Category: #Silenti

+

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

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

+

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

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

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

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

Harlequin Solstice

Harlequin solstice St John Kin A picture in the fading sun A race of fingers, digits Of solstice long earned Short departed ➰ How little How sadly You are understood Your music the struggle Of madness Made harmony ➰ Until this moment When kings detach your strings When single song Descends Towards the dark arms But brighter eyes Of St Stephen ➰ ©Stephen Tanham

Three Days of the Oyster-Catcher (1)

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)

The way to dusty death?

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?

The Golden Eye of Fiveness (3)

“It is highly dishonourable for a Reasonable Soul to live in so Divinely built a Mansion as the Body she resides in, altogether unacquainted with the exquisite structure of it…” Robert Boyle In Part One, and Part Two we looked at a the emergence of a special number, Phi, that allowed the division of any ‘whole’ – like a figure in a painting or … Read More The Golden Eye of Fiveness (3)

The Golden Eye of Fiveness (2)

In Part One, we looked at a very simple sequence of numbers that ‘orbited’ or homed-in on a certain value. Now we need to examine that value and look at the sheer magic of what it represents. This new number was 1.618. It’s derivation is summarised in the diagram above, and described in the previous post. Simply: (red numbers) we add the two previous … Read More The Golden Eye of Fiveness (2)

The Golden Eye of Fiveness (1)

In the dream the Hermit was speaking. “I am the eye of fiveness,” he said. I listened… dreams are not always this lucid. “In the beginning was the division, not the multiplication; and the division contained what divided it, but in another form…” I was listening, intently. The figure of the Hermit promised great insight… “No-thing can be a principle. It does not have … Read More The Golden Eye of Fiveness (1)

Five Faces of the Macbeth Human

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

An idea whose time has come

An idea: invisibly potent A watery creek A new and gentle breeze of ripeness Felt by few A red propeller spinning in the soil? A sail – unfurled and flapping Held fast with thin steel ropes which ‘clack’, dull metal, at its imprisonment … Whose time: like the now-revealed spinning toy Whirring in the wind Unwraps, revealing shining teeth Rotating gear, synchro-meshed Engages, beneath … Read More An idea whose time has come

The Bedouin

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