Spirit mischief dares
Sliding stolen silver form
Reflects the only clue
©Stephen Tanham
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We normally take a week’s holiday at this time of year. Our Silent Eye’s main event – the April Workshop in Derbyshire – is a result of a year’s intensive preparation by the organisers and some very concentrated participation by all those present.
This year’s ‘Feathered Seer’ workshop worked very well and Sue and Stuart’s posts cover it in some detail, as per my reblogs, here.
Bernie and I have never been cruising. It didn’t feel like our thing, and I have this morbid dread of cabin fever based upon overnight ferry trips we have made to get the car to such starting points as Santander in northern Spain.
But the prospect of a cruise on a very large and well-equipped ship appealed when we saw an advert by Celebrity Cruises for a seven day trip from Southampton to the Fijords of Norway – the ones that the extra-terrestrial Slartibartfast designed in Douglas Adams’ ‘The Hitch-hiker’s guide to the galaxy’.
So, we booked… and, two weeks before the trip, we were still booking little day trips from the boat, like Kayaking excursions, and Celebrity were still accepting our additional monies.
When I got back from ‘The Feathered Seer’, Bernie sat me down with a coffee and said she had some bad news… A representative from the company had phoned and explained that our cruise had been cancelled – those exact words. At first, I assumed it meant that the boat had come down with a massive virus, or some huge marine engineering problem, but no… the phrasing was exact, ‘our’ cruise had been cancelled…
To cut a long explanation short, it appears that cruise companies overbook their boats on the basis that some cancellations always occur – but this time clearly not enough. We we bumped and dumped… and read the small print, there’s nothing you can do about it.
There were apologies and a generous compensation package, including a free cruise some time in the next two years at our leisure. But we weren’t going to Norway.
With my Slartibartfast hat on I wished I had been home to take the call from Celebrity. I would have asked what was to stop them from cancelling our ‘replacement’ cruise a few days before that one is due? Further incursions into the Douglas Adams world would have led me to ask whether they actually had any boats at all; or were just operating the world’s most slick business plan, based on endless cancellations…
But now I’m getting churlish…
So, we’re not in Norway, we’re sitting in a last-minute booked resort in Cancun, Mexico. It looks very nice and we’ll get some sun, but probably not too much kayaking. It’s a long way to fly for a week but we’ll make the best of it!
We figured the Mexicans needed a break, too…
I’ll attempt to keep the irony going with a series of ‘Not from Norway’ posts as we dance on our hats… our celebrity hats…
(Posted from my iPhone so forgive the formatting!)
Image: Wikipedia CC by 2.5
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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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Since early childhood, I have been a spinner of lore, working, oft-times, in tandem with my opposite, my all-but-twin, Sun to my Moon, Weaver of that which I spun from moonshine and memory, tale and tradition.
But it is a lonely existence in many respects. The spinning calls upon tides and times unseen by the melting-pot of mankind. My rhythms, slightly askew, jerk and judder when social meets and frenzied fraternising is called for. Hermit by nature, I do not venture out of the Cave of Seers with ease. I stand, in sun too bright, blinking and bleary from the soothing uterine darkness of the Mother Cavern, wordless and shy amongst the silver- tongued ones.
Oh! At necessary moments, and clad in convincing costume, the rules of society rote-learned and word-perfect, I emerge and walk amongst the Land-Dwellers, selling my stories for a monetary pittance or exchanging them for the…
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…With this year’s April Workshop, we returned to source.
Five years ago, The Song of the Troubadour birthed our school and opened the gateway to three levels of Enneagram study.
This year we opened another gateway, which led into deeper levels of understanding, with a Song of the Stones.
Last year we moved through Mediaeval Courts, and Castles, and Fairy Forests, in search of the soul.
This year we danced with grace through the heart of that soul, and learned how to overcome fear.
The settings were simple, the costuming uncomplicated, with only the Weavers of Time and Story providing the strands and splurges of rainbow-like colour we might usually associate with this time of year.
A veil split the temple space.
It was a veil which had morphed through fire, sun and beyond fear into spirit before we were done.
And we did not even have any pantomime…
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Intrigue ⦿ Magic ⦿ Religion ⦿ Science
Four faces of a Elizabethan jewel that will become Britain… and one deadly enemy – hidden deep in the inner workings of an age.
1586, and our story begins… The reign of Elizabeth I, the ‘Virgin Queen’ of the house of Tudor.
A time when England stood virtually alone amongst its neighbours, surrounded by hostile political and religious forces set in motion by the reign of Elizabeth’s father Henry VIII, a plot has just been discovered to assassinate the now-established Queen of England and Ireland. The man who uncovered it is Francis Walsingham, her celebrated and loyal spymaster, intent on establishing a network of agents outside and inside England to protect her.
By the 1580s, this small island, with its ‘virgin’ Queen, had become a hotbed of intellectual and magical insight, with leading thinkers, such as the Queen’s astrologer, John Dee, driving forward the knowledge of the…
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Ali’s powerful retelling…
The drum called, its stick an instant friend in my hand, unexpected tingle of familiarity up my right arm. I knew the figure crouched at my left, bright streams of Sun colour a solar-fall down the cloak of pure gold. I recognised the tall shadow of the Shaman, dark feathers shining unearthly green and blue, pelts still giving off the slight whiff of the animals which gifted them, sharp beak a stern reminder of mortality.
Stones – tall and weathered, humming and sparking with energy – surrounded us; the steep slope, shawled with grazing kine behind, a powerful shoulder for the people to gather strength from, or weep upon. The Circle fizzed and fuzzed with expectant silence. Sun, a radiant smile overhead, blessed the sacred site with its vernal benison, though the catch in the throat and the infinitesimal darkening and deepening of Sky’s evening palette suggested imminent transition. Darkness…
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