It hardly seems possible that it is already a month ago that we were waiting in a place between the worlds for the rites of Beltane to reach their culmination. Glastonbury…the fabled Avalon… is a place where the veil between realties always seems thin, and in this case, the geography aligned itself with legend as we congregated in a field, high above the town, yet far below the summit of the Tor.

It was a perfect location; an impromptu sanctuary, enclosed by trees, poised between the valley and the heights. The tower of the church within the town below an echo of the ancient tower on the Tor…and it was here they would raise the maypole that would marry the worlds.

Children ran and played in the sun, introducing themselves to grand old trees, families and friends gather, laughing and smiling in the perfect weather. No-one was a stranger, even…

Sunday morning, Beltane, the first morning of May…and we were in Glastonbury. After a leisurely breakfast, Alienora prepared for her role as Priestess in the morning’s proceedings. We would meet the others in the town for the start of the day’s festivities. By the time we arrived in the town, the place was already buzzing.

The morning began at the Market Cross, where the Mayor, Jon Cousins, Glastonbury’s Town Crier, David Greenaway and our friend, Morgana West would open the day. One of the first tasks would be to light the Unity Candle. The light is a representation of inclusive acceptance and its flame is lit by groups of all faiths, beliefs, paths and denominations as a symbol of unity in a divided world. It is a spark that echoes a greater Light that shines within all of us and, because of that, when you are asked to light…

No false ideal can be a true defence
When evil, as a spoiled and angry child
Can break and shatter childhood innocence,
To be, by any feeling heart, reviled.
No hope can find its birth in violence
As death’s own purpose is itself defiled.
The earth is scarred by Man’s insanity
And empty arms hold only memory.

Some feign belief and then defy the laws
On which their path depends to reach its goal,
Examine others’ paths to note the flaws
Whilst seeing theirs the only truth and whole.
They set themselves apart and preach a cause
Abhorrent to their brothers’ heart and soul.
The breakers are the broken and the lost
And their rejection bears a human cost.

No child has lived enough to need to die,
A mother’s tears are better shed in joy;
No heart should break to know the reason why
A life became a statistician’s…

*

Shortly after the ‘Leaf and Flame’ event in 2016, the outline for, The Feathered Seer, workshop took shape for us on the edge of an ancient necropolis overlooking Big Moor.

The seeing that day, be it courtesy of the seasonal sun light, or more esoteric manifestations, allowed us to work out one possible function of the Barbrook 1 stone circle.

And this ‘rudimentary ritual’ was replayed in original situ later that year for the group of Companions who attended our Living Land workshop, ‘Circles Beyond Time’, in September.

Naturally, it also formed the basis of R3 of The Feathered Seer and its working proved to be one of the most intense undertakings we have ever experienced.

What the ancients knew was that only the querent holds the answer to the question, but that the clues to those questions are everywhere played out in living experience.

*

Exploring the Inner…

The Fox, I have already shared. Yesterday, as I walked Jumble down the track, instinct drew me to the gate at the end (two down from the Fox Gate). I stopped. A deer stood before me, delicate and beautiful in long green grass, powered by sunlight. The Hart. So apt. Another, and indeed the first, of Sir Gawain’s hunting trials as set by the mysterious Sir Bertilak, the fox being the final one. In the context of the poem, the archetypal fairy tale game of three, chivalry and, from another source, love.

As I walked on, I began to free-associate: Thoughts of the rut, of stags fighting, of the Young Stag battling the King Stag for the good of the Land; of the White Hart, the Wasteland and Grail question; the fact that even prey animals can inflict damage; the whole essence of flight (both needful and needless) and the…