Celebrating Brigid in these Times of Change

Wednesday 2nd February is calendar Imbolc, feast of Brigid, Goddess of healing, smithcraft, home, hearth, poetry and inspiration. 2011 seems to be a time to follow our inspiration and plant our ideas firmly in the earth as an act of healing for the future. The present times seem extremely unpredictable as we witness global protest against authoritarian government regimes, extreme environmental disasters and sweeping cuts which seem to be affecting the vulnerable in our own back yard. In many ways one could view this as bleak, just like the icy wind and barren earth outside. Yet change brings not only instability, but also possibility. This time is an urgent wake up call. Inside each of us is the seed of possiblity and the potential for positive change and growth.

For me, the past few years have felt like a time of deep personal healing accompanied by unforseen, sudden changes in home and hearth along with huge opportunities for growth. I am now feeling an inner urgency to translate that inner growth into outer action: a need to contribute, to heal, inspire and work in harmony with others. I have always felt strongly that change has to occur within before it can manifest in the external world. It seems for the last ten years I have been slowly learning to 'school the soul'...Keats and that this is the journey we are all on. Part of my process at present is an increasing awareness and sensitivity to the need to contribute in my own backyard. Malcolm X actually advocated this and I believe it holds much truth. We need to set our own house in order and endeavor to make changes in ourselves, our family, our community, workplace, relationships first and in doing so we can change the world in which we live. Ghandi said:'You may never know what results come of your action, but if you do nothing there will be no result.'And 'Be the change you want to see in the world'....He also said there was no better way to find yourself than to lose yourself in the servise of others.

I do a very simple act when I go out walking and this is just picking up any letter I see and either recycling it or putting it in a bin. I am horrified at the amount of litter in the hedgegrows and back lanes near the town in which I live. This act is easy and I just make sure I take a bag with me when I go out so that maybe that path I walked down will be clearer for the next person or someone will see me and maybe think twice before they walk over the next pizza container in the street. I feed the birds regularly, I recycle what I can, I endeavor to smile and to be friendly to others and help them. None of this costs anything and yet it is amazing how far a smile or an act of empathy can go.I believe that once you make changes at this very basic level it is surprising how that energy can act as a flame for others and inspire them into acts of growth and healing. I have chosen to work for a domestic violence charity and in doing so see daily how far a smile or act of kindness can make the difference to the day of a woman or child feeling alone, vulnerable, afraid and in need of warmth and hope.

At this time the first shoots are struggling to emerge from the earth and the bulbs are heralding potential for growth stored within the earth throughout the winter. The evenings are starting to draw out and the light in the sky is clear and sparkling in unblemished blue. Brigid is heralding her return as maiden and the branches have begun to sing. So too can we as we heal ourselves and our commmunity. the church renamed Imbolc as Candlemass...it is a festival of light. We too can light the flame of hope and inspiration in our hearts as we extend Brigid's gifts of healing and light into a world that so desperately needs it.

A good idea for Imbolc is to light a candle and ask Brigid for healing and inspiration. Or maybe go on a walk and notice the signs of change in the air and in the hedgerow.Visit a holy well and hang a ribbon or 'cloutie' as a prayer for healing. Thanks Brigid for her gifts and cleanse your own home and hearth in preparation for the Spring.Welcome her energy into your hearth, home and community. Walk your path with intention and stay grounded in what you seek to manifest. The earth at this time is wet and muddy, the sap is starting to rise and the rain to fall...there may even be a last flurry of snow...and yet the first snowdrops are appearing like little lights in the dark green shades of the woods and one by one they create clusters and those clusters create carpets and before you know it there before you is a spreading mantle of pure,flickering, angelic light.

Blessed Be xxx
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New Year...New Moon....Partial Solar Eclipse

This is a time of new beginnings - sun and moon are together in the same sign which happens to be Capricorn.Also, today was illuminated further by a partial solar eclipse: the moon passing in front of the sun!The word ‘eclipse’ comes from the Greek word ékleipsis, or ekleíp(ein), which means to leave out, forsake, fail to appear.I tried to view it between 8am and 9.30am but most of the sky was obscured by cloud. Today's eclipse was visible across much of the Middle East, Europe, North Africa and central Asia.There will be four solar eclipses in 2011 and two lunar ones.And meteor showers tonight.

Last night I went outside to look up at a beautiful clear night's sky prompted by BBC 2's excellent 'Stargazing Live'with Professor Brian Cox which will be on over the next 2 nights at 8pm. He urged you to turn off the TV after the programme and go outdoors to view the stars and planets above you. It was a refreshing reminder that there is so much to see at night if we can be bothered to get up from the sofa and discover it. Jupiter was visible in the sky due south.I also found this beautiful simulation on U Tube.



New Moon is a good time for meditating on new projects you would like to begin...whilst the moon is in Capricorn look at your foundations and how comfortable you are with your own laws, rules and regulations.Saturn ruled Capricorn focusses on career, public life, achievement, reputation and personal accountability. This is moon for achievement and sure footed starts.

Another major event happening today is Jupiter's conjunction to Uranus in the sign of Pisces - the last of three conjunctions (for about 12 years) that began June of last year. The need for progressive change is strong under this influence. We might take risks for the sake of freedom. We can open ourselves up to new ways of thinking, approaches, and attitudes now. Enthusiasm runs high, the desire for freedom from restrictions is strong, and thirst for adventure is with us.

Blessed Be xx

John Harris - Cornish Poet

John Harris was born in 1820 in Bolenowe, a small village not far from Camborne, in Cornwall. His father was a miner at Dolcoath Tin Mine where young John also started at the age of 10.He began writing poetry as a child, usually in the open air where he was inspired by nature. He published several volumes of poetry, including his masterpiece, the loco-descriptive poem 'A Story of Carn Brea'. None of his poetry is now in print. John Harris died in 1884.


Johm Harris 'A Story of Carn Brea' Extracts


"How blissful thus to muse where Nature pours
Her incense forth in hollows watch'd with hills,
And roof'd with stars, and floor'd with living flowers!
0 what a temple is the leafy wood,
The rude old carn, the ocean's solemn shore,
The valley's bosom, and the meadow's lap!
I love thee, Nature, with a fire unfeign'd,
And ever at thy feet thy child would sit
In pleasant meditation, where the eye
Of selfish man beholds not my retreat,
In storm or calm, when heaven is blue or black,
Learning thy lore, and treasuring up thy truth." Extract Book One



"HOW often hast thou fed my early Muse,
Crag-heap'd Carn Brea, when from my father's meads
I scann'd thy front, mist-clad or clear, deeming
My mount and thee twin-sisters beautiful!
One bright May morn, when violets were rare,
I trick'd old Labour, and equipp'd myself
With poets' baggage, pencil, sheet, and lyre,
And, walking o'er the moors, I turn'd my face
Towards its summit shining in the dawn,
As't were an old bard welcoming the young.
I cross'd the meadows, follow'd by our dog,
Who snuff'd the air and bark'd among the flowers,
Right happy to be free! The larks were up,
Singing among the cloudlets, and sweet song
Gush'd from a hundred hollows. In the fields
The cottagers were busy with their spades,
And ploughs, and harrows; and perhaps they thought
I was a crazy fellow wandering weird.
I reach'd the mountain's base, where an old man
And a young lad were cutting granite blocks,
Perchance to build a cottage of their own;
And hard enough they work'd. So on I went
To gain the summit of this famous carn,
Which look'd so distant from my father's door,
That oft in childhood I have thought the sun
Stopp'd on the rocks and started forth again,
Renew'd by resting on its ridgy brow;
And in my dreams within my own dear bower
I oft believed, if I could wander there,
I should be sure to see great Phœbus' bed,
And mark the door from whence the moon came out,
And view the' uncover'd stars." Extract Book Two

At the moment, I am revisiting my early love of the Romantic poets and am reading a biography of William Wordsworth. Many poets, artists and writers find their early spiritual experiences in Nature in what Wordsworth describes as 'spots of time'.These moments are transcendent, timeless moments when the individual feels a profound sense of unity with nature and a harmony which can be revisited in the imagination later in life and which acts as a spring of inspiration and healing.Wordsworth began to question why, as a child, he once was able to see an immortal presence within nature but as an adult that was fading away except in these few moments:

'There are in our existence spots of time,
That with distinct pre-eminence retain
A renovating virtue, whence–depressed
By false opinion and contentious thought,
Or aught of heavier or more deadly weight,
In trivial occupations, and the round
Of ordinary intercourse–our minds
Are nourished and invisibly repaired;
A virtue, by which pleasure is enhanced,
That penetrates, enables us to mount,
When high, more high, and lifts us up when fallen.'

The Prelude W.Wordsworth

It is worthwhile pausing for a moment and reflecting on these moments in our own life, particularly early moments in childhood to draw a sense of healing and strength.The power of nature to enable us to overcome the difficulties of our daily 'trivial occupations' is profound. In John Harris's vision of Carn Brea, he resembles Wordsworth as he sets out on an early morning ramble to greet the dawn imagining himself as poet, artist and minstrel with his pencil, sheet and lyre. He feels free from the daily grind of a miner's life as he passes a miner and his son cutting granite blocks for their cottage. The way he describes the 'ridgy brow' of the 'craggy carn' which he views as a mountain personifies it.It is a living entity of mythic and eternal significance to him and he sees it every day. I love the way he sees himself as slightly mad; a 'crazy fellow wandering weird'and in this day and age as he cheats the mundane work day he must have been viewed as such by the community of sombre Methodists. This sense of seeing the carn as a quest and adventure to be enjoyed really moved me as I too have set forth in the same way on a May morning and it is true that still the Carn Brea valley is alive with birdsong and blossom at this time of year.Like Wordworth and many a Romantic he will wonder in his imagination back to this moment when he is dreaming in his 'bower'. Wordsworth says:
'For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;

when he describes his vision of the daffodils in his famous poem. As winter draws in it is comforting to lie on the sofa and dream of those moments of harmony and spiritual inspiration in nature. I like the way Harris walks out from his father's door. He can imbue this carn with the grandeur of a mountain and by climbing it he is closer to the infinite, just as Wordsworth climbed Helvellyn and other Lakeland peaks. Many poets seek their muse in high places like the prophets and bards of ancient Greece sought their Gods and Goddesses on Mount Olympus. Thus each of us can find in ourselves the poet and the pilgrim as we set out from our ordinary front doors in search of these extraordinary moments.

Blessed Be x x x

Carwynnen Quoit

"There is present little doubt amongst antiquaries with respect to the originall Cromlech; it is generally believed to be a sepulchral monument used by the Druids to mark the places of interment of the Druid chief or such princes as were favourable to their order" John Greig 1808A couple of Sundays ago I went for a walk with my sister and neices to Carwynnen Quoit on the outskirts of Troon and on the edge of the Pendarves estate. It was a beautifully mellow late Autumn afternoon and the woods were copper and golden with pathways of deeply fallen leaves and guilded with rays of sun through the branches. I love these woods. They seem very old and are full of earth works possibly from mining, but the area itself is full of fascinating history from the 19th century hamlet of Treslothan to the ancient hut circles on Copper Hill recorded by Charles Thomas.This quoit can easily be approached from the road from Troon to Carwynnen and is discovered at the bottom of a gated field.Known as the Giants Quoit, it has also been called 'The Devil's Frying Pan' set in what was known in old tithe records as 'Frying Pan Field'. The quoit is now being preserved by the Sustainable Trust who hope to resurrect it and the land in which it reposes. Old photos on an information board at the site show a picnic around a capstoned quoit very much like Lanyon Quoit in West Penwith. The quoit is Neolithic (3,500-2,500BC).The capstone of this tomb once stood on three supports and was 1.5m high. It collapsed in 1834, was rebuilt and then fell again in 1967. It has remained collapsed ever since.It is difficult to seethat it is a quoit as it looks more like a pile of boulders but if one looks more closely one can see the capstone beneath two former support stones and a third beneath.A meeting of the Camborne branch of the Old Cornwall Society was held at the stones in the summer of 1925 and the Bards of the Cornish Gorseth held their annual gathering at the quoit in 1948.

When we visited we shared our time with a resident horse who was very protective of his patch and rather too friendly so we didn't stay long as none of us were terribly confident with being followed quite so closely.
John Harris, a major 19th century poet, was a miner who loved to walk in the Pendarves area. He is buried at Treslothan Churchyard with his beloved daughter Lucretia.

"Our curious cromlechs! Let no hand of man
Destroy these stony prophets which the Lord
Has placed upon the tarns and sounding downs
With tones for distant ages."
'Destruction of the Cornish Toman' by John Harris

Liminal Spaces

I have been very conscious of wanting to walk along the tide line and pick my way along the space where the sea meets the land. There have been very high tides foaming and scratching away the sand leaving scalps of brown weed in their wake. These spaces seem to possess a timeless quality and a sense of peace. Liminal space is in-between space; in his inspirational book 'Last Child in the Woods' Richard Louv says that :

'Life is always at the edges.'

He speaks of the importance of edges and boundary places as spaces for the imagination to roam freely.I think of the paths off main roads which lead to forgotten woodlands and copses, to blackberry hedgerows and old mine scapes. Liminal space is poetic space often rich in paradoxes and contrasts. These are the places I played as a child; places like the old quarry in the middle of the playing field which became a tribal hunting ground and a jungle (albeit of Japanese knotweed) where we built camps and fought our rivals from along the terrace with sticks, stones and the odd wellie boot flung at speed; and ....there was the top of the back hedge with fields beyond and a view, if you stood tiptoe on the top of the wobbly granite, down to the ocean sparkling over St Ives on a summer's day. There was the old reservoir where the rows of miners houses ended: a murky slime, dense in brambles and pond weed, where we would happily while away whole afternoons fishing for tadpoles to bear proudly back in jamjars to live the rest of their lives kicking little black legs around dolly's pink. plastic bath, later to make an escape bid on to the lawn and then under stones in the flower beds.There were rock pools which fascinated us as we stared into their swirling depths as the tide left behind its miracles; if you were still and crouched long enough you got to experience a whole world in minature motion; sea anenomes fanning deep red fronds with the odd flash of blue, crabs edging their way sideways under emerald green swathes of weed and the flurry of sand as a guppy emerged in the blink of an eye...liminal spaces full of magic..the cliff path winding its way to the edge of the land and into a brittle dance of sunlight and plumes of spray as the waves crash against granite and a host of gulls wheel on invisible spirals in the blue eyed sky.....yes, I have been very aware of these edges recently...very open to that balance and contrast that this season heralds.The weather itself revealing that we are on the edge: Tuesday was hot and sunny, now on Thursday it is cloudy and there is a real nip in the cooling air. It feels as if this week we have passed from summer into Autumn..the leaves are half curled and growing brittle; the colours turning from greens to russets, bronze and gold; the mornings are misty and the dews are growing heavier; the blackberries are over plucked by 'the devil's claw' as my father said.We are in the days before dark evenings loom and cold bites. Today felt like we had passed over..I watched a child play in a playground of falling leaves with grass sprouting small mushrooms and the smell of smoke on the air; there was no sun only grey; the hush was palpable as Gaia turned.

Wanderland -October 2010

'Travellers,there is no path, paths are made by walking.' Antonio Machado

'If you just set people in motion, they'll heal themselves.' Gabrielle Roth

'Dancers need music, but walkers are their own music.' W.A. Mathieu

I love to walk the land. Walking is something I have always done and in many ways taken for granted that I can do easily. It is only when I had a foot injury that I realised just how important it was to me. In times of stress, I walk; when I am in need of inspiration, I walk; I walk when I need peace; I walk when I feel crazy; I walk as a pilgrim and a poet, a nature lover and an adventurer; I walk to heal, to create, to ground and to breathe again.

And yet it seems to me that in our hectic, work driven, media savvy age we limit our horizon to the office window or the computer screen. We haven't the time, we say, to go for a walk; even artists all too often shut themselves away from new experiences and therefore deny themselves both sight and insight.Walking is simple and commonplace; we take it for granted and yet it is one of the most, if not the most, potent creative tool I know. Walking offers spiritual renewal and is a gateway to the imagination. Walking allows our imagination a chance to wonder and to feed. Being in motion provides us an infinite world of in-sight and sensation. As I walk the land I find that I feel a new rhythm and gradually become in tune with the pulse of Mother Earth around me and beneath me.I hear bird's song, smell the scents of flowers, feel the breath of wind on my cheek,taste the juice of blackberries and literally and metaphorically, see the light. My heart starts to beat more steadily and my breath comes easily as I come into harmony with nature's music. My senses come alive and I walk into the ground of being, synonymous with being in spirit or goddess or whatever you choose that creative principle to be.This act of walking is a journey into soul through the soles of my feet.

Walking is an ancient form of meditation used by all cultures and creeds from the Aboriginal Walkabout, to the Native American Vision Quest and the Christian pilgrimage. For a long time I have journeyed to sacred sites in what I now realise was an act of pilgrimage and a source of spiritual renewel, whether it be the stones of Callenish or the temples of Malta, Glastonbury Tor or the Boyne Valley. I love to walk the local ancient sites and found this more interesting once I read more about Ley Lines and earth energies. The fact that these leys of energy converge at key nodal points and that our ancestors must have been following these lines too, to the point that they built sacred sites upon them, is testament to the power of Gaia's spell.As we walk the ancient leys, we are realligned in our own energy.

'People have travelled over this Earth with a heart of inquiry for millennia. They have sung the land as a living being, offered themselves, their steps, their voices and prayers as acts of purification that opened them to an experience of connectedness.' Joan Halifax, cultural ecologist.

Most interesting to me is the fact that so many poets I love are walkers and mystics:the Romantic poets, in particular Wordsworth and Coleridge who composed the Lyrical Ballads whilst walking in the Quantocks near Exmoor; Emily Bronte with her walks on the heaths and wuthering heights of the Pennine moors near Howarth Parsonage;Keats' pilgrimages to Staffa and the Isle of Wight; Thomas Hardy's Lyonesse and Wessex.The poet is a bard inspired by world soul. Walt Whitman sang 'the body electric' - the planetary song. Is it any wonder that poems are divided into metrical 'feet'? Shakespeare's actors remembered their lines through the soles of their feet as they 'walked through' them. How else would they have managed such a wide repertoir of plays. They were helped by iambic pentameter and the rhythm of the lines.Bruce Chatwin's book 'Songlines' really explores this notion of walking the land into being in the Aboriginal Dreamtime landscape:

'The Ancestors sang the world into existence....each totemic ancestor while travelling through the country was thought to have scattered a trail of words and musical notes along the lines of his fotprints...' Bruce Chatwin 'Songlines'

Ancient people's sang the land and animated it. They knew their own piece of earth and honoured it. This was a fundemental oral tradition passed down to their children through song and story, music and dance, art and drama.I was recently reading 'Boudica' by Manda Scott. Although she insists that much of her world is imagined,she has researched widely from the available sources (mostly Roman) and ends with Boudica riding away from a final battle with theRomans under the cover of mist evoked by the bards or seers of the tribes 'The Dreamers'. It is more crucial that the children escape than to fight. This is not just so that they will be the warriors of the future as the vision of the Grandmother warns:

' That is not enough. There must be those old enough to carry their ways, their dreams and their tales. How else does a people know itself?' Manda Scott 'Boudica, Dreaming the Eagle'

This message has haunted me....walking is not just a form of exercise, not a pleasant past-time, not a cheap way of spending free time, not a chance for a chat with a friend...it is a way of ancient knowing; a way to keep the paths and the gateways to inspiration and insight open for the next generation and their children.It is a way of coming back into touch with Mother Earth and of finding our centre. It is a simple and powerful means of shaping and creating our dreams and being at one with the source of infinity.

Midsummer Dreamings ...