Continuing the story of a Silent Eye workshop in Derbyshire, in December 2017. Parts One , Two  and Three can be found by clicking the highlighted link.

We toured the church in Bakewell with our companions, stopping at each of the eight chosen points of interest that highlighted the story we were speculating upon. There is far more in that church than the details upon which we were focussing, but knowing that time was limited, we wanted to ensure we covered the unfolding tale. As it was, our timing was more perfect than we could have planned… a group of schoolchildren left as we entered the church, leaving the place empty apart from our party and the wardens, who locked the door behind us as we left.

There was time to look around though. We wanted to show our companions the fantastic misericords, with their carved beasts and dragons, as well as the Elizabethan and medieval tombs that now occupy the Newark. They also needed time to find the token that had been hidden within another octagram. It would give the party access to the next clue to get them to the first location of the following day. The first clue they had been given had the eternity symbol on the back, itself a beautiful piece of geometry, which, when turned from landscape to portrait, becomes the figure eight.

Before leaving, we stood together beneath the Crossing, where the dowsed anomalies come to a single point within an eight-pointed star, at the centre of an octagonal tower built to a geometrical design so perfect it can symbolise both harmony and eternity. The eight-pointed star has, in one form or another, a place in almost every religious and spiritual tradition throughout history. From the Sumerian Star of Ishtar, to the Islamic khatim-sulayman, the seal of the prophets, to the Hindu Star of Lakshmi. Pope Francis has chosen to place an eight-pointed star on his papal coat of arms to symbolise his personal devotion to the Virgin Mary and, by the time we had researched all this and more, it came as no surprise to realise that the croix pattée, one variant of which is the flared cross associated with the Templars, is also an eight-pointed star in disguise… and very similar to the design on the aumbry in Bakewell church…

We stood in quiet meditation for a moment, each of us dedicating our personal quest to that Light which shines upon all spiritual paths and charged the stones we had brought to continue the sowing of symbolic seeds of Light that we had begun at the Feathered Seer workshop in April.

Outside, the moon was almost at the full and shrouded in pale mists. The day was fading, but there was light enough to see the large, medieval carved head tucked away on one side of the porch and the far-too-tall stone coffin on the other that seems to have been built for a slender giant. The coffin is one of several propped up against the porch and the tallest of us can barely squeeze into the narrow width, yet the person for which it was designed must have stood head and shoulders taller than any of us.

The great west door is around a thousand years old. It would once have been the main entrance to the church and the octagonal baptismal font would have stood between the faithful and the altar as they came in to the worship. There has been a church here since Anglo-Saxon times at least, but Christianity would have been known here much earlier, and some of those who were with the Roman legions stationed here in the second century could have been Christians themselves.

High on a corner of the north wall is a curious carving… a chalice whose cup and base mirror each other. It is carved in high relief and we believe it may be a mason’s mark. The Chalice is also used as an important symbol in many spiritual traditions. In Christianity, it is the Grail and a symbol of the Virgin as the vessel. Both popular fiction and speculative research have made much of the potential connection between the Templars and the Grail symbolism, but it is also central to many other spiritual traditions and paths, including Masonry, which, like the Templars from whom many say Masonry is descended, traces its roots back to the Temple of Solomon and the Dome of the Rock.

So, we had the beginnings of a theory. Tenuous, perhaps, but with all the other research that has not been added to this account, perhaps not as thin as it may seem. What if, following the forcible disbanding of the Templars, some had escaped to Derbyshire? The Templars held lands in the area, but did not have a Preceptory closer than Yorkshire. They could have gone ‘underground’. What if they were the ‘wealthy landowners’ who had funded the tower, with the geometries of the Dome of the Rock, and the Newark where the Knights of the Shrine then met? What if the Masons had taken over where the Templars left off? What, if anything, did Foljambe have to do with it all? And was there any proof at all that either the Templars or the Masons had ever had a presence in the area?

Well, that last, at least, was easily and fortuitously answered. Researching Masonic symbols, I stumbled across an article by Amanda Norman and Mark Kneale who share an interest in photography and arcane symbolism. The article contained a picture of a gravestone in Bakewell churchyard and an exploration of the symbolism, which is indisputably Masonic. Amanda graciously gave permission to reproduce the photograph.

Image: Amanda Norman

Interesting though the theory may be, does it really matter, you might ask. Well, it might. Not because of some Da Vinci-esque conspiracy theory, but because of our own relationship with the life of the land and the Underground Stream. What if, instead of asking ‘what if?’, we started to ask what were they doing and why..?