County Tyrone, Wednesday, 15th June, 2022…
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Maybe, the magical battle
is still going on?
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The Fomorians are described as
one-eyed, one-legged, and one-armed?
*
Which could just mean that they
were regarded as being deformed in some way?
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Some of our adversaries, these days,
are nothing if not single-minded…
Continue reading at France&Vincent
County Derry, Tuesday, 14th June, 2022…
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Should it surprise us that people
who lived so long ago
were engaged in magical practices?
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Hardly, and certainly not if we turn a critical eye
upon the nature of their monuments.
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But do the texts left to us say aught of all this?
*
Why, of course they do, but only
if one can read between the lines…
Continue reading at France&Vincent
County Antrim, Tuesday, 14th June 2022…
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There are twenty-seven stones, or sockets for stones,
supporting the burial mound.
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The ‘rubble’ in the outer court shown above
on an old photograph from the nineteen-forty excavation,
would have been deposited when the site was closed,
and may have comprised some of the kerbstones
used as ‘packing’ for the mound.
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At which point the thresholds
to the chambers within the mound
were also sealed by dry-stone walling.
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Along with the magical act
of leaving highly polished
axe-heads in the walls…
Continue reading at France&Vincent
County Antrim, Tuesday, 14th June, 2022…
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From a distance this looked like nothing
more or less than a giant moot.
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And maybe that is what it really was?
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In which case we ought really to have
sought permission before entering the fray…
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From an archaeological perspective
we had stumbled upon a court-cairn,
and a somewhat skeletal court-cairn at that!…
Continue reading at France&Vincent
County Antrim, Tuesday, 14th June, 2022…
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The history of Ireland can be perplexing.
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On the one hand, there are ample materials
stretching far back in time…
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And on the other,
it is clear that the materials, which
have been translated, have also been fiddled with.
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Nowhere is this more evident
than in the Lebor Gabala Erenn,
or ‘Book of the Takings of Ireland’,
where the early history of Ireland
is unceremoniously crow-barred
into a biblical narrative
by monkish clerics tasked with retelling the story…
Continue reading at France&Vincent
County Antrim, Tuesday, 14th June, 2022
***
‘In the land of the blind
the one eyed man is king.’
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Clochan na bhFomharach, being, ‘Stones of the Fomorians’,
who were, according to ancient Irish tradition,
the early, if not original inhabitants of Ireland,
and whom, so the stories say, retreated to the coastal fringes
and islands of the north-west after their defeat by the Crafty Folk.
***
‘They were large and would have looked like giants to our eyes.’…
Continue reading at France&Vincent
The Hero’s journey, Sunday, 8th May, 2022…
She carries their gifts… the dead ones, their souls in hers, more than memory.
*
Take the pouch of seed-stones and hold them close to your heart centre…
Close your eyes… And place into the seed stones your loving intent for growth… And completion…
And a link to attune with them at will…
And then open your eyes, turn and plant some seed stones close to the standing stone or stones with which you have felt resonance…
After you have done this leave your blessing on the stone or stones…
And then walk to the centre of the circle…
*
After the gestural keys of the Chariot and Lovers our adventurers are given time alone with the ancestors…
*
Continue reading at The Silent Eye
The four of us donned what protective gear we had with us and set off over the moor.
It soon became evident that we should have brought Wellingtons.
Stuart was the only one thus sensibly clad and my walking shoes are only waterproof until the sodden peat and pooled water rises higher than the ankle.
At least it wasn’t raining.
It was a perfect morning, really.
The clouds rolled low across the hilltops, drawing a veil over a landscape already shrouded in mystery.
Glacial boulders strew the moors, the striations of pressure still visible after millions of years.
In such a place it is not easy to distinguish the hand of man… until you know what you are seeking.
Then you cannot miss it.
The four of us squelched through the boggy ground in search of a drier path.
The irony was that we had chosen this route to avoid the one we had taken the last time we were here, where water ran like a stream, and pooled in every hollow.
That day we had been alone and we have become accustomed to finding ourselves with soggy feet on our explorations.
This time, we were with friends… and the baptism of chilly mud seemed a poor welcome.
We had arranged to meet author Graeme Cumming and his partner again… it had been decided that we would play out on the moors before lunch, so Stuart and I were going to take them to see an unusual site and a very special standing stone.
If… and where Stuart and standing stones are concerned, it was a big ‘if’… it was still where we had left it.
They have a habit of going walkabout…
Continue reading at France & Vincent
*
… After watching the, again, somewhat recalcitrant sun-up, we decide to head back for breakfast via the cluster of, albeit haphazardly, positioned stones which we have come to call ‘the recumbents’.
This is something of a risk, as we do not yet know what the stones represent and our Companions will undoubtedly be expecting a little more than, ‘we have a vague notion based on the feel of this place that it is something, although, we are not quite sure what.’
However, as an example of how we work, in and with the landscape, it is accurate and will highlight the experiential approach which both we and the ancients favour.
And this we do, telling the story of the site’s gradual introduction to our consciousness and the subsequent discoveries over the course of our last few visits.
We don’t have an ending, of course, except that we now do and that ending has become a beginning for, as we turn to leave the site by a slightly different route than we have done previously, Wen sees it.
“It’s a giant’s head and breast!”…
*
This formation of stones, cunningly crafted into an unmistakable form, by the ancients, stands on the edge of Ilkley Moor and can be seen from the beer garden of the Cow and Calf hotel…
From that vantage though, it does not look quite like the photograph, above, which was taken after a ‘greeting the sun’ on one of our early landscape workshops.
The art of the ancients depended in large part of finding the correct perspective from which to see things…
Which in landscape terms translates as discovering the right angle from which to look…
We stumbled on the form above or, alternatively, were gifted it because we took the time to listen to the land, entered into a ‘conversation’ with it, and undertook to share this process with others…
In this respect the land really does behave like a Cauldron of Plenty, which the ancient myths speak about with such awe and reverence…
Indeed, awe and reverence are two of the keys which will unlock the magic of the land and its living, breathing, loving reality.
Once this is done, as Sue and I found, the world shows forth its true colours…
Sue’s sobriquet in her family of boys was, ‘the hobbit’, which although she pretended to hate, she in fact quite liked, as she was a huge fan of Tolkien, and she also ‘begrudgingly’ allowed me to use the moniker… If done carefully, and sparingly…
At Sue’s funeral last March we walked out to the theme from the recent series of films of that name…
Sue was, it is true, a woman of small, if not diminutive, stature, yet that frame held a heart big as a cauldron, and a spirit that would gladly take on the gods…
Sue grew up on the moors and wrote a fictional tale encapsulating her love of their wild and rugged beauty which was published as, Swords of Destiny.
A year on from her premature departure from the world she loved we returned to mark her passing at the landscape form which she discovered on the edge of her beloved moor.
Maybe you would like to do the same if ever you are passing that way…
You will, though, have to find it first!
Spring 2022
I’ve come to the conclusion the best magic is that which arises unbeckoned and fills the soul with joy. During a family trip to California over the Thanksgiving holiday week, I had the pleasure of encountering this type of magic more than once.
We took the path ahead, which leads to Lizard Rock. You can just make out its profile in the tiny peak to the left of the center of the distant hill.On the second morning of our stay in Thousand Oaks, my husband, daughter ventured to a nearby system of trails and left my sleep son behind in the hotel. A mere ten minutes drive from where we were staying, we were afforded several paths to choose from for our morning hike. After debating between Paradise Falls (which likely had no water to offer) and Lizard Rock, we chose the trail leading to the head of the dragon. We could just make out its profile on the far horizon and it seemed to beckon us…
Continue Reading at… The Light Behind the Story
Sue Vincent's Daily Echo 