‘All of you undisturbed cities,

haven’t you ever longed for the Enemy?’

Rainer Maria Rilke

“Burn and Grieve.”

The title stared back at me from the screen. It seemed prophetic. Mute fingers poised, I wondered what on earth had possessed me. How could I possibly write anything that would meet the expectations raised by the previous workshops? I didn’t even have a proper story! Nothing that would hold up as a five-act ritual drama, the format Steve had pioneered as the template for the annual workshops.

In previous years, Steve had taken us from a lost mountain monastery to ancient Egypt via an unexplored planet. Stuart had followed with the woven tales of the Foliate Man. All of them wonderful stories. Me? I had a handful of whispering stones, a few fragmentary glimpses into a debatable past and a speculative theory or two. For a moment, only three of the…

”The spirit is so closely linked to the body as a thing

that the body never ceases to be haunted.’

Georges Bataille

We had chosen five of the ancient and sacred sites of the local landscape as inspiration and setting for the story of the Feathered Seer. Unlike the Circles Beyond Time workshop, we could not take our Companions out into the landscape for the rituals. Instead we chose to bring the landscape symbolically within the sacred space created and hallowed by the intent of the Companions. Even so, the village once more saw strangely garbed figures wandering its fields in the pre-dawn light.

It is a measure of the trust we have in each other that we can ask the company to rise before dawn, donning robes and cloaks, to walk though the village streets to the hillside, there to enact whatever ritual we have devised with which to…

In Yutacan, where Mayan mind

Once ruled a fabled land

A mighty structure stands its side

It is a temple of the wind

Tumul its name, once whispered wide

Upon this jungled horn

An ancient place, revered its past

Where paintings crown the work of sides

Where throngs of people shuffle past

The guardians used to stand

In stern Castillo, facing seas

To read the fates and seek what lasts

In thirteen, four, and nine beneath

The learned Maya homed

Within their Four their patterns bore

The lasting truth of their belief

Pale shadow now our vision sees

Of order once so fine

But stop the crowd and touch the wind

To feel the peace before decline.

©Stephen Tanham

Alethea Kehas and Barbara Walsh holding a photograph of Obi.

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For those Companions who study the Silent Eye Correspondence Course the Sunday morning of our April Workshop is a special time.

It is then that we mark their progress through the three degrees of the course with a ceremony designed to ratify each stage of that process.

This year we were delighted to acknowledge Alethea Kehas and Barbara Walsh who completed their Second Degrees and Maurice Obioha Nwankwor (Obi) who completed the Third Degree of the course and thereby became the first of our students to achieve this beginning…

‘Initiation cannot be conferred by human hands.

Not all who reach the Portal will pass the Threshold.

Not all who knock will see that door held open to the Light.

Initiation cannot be bought, nor can it be earned through effort.

It is not a goal, but a beginning.

It…

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Any creative endeavour involves hazard.

We are fortunate enough to work with an eclectic and talented bunch of souls which inevitably lessens that hazard.

With our previous Workshop, Leaf and Flame, we had made a rod for our own back by extending the compass of R4 out into the night and into the realms of spectacle… and fire… and dance… and legend, courtesy of the street entertainers known as Mister Fox.

So, what this time for our R4 extension?

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“It’ll need to be big, brash and in your face to counteract the, ‘Beyond the Veil’ section of R4.”

“We’ll hand it over to Dean and Ali.”

“Our Lore Keepers?”

“Perfect!”

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Dean Powell and Alienora Browning have been April Workshop stalwarts since the Silent Eye’s inception and have on numerous occasions stepped in to cover more than their primary roles when illness or mishap has dictated.

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“So…

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“No one else is doing this.”

“So far as we are aware.”

“And if they are doing it they are not doing it in quite the same way.”

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It was not always the case.

The ancient mystery schools utilised story and drama in order to teach and inculcate spiritual and psychological truths within their aspirants.

In many cases those same stories and dramas are still around in the form of myths and legends, although their deeper content may now be well hidden, if it remains at all.

It may even be that story and drama originally evolved with no other purpose than the sacred, and that what we now know as entertainment is the dying gasp of a degenerate process.

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…Anyway, a quiet revolution has been under way over the last five years.

We have been gradually expanding the boundaries of the temple ritual and nudging it outside and into the sacred site.

Conversely, we have also been expanding the boundaries of the sacred site and nudging it inside and into the temple ritual.

The results have been both fascinating and worthwhile and they look set to continue into the near future and beyond…

For at least as long as we can stick around.

So why don’t you come along and get involved?

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