Sue Vincent's Blog: Echoes of Life, page 1040

Dear Wen XIX

Originally posted on Stuart France:

Dear Wen,

‘Even in a little church not five miles from where I am sitting there is a thirteenth century font with a panel on which is sculptured in low relief the diabolical boar trying to uproot the True Vine with his snout.” – Introduction ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’.

The ‘Sign of Jonah’ is at least as old as the Babylonian Fish-Gods as also is the backward looking beast overcome by Marduk amongst others if memory serves.

It is always a hot debate when considering a static image whether the form is being swallowed by the fauna or is emerging from it.

The hero usually does both…sometimes cutting a way out!

A lot of the composite beasts were originally calendrical symbols anyway with each different section of the bodily form representing a span of time or season.

The Zodiac is an extension of this idea with the figures…

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Never trust the map

According to the little map in the book, if we parked in the layby it should be no more than a few minutes’ walk to the stone that was marked there. Now this was, we hoped, the elusive standing stone that had already seen me mud-sliding a year before, had us walking the length of the moor in vain one weird weekend and poring over maps, books and anything else that came to hand in a vain attempt to locate it. We were, by now, beginning to wonder if the original encounter with the biggest standing stone ever had been little more than a dream… You would think there would be reference to it somewhere.

However, the book said that if we followed the path we would, at least, find a standing stone… and a monument. No more than a few minutes away in the bitter biting cold, it said. So, we parked the car, donned the boots and off we went. The puddles had not even attempted to defrost themselves. The path stretched as far as the horizon with no sign of stones… except, I the path was more of a stream through which we squelched, hopped and splashed our way up the hill.

It really wasn’t a day for a pleasant stroll across the moors, but then, to be fair, I will walk them in any weather without the slightest excuse given half a chance, so I wasn’t complaining. We located landmarks on the map… or so we thought. Bear in mind this isn’t a proper map, with elevations, grid references and such… no, this is three or four wiggly lines scattered with dots and no sense of scale whatsoever. It is an excellent little book, and the maps always prove to be accurate… but usually not until you fall over what you are looking for so you have at least one point of reference to work from. More of a retrospective map than a guide.

There was, it seemed, only one path and after we had followed the cliff edge, locating a monument on its crest. Was it the monument my friend remembered from that initial discovery of the standing stone? No. And by this time we had walked way too far to be on the right path. We retreated to a huge boulder set below the edge… a good vantage point to see the landscape… and decided maybe this bit wasn’t the bit with the stone. Maybe Gardrom’s Edge was the next escarpment… So off we went merrily through last year’s heather, the bronze of bracken and rushes and the squelching of mud.

This ‘felt’ better though, and as we came down onto the small plateau we just knew we were in the right area. It felt ‘lived in’… not now, of course… but you could just tell somehow. My companion made the discovery once more. I really must go to the optician’s. Or wear my glasses. We headed on over. There are a number of Iron Age sites on the Edge; the remains of roundhouses, cairns and hut circles. The standing stone, however, was not the one we had been looking for… but neither of us were disappointed at the strange finger of stone that pointed skywards through the birches.

Whichever way you looked at it, it was different. From one angle it is a great triangular slab… from another a slender pillar. One side shows a face in the rock… and you have to wonder about that. These stones were not chosen at random… a totem? A spirit stone… watcher… or guardian? From that angle too a convenient boulder lifts the eye to the weathered notch that seems like a sighting line to the distant hills, now hidden behind the silver birches. We know there is a stone circle there after all.

We stood and pondered for a while before wandering off through the trees. There was, said the book, also an enclosure and a carved stone. The ruined walls of the enclosure were easy enough to spot, in spite of their ruinous age. We had, however, about as much chance of finding a weathered carving as we did the proverbial needle in a haystack. These prehistoric carvings are faded, eroded and almost impossible to spot unless you know what you are looking for. Which we didn’t. The entire plateau is strewn with stone… one amongst thousands we were not going to find. Except, we did.

Then we simply stood in awe for a while at the complexity of the symbols. We have theories about those, especially given our acquaintance with the enigmatic wood-stone in the city and my own long familiarity with the carvings of Rombald’s Moor. This one, however is quite unique, both with the spirals and lines and with something else too. It isn’t the real stone. The real one was discovered back in the 1960s, the stone itself dates back to the dawn of man. Erosion was destroying the carvings, and it was agreed something had to be done to preserve them.

It has long been a practise to hoik such things from the ground and place them in museums, but taking these stones out of the context of their surroundings is like trying to read the hieroglyphs without the help of the Rosetta Stone. Similar carved stones have been shown to have complex alignments with other sites, both near and distant as part of their design. Here, however, the stone was left in place, but covered with an exact resin replica, indistinguishable from the stone beneath, thus protecting the original carvings for posterity.

Replica or not, the groups of ten ‘cups’, the spiral and pathways between them make for fascinating speculation. I clicked away at the camera, as always as we spoke and it was agreed we would have to come back and explore some more on a warmer day. Anyway, the pubs would shortly be open. We made our way back towards the car, following the non-existent path. We were almost back before my companion checked the time… and noticed something very, very strange. But that is another story for another time…

Kin

Done

I’ve finally decided I am glad I am so short,

The floor today seems way too far… I really think it ought

To realign its distant stance and do its best to meet me

About halfway twixt here and there’s the best place it could greet me.

I’ve done my back again, you see, and have to blame the cat,

The ginger one next door has provocation right off pat…

And hissing at the small dog as we exited was bound

To set the small dog chasing, as she ran the thing to ground.

All very well and natural, for cat and dog to play…

For nature has designed their animosity this way.

But I was holding grimly to the small dog’s lengthy lead

When she set off at speed without the slightest bit of heed.

She hasn’t got a clue, of course, about inherent risks

And doesn’t realise she’s playing Frisbee with my discs,

I dangled as she raced along… from the ‘controlling end’?

And so today I’m stuck with bits that now refuse to bend.

I went to work this morning, groaning all the ruddy way

To find we have appointments in the town later today.

So I’ll be humping wheelchairs when I feel I should be in one,

And wishing someone would invent a really lightweight tin one.

The dog, of course, can’t understand why she’s not had her run.

She really wants to go and chase some more stuff in the sun.

The day is warm and casting golden shadows on the wall…

Be me, I want a nice hot bath, and not to move at all.

Shillito wood

Where were we? I was telling you about my last trip north before I got side-tracked… there has been so much going on lately! We’d had beautiful weather in Tissington, but it had turned cold and snowy as we reached the car, so we headed back to food and wine and to work on the books., hoping for decent weather Sunday. Or at least not heavy snow. We were lucky and though cold and grey, the morning looked promising as we headed out.

The sign for Shillito wood had intrigued me everytime I passed it. It was just at the end of this lane that I had seen the huge herd of unexpected deer a few weeks earlier. I had eventually stumbled across reference to a cross there. Apparently there was a car parking area on Fox Lane… which could not have been more synchronous considering we were sending Mister Fox, the new graphic novel out into the world that weekend and we had already ended up at the Fox House inn because of the snowstorm. The bit of information I had found simply said there was a cross in the wood… like a needle in a haystack… so we parked the car close to where someone had set up a feeding station for the birds, bundled ourselves into as much warm clothing as we could, given the biting cold of early morning and headed out with little hope.

“I can see it,” said my companion after a whole two seconds. That was pretty good going. I couldn’t see it immediately, not even when he pointed it out to me, dressed as it was in the colours and lichen-lace of the woods. It was a strange find, literally out in the middle of the moorlands, now in a wood, though that might not always have been the case, of course.

Fox lane cross. Image source: Out & About

The ‘Shepherd’s Cross’ it had been called on old maps and close by stands the Fox Lane cross of similar design, both thought to have been placed there by the monks of Beauchief Abbey… not far from my companion’s abode and where we had been witness to the stag defending his herd. Oddly enough, that was the morning after that first visit to see the Fox dance with flames beneath a hunter’s moon… and in many ways the story was the same.

There was the base of another cross, and somewhere a guide stoop with one of the poetic Companion Stones… but it was, we decided, a place to come back to in warmer weather. It was indeed bitterly cold so we bundled back into the car. The next planned stop was little more than a mile away and should, we hoped, be a very short walk from the car. The moors are high above sea level here, the winds chill and the weather always uncertain. Not a day to be out on the moors really. Not for long, anyway… and the prospect of a nice warm pub as soon as they opened was appealing. The trouble is, you really can’t rely on these hand drawn maps…

Asking questions…

“The Silent Eye- a modern Mystery School”…

All very well, of course, but that probably raises more questions than it answers, so we thought we would answer some of the ones we get most frequently. The polite ones at least…

Three of us run an international school… three people who come from different backgrounds, both spiritually and in the everyday world. We see through our own eyes, through the filters of our own experience, thoughts and emotions… as does everyone. So instead of getting our heads together and agreeing a consensus to the questions, we have each answered them separately… each with our own view.

If you want to know a little more, please follow the links to read the articles. And if you have any questions… just ask!

Steve’s answers

Stuart’s answers

Sue’s answers

Join us for a magical weekend in the Derbyshire Dales. A full brochure, including details of the event, prices and booking form are available on The Silent Eye website.

A printable version of the brochure can be downloaded here:

Brochure, price list and Booking Form for River of the Sun 2015

Panic

Notes from a small dog (LIV)

It’s been all go around here! The fields are getting drier and I’m managing to drag her away from the ‘puter long enough for some really good walks lately. Not just on the hard stuff or through the woods either… we’ve gone miles and miles…

So, she needn’t take all the credit for the big birds and the furry things. It is only because of me that she saw them after all. And when you consider my self restraint while she watched and made silly noises and squeaks, I think it is a bit mean of her not to let me have the feathers. Just sayin’. She says it’s cause I ate the last ones they got… and she’s put these up high where I can’t reach. Last time she left them on the table…

Well no, I don’t normally just help myself to stuff on the table… but I have a thing about kite feathers… Don’t ask me why… I just love ‘em and I really want these ones… She left them on the little sideboard… and I could smell them… Sooo tempting…. I tried, but she’s put them even higher now…

I mean, it’s not as if she’s an ephelant … Dumbo… she’s not going to wave feathers and fly. Though if she sits too long she might end up looking a bit that way… sort of grey and round… :P

Maybe we’ll find some more. I’m finding loads of stuff out there! It’s all nice and green again and though the grass is still short, there is plenty to see. There’s flowers… snowdrops, daffodils, crocuses… and all sorts of buds and stuff on the trees.

There’s ducks in the pond at the end of the lane too. Not that she will let me off the leash there, mind you. There are the big cars that come down there now. Still, give her some credit, my new leash is really, really long… I can explore a lot even with her dangling on the end of it. And the ducks are obliging :)

She did have a few words to say about that though. Things about why I will walk the length of the muddy stream or dive in the pond but run and hide at bathtime. It isn’t the same thing at all. Do I want to smell of flowery stuff? No. But mud and vegetation and foxes and stuff… well, that’s real perfume.

She just doesn’t get it though. While I come home, have a drink and just flop and grin, she just sits back down and starts again. What is wrong with you two legses? You really need to learn to chill better! And a few muddy footprints on the sofa are no big deal. It is my sofa after all…. Even though she seems to think it might actually be hers. Honestly, I despair of her sometimes…

She’s making stuff to eat… hmm… may have to investigate then take her out to walk the calories off again.

I’ll let her take the camera- thingy…

Much love,

Ani xxx

Oblivious

Full moon passes

How many more will be missed

Dreaming in darkness

Ronovan’s Haiku Challenge

Dear Don XIX

Dear Don,

Yes, The Legend seems to have caught fire somewhat… which is rather nice. It will be interesting to see what happens when the copies hit the dancing ground.

I’ve been thinking about this whole Devouring Beast malarkey. We’re missing something. Well, we’re probably missing a fair bit, of course, but I started wondering …sort of backwards. I may waffle…bear with me.

For a start, these ‘Norman’ fonts… well, are we sure they are all Norman? Just because the experts date them to a specific era based on contemporary designs, doesn’t mean that’s when they date from really does it? It just gives a likely date of construction. But don’t we, as a society, often harp back to older artforms as a matter our course? Either through nostalgia, an appreciation of the meaning and beauty or… as in the Ancient Egyptian, for example… through an awareness that perhaps the Old Ones knew something we have lost or forgotten?

I mean, how many modern ‘Celtic’ crosses have we seen lately? Hundreds if we include all the gravestones! Copies or taking inspiration from a much older style going back to the beginnings of Christianity in this country… and possibly beyond if some of our theories are correct. We’ve seen jewellery based upon ancient carvings, Modern notebooks with covers that look like the illuminations of the Lindisfarne Gospels… We look back… we do it all the time.

So supposing Norman the stonemason, faced with this chunk of stone he has been commissioned to carve into a sacred object, decides he wants to make it as deeply symbolic as he possibly can. What is he going to draw upon for his designs? He’ll either go for something nice and safe, like the architectural pillars on the old font at Bradbourne… because you can’t offend anyone with pillars… or he could go all avant-garde and use the very latest designs. Which should have the fonts looking like something from the Bayeux Tapestry… but they don’t. Not at all. They look Saxon. Or Celtic. Their very crudeness is utterly out of place within a culture capable of the high art and craft that left such fabulous artefacts.

Now, if good old Norman isn’t Norman, but of indigenous stock with his roots, through his forefathers, deeply enmeshed in the spiritual history of Albion, he might just draw upon that symbolism instead of the more modern imported art. In the same way we are taught the fairy stories, myths and legends as children, so would he have been, In fact, the Oral Tradition was far stronger then than it is now when we lose so much to digital entertainment and everything has a scientific explanation and no sense of awe or wonder.

Regardless of the priests and the prevailing politics of organised religion, there would have been the magic and folklore of the land woven intricately through belief and reverence. That reminded me of a passage from James Clavell’s Shogun:

So, back to Norman. Whatever he carves he’s going to have to have an acceptable explanation for the priest, of course, that fits the Christian iconography, but I am betting that like the Filid, there were layers of meaning.

So, take the Tissington font, for example. We could just have Adam and Eve. Or the Divine Twins. Or the Two Worlds… Heaven and Earth, Inner and Outer, Real and Otherworld… We may have the Dove of peace being chased by the ravening beast… or the pursuit of the Raven of prophecy. The beasts in Christian terms, at the simplest level, symbolise the animal passions… in older versions they are the bearers of Knowledge. Why would you have a dragon tailed lion swallowing a fawn on the font used to baptise babes and bring them into the Kingdom of Light? But then, in the older versions that would have been a simple Transformation… even a magical shapeshift… like the Merlin…

Yes, I know. I’d better end there… I’m getting dangerously near heresy again, if not already up to my eyeballs in it… but you get the idea. We need to dig deeper. Backwards.

Speaking of which, our very own Beast has disembowelled the sofa again and built the Castle Perilous from its cushions. I’d better go rescue them…

Love,

Wen and Anu x