Mother of Sorrow

(Image : The Cailleach, Mika, acrylics, 09)

…The mountains are clothed in ochres, reds, and glowing yellows, and the Cailleach is roaming the land again.
This morning I heard a strange hooting laughter as I walked the woods, and the morning mists are hiding autumn´s mysteries.

Oh Mother of Sorrow, Mother of the shadows, Mother of the fallen leaves, of felled trees and rotting trunks, accept in your compassionate cauldron all that is now broken. Embrace the dead in their journey to the Light, speed them on towards the Light, and in your sweet compassion, wrap in your dark veils those that are left behind.

Mother of the ferns, your beauty, though hidden under your rags, touches my heart as no other being can.

An ecopsychological insight

(Image : The Grandmother in winter, picture SG, 2002)

…Autumn has come to the Sanctuary. The temperature has dropped dramatically, and Grandmother Figtree, standing there in all of Her glory, presents us with pounds and pounds of fruit.

This morning, as I was eating a fig, before going down to the village to the post office, the thought suddenly erupted in my mind…I am eating Her fruit, and by that intimate communion, She makes me a part of Her!…

It wasn´t, you know, a mystical insight, with angels blowing their trumpets…It wasn´t an emotional catharsis. Not at all.

It was as casual as… “Damn, got a headache!”.

But it was so real. I could actually see, on an atomic level,  in the crystal cup of my conscious mind, how the Grandmother makes me a part of Her, as I eat of Her fruit.

It is absolutely true. We are what we eat.

We actually need to understand that. This experience is the very essence of a much needed Ecopsychology.

The Prayer Tree

Living under the trees

(Image :  The Earth Sanctuary, 2007)

…I don´t think that the real Druids – 8000 years back in the tunnel of Time – really understood the importance of trees. Now before you spit in my eye with your Oaken Knowledge, let me tell you this.

Eight thousand years back there were so many trees in Europe that they formed one vast Forest from Iberia to the Danube and beyond. Men were living in this giant Forest like fish live in water. We can´t really get an exact idea how that felt, except to imagine that trees were a primary element in men´s psyche, trees were part of their religion, long long before the Nailed One came to incarnate among us. Druids had what we call ”Knowledge of the Oak Tree”. Druids probably considered trees as gods, or at least as spiritual entities. As some African or Aborigene tribes still do. Nature was alive with spirits, which had to be feared, and revered, and appeased.

But men had zero scientific knowledge. They didn´t know that we actually need trees to survive. (Well, except, of course, if we start to build crystal domes, and who wants that?)

And that, the lack of knowing the survival value of trees for humankind,  is why they couldn´t do a bloody thing when the Romans started to burn their way through the Forest, advocating the necessity of “civilization”. The old Oak Knowledge disappeared. And the Druids disappeared too. Technologically, the Romans were infinitely superior. The Oak Knowledge probably survived in small pockets, maybe in Ireland, maybe in Scotland. In the rest of Europe, the Roman “marines” got their way.

The Druids didn´t know how to resist Roman “civilization”, or couldn´t. They probably couldn´t even understand the Roman mania. And thus, here we are, at the Eleventh Hour, destroying more and more of our life-giving habitat, until we all die from the consequences.

As a species, we truly lost our mind. We quite litterally lost our mind. I mean, we have to reclaim our sanity, this has to become a very conscious act.

Nowadays trees are just part of the sitcom movie in which we live. Forests are places to do your jogging routine (when you find a forest, which might be difficult where you live!!), nowadays the real human story is urban. It´s in the cities that the real story of humankind is unrolling. Forests are just nice places to go on week-ends, to have fried sausages with a bunch of friends. If you can get out of your city, that is. Which Saturday Night fever will need a lot of petrol for a lot of people!

The planet is fast becoming a desert. The planet is becoming a Wasteland. There will be wars for water. Thank you, guys. Nice idea of a future for our kids.

My friend Govinda who is a biologist, and an encyclopedia of plant life, once told me, sort of dreamily…”You know, humans are meant to live under the trees. That is where we really thrive.”

That triggered my thinking, and a huge part of my ecopsychological sensibility. I started to pay attention to what happened to my body when I got out of my little haven of shade and water. And let me tell you, that is easy: five minutes down the road and you get roasted alive in July. Spain is truly becoming the proverbial Wasteland.

Living in the shade provided by the trees is where my heart is these days.

My Avalon is thriving.

Listen to this, friends of my emerald heart : we do need the trees!…

OK, so we can´t know how the Druids actually lived, and I don´t think we really need to know. Our species has changed, science and Time have changed our brains. We are wired in a totally different way. But this,

living under the trees, 

we will still need to understand it, and wherever possible, we will need to apply it. Maybe a new Knowledge of the Oak will be about understanding that we are part of this planet, we are not displaced aliens!…

The sheer necessity of places like the Earth Sanctuary will become more vital as every year passes.

Nine Ladies of Avalon

(Image : The Holy Grail, collage on paper, SG, 2002)

Nine ladies with long skirts, white and red and black, dancing through a dark forest, at velvety midnight.

Oh sisters what do we do, so strange the night, so dark the forest, and terrifying the call of the owl,

hoo hoo hoo

together and glancing furtively, owl-like, this way and that,

nine ladies in white-read-and black, dancing under the clear moon, nothing to fear at all, but how vast the mystery

(The Nine Ladies, SG, 2002)

The Isle of Avalon is an inner landscape, an archetype of Beauty, Wisdom and Truth. It is the earthly Paradise which the myths tell us was once our home, now mostly forgotten. It is the land which the poet and mystic see in vision, where the artist and musician find inspiration; where the soul goes for spiritual healing : a timeless land of power and mystery that offers initiation and enlightenment to all those who dare travel to its shores.

The island-valley of Avalon

Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,

Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies

Deep-meadow´d, happy, fair with orchards-lawns

And bowery hollows crown´d with summer sea.

                         (Alfred, Lord Tennyson)

Nine is the most magical Celtic number, 3 three times itself. Returning to Taliesin´s description of the Isle of Apples in “The Life of Merlin”, the Chief Bard tells us :

“That is the place where nine sisters exercise a kindly rule over those who come to them from our land. The one who is first among them has greater skill in healing, her name is Morgen, and she has learned the uses of all plants in curing the ills of the body. She knows too the art of changing her shape, of flying through the air, like Daedalus, on strange wings.”

Whatever the case, the powers of these women of the Otherworld are very real indeed. Their role is to initiate students into the inner planes through the cauldron of rebirth, an undertaking which demands great sacrifice – to die to one´s old self in order to become reborn transformed, with perceptions and powers beyond the unawakened human experience. The magical cauldron, or grail, is nothing less than the crucible of the goddess out of which emerges the transformed initiate of the Celtic Mysteries. Legend has it that Arthur´s sword, Excalibur, given to him by the Lady of the Lake, was forged there also. This of course symbolizes the masculine principle, the gift of will, authority and action. The Avalon initiation unlocks the energy of both the chalice and the sword, both masculine and feminine powers in perfect balance, for us to take back to our own side of the waters for the healing of our world.

The Old Forest travelled in our pockets

 

(Image : Magic matchbox shrine, Shakti G. (yours truly), mixed media workshop)

 

October 2005, for Samhain, Mika and I went to Brocéliande (Brittany) for a ten-days retreat with OBOD´s Chosen-Chief, Philip Carr-Gomm, and besides meeting a bunch of delightful people, I got to walk into and touch, the Old Forest. Sometimes, some places, at a certain time, with just the right twilight, Merlin could have walked right out into the clearing, and it wouldn´t have seemed odd…
Viviane, Merlin´s companion, was very present for me too.
It´s the heart energy that I feel for water, rocks & wind, the uncanny familiarity of the feeling, and the way I breathe around very very old trees, – that brings about the magic of the unmistakable smile of the Goddess deep inside…I suddenly feel blessed to be, here and now, sharing the Life…You know, you really “enter” Brocéliande. It is like a guarded territory, absolutely different from the French surroundings. You can actually feel the Gates when you drive through them, great trees arching over the road… I felt embraced by the Forest.
I remember that after our long long journey from Spain, when we were on the highway after the city of Rennes, not knowing exactly where the place we were supposed to arrive to was, I looked out of my window at some point and told Mika, pointing to the far away line of trees :”It´s there”. I don´t know how I knew it. A different vibration. The Old Forest calling to me ? I don´t know.
And it was there, right there. We went to the place – the Manoir du Tertre – as if we knew the route. As if something as old as the trees was guiding us.

The air smells different. There´s a tinkling, a sparkly something, a different quality of the light.
Thank the Goddess, it was october, and out of season. We were the only tourists, and very respectful at that.
The places we saw, they were a rich tapestry of greens and ochres, and alive.
It was around Samhain, and the Old Forest was going into its wintery sleep. We collected acorns, to take them back to Spain. Mika told me “Look! …A forest in my pocket!” And we laughed about that.

When they asked us during the retreat what we would do now with our “Brocéliande experience”, I said “I want to plant a new Brocéliande in Spain!” (The French looked at me sort of,..mmm… that lady is a bit weird…, how is she going to transport, you know, the one and unique BROCÉLIANDE…? but I meant it. Exactly that.)
It came to pass (lol)… that we planted the acorns, in 2005, and lo and behold, the following spring they germinated and here they are,  in 2008,  tiny oaks of the New Brocéliande…

Every day it has been like watering a Myth, not just little plants. Watering the Great Legend, full of Fairies, and Wizards, and magical happenings… Mother Nature is that way : so generous with Herself, that we can take acorns from one place and get new trees in another, and who is to say that ours are less magical than the ones in Brittany ? Except for size, the essence is the same. You know what ? They have/are the same light.
And maybe that is the Lesson for us.

The Old Forest travelled in our pockets.

*CCG* (Cheshire Cat Grin)
The Lady Dragon,
From her neck of the woods,