Synopsis offered by Peter Dawkins 08/06/2024.
Inaugurated in the latter part of the 1970s by a group of people including Sir George Trevelyan, Stanley Messenger and Peter Dawkins, the Gatekeeper work was founded as a UK Registered Educational Charity (No. 326416) known as ‘The Gatekeeper Trust’ on 5 May 1983.
The Charitable Objects of Gatekeeper Trust are: “the advancement of education for the benefit of the public with particular reference to the study and investigation of the origin and significance of temples generally, landscape temples, holy places, earth structures, and their layout, and all beneficial forms of natural and metaphysical study, including the association of butterflies and plants in relation to such matters, and also including research into the nature and structure of all forms of art, particularly sacred art, including drama, ritual, music, dancing and folk-lore.”
In particular, Gatekeeper Trust seeks to rediscover the ancient art of pilgrimage as a way of journeying with an awareness of the sacred nature of our environment. Just as acupressure can restore the healthy flow of vital energy in humans, so walking with awareness, and in a simple, friendly and sacred way, can help Mother Earth. It can enhance the Earth’s natural energies, helping to bring healing and balance to the environment and to the planet as a whole. Likewise with the right use of sacred art.
We experience the planet Earth as a living temple, in which are multitudes of lesser temples, landscape temples, each with a network of chakras (zodiacs) and energy flows. Each chakra (or zodiac) and each landscape temple has a guardian Spirit, who appears metaphysically at each gateway as a Gatekeeper. To meet these Gatekeepers, whom we understand to be part of the intelligence or mind of the planet and nature as a whole, and to learn from them how best to enter each temple or chakra or space, is important. It helps us to do the right thing, at the right time, at the right place, and with the right motive, so that it helps the place and all its natural forms of life. We find it brings healing and transformation into something more beautiful than before, both of ourselves and of the places we visit.
The hedge-brown butterfly, known as the Gatekeeper butterfly, is our symbol, as they are usually found in hedges and associated with gateways. Like all butterflies, they also demonstrate how transformation and transmutation takes place, from an earth-bound state to a winged form of life that can fly in the air. In such a way we also can, when acting in love and friendship, transform and transmute ourselves and the landscape, even the whole planet, until we become temples of light or delight.
© PETER DAWKINS 2024