can learn more about Living with the Gods, at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09fj9mt

and listen to the programme, if you’re in the UK. You can also buy the book (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Neil-MacGregor/e/B0034PYKSQ/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1

And if you’re in London between now and next April, you can see the exhibits MacGregor talks about in his work at the British Museum. 

Beginning of July

David and Mara share a moment

Fairy wood

like our hats?

It was a glorious weekend. On Sunday we walked around the woodland near Cwmtydu (close to New Quay),  through a fairy wood, across a flower meadow filled with butterflys, over a hill fort called Castell Bach with its own colony of common orchids and down to the secret beach only reachable on foot.

first view of Cardigan Bay

summer meadow

The first salad potatoes are out of the ground and yummy, and we've actually finished one planting of peas and are on to the next. And the chickens are growing happily up with their two mums; Ceredwin, who is a concientious mum, and Henrietta, who is now, sadly, more interested in filling her own belly that that of her chick. When I offer them mealworms, to encourage them to eat off my hand she's there with her massive (painful) beak, and doesn't offer a single morsel to brown chick. Poor thing has to fend for itself, although Daddy Pwych does keep an eye out for it.

orchids

 It was still warm, if cloudy and a bit breezy, early this week, when we met Gill and Jenny down the Ffostrasol Arms for lunch. We were able to sit on the patio with our after-lunch coffees, anyhow.

But today, Thursday, it's drizzling and not at all warm. Suddenly, I longed to be somewhere where the weather is predictably hot all summer. Like Montenegro, where Becky is right now. Or Spain; the Costa Del Azahar, where we spent many fabulous summers. The poem below is in memory of those times. 

Spanish Song

 Heat virgin olive oil in a heavy pan,

Chop onion and gently fry.

Crush garlic, but add later in case it might burn.

Heat the grill for the sweet peppers to sear…

…To sear in thirty degrees, 

Lay out the tropical towels 

Smear with factor ten in case we might burn

Add four thin bodies to the heat-swirled beach.

Add four thin pork boneless steaks to the pan.

Seal juices while peeling red peppers

Once they have blistered. Slice finely. 

Grind in black pepper, oregano seasoning…

…Season for the murmurs of summer, 

For the glitter of the wide sea,

The screech and splash as children leap,

For the sleepy Spanish tongue; those sun-dried sounds.

Drain and slice a jar of sun-dried tomatoes

Toss into pan the tomatoes and the peppers. 

Cover and simmer for twenty minutes

After which add twenty olives to salt the dish…

…Salt in your hair and the feel of sand

Where the bar of your flip-flops grinds between your toes

Coming up the hill from the beach, stepping over wild thyme

Under the acacia trees into the marble chill of Los Arcos.

Chill the wine in the marble cooler,

As you lay out the ceramic you bought in Valencia.

The pepper skins lift; gift-wrapped in scarlet tissue, 

Spoon out the cerdo espanol and fluff up the rice

As the vino blanco is poured and sipped

Put on some Flamenco and twirl round the table…

The long evening filled with the fast guitars

And the smells of ceno from the next apartamento.

Midsummer - Glorious June 2014

Merry Midsummer to all our friends and relations!

We had a great day, yesterday. We rose at 4.30 so that we could see the sun up. Jane, Jim and me walked to the ridge of the Gernos Mountain. If this sounds like a hard tramp, believe me it wasn't; we just went up to the top of the field behind our house, 200 m above sea level.  It was bitterly cold and we were wrapped up in gloves and hats, but steadily, this massive, red sun rose above the horizon. As it did so, the clouds moved and we could see the crescent moon, pale in the sky. We took strawberries with us. We're getting a pudding baisin of strawberries a day, at the moment - I've had to make jam. I'm hoping they'll last till Wimbledon! We also took some fizzy elderflower cordial that I'd made the day before. I'd popped round to see Mara and taken home 25 heads of elderflower (and 2 lemons) and make several bottles of cordial. Very lipsmacking, I have to say. 

It was a glorious June day and we worked solidly in the garden trying to catch up with both the flowerbeds and and the veg plot; nearly there, at last. It's great, watching the two mother hens, Henrietta and Ceredwen, proudly bring their chicks out for a constitutional, but there was a sparrowhawk hovering so they soon hotfooded it back to their enclosure. They're grand mums, and the two cocks are always in attendence...I get the feeling they both think they're the dad.

In the evening we over to Rob and Angie's for a Midsummer party, with a blazing fire and loads of yummy food. By the time the bats were swooping overhead, the guitars, squeezeboxes and drums were out and we had a grand old singsong. 
By the time we crawled into bed, we'd been up for 20 hours, but who cares. It's midsummer!

Glastonbury in Midsummer 2014

Blown away completely by my four day stay in Glastonbury!

THE OLD HOLY THORN

Friday; 

THE ABBEY HOLY THORN; WITH WALKING STICKS

Lots of lovely people around, to meet, chat, drink tea with. I took a walk up Wearyall Hill, to see the poor, desicrated Holy Thorn tree; the one that used to blossom at Christmas; a sprig was always sent to the Queen for Christmas Day. It now looks like an amputee, but a much loved one, covered by cloutie ribbonds. 
This attack was not spiritual, but all to do with money and a landowner's feud.

A wander around the Abbey grounds was so peaceful; a great place to relax. And there, of course are two living and healthy Holy Thorns. I met the lady (in blue costume in the photo of the Abbott's Kitchen) whose Great Grandfather planted this Thorn. Her Grandfather subsequently planted a thorn some years later.

Later, the first of two chanting sessions with JJ and Adrian; these blew the ceiling off. Amazing. Finally, dinner with Mara before going back to my B&B. 
I'm staying at Bliss Cottage; which is bliss! Such a fantastic place; the garden full of roses and the house full of warm welcome from Trish.

Saturday; A massive marquee in the Abbey grounds to take 400 druids from over the entire world. Mara and I particularly loved Ronald Hutton's talk; you may recall his erudition when he spoke at my book launch for In the Moors - here he was the funniest I've ever heard him. Caitlin Matthews and the Druid's Chosen Chief Philip Carr-Gomm also spoke well, and Liv Tork's new book of Tree (Ogham) poems was created live on stage (more or less with live trees!)

I AM IN MATCHING GREEN TABARD AS I WAS PART OF THE RITUAL;
A PHYSICAL REPRESENTATION OF THE AWEN GLYPH 

MARA FREENAN LOOKING HER USUAL STUNNING SELF
AGAINST THE BACKDROP OF THE LEVELS

In the afternoon we all went up the Tor for the Druid's ceremony -. It was a short ritual, but very moving. 

  
That evening we had our party, back in the Town Hall for food and the Marquee for the Eisteddfod; Liv Torc was wonderfully funny on being pregnant and having her baby, and there was even a soprana from Holland, singing from Tosca. The dancing went on until 11pm when the fireworks started.

Sunday; Weary travellers were returning from the two ceremonies that had taken place at 6am at Stonehenge and Avebury as Mara and I joined other writers in the town hall to  raise interest in our books. We were part of a massive Druid Extraviganza; the  town hall full of tables where druids could display their speciality interests - everything from how to form a Grove to the Anti-Fracking campaign.

In the afternoon Mara was interviewed about her new book; Grail Alchemy by Philip Carr-Gomm. In the foreground, is Gill, a shaman I enjoyed meeting and hope to link up to again. 




It was a hot, sunny day and a trip to the White Spring was in order; this wellhouse, beautifully decorated by the trustees and volunteers is the original Victorian wellhouse which tapped the white spring directly from its source, as it tumbles out of the Chalice Hill rockface at gallons per minute. Inside, it constantly fills small pools in which you can paddle. Candles and flowers and bowers of hazel twigs are everywhere. Drumming, and singing to guitar added to the atmosphere, while children made rockpools by adding shells and pretty stones. A  fantastic moment in time.

Monday; I chaired a panel of writers at the 'Meet the Writers' morning, where we chatted informally about writing and tried to answer people's questions about their own writing. It went so well we adjourned to the George and Pilgrims after it was over; thanks especially to Mara, Brendon, Penny for being on the panel, and for Philip and Steph Carr-Gomm for coming, and for everyone else for making it such a lively event.


In the early evening I walked out onto the Somerset Levels (which I know so well....) to Ham Walls. An amazing experience; nature in abundance. I heart Bitterns booming, a Cetti Warbler, a Reed Warbler and various other reed birds, including the one recorded here, plus a thrush, a wren, a chaffinch, a blackbird, a goldfinch and a cuckcoo! A fabulous ending to the weekend.

Gors Fawr; Now on the Channel Five Map!

We were having a wonderful time at the Gors Fawr stone circle in the Preseli Hills, Pembrokeshire. We had created a short ritual to ask the stones, and their spirits and ancestors to allow us to continue working at this sacred and ancient place, just as those who erected the stones had done, thousands of years ago. When all of a sudden, out of the blue, two boys in Lycra on bikes came by…Larry and George Lamb!

Of course it didn't quite happen like that. George Lamb had particularly asked to meet druids in Wales to find out more about this spiritual path, and we agree to be there on the day of filming. But we did create a lovely ritual, which we'd almost  completed by the time they came riding by, tinkling their bells to attract yet more fairies and joining in with smudge sticks to the ready…

You can watch us chat about Druidry to Larry and George Lamb on Britain by Bike, 
Channel Five 13^th October – Pembrokeshire – 8pm.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Two magicians shall appear in England. The first shall fear me; the second shall long to behold me …

Dressed in an oriental robe and a white skin-suit scribbled all over with the predictions of a medieval English magician, I cried out those lines in a fit of madness. 

I was playing Vinculus, a character in the amazing, intriguing and compelling book called Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. A group of 10 of us, all lovers of this 1000 page (if you include the copious footnotes) work of magical fiction, had gathered together to enact, discuss and explore this amazing achievement. Acting out a huge piece of fantasy is not as daunting as it may seem; the same group of people have acted out Tolkien’s work and all of Homer’s, using a three day period to do so. In that time, we eat, dress and sleep the book in question. 

 Susanna Clarke writes about her invented world with such ease; it’s easy to believe England could really be like this – filled with magic and romance. It has been described as  'Harry Potter for grownups’ but that really does not do this eloquent and momentous work justice, although adults who adored Harry Potter will be impressed with the rich characterization and the great finale to the story.

Clarke has a flair for language, utilising the right words at all the right moments. She chose for her style an emulation of Jane Austin, (including archaic spellings). Some passages made me laugh aloud – Austin was funny, and here is another layer spread upon that ironic wit. 

I’m not alone in loving the book; Neil Gaiman said,  Unquestionably the finest English novel of the fantastic written in the last seventy years. It's funny, moving, scary, otherworldly, practical and magical...

This was Clarke's first book, although she’d prepared the ground by writing some short stories set in her parallel universe – a world that has the same history as our own, except for the fact that England was once filled with magic and magicians, and the North of England was ruled separately, by the Raven King – John Uskglass – a man who had been spirited away to fairyland as a child and returned full of fairy magic.

Ready to dance till dawn
 at the Fairy Ball in the kingdom of Lost Hope

But all that was centuries ago. When the book starts in1806, England is struggling with the Napoleonic war, and practical magic has faded into the nation's past – now magic is only studied ‘theoretically’.  But two of these students discover that Mr Norrell can really do magic. He’s studied the books all his life, and his displays of magic lead him, and his mysterious servant, John Childermass, from the north of the country to the bustling city of London. After he successfully brings a beautiful woman back from the dead and  terrifies the French army with a fleet of ghostly ships, he is taken to the bosom of the rich and fashionable. Gilbert Norrell is dedicated to book-learning and he's trying desperately to ignore and forget that in raising Lady Pole from the dead, he has awaken an amoral fairy king, who is now strutting around our world, enchanting people. When Jonathan Strange, the 2nd magician in the prophecy emerges, a dangerous battle of wills begins. Strange is young, dashing and daring, and not at all interested in only learning magic from books. While Norell,  a reclusive and cautious man,  is trying to get rid of any taint of dangerous fairy magic, Strange is actively bringing it back. He has no idea what a menace the fairy king posses, especially to his own lovely wife.

I was soon hooked on Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell the first time I read it, even though you need to get through at least the first 200 pages to even begin to see where the plot is going. Reading it again for the weekend event made me love it even more. All its depth and humour and the true cleverness of the carefully crafted plot became even more clear. One thing I really loved was the vast history of magic Clarke invents for England. Long after I finished it, I was still thinking about the menacing settings,  the wonderful characters, the

brilliant narrative development and the history she creates.

Of course, I also watched the TV series, now available both in the UK and the US to watch again.  Bertie Carvel who plays Jonathan Strange so well, said; I read it years ago and loved it … They've preserved the scale and majesty of the story … So you have credible, fully imagined characters recognisably of the same world we inhabit.  Paul Kaye, who played my chosen character in the film said, 

I read the book and loved it. It sort of obsessed me for a while and I felt an affinity with what turned out to be my character, Vinculus. I found the footnotes addictive! If there wasn't one on the next page I would be disappointed

You can watch the TV adaptation at:

UK; https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/video/detail/B00Y1Q6KXA/ref=imdbref_tt_wbr_aiv?ie=UTF8&tag=imdbtag_tt_wbr_aiv-21

US; http://www.bbcamerica.com/shows/jonathan-strange-and-mr-norrell

The Thrush Sings Thrice Over

There’s a thrush singing in my garden. When I let out my hens at daybreak, he’s there, welcoming the new morning. The first time I heard him, about a week ago now, I stood for long minutes. I had no idea that the wind from the top of the hill was lifting my hair, making me shiver. I was inside the song of the thrush. Finally, I was carried down the garden, with my steaming dishes of hen’s mash, calling out the lines from Browning…

That’s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, 

Lest you should think he never could recapture 

The first fine careless rapture!

I’ve seen him—it might just be a female, of course— fly from my far stand of clumpy willows, out across the fields, but usually he sings in a particular beech tree, establishing his territory for the breeding season. His song repeats on and off through the rest of the day, and is always there as the shadows soften down and the hens are heading to their beds. I’m hoping he and his lovely mate will choose my garden for their nest. Mr and Mrs Thrush don’t always start thinking about lurve quite this early on, but they’re responding to the warm rush of weather that has meant I don’t even need morning central heating. We seem to have left behind the worst ravages of winter behind bang on cue. 

The TV weatherman always makes the point that there are two starts to each season. The astrological start, which for spring is the 21st of March, and the meteorological start, which they seem to think is the 1st of March. But as a Druid, I follow the Celtic farming calendar, which has been with us since the Iron Age. The 21st of March,  June, September and December are the mid-seasons, not the beginnings. Spring started on the first of February, when our little band of earth-magic lovers…pagans, druids, witches, and the like…celebrated Imbolc, the coming of spring. For, although you might not feel very springlike at the end of January, under the soil and in the sap of the trees there is a new thrusting, shooting drive to lift the head and sniff the air and get on with things, from tilling the soil, to some DIY, to raising a family. 

Our Bridie Mantle, or girdle
 People pass through it, tying on their
hopes for the coming year

Imbolc is an Irish word, meaning ‘the milk of the ewe’, andeve n now, February the time of the baby lambs. Imbolc is dedicated to the Mother Goddess and the new life that she brings. She is well-known in Ireland by various names - Brighid Bridie Brigantia, becoming, as the years went on and the religion changed, Saint Bridget. She is often symbolised by the gentle bobbing of the snowdrop, which can literally burst through the last snows, and she's said to drape her green mantle across the winter world, turning it verdent. In her honour, Brigid Crosses are made by weaving rushes into a four-pointed star. As a goddess of healing, she has sacred springs across our lands, and in Solas Bhride Spiritual Centre, in Kildare, Ireland, a Perpetual Flame is tended by the Brigidine Sisters in memory of her, guarded as a beacon of hope, justice and peace.

with thanks to 
https://www.blarney.com/st-brigid_s-cross/

It is true that this mother goddess takes a little time to spread her mantle over the cold, hard, earth. Legend has it that if the Winter Goddess, the Callieach, intends to reign over a good, long winter, she will make sure the weather on the 1st of February is bright and sunny, so she can gather plenty of firewood, often seen in the form of a raven picking up sticks in its beak. Therefore, people in old times were generally relieved if that was a day of foul weather. Last year around my area of West Wales it was a lovely day on the first, but this year it was cold enough for snow to fall. So our small ritual was based on the idea that these two had to confront each other; the beautiful maiden of spring and the wizened old hag of winter. Of course the Callieach must lose, and slink away, threatening to return next winter, but we’re not under any illusion that from the 2nd of February onwards there would be nothing but daffodils nodding in sunshine! In fact, it may be that the wonderful, record-breaking warmth we have been enjoying in the past few weeks should be worrying us.

Yesterday, it was ‘as warm as spring’, and I went on a Garden Crawl with some veg-growing friends. This is a bit like a pub crawl, but with tea and cakes as substitute for beer. We saw five wonderful gardens, with polytunnels as warm as a Mediterranean beach. For the first time since last summer, we pulled out my rattan furniture and sat on my lawn in the sun, chatting, enjoying Kate’s greenhouse-grown melon and listening to larks rising from the fields, and my thrush, shouting at the top of his voice.

For me, the song of the thrush is simply the best. Yes, the blackbird and the blackcap are lovely, and the robin has a very pretty tune, while the nightingale’s melody is darkly spine-chilling. But the thrush can lift off the top of my scalp. His song always surprises, full of twists and turns, and not always ‘thrice over’; sometimes he repeats a phrase four times, or twice, but what I love is you never know what will come next…only the bird knows that. It is said that the more complex the song, the smarter the bird, but that can only be true of ‘Passeri’ class of perching birds, because we all knows that Corvus—rooks, ravens, jackdaws—are as smart-as-they-come, and there’s not much to a crow’s song except latent threat and a thread of misery.

Super Worm Moon. With thanks to
 https://res.cloudinary.com/jpress/image/fetch/c_fill,f_
auto,h_400,q_auto:eco,w_600/https://inews.co.uk/wp-content/
uploads/2019/02/shutterstock_205323442-e1550676266368.jpg

Meanwhile, as the new lambs, chicks and fledglings begin their lives, the wheel of the year turns. That’s what I love about celebrating as a Druid; the constant turning of that wheel. Just 21 days ago it was Imbolc;  in less than four weeks time it will be Vernal Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere, an astrological event celebrated right back to the Neolithic. This year, that special moment of solar balance falls on the 20th March; twelve hours of daylight, twelve of darkness. The tides will rise as high as they can, while it feels as if the world stands still. And this year, as an added frisson, it will be the third full moon of the year; the Worm Moon…and this will be a supermoon, large, close to Earth and wonderfully ripe for magic. I wonder what we will celebrate on that night?

If the weather continues warm, my true-loving thrushes will have started a brood by then, and may carry on having broods of babies to the far end of summer. I haven’t a clue where that nest may be; it could be in the deep layers of ivy covering my century-old  beeches that line boundary, or it could be in the long, thin strip of land between the garden fence and the edge of the high bank elevating us from the little country road. I’ll be leaving out bits of cotton and fluff for birds to take advantage of, but I doubt the thrush family will use this; they like natural materials for their house. I would love to find it, with its clutch of sky-blue eggs, but I don’t want to look too close. I think it’s best if I just let them get on with their lives, while I get on with mine.

You can hear the song of the thrush here.