POSTCARD #265: Chiang Mai: I’d decided to use this image for the header thinking the way I cope with my headache is an improvised thing, much like the way this traffic sign has been bent back into shape after something has crashed into it – then as I write this I’m distracted by wind chimes from the balcony of the next-door house, which suddenly play a perfect chord in the air. I slip into wakefulness from the dream of that which I’m held by, and become an extension of the wind-chime’s notes. Horizontal on the bed as if shipwrecked on a sandy beach. Waves rushing in to the shore crash-crash, and the whole thing receding back. Comes rushing in again, crash-crash-crash, becoming a form that shapes into the body of the sea rolling over on its side like a great animal trying to sleep in an enormous bed. Then I…

Really? A giant, black, Jaguar materialised from the south face of the Chichen Itza pyramid and thundered across the ground to devour you?

On one level, it’s a preposterous thing to write; on another, it’s the heart of the matter.

“If you can’t let go,” Jerome had said, under the quiet shadows of the one silent place in the hotel grounds, “then you’ll get little, apart from academic worth, from Chichen Itza.”

Manuel had moved his guided group on, away from the the place of the first sighting of the temple complex, and to the fabled ‘ball court’, leaving a solitary figure staring at the pyramid, from which the jaguar that was filling his perception had emerged.

They had split time, the Shaman and Manuel, the gentle guide; had opened a door of perception known about but never personally experienced in this form. I had, as I wrote in the

Many foxes…
Copyright: MJ Heritage @ Mr Fox

Fast forward a year to the “Leaf and Flame: the Foliate Man” weekend. The directors of the Silent Eye (a modern mystery school), not really knowing what they might be letting themselves in for, honoured me with a request to present one of the exploration sessions.

These punctuate the weekend, expanding on themes weaving through the tapestry of the unfolding story driving the ritual elements. To say that I was intrigued, that a thread involving Spirit Animals could find its way into the 2016 retelling of the story of Gawain and the Green Knight, would be an understatement.

The outline of the exploration was drafted in my head by December, re-drafted by January, fiddled around the edges in February, and completely forgotten by March. The work-book arrived sometime in April. Under normal circumstances, I’d have had opportunity to read through…

There’s something wrong with the two-legs. She’s not broken exactly, but she’s not working right. I keep having to remind her about impotant things… like my dinner.  ‘Off colour’ she calls it… I thought that only happened to the fish when they go weird, but no. This time she’s right…she is a funny colour.

Normally my two-legs is sort of pale pink. Well, she calls it pink. I wouldn’t … more like an earthworm or that pastry stuff she makes. By this time of year she is normally browning nicely with the sun, but well… she’s looking more sort of undercooked at present. Most of the time anyway.

Till evening comes and she gets weirder…

It’s not the heating…she turned that off ages ago, even though it isn’t very warm yet. I was glad about that though, ’cause it was playing havoc with my spring moult, you know… hair falling…

‘If you have not lived through something it is not true’

Kabir

The fourth ritual took us to a place of fear. Within the local landscape there is a high place that had, for a long time, remained hidden from notice, even though we had passed it many times over the years. It was never hidden from sight… there are no trees to give seasonal camouflage, no houses or obstructions…it was only, somehow, hidden from awareness. Even though we must have seen it, the mound had never impinged upon consciousness. And it is really too big, too imposing, to miss.

It was inevitable that, once noticed, we would visit the site. The story that was born of that first encounter has been told elsewhere. The encounter itself was unlike any other, beginning an unease that grew with each successive visit and leaving me an emotional wreck. The tale that…

‘The hidden world has its clouds and rain, but of a different kind. Its sky and sunshine are of a different kind. This is made apparent to those not deceived by the seeming completeness of the ordinary world.’

Jalaluddin Rumi

For the final ritual, the setting we chose was Arbor Low, the great stone circle within a henge. Its is unusual as it contains a central cove beneath which ancient human remains were found and the stones lay flat as if gazing at the pattern of the heavens; there seems little evidence that they were ever standing. Our own experiences at the stones were to provide the basis for the ritual… but as the essence of the workshop evolved, so did its final form of re-enchanting the land.

It is odd how things work out sometimes. One aspect of the five rituals had been put in place…

Alethea continues the story of her experiences throughout the Silent Eye’s Feathered Seer weekend. Here she speaks of the part played by the crystals we had chose to use as Seeds of Light…and issues her own invitation to be part of the magic…

I didn’t know why I felt compelled to bring it, but I had a feeling I would never wear it again. There had been the sense for some time that it was no longer meant for me. Perhaps it never was. For more than a year I had worn it often around my neck, and felt the comfort of its presence against my heart. Last year at the Silent Eye’s annual workshop, The Leaf and Flame, where I played the role of Queen Guinevere, the rainbow crystal wrapped in wire rested against my velvet gown. It gave me the sense of strength and protection as…

I’ve decided there is something Shamanic about suffering. The past few years have been challenging for me in a very specific way: whenever I have approached an important event, particularly one where I have to ‘perform’ well, in a dramatic or ritualistic way… I get slightly ill.

This is not stage-fright. Apart from the odd deep breath, I just get on with it, trusting that the kind fates and the momentum of experience will see it done well. It matters to me that it is done well…

Last year’s vivid ‘Leaf and Flame’ workshop for the Silent Eye’s spring weekend was a classic example. I had a particularly demanding role as Sir Gawain in an enhanced version of the Green Knight story. What few of the rest of the group knew was that, for the duration of the weekend, I was on a strong dose of penicillin for a chest…