FULL MOON MEDITATION ROUND THE BRITISH LANDSCAPE ZODIAC
‘Guardian of the Good Dream’ - CELEBRATING SUN IN CANCER
AND MOON IN CAPRICORN
Arbor Low 2018 (Charlotte Yonge)
As we are questing ‘how can I embody our inner Guardian’, listening to the intuitive insights of Capricorn ‘the consolidator’ of our understanding, we can find inspiration for initiating the form our understanding takes within our plan of love in action.
PILGRIMAGE ARBOR LOW, Peak District
Following on from the pilgrimage to The Dream’ sculpture in Taurues, and our keynote ‘Dreaming the Good Dream’, in Gemini we imagine and communicate our joy in blending heart and mind.
The site symbolizes ‘The Guardian’, and on our visioning journey this solsticial high summer stage represents our understanding – having interacted imaginatively with subtler levels of energy at Gemini – of the ‘good dream’ of the landscape. We began developing how to carry forward the creative ‘waking dream’ dreaming as a practice of enquiry using poetry, lanterns and other ceremonial objects.
Arbor Low circle is bounded by embankments carved with with sightlines into the direction of distant horizons and other sanctuaries. It is to do with harmony, connectivity and completeness, in which a great energy of celebration and inspiration of the heart could take place: with ‘good boundaries’. Good dreams need boundaries, that interconnect with larger realities, and stimulate subtle sensing and deeper awe for beauty and harmony.
Peace Lantern in the centre of Arbor Low (Charlotte Yonge)
At this very beautiful and special stone circle, we began being directed by Vicky who as an unpaid archaeologist had spent many years investigating and getting close to the sacred site. We started at a barrow a little way off from the circle, which had stones exposed on its flanks, and a small cluster of stones offset from this in the field.
When we approached the circle, we took note of the causeway stretching away into a hill-top copse, ending at a small gateway. This was the ritual opening to the energies of the circle. With encumbant stones, the site revealed itself gradually as we walked through gaps in the embankments into the centre. The stillness and warm sun created an extraordinary sense of being looked after and presented with a thing of beauty. As Vicky described the way that the shapes of the embankment related out to the cosmos and the larger landscape, the whole circle seemed to carry far more meaning that met the eye, and a multi-dimensional intuitive grasp of the site came together little by little.
After a ceremony offering the light to the world with our lanterns, we travelled to Rotor Rock, a cluster of extraordinary rounded outcrops which had been carved and molded outside of recorded history, to be symbolic of some people’s inner journeys. This seemed particularly true of the caves, with corridor entrances, and the ‘Druids’ Rock’ with cup marks indicating use for ritual purposes. Again Vicky’s explanations helped us to tap into the energy of this reclusive, yet be accessible hill-top situated behind our lunchtime pub. We pondered on how the rocks could have been shaped by the Ice Age or other means, as they were beautiful in their flowing and cliff-carved shapes.
Druid carved ‘altar stone’.
A cave at Rowtor Rocks.
PEACE PRAYER COLLAGE (for peace meditations):
Stones, Caves and Tunnels of Rowtor Rocks suggested
A place of monastic silence and contemplation.
(Charlotte Yonge 2018)
We travelled on to Robin Hood’s Stride, where four standing stones seemed to greet us as a sort of gateway. Some people have thought them to be part of a previous circle. Two were offset by a second pair that looked like praying hands from the perspective of our path. The first two bore a sort of polarity of shape, one sturdy and square, the other more refined and delicate: perhaps they might have symbolized the mother-father duality within the initiate, as s/he approached the whole larger site. The rest of the hillside contained a series of boulders in a sort of ‘dragon line’ through which an initiate would have travelled to face challenges up to the little peak, symbolic of ascending to a higher level.
Robin Hood’s Stride. The images within images
became kaleidescopic, just as subtle energy
nests within each observation. I imagined my ancestors
striding along a dragon path of challenges in the hills.
INITIATORY TRAILS: The whole complex, together with Rowtor Rocks spoke to me of contrasting challenges to those Druidic initiates who had been inspired at the mid-summer ceremony to commit to deeper values of harmony, guardianship of beauty, truth and love. There appeared to be rock-womb areas for inner contemplation and challenges of certain kinds, as well as active, winding pathways through rocks that symbolized future roles of leadership and magical practice…. Perhaps.
THE ARCHETYPAL LANDSCAPES OF THE ZODIAC
IS THE SIGN OF CANCER A ‘BOUNDARY MAKER’ and graphic/plan for the cycle of initiation, symbolized in the tests and challenges of the landscape? It seemed to my intuition that it was reasonable to suppose that each sign of the zodiac held specific training and deep conception or metaphorical enquiry. In each sign there are complexes of sacred sites composing of symbolic tors, circles, burial mounds, caves, and other places suggestive of training for insight into human psychology and spiritual questing.
AS TRUTH SEEKERS IN MODERN TIMES, WHAT FAITH-MAPS DO WE NEED TO GUARD AND GUIDE OUR TRANSITION INTO A PLANETARY HUMAN FAMILY?
Courtesy Peter Dawkins, 1984, graphics by Caroline Danby 2017.
A Map of Guardianship boundaries: The Round Table as a Questing Path of initiation where each sign symbolizes a gift of creative courage and vision, with its own logic. This is used to form a questing path to embody and activate the archetypes of King Arthur’s Knights within our personal visioning for a New Age.
Charlotte Yonge and pilgrims, 2018.