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 ...

Midsummer Musings

Midsummer has passed and already the fields are turning golden and there is a hint of heather on the cliffs. I spent my midsummer day on the Lizard camping. It was beautifullly hot and we spent three days swimmming, surfing and walking the cliffs with their profusion of ice plants cascading down emerald crannies to the turquoise ocean beneath. We saw two basking sharks very close to the shore at Kennack Sands; with its serpentine rocks glistening in the sun like prehistoric beasts awaiting resurrection with the oncoming tide. The days were long and sultry and in the evening of the longest day we watched the sun die in a blaze of fiery light as we sat on a hill in front of the embers of our campfire. Midsummer is a time for celebration,bonfires on the hill tops, dancing, being with friends, lovers and enjoying the long days and starry nights. It is a time to reflect on the turning of the Wheel from outward to inward as from midsummer day when the sun reaches its zenith, the days will gradually wane. It is a time to contemplate what you have accomplished and created and brought into bloom and to dream about what still has to be completed by Lammas before the nights draw in and Mabon is upon us. The abundance of growth and fertility in the pastures and hedgegrows, woods and cliffs reminds us that the year is at its highest point and the goddess is at her most potent and fertile. In the Priestess of Kernow Wheel of the Year we celebrate her aspect as Maeve, Irish Queen and Goddess of the Land whose palace was on the Hill of Tara in Leinster, the sacred centre of Ireland and marked by the Stone of Destiny.Maeve is a powerful goddess whose name means 'intoxicating': she could outrun horses, confer with birds and bring men into the heat of desire with a mere look. Maeve is a goddess of sovereignty, she strides into our lives and asks us to be Queen of ourselves, to stand proudly in our own power and not to be diminished. She wants us to take responsibility for our lives and to stand in our own domain and be Queen of it. Once we take our power and stand strongly within it we are accountable to no one but ourselves and we can then create whatever we desire to flourish and grow. I have found her a very powerful goddess to call upon and she has helped me to walk tall and be brave, to rise above petty injustice and to walk my own path and follow my own destiny. I have had dreams of a queen and a hall of men and it fascinates me to know that her mythical hall was a mead hall. Kings of Ireland would mate symbolically with her to gain the right to rule the land.I also believe she is a good goddess to call upon when women reach their prime and as a woman in my midforties, I can feel her energy commanding me to rule my own life and to take my space and creative power.She knows her own will and mind and is confident and assertive. It is wise to cultivate this energy and to allow it to blossom as you enjoy coming into wholeness. This is a challenge for all women in a patriarchal society to embrace. What is it to be Queen of ourselves, ruler of our own destiny?

Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' personifies this energy in the Faery Queen, Titania. She is haughty, vain, extremely enchanting and sexually alluring. Men instantly fall into midsummer madness when she casts her spell and are made fools of.
Her quarrels with Oberon, King of the Faery have blasted the land with midsummer storms and created chaos in the natural world.She has banished him from her bed since he has taken Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons as his mistress; she in her turn will not give him her 'indian boy' to be his henchman. The descriptions of nature in their opening speeches emphasise the notion of the faery as powerful, magical forces animating nature and controlling it. Titania personifies all that is abundant, fertile and volatile in nature, she is proud and haughty holding her own power with her Lord. She too is a goddess of the land and exemplifies the passion, creativity and sovereignty of the midsummer season.Here is Titania's opening speech to Oberon:

''These are the forgeries of jealousy:
And never, since the middle summer's spring,
Met we on hill, in dale, forest or mead,
By paved fountain or by rushy brook,
Or in the beached margent of the sea,
To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,
But with thy brawls thou hast disturb'd our sport.
Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,
As in revenge, have suck'd up from the sea
Contagious fogs; which falling in the land
Have every pelting river made so proud
That they have overborne their continents:
The ox hath therefore stretch'd his yoke in vain,
The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn
Hath rotted ere his youth attain'd a beard;
The fold stands empty in the drowned field,
And crows are fatted with the murrion flock;
The nine men's morris is fill'd up with mud,
And the quaint mazes in the wanton green
For lack of tread are undistinguishable:
The human mortals want their winter here;
No night is now with hymn or carol blest:
Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,
Pale in her anger, washes all the air,
That rheumatic diseases do abound:
And thorough this distemperature we see
The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts
Far in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,
And on old Hiems' thin and icy crown
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
Is, as in mockery, set: the spring, the summer,
The childing autumn, angry winter, change
Their wonted liveries, and the mazed world,
By their increase, now knows not which is which:
And this same progeny of evils comes
From our debate, from our dissension;
We are their parents and original.''Act 2 Sc 1

There are many Queens in Shakespeare: Hermione,Hippolyta,... Cleopatra, Gertrude, Elizabeth, Margaret,and of course Lady Macbeth. All of these embody different aspects of female power. Food for thought and another day.

Blessed Be x x x

Thought for the Day

'Man's heart, away from nature, becomes hard.'Luther Standing Bear 1858-1939

The Lakota knew that lack of respect for growing, living things, soon led to lack of respect for humans too.


'What is the extinction of a condor to a child who has never seen a wren?' Naturalist Robert Michael Pyle

I am currently reading a book by Richard Louv called 'Lost Child in the Woods' about saving our children from what he has coined as ' Nature Deficit Disorder'. Basically,he is arguing that there is no substitute for the joy and freedom a child experiences playing and exploring a wild, natural habitat near to, if not in, their own back yard. He is also arguing that this ablity to access the natural world free from the constraints of adult supervision, the restrictions of urbanisation and increasing dependence on computers, is becoming more and more limited. Add to this adult fears of leaving children to play alone, limited access to free, wild land and the demise of group activities which encourage young people to explore ie: scouts and guides with their camps; as well as restrictions imposed on education by health and safety regulations, and there is a real problem emerging for today's children who may know the names of each new computer game, but not those of the trees and flowers in their own locality...that's if there are any.Subjects like Biology and Geology are also now specialist subjects integrated into general subjects so children are not getting any specialist knowledge of the names of plants and animals. As the quote says if they do not know what a wren is then how can we expect them to be interestedin the plight of the condor and wider envirommental issues. Children, according to Louv, are not making these vital connections.Louv is writing in 2005 and his arguments centre on the plight of American children.

Thankfully there is a growing awareness in the UK that children are in desperate need of outdoor activities and risk taking play. Bushcraft courses and environmental education is apparently on the increase with new projects like 'Plan-it Earth' in west Penwith invitng the community and especially schools to see nature as the source of education. As Wordsworth says:'Let Nature be your teacher..'Hopefully, this sort of community programme will take root but it is still dependent on funding and also can only work with those schools like cape Cornwall who want to allow that sort of educational experience to take place...it is not the norm. Also with increasing and pressing need for housing, roads and even new towns where will children go to play and in any case, will their parents allow them? It is an interesting question....where I live there is a playing field and many open fields right next to a large estate...do I see groups of children happily playing, making camps, running, playingball or hanging out on the grass? The answeris so far, no. I saw a couple of boys playing rugby, some boys round a motorbike and a few children playing on their bikes...but I am aware that the only person who uses that green space on a regular basis is either your average dog walker doing the obligatory round of the field or interestingly the local gypsy in a very speedy horse and cart ( I can't think of the correct term...senile moment!}It is only gypsies who still have this love of freedom in the outdoors....and by gypsies I am not referring to travellers. Everyday when I see him he seems to symbolise that wild, freedom with his deeply tanned skin and black hair...trotting or cantering or racing at speed around that field. Where are the children???Indoors on their playstations racing cars, planning military attacks, collecting new cages for their fantasy pets or losing weight playing baseball on Wi. What's there to do outdoors...it's boring!

Hopefully,living in Cornwall we can still go down to the woods today, let our children play and not be afraid of the Blair Witch or the odd bear on a picnic...hopefully....

Blessed be xxx

Musings on Nature and Imagination

William Blake - Auguries of Innocence


To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

Blake is one of my favourite poets and these lines have revisited my consciousness just recently on my visits to Dartington Hall and its wonderful grounds rolling with banks of primroses and daffodils, magnolia in fleshy pink on china blue skies. The grounds are a natural stage where nature and art unite in harmony. This is a place where a philosophy of holistic education for the perfoming arts,natural sciences, crafts and creativity imbues every space and inspires the soul to take flight with the birds. There is a plaque with these lines from Blake's 'Auguries of Innocence' etched in slate in the grounds near to a statue of what I can only conceive to be the goddess Flora with garlands of flowers in her hair.

The other inspirational gardens I love are those at Heligan, near St Austell Bay: again with Tim Schmidt's love of the arts and nature there is once more this delicious blend of creativity and wild,free nature. There is also this philosophy of bringing the arts, nature, education and environmental awareness together. Here again,in the grounds of Heligan,the goddess dreams on her bed of primroses and the imagination awakens in the form of the Green Man or Giant to stimulate and animate the Goddess Gaia..Mother Earth.Like the Romantic poet's, our imagination is brought to bear upon the natural scene to give it eternal and lasting qualities: to transform it into a very individual, unique world of our own creation with its own harmonies and resonance. Like a painter we paint the scene with our soul...the mage or magician in us waves a wand and the smallest aspects of nature are a world within a world, a vision of the whole of creation: timeless and eternal.

On the course in Creative Arts Therapy,we bring our imagination to the healing process and seek ways into the unspoken parts of the body which have been wounded or locked away. The aim is to be a witness to the unfolding of the flower of the human being before us and to create a space where that individual can find a safe means of self expression through play and creativity; movement, voice, art, drama and poetry. I am only at the beginning of this process myself and yet I am intrigued and astonished by the depths of the spaces within me which are now being set free. This inner growth is reflected in the blossoming around me and in the flowering in every tree, bank and field.

In the grounds at Dartington there are little doors in the roots of trees...one imagines a gnome living here, a Pogle like in the children's TV series of the early 1960's 'Pogles Wood'.I watched an old episode on You Tube and it brought back great nostalgia as well as reminding me that as a child I had imagined these knitted puppets to be green and alive when now I can see they are made of wool, their eyes are even knitted or felt and they are in black and white.....in the episode...six I think..they are visited by a witch....imagination truly is a wonderful thing! My next journey is going to be with the 'Double Deckers' climb aboard!!


Blessed Be xxxx

Beltane Blessings

After a two month break from blogging due to a move of house back to my homelands of Redruth in Cornwall, Capital of Cornish Mining and home of the first gas lighting pioneered by William Murdock, I have managed to walk from my door and greet Beltane as it dawned in blossoms of cherry, apple, wild garlic flowers, forgetmeknots and the rush of bluebells in hedgerow and wood, starting to paint the beech green with sweeps of deep violet blue.

I rose early on Beltane morning and took a gentle stroll towards the village of Carn Brea with its wishing well dedicated to the saint of that parish, St Euny whose church spire nestles in the valley and surrounded by mine ruins and stacks evokes a sense of the roots of this mining kingdom in a deep spirituality which you sense in the clear running stream and the cacophany of birdsong as rooks swoop in the vale for twigs and blackbirds pierce the still blue pools of air with their shrill, piping song.

Beltane is one of my favourite points on the Wheel of the Year with its profound sense of abundance in nature,its fresh canvas of pastel colour and that keen awareness of a spirit of life, joy, passion and fertility. Here we have the goddess in her aspect as maiden queen- life is at its most promising and she is dancing and revelling in the wonder of it all. The evenings are drawing out and the nights getting shorter; we feel awake and alive, 'Full of Spring' as a friend so aptly put it recently.The sun is gathering heat and warmth and the full moon on Lunar Beltane in Scorpio has a mystical poetry. The sense of abundance in nature fills the heart and soul with a desire for self expression..a need to express the beauty of the world as if it had just been created and our eyes were newly opened. May time is a dance, a song, a beat and rhythm deep in the earth captured by the dance of the Obby Oss at Padstow and the Furry Dance and Hal an Tow in Helston.It is a time to revel and celebrate the beginning of summer and the fertility of life. To give thanks and appreciation for the gifts we have been given so far and for what we have manifested in our lives. It is also a time to contemplate what else needs to be done, to be brought to fruition, to be created and expressed. This is a time when the Maiden goddess has come into her own self, her true, wild, free nature bringing the promise of life, love and laughter.

With the prevalent ritual emphasis on the phallic Maypole as symbol of fertility for maidens to dance around, there has been less emphasis on this festival as a time to celebrate womens menarche..the bleeding and floering of the Maiden.Now as women we can celebrate the power of our moon blood..women's blood was once adored and used for its potential life sustaining properties. When a woman started to bleed she was honoured and declared of value and importance to the tribe. The blood of women meant blessings from the goddess and the assurance of life's continuation. Blood was ritually poured into the earth to aid the growth and fertility of crops.Like the fruit and flower of plants, the woman bleeding was the woman's flowering.The blood of a woman is potent and healing it can be used in spells and rituals to add intensity and life force to these.

At Beltane celebrate, contemplate your moon flow and your experience of it over the years...celebrate its power and awaken your own free, wild nature - your maiden aspect free, powerful and strong unto your self. In what ways are you enriching your own life? How are you blossoming and coming into your own power? Dance with your own vital energy, enjoy your self, feel the sap rising and the world celebrating the fire of your spirit in a universal joy of being.

Blessed Be xx

Dartmoor Photos of Walk 1

Dartmoor March 2010 - Walk 1

I have just returned from a visit to Dartmoor with a friend to go walking and revisit some sites. The landscape of the moor is particularly late greeting spring this year after the snow and ice of winter. Snowdrops were in profusion in the pretty moorland churchyards and hedgegrows but daffodils had yet to trumpet the return of Spring. Nevertheless, there was plenty of sunshine and in places out of the breeze it was really mild for this time of year. The sunshine, dappled on green boulders showering the many dancing streams and rivers, was particularly beautiful and the High Moor was bleached blonde almost like a desert.

We walked from Scorhill stone circle on the moor above Gidleigh and Chagford to the Tolmen stone - like our Cornish holed stones it is a large granite block with a hole through it caused by water erosion as it rests above the racing Teign river. This stone is famed like Men -an- Tol for healing rheumatism and whooping cough should you manage to crawl through it.Scorhill is a stunning stone circle with tremendous power and energy. It is nearly 90ft in diameter and comprises of over 30 stones with the tallest menir at 8ft high.It is in a dramatic, wild spot looking out upon the moor with wilderness on all sides. It is special in that it has not been restored but some stones have been removed to line the leat further in the valley. i have visited here on a number of occasions and find it a particularly energising circle, well worth a visit and within easy reach if all you want is a short stroll.

From this area, we walked towards Kestor rock. passing over two clapper bridges:Walla Brook and Teignon Teign-e-ver. Kestor Rock seemed as if it would be a bit of a climb, but on approaching it it was like alot of the Tors, easy to get up once you had clambered a few granite boulders.It was a dramatic rock, scored by wind and rain, the wind blowing away the cobwebs of winter as we stood and nearly took flight with the buzzards on its peak. The views over the High Moor were fantastic and its skirts were strewn with granite boulders and the remains of Bronze and Iron age occupation: field systems, hut circles, and also a round pound, possibly a smithy dating from 500BC. On the top of the rock was an unusually deep rock basin filled with water like a giant's ink well with the sun shining so brightly. In Victorian times it was rumoured to have been used as a place of sacrifice by the Druids....a pretty common yarn amongst God fearing folk attached to most cairns on high ground it seems.

From the desolation of the High Moor, we were content to amble down hill at last through a magical conifer wood lit with dappled light to Glassy Steps and across the rushing River Teign again. These woods would be pretty ominous in mist or damp but in sun they cast a more benevolent, elven magic. This sense of timelessness permeates this landscape and gives it an other worldly, ancient atmosphere. One can feel the primeaval energies in ancient woodland and Tor, as well as sense the faery realms in the sylvan riverside valleys and trees.

From Glassy Steps we walked uphill and out of the wood on to the winding Dartmoor lanes. It always feels very easy to get lost on these when driving and one mile seems to last an eternity. We followed the sign posts for Gidleigh and came to rest at its pretty churchyard with 15th century church; with its banks covered in beds of snowdrops and the stream running through, it felt deliciously warm in the melting afternoon sun. Blackbirds sang and there were Blue tits darting through the branches overhead. The sun felt like honey on the skin and the peace of the place imbued it with a timeless quality. Through the iron gateway after the church we could see the remains of the tower of Gidleigh Castle, a fortified manor house built by Sir William Prous around AD1300. It did have a feudal feel with the church so close and spring lambs in the pasture nearby.

From the peace and tranquility of Gidleigh, we wound our way up hill still tracing the end of the ambiguous Dartmoor 'mile' we seemed to have begun an age ago to eventually, after probably another 'mile' at least up hill, reach the car park at Scorhill where we had begun at midday. There were still icicles hanging on the bowl of a stream where the sun had yet to reach reminding us of a faery crystal glade.There was a rare magic every where in this area which had touched us both that day.

Blessed Be xxx

Quote for the Day - What is Magic?

To work magic is to weave the unseen forces into form; to soar beyond sight; to explore the uncharted dream realm of the hidden reality, to infuse life with colour, motion, and strange scents that intoxicate; to leap beyond imagination into the space between worlds where fantasy becomes real; to be at once animal and god. Magic is the craft of shaping, the craft of the wise, exhilerating, dangerous - the ultimate adventure.' Starhawk 'The Spiral Dance' pg 136

' The language of magic is expressed in symbols and images. Images bridge the gap between the verbal and non verbal modes of awareness. They allow the two sides of the brain to communicate, arousing the emotions as well as the intellect. Poetry, itself a form of magic, is imagic speech.' Starhawk ' Spiral Dance' pg 137

Magic - magical - magician - mage - image - imagination - I Mage - Magnet - Imagnetic - Imagenesis( creation out of image) - Imagnosis ( this through what we imagine we know - take a word and see what it imagines itself to be!!

Imbolc Feb 2nd

Imbolc is the feast of the Goddess Brigid to whom this site is dedicated. It is at Imbolc that we celebrate the return of the goddess in her maiden aspect; renewed and reborn after the winter dark. In Irish legend, Brighid was a triple fire goddess whose name means 'fiery arrow'. Hers are the three fiery arrows of inspiration, healing and the hearth fire or forge. She is the muse of poets, the goddess of healing wells and the patroness of the crafts person or smith, transforming base metals into beautiful and useful tools. Brighid is generally seen as dressed in white like the snow drops and snow which still threatens to cloak the land at this time of year.Her bird is the swan also white and graceful. The swan is believed to only sing once - when it is dying. Its song is associated with prophesy, music and poetry.Swans skin and feathers are said to have made the cloak of a celtic poet.In some literature swans were said to sing mortals to sleep...your swan song is your last song of course.

Now is the time of regeneration; the first buds appearing on branches, the sounds of birds in the morning welcoming the return of the light;green shoots in the hedgerows and fields; streams and wells flowing with her purifying waters. Now the earth is reawakening and we can really sense the promise of longer, warmer days stretching ahead.Now life is stirring again after its deep hibernation and we can dream of the year to come. Now we can plant the seeds of hope; wishes for the year to come. Now is a time to make wishes at wells and to feel the inner spark of the flame of creativity. Imbolc was reclaimed by the Christian church as Candlemass and the old tradition of lighting candles to celebrate the returning light is marked by this festival.

I visited Madron well on Sunday to begin my Imbolc celebratio,my favourite festival even though it is bitterly cold and the earth is clogged with mud. I could definitely feel the sap in the greenery which emerged along the path to Madron Well with its Celtic Baptistry dedicated to St Maddern and reknowned for its healing properties with the hawthorns around the well spring bedecked in 'clouties' strips of rag and ribbon as prayers for healing.St Maddern may be a masculine saint but earlier asscoiations with Madron may link it to the idea of Madrona or Mother..there is more to say about this which I will discuss later.

The earth is starting to thaw and there was a delicate snowdrop at the foot of the tree outside the chapel. The sky was fierce blue and just as my friend and I began calling in the directions and the goddess, the sky turned dark grey and the wind howled; next we were pummelled and literally 'hailed' by a storm of hail stones and suddenly the chapel was transformed in seconds from granite to white. It was as if Brigid herself had decided to join us in the chapel and clothe it in her virgin mantle. Just after we had completed the calling in, the sun emerged bright from behind the clouds and the chapel was strewn with shafts of silver, white, twinkling light. The sky returned to sharp blue. It was a very powerful moment and struck us both with its magical quality. We had made a small hearth for Brigid on the altar of the chapel out of moss and gorse buds and were welcoming her return to bless the place and our lives with healing inspiration.My friend made a cross of twigs and bound it with white ribbon. We placed the cross on the altar, lit candles to honour the waxing light and also said prayers for healing at the well.Now is a time of beginning and individuation when the seeds begin to stir and we are initiated into a sense of our own light. It is a time of becoming uniquely ourselves and sharing the light of inspiration that will grow with the waxing year. Focus on what inspires you and what you wish to create.

Brigid has blessed me already with her inspiration as I have had my first poem 'St Marys Church, Cadgwith' published in 'Scryfa'Vol 12 - a book celebrating the best of contemporary Cornish writing!

Blessed Be xxx