For five years, it was Steve who was the principal writer of the annual workshops. I don’t think any of us had really considered that it would ever be otherwise. We contributed, both ideas and certain sections of the weekend, but he had established a format and set a standard. All who attended knew they could trust him to deliver.

The morning of the first meeting after the River of the Sun workshop, Stuart and I had been talking about an idea he’d had for a workshop long ago…something he had been thinking about, on and off, for years. The Green Man had been coming up a lot in our lives…perhaps that was what had brought the idea to mind once more. We tend to trust the synchronicities that lead us along these odd pathways…especially when they go all ‘bells and whistles’.  You never know where they might lead, and…

They placed him on a bier and tended his bruises and the flow of blood from his elbow. Bandaged and victorious, he was carried into the Temple of the Jaguars from where, elevated high above the level of the Ball Court, he  was invited to watch the start of the new game, below.

He wondered if this was just for him; wondered if his presence in this harvest of spirituality was an extension of the grace as witness… or whether the difference in time and place didn’t matter, that condition and readiness were everything, and, once fulfilled, the dawning horizon’s fingers of purpose would weave their anciently-spun magic, no matter what the era in which they were invoked.

They gave him water for his parched body, then a sweet liquid that contained a contrasting brew of bitter herbs.

In trust he drained the cup…

When he woke, it was…

The car once more full to bursting, ready for the long drive south, and my companions either back at work or heading for the airport, I went to collect Nick from the hostel, ready for a morning in the hills. There were a few things I wanted to show him before he headed south himself and we began with a drive across the moors, following a spectacular little backroad we had stumbled across on our travels.

We were heading for the Derwent Dams. My sons had been fascinated by old aircraft in their childhood. We could all tell the sound of a Merlin engine…and every one of us would abandon the table when we heard that note that told us the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight was passing overhead. Lancasters were a favourite plane and it was inevitable that the Dambusters, 617 Squadron, would feature in the stories they…

Manuel is speaking, but he’s wrong…

This thought hits home as my unseen flight ends with a trip over the ledge that marks the boundary of a small incline. Ahead of me, the tourists turn and politely ignore the unhurt figure in the dust, though others are laughing.

What was it that Jerome had said? ‘Shamanic methods are ultimately kind…’ The exactness of that hits home, and with it comes a realisation that the Shamanic world – really the objective world seen by the Shaman – is brutally centred in the now, but has an implicit trust in the motives, or rather, direction, of that living wave of Creation.

Conventional ‘goodness’ has nothing to do with it, though individual kindness does. Perhaps this is one of the secrets: that the true Shaman can swim skillfully enough in that flow to create a little eddy, a safe-moment, in which to…

The count had reached forty steps by the time the newfound realised what was happening. Below him, the rising air from the plateau smelled, newly, of summer grasses and deeply-perfumed flowers. 

The sun, near vertical overhead, beat down with a ferocity that touched skin which seemed naked; and yet fed, unburnt, from the sky-borne radiance. It was summer’s height and yet, at the same time, it was midday. Disbelieving eyes blinked, as the import of the snarling lines of light bore into what had been his brain.

Eighty steps, and the ground below seemed to be falling away. Ninety and it was a distant memory, yet still there. His legs were walking in the air, in large circular steps, as the Jaguar sought and weeded out the pale image of a calendar on his study wall, replacing it with a movement that involved his whole body in ecstatic, radial motion.

The…