Dream, St Helens, Merseyside
Dear Gatekeepers
Welcome to our full moon medita6on on the British Landscape Zodiac. Our full moon in Taurus on November 5th is the second of three supermoons. It will appear larger as it rises on the eastern horizon around the 6me the sun sets in the west.
Taurus represents earth and the builder and so we pilgrimage to Merseyside in the west and to a profoundly moving, and immense, sculpture rising above the former site of the Sutton Manor Colliery. Standing 20 m tall above the busy M62 motorway it is coated in sparkling white Spanish dolomite as a contrast to the black coal below, the sculpture resembles the head and neck of a young woman with her eyes closed in meditation. Jaume Plensa, the sculptor, stated "When I first came to the site, I immediately thought something coming out of the earth was needed. I decided to do a head of a nine-year-old girl which is representing this idea of the future. It's unique”.
In July I joined others on a pilgrimage of Envisioning Beauty, led by Sarah Dawkins and Andrew Clark, along the AA line from The White Tower (Tower of London) via High Cross, ending here. More to follow in another newsletter.
Peter Dawkins has updated his article on the “Discovery of the British Landscape Temple”
here: https://www.zoence.co.uk/zodiac/discovery-of-the-british-landscape-zodiac/
Here we link to Charlotte in the sun sign of Scorpio - https://gatekeeper.org.uk/events/wheel-of-life-full-moon-meditation-scorpio-sun-taurus-moon/
Pleiades star cluster - Wikipedia
At this time of year, the silver blue star cluster of the Pleiades appears, known as The Seven Sisters, it sparkles all winter in the night sky, subtle but beautiful. Located in the constellation of Taurus, find it by following the line of Orion’s belt up and past Aldebaran, Taurus’ brightest star.
The Celts associated it with mourning and funerals because at that time it first became visible in the sky (at its “heliacal rising”) at Samhain. All over the world, the Pleiades are among the most mythologised of sky objects, and the same theme arises, of a man (often Orion, the Hunter, in his various guises) chasing 7 women, one of whom becomes lost, struck by lightning, hides in shame, transforms into a comet, and so on.
In Greek mythology, the Pleiades were the daughters of Atlas, chased across the sky by Orion. All the sisters married gods except for Merope, who married the mortal King Sisyphus, and forever hid her face in embarrassment. Among indigenous Australians, the myth goes that 7 sisters were being pursued by Njuru, or Orion, and one of them was caught and died. “Lost
Pleiad” stories are also told in native American, African, Indonesian and Asian cultures.
The odd thing here is that to the naked eye there are not 7 but 6 stars in the cluster. There are other stars within it, but you would need magnification to see them, this has been the case for a very long time indeed. Even in a historic cave painting of around 17000 years old at Lascaux in France that is thought to depict the cluster, they are represented as 6 stars. The
other odd thing is that before colonisation, indigenous Australians had little to no contact with the rest of the world for at least 37000 years.
These parallel stories cannot be accounted for by the flow of stories with migrations that have occurred elsewhere. The
answer seems to be in the movement of the stars. The Pleiades are not static: the sisters move within their silver-blue gas cloud in relation to each other – very slowly. Astronomers know that the star Merope was once distinct and so 7 stars were indeed once visible, but it has now moved too close to one of its sister stars to be picked out with the naked eye.
The catch, though, is the time scale: Merope was last separate enough to be seen 100,000 years ago. This suggests that the root of the story of the lost-sister myth predates the great migration out of African into Europe, Asia, the Americas and Australia 60,000 years ago.
From: The Almanac by Lia Leendertz
Lascaux cave painting showing constellation of Taurus and Pleiades. Photo Robert Temple
“Learn also to reflect the Light from each holy place to which your pilgrimage steps are led.”
Wellesley Tudor Pole.
With thanks to the Gatekeeper Trustees, Sarah Dawkins and Amelia our Gatekeeper secretary.
With love to you on your landscape.
Rose
rose.wol2022@gmail.com