"Older yet and lovelier far,
this Mystery,
and I will not forget"
Robin Williamson ("5 Denials on Merlin's Grave")
I have always wanted to see the Callanish Stones, far out in Scotland's Outer Hebrides. The Stones (Clachan Chalanais or Tursachan Chalanais in Gaelic) are on the west coast of the isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. Construction of the site took place between 2900 and 2600 BC, though there were possibly earlier buildings before 3000 BC. Amazing.No, let me amend that.
I have always wanted to lay my head on the green breast of the Great Mother, dreaming Annu, and stand with my hand on a great stone made of the oldest rock in all of Europe, raised by Annu in the mists of time, and raised again in mystery by an ancient people laboring on a far island lonely in the windswept Northern Sea long before even Stonehenge was raised. I want to see the Summer Solstice Sun rise between those stones, or see the moon rise between those portals to the the heart of the Earth they en-circle. I do not believe that one can "see" the Callenish Stones. I think one must go in pilgrimage, perhaps not on one's knees, but bringing an offering, and an awed and reverent mind, ready to receive vision and instruction from the Numina that surely still live there. And perhaps only poetry can do justice to the experience.
I've been wondering why I've felt so strongly about going to England this summer. I feel great honor at being able to share my work at the Goddess Conference, and fascinated by the opportunity to learn about standing stones and crop circles and earth energies at the Glastonbury Symposium. It seems a nice symmetry as well that the person who introduced me to dowsing and Earth Spirituality all those years ago, Sig Lonegren, also lives with his wife in Glastonbury. Circles. But gradually I've been realizing that this trip is really a pilgrimage.
In a previous post I mentioned a vision I had back in 1989. In that very tangible vision, I saw myself flying over a circle of standing stones in a very green place - people in white were walking through the green to gather there. Then I saw myself flying over layers and layers of South Western petroglyphs - they just kept receding into the red rock, an overlay of Story. Finally, I flew over a freeway system in Los Angeles, but the pattern of the freeways became a figure 8, the infinity sign. Patterns, Pictographs, to it seemed a language of Gaia speaking through the "works of man". Spider Woman's Hands.
Dreams and visions have many dimensions of meaning, and they speak in a language of symbol and myth with an order that is not always within linear time. Having said that, I re-member, as I write this, that long ago vision I had while sitting in my truck at a rest stop in Virginia (not very romantic, that part. But sometimes you don't have to climb mountains, apparently.) Most of my blue-eyed ancestors came over to this country from England. The family were shipbuilders. There's a lake in New Hampshire, a lake in California, and a lake in Minnesota named after adventurous family members.....they got around, and apparently also liked to be near water. And a few ancestors, who I know less about, were already here. And I more or less grew up in Los Angeles, so there is that dimension to my personal history.
With my Spider Woman project, I think I've done my best to penetrate "layers of story" here in the Southwest, for Grandmother Spider Woman, in Hopi and Dinah mythology, and perhaps with the prehistoric Mississippian peoples as well.......is often viewed as none other than Mother Earth Herself, the Creatrix/Weaver at the center of things. Perhaps this pilgrimage will reveal more of what that 1989 vision meant. And perhaps some of the meanings of that vision I've already lived. More on this as it unfolds.
Here BTW is a wonderful magazine about Earth Mysteries particularly in Great Britatin: Northern Earth
Here BTW is a wonderful magazine about Earth Mysteries particularly in Great Britatin: Northern Earth
I'm grateful to Rupert Soskin and Michael Bott for their 2007 film "Standing with the Stones", and in particular, the video excerpt below on the Callenish Stones. To read more about Rupert Soskin, visit his website:
We have a beautiful mother
Her teeth the white stones
at the edge of the water
the summer grasses
her plentiful hair.We have a beautiful mother
Her green lap immense
Her brown embrace eternal
Her blue body
everything we know.Alice Walker