Thursday 18 April 2024

Wednesday 17 April 2024

Native American People

"In the Lakota/Sioux tradition, a person who is grieving is considered most holy. There's a sense that when someone is struck by the sudden lightning of loss, he or she stands on the threshold of the spirit world. The prayers of those who grieve are considered especially strong, and it is proper to ask them for their help. You might recall what it's like to be with someone who has grieved deeply. The person has no layer of protection, nothing left to defend. The mystery is looking out through that person's eyes. For the time being, he or she has accepted the reality of loss and has stopped clinging to the past or grasping at the future. In the groundless openness of sorrow, there is a wholeness of presence and a deep natural wisdom." ~ Tara Brach
Early History:  The native people of America were first called “Red Indians” by Christopher Columbus, when, upon arriving in North America, he thought he was in the East Indies on his way to India! There would have been 1,000 native languages in use at this time. Studies have suggested that people traveled during the ice age, perhaps as long as 30,000 years ago, from Mongolia, over the Bering Straits land bridge into Alaska, and down through the Americas. Shamanic culture that survive in Mongolia are thought to be similar to the native American shamanic practices. There is also some evidence that sailors left Europe in small canoes, surviving the frozen ice floes of the Atlantic Ocean to arrive on the Eastern sea board of the Americas. 

Tuesday 16 April 2024

The Mountain Dreamer - A Challenge

It doesn’t interest me if you are good looking. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself and if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not hurt another. I want to know if you can be faithful and trustworthy. I want to know if you can see beauty - even when it’s not a good day, and if you can endure great hardship and can still abide in God’s presence. I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of a lake and shout wildly and ecstatically to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!”

It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done for those in need.
It doesn’t interest me who you are, or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of fire with me and not shrink back.
It doesn’t interest me where or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else has fallen away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep.

Meditation on an Artwork

 

I met Frater Bia on Facebook and we were speaking about the Holy Grail and what it means. He showed me this artwork of a golden chalice, and tree with a doorway in the trunk. I had just this week found notes of some meditation work with my long lost, and revered esoteric tutor Yvette (oh you probably know her under another name) where we would meditate in the circle and she suggested my entry through a similar doorway and I reported to her what I discovered inside. So last night, I went through this Facebook friend’s artwork.

Who was there in her 1940s sitting room, Yvette of course, the one who held the chalice for me. 

This is what she revealed last night: To find the Grail is to appreciate “awe and wonder”, and she spoke about how Jupiter was known to the ancient Babylonians and is Father God of expansion and benevolence, inspiration of heroes, and how he always outshines his predecessor, the old father God, Saturn, who was so mean  and greedy that he ate his own children.

Monday 15 April 2024

Synchronicity!

Carl Jung devised the term ‘synchronicity with his colleague, the physicist, Wolfgang Pauli, but neither explained the concept to any definitive degree. Probability mathematicians have questioned the theory, as coincidences can occur that look to be unprovable.

Marcel Sternberger was a methodical man of nearly 50, with bushy white hair, guileless brown eyes, and the bouncing enthusiasm of a czardas dancer of his native Hungary. He always took the 9:09 Long Island Railroad train from his suburban home to Woodside, N.Y.., where he caught a subway into the city.

On the morning of January 10, 1948, Sternberger boarded the 9:09 as usual. En route, he suddenly decided to visit Laszlo Victor, a Hungarian friend who lived in Brooklyn and was ill.
Accordingly, at Ozone Park, Sternberger changed to the subway for Brooklyn, went to his friend’s house, and stayed until midafternoon. He then boarded a Manhattan-bound subway for his Fifth Avenue office. Here is Marcel’s strange story:

Saturday 13 April 2024

Cornwall - A Visit

St Just Well
Wild moorlands and magnificent coastlines of Cornwall have inspired artists and writers to visit this beautiful rural county but there is further wonder and magic that makes it ideal for channelling energies of angels and ascended masters. 

When hordes of invaders, Angles, Saxons, Vikings, Jutes, and others, arrived from the Continent of Europe, the indigenous Celtic people were driven to outlying lands, to Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Cornwall. In these places, the Celtic languages survived, and we have traditions handed down the generations by the Druids, famed throughout the ancient world for poetry and storytelling, their love of family ties and their knowledge of the law.


Friday 12 April 2024

The Grail and Ark



What is the Holy Grail? Many ask this question - and there are many interesting answers! However, we don't know what The Grail is, as it has never been found to our knowledge. It is described in many ways, and always as something with the greatest of abilities for healing and transformation! 

Wolfram’s title of the Grail in his poem is “lapis exilis” - the philosopher’s stone and it bears the inscription “Any Templar appointed by God’s hand to be master over foreign people, must forbid the asking of his name or race, and help him gain his rights”. Dated 1210AD This was a declaration of human rights 5 years prior to The Magna Carta. 

The Grail first features in a 1118 poem by Chretien, a name that means Christian so we know he wasn’t a heretic. He was a troubadour (a writer of courtly love and aristocratic or religious devotion), of the ancient town of Troyes in the Champagne region of France. The poem describes several motifs; a knight with a pure heart, a mysterious castle, a lame 'fisher' king, and an enigmatic procession of servants carrying items, such as a lance, a sword, and a woman who carries a dish that holds a communion wafer. 

Because the Grail Castle knights and the Knights Templar wore white, there could be be a connection between them. The Champagne region was a rich and important commercial area. Bernard of Clairvaux, the nine original Templars, and Chretien, all came from the Troyes region of which Chartres, once a Druidic grove, was the spiritual centre. 

Wednesday 10 April 2024

Tuesday 2 April 2024

Saffron Walden - A Visit

The ancient labyrinth on the common at Saffron Walden is the largest 'free to walk' labyrinth in England and is believed to be based (very loosely) on the labyrinth in Chartres Cathedral (which dates to the twelvth century). Saffron Walden has four raised areas at the quarters and a mound at the centre. The labyrinth is reputed to be a portal to other-worlds and this one perhaps lies on a ley node. The round trip to the centre and out again is two miles. I visited it on my birthday to meditate on the year ahead. Before I had left home, I had opened a gift from a friend. It was a tiny bright sculpture of mythical beasts emerging from an egg and was titled, 'new beginnings'.

Monday 1 April 2024

The Chariot

From Tarot Apokalypsis by Ciro Marchetti:  The Chariot - The Roman Triumph Imperial cult and apotheosis of heroes! "Call my name in triumph, sing my praises in victory, give sacrifice only unto me, and I shall show you the mysteries of the triumphant road. I am winged apotheosis, pulling your soul from dirt into the shining heavens, there to place you an an immortal star, unconquered and unrivaled. I am the song of your name that lives long after the singer has gone, the rhyme of your deeds to last through the ages. I am the overcoming and the rising, the procession of the soul to greatness, and the achievement of your greatest ambitions. Know this: that the heavens were not created for the humble and mediocre and only greatness can ensure your immortality. What man is mortal whose name is remembered? What woman is not a goddess whose deeds are still spoken of? Yet do not mistake me: this is not the aggrandisement of the self alone, for this is the only service of the ego to the world. In your triumph you shall show to others the possibility of greatness, bringing into their reach the highest of goals: your virtue shall be enshrined in the holy words of the poets and inspire the journey to godhead of those who come long after you are gone. Victory, Imperator, and the mantle of the gods!"  

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