SteveTanham – writing, mysticism, photography, poetry, friends

Category: Mindfulness

July 9, 2019 + #Silenti, Ancient Landscapes, Ancient Sacred Sites, Celtic Christianity, Christianity and modern mysticism, Consciousness, esoteric psychology, Highlands of Scotland, landscapes, Magic, Mindfulness, Mystery Schools, Mystical ritual drama, myths and spirituality, Neolithic, Pentagram, Scotland, Silent Eye School, Spirituality

Three Days of the Oyster-Catcher (Part 6) Beyond the Blasted Heath

by Steve Tanham

We were all tired; it had been a wonderful day, and the weather had been kind – which is not always assured in Scotland… The brain tends to switch off, which is no bad thing when you are in a ‘holding’ group and the whole idea is to engage a different (deeper, gentler, non-analytical) layer of consciousness. The path was very straight and shaded … Read More Three Days of the Oyster-Catcher (Part 6) Beyond the Blasted Heath

July 4, 2019 + #Silenti, Ancient Landscapes, Ancient Sacred Sites, Celtic Christianity, Christianity and modern mysticism, Consciousness, esoteric psychology, Highlands of Scotland, landscapes, Magic, Mindfulness, Mystery Schools, Mystical ritual drama, myths and spirituality, Neolithic, Pentagram, Scotland, Silent Eye School, Spirituality

Three Days of the Oyster-Catcher (Part 5) Stone in the Sky

by Steve Tanham

You can’t miss Sueno’s stone. It sits on its own plateau, just off the old main road between Findhorn and Forres; now bypassed. You see its ‘hangar’ first, then realise that this glass and steel monolith contains something special… Sueno’s stone was thought to be named after Swenson Forkbeard, but this is disputed. There is also a folk-link to King Duffus, whose castle we … Read More Three Days of the Oyster-Catcher (Part 5) Stone in the Sky

July 2, 2019 + #Poetry, Metanoia, Mindfulness, Mystical poetry, Silent Eye School, Spirituality

The Blissed Hand

by Steve Tanham

Like a flower the truth is swiftly hurt Perfection is the gentlest thing Touched only by inside seeing Fingers’ secret is caress Engaging deeper self A sacrifice to one alone Blissed hand holds essence of rose Its fading leaving room for another Its silence an invitation to a third ➰ ©Stephen Tanham

June 29, 2019 + #Silenti, Ancient Landscapes, Ancient Sacred Sites, Celtic Christianity, Christianity and modern mysticism, Consciousness, esoteric psychology, Highlands of Scotland, landscapes, Magic, Mindfulness, Mystery Schools, Mystical ritual drama, myths and spirituality, Neolithic, Pentagram, Scotland, Silent Eye School, Spirituality

Three Days of the Oyster-Catcher (Part 4) Sea and Stone

by Steve Tanham

I didn’t want to leave Burghead, not even for Findhorn; a place I’d wanted to visit for a long time. Burghead had filled me (many of us, I think) with a sense of ancient mystery and that dreadful knowledge that the centre of the Pict civilisation had likely perished in the Viking raids of the 9th century, when the ‘fort’ was sacked and burned. … Read More Three Days of the Oyster-Catcher (Part 4) Sea and Stone

June 27, 2019 + #Silenti, Ancient Landscapes, Ancient Sacred Sites, Celtic Christianity, Christianity and modern mysticism, Consciousness, esoteric psychology, Highlands of Scotland, landscapes, Magic, Mindfulness, Mystery Schools, Mystical ritual drama, myths and spirituality, Neolithic, Pentagram, Scotland, Silent Eye School, Spirituality

Three Days of the Oyster-Catcher (Part 3) Headland of the Picts

by Steve Tanham

The Moray Firth is vast, wild and beautiful. Examined on a map it resembles a child’s geometry exercise in triangles, with the coast between its ‘origin’ at Inverness and far-away Fraserburgh being a virtually flat west-east baseline. From Fraserburgh the great inlet of the Moray Firth reaches northwards into the North Sea. The final line in the triangle, from Inverness moving north-east, ends at … Read More Three Days of the Oyster-Catcher (Part 3) Headland of the Picts

June 25, 2019 + #Silenti, Ancient Landscapes, Ancient Sacred Sites, Celtic Christianity, Christianity and modern mysticism, Consciousness, esoteric psychology, Highlands of Scotland, landscapes, Magic, Mindfulness, Mystery Schools, Mystical ritual drama, myths and spirituality, Neolithic, Pentagram, Scotland, Silent Eye School, Spirituality

Three Days of the Oyster-Catcher (2) Coast and Castle

by Steve Tanham

There has to be a dawn… I’m not being flippant. Our Silent Eye ‘spirituality in the landscape’ weekends always have at least one early morning event during which we gather somewhere beautiful and greet the dawn. It’s a joy and also a discipline: something that tells our inner self that ‘we mean it’. Sometimes we might read poetry or even enact something from esoteric … Read More Three Days of the Oyster-Catcher (2) Coast and Castle

June 19, 2019 + #Silenti, Ancient Landscapes, Ancient Sacred Sites, Celtic Christianity, Christianity and modern mysticism, Consciousness, esoteric psychology, Highlands of Scotland, landscapes, Magic, Mindfulness, Mystery Schools, Mystical ritual drama, myths and spirituality, Neolithic, Pentagram, Scotland, Silent Eye School, Spirituality

Three Days of the Oyster-Catcher (1)

by Steve Tanham

We were standing close to the River Spey in the grounds of Strathallan church a few miles from the centre of Grantown-on-Spey: one of the gems of the north-eastern highlands of Scotland. The previous hour had seen us all meet at a tea room in the centre of the town. We discussed the plans for the weekend, drank tea and had cake… Strathallan church … Read More Three Days of the Oyster-Catcher (1)

June 13, 2019 + #Silenti, Ancient Landscapes, Ancient Sacred Sites, Astrology, Belief and Faith, Castles, Consciousness, English Lake District, guided mystical walks, Higher Mind, Lake District, Magic, meditation, Mindfulness, Spirituality

The way to dusty death?

by Steve Tanham

We were in Ulverston, Dean and I. We’d just climbed the famous ‘Hoad’ – a tall monument on the top of a tall hill that looks like a lighthouse… but isn’t. There’s some important symbology in that, but we’ll return to it later. He was on his way back from Somerset to northern Scotland – the Glenlivet area of the North Cairngorms, where he … Read More The way to dusty death?

May 30, 2019 + #Silenti, Ancient Landscapes, Ancient Sacred Sites, Astrology, Belief and Faith, Biology and mysticism, Castles, Child of Light, Consciousness, Egregore, Esoteric Meaning of Myth, esoteric psychology, Higher Mind, Highlands of Scotland, Initiation, landscapes, Magic, Mindfulness, Mystery Schools, Mystical ritual drama, myths and spirituality, Scotland, Silent Eye School, spiritual turning around, Spirituality, Travel and Photography, Understanding Fear

Five Faces of the Macbeth Human

by Steve Tanham

Exploring the faces of the ‘human condition’ should be consuming our world at the moment. We might reasonably conclude that understanding the heights and depths of our shared experience, as we drain the planet of its living life, would be of interest to us. But we don’t… Instead, if we ask any questions at all, we spend months looking at things from a political … Read More Five Faces of the Macbeth Human

May 23, 2019 + #Silenti, Ancient Landscapes, Consciousness, esoteric psychology, Higher Mind, Mindfulness, Mystery Schools, nature, Photography, Places and Prose, Silent Eye School, Stream of Consciousness

The Bedouin

by Steve Tanham

It is said we learn most from those we would wish to emulate. Not copy, perhaps, but take from them an essence of thought, of action. If we are younger, of style, even… There must have been a thousand people in the room. The university hall was full. When he stood up to speak, his movements were relaxed. His body language gentle, open. What … Read More The Bedouin

May 16, 2019 + #Silenti, Ancient Landscapes, Ancient Sacred Sites, Consciousness, esoteric psychology, Fear, Journey of the hero, Life and Death, Love, Lust, Mindfulness, Mystery Play, Mystery Schools, Mystical ritual drama, Myth, myths and spirituality, Sex, Sexual Force, Soul, soul in body, Spiritual use of sex force, Spirituality, Stream of Consciousness, Sumerian myths

Gilgamesh descending (9) – final part

by Steve Tanham

And now you will want an ending… Like day gives way to night, though there is no single point where we could all agree that it was either… Like the moment of sleep or awakening, though one drifts into the other and each knows little of its twin… Like the point in the play where the character releases the player from his undertaking and … Read More Gilgamesh descending (9) – final part

May 14, 2019 + #Silenti, Ancient Landscapes, Ancient Sacred Sites, Consciousness, esoteric psychology, Fear, Journey of the hero, Life and Death, Love, Lust, Mindfulness, Mystery Play, Mystery Schools, Mystical ritual drama, Myth, myths and spirituality, Sex, Sexual Force, Soul, soul in body, Spiritual use of sex force, Spirituality, Stream of Consciousness, Sumerian myths

Gilgamesh descending (8)

by Steve Tanham

The portal through which all the others have passed – except ghostly Enkidu and forlorn Gilgamesh – shimmers and fades. My brother – his twin – fades… And he and I… and then only I am left alone in the middle of the most threatening inner space I can imagine… There is the dominating sense of ‘nowhere else to go’; and yet I know … Read More Gilgamesh descending (8)