SteveTanham – writing, mysticism, photography, poetry, friends

Category: Understanding Fear

March 5, 2020 + #Silenti, Biology and mysticism, Consciousness, People power, Politics, Politics and Power, spiritual turning around, Spirituality, Understanding Fear

Echoes of the Bunkermen

by Steve Tanham

I was born in the 1950s. It was an age riven by anxiety about nuclear war. Ten years after the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been destroyed by the first use of atomic-powered weapons, the west was still consumed with the horror of seeing Oppenheimer’s equations translated into an explosion that ripped apart buildings, adults and children on a scale envisaged only … Read More Echoes of the Bunkermen

October 22, 2019 + #Silenti, Mystical poetry, nature, Photography, Poetry, Powers of the Mind, Silent Eye School, soul in body, Spirituality, Stream of Consciousness, Understanding Fear

The Opening

by Steve Tanham

I know the words The long-learned words With which this view is framed These slats of wood I crafted round The Opening… ➰ Yet there it lies, unshut before me The rawness of the world Behind my words I kneel, now Afraid to stop their flow’s intent In widening my wood ➰ One day the words will be unspeakable The splinters brushed aside By … Read More The Opening

September 26, 2019 + #Silenti, Ancient Sacred Sites, Bakewell, Consciousness, Fear, Life and Death, Love, Spirituality, Travel and Photography, Understanding Fear

Fear and Love in the High Peak (2) – “I want a posset!”

by Steve Tanham

The first visit of the Silent Eye ‘Rites of Passage: Seeing Beyond Fear’ weekend was to the Derbyshire village of Eyam (pronounced Eem) – The Plague Village. Our family has a personal connection with Eyam and the terrible events of 1665-6, when bubonic plague, newly arrived in Derbyshire from London, took the lives of 260 of its occupants: over seven-tenths of its population. No-one … Read More Fear and Love in the High Peak (2) – “I want a posset!”

July 18, 2019 + #Silenti, Ancient Egypt, Astrophysics, Belief and Faith, Biology and mysticism, Child of Light, Christianity and modern mysticism, Consciousness, Egyptian Gods, enneagram, esoteric psychology, Fear, Incarnation, Life and Death, Love, Mindfulness, myths and spirituality, Photography, Solar Year, spiritual turning around, Spirituality, The Beloved, Understanding Fear

Death of a salesman

by Steve Tanham

In a few short weeks it will be September. We (the Silent Eye) have been invited to speak at the Unitarian Society of Psychical Studies annual conference at the Nightingale Centre in Derbyshire. We use this lovely place for our main annual event in April each year. We had our official ‘birth’ there in 2013. It is a very special place to us, and … Read More Death of a salesman

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

April 4, 2019 + #Silenti, Ancient Landscapes, Ancient Sacred Sites, Consciousness, Dark Humour, Esoteric Meaning of Myth, esoteric psychology, Higher Mind, Journey of the hero, landscapes, Life and Death, Mindfulness, Mystery Play, Mystery Schools, Myth, myths and spirituality, Politics and Power, Spirituality, Truth and Esotericism, Understanding Fear

Dancing with the Ghost in the Machine

by Steve Tanham

If you’ve ever been involved with anything of an ‘amateur dramatic’ nature, you will know that moment: the protagonist, hated until the final few moments (when the greater picture is revealed) shuffles off, in rags, to his doom; and the shared and questioning silence longs for the gentle and poignant soothing that only the right music can bring…. Screech, click, screech, ping, wheeeeeedle…. . … Read More Dancing with the Ghost in the Machine

July 26, 2018 + #Silenti, Ancient Landscapes, Celtic Christianity, Consciousness, Fear, mystical travel, Silent Eye Workshops, Spirituality, Understanding Fear

Pilgrims of blood and stone

by Steve Tanham

The blood: the Life that flows through us, taken in as breath, fresh each second, flowing out to be renewed in the world of nature; natural, given. The stone: the fixed structures we rely on to ensure persistence of that life-force made flesh. The riddle, the contradiction – the mystery… beginning with that most profound and persistent structure: the body… There is no more … Read More Pilgrims of blood and stone

November 30, 2017 + #SE18Characters, #Silenti, esoteric psychology, Jewel in the Claw, Mystery Schools, Silent Eye School, Silent Eye Workshops, Spirituality, The Jewel in the Claw, Tudor Lifetimes, Understanding Fear

The Dragon of Elizabeth’s Seas

by Steve Tanham

It is the beginning of May, 1587, and a man known locally as The Dragon is headed for Cadiz on Spain’s Atlantic coast. His mission is not peaceful. The act of sailing to Cadiz poses few challenges for this master mariner, who, ten years prior, had already circumnavigated the globe – becoming only the second person (after Magellan) to do so. But what … Read More The Dragon of Elizabeth’s Seas

November 23, 2017 + #SE18Characters, #Silenti, Consciousness, esoteric psychology, Jewel in the Claw, Mystery Schools, Silent Eye School, Silent Eye Workshops, Spirituality, The Jewel in the Claw, Understanding Fear

She of the Voice

by Steve Tanham

“Ra-bi-ya, Ra-bi-ya…” As she surveys the black and white squares of the court before her, the song echoes in her head, a beloved memory of time spent, long ago, with her mother, playing their hiding game among the orange groves in the gardens of the royal home. ‘She of the voice, the inner voice,’ had been the way they referred to her, later in … Read More She of the Voice

November 16, 2017 + #SE18Characters, #Silenti, esoteric psychology, Jewel in the Claw, Mystery Schools, Silent Eye School, Silent Eye Workshops, Spirituality, The Jewel in the Claw, Understanding Fear

A Woman of Power and Substance

by Steve Tanham

It is the winter of 1584. The well-dressed woman watches as her fourth husband storms out of the dining hall at their present home, Tutbury Castle, in Staffordshire. In the corner of the room sits a younger woman, now smiling at the angry departure of the man of the house–the sixth Earl of Shrewsbury. The seated woman with the secretive smile has good reason … Read More A Woman of Power and Substance

November 9, 2017 + #Silenti, esoteric psychology, Jewel in the Claw, Mystery Schools, Silent Eye School, Silent Eye Workshops, Spirituality, Understanding Fear

The Deadly Edge of Love (part two)

by Steve Tanham

(Continued from Part One of The Deadly Edge of Love) It’s the morning of 18th November, 1558. Robert Dudley is witnessing a miracle. In her dying months, Queen Mary, Elizabeth’s half-sister, and daughter of Henry and Catherine of Aragon, has restored Elizabeth to the line of succession, following the failure of her marriage alliance with Charles II of Spain. Now, Mary is dead, and … Read More The Deadly Edge of Love (part two)

November 2, 2017 + #Silenti, esoteric psychology, Jewel in the Claw, Mystery Schools, Silent Eye School, Silent Eye Workshops, Spirituality, Understanding Fear

The Deadly Edge of Love (part one)

by Steve Tanham

They were both young, though he was a year older; beyond childhood but not yet adults, not in the way that their lives would soon force them to be… They had been together since their early years, and what they were experiencing, now, would, on an emotional level at least, bind them together for life. How much more frightened could you be than to … Read More The Deadly Edge of Love (part one)