By Peter Dawkins, based on a transcription of a talk given by him.
For several years, during the 1970s, Sir George Trevelyan and Tom Welch, with whom I privately shared my research and clairvoyant experiences of landscape temples, wanted me to talk about landscape temples more publicly to others, because I had a direct perception of these at a time when others had not yet developed that perception. When eventually I was approached by Stanley Messenger at Sir George’s 1978 Wrekin Trust Round Table meeting, and he asked me to join his artistic Steiner-inspired butterfly group, who had been asked by Sir George to present a weekend course on Steiner’s inner perceptions of butterflies, my inner teacher said that this was the group I had been waiting for who would ‘midwife’ the landscape temple work, to help bring it out into the open.
On 24 March 1979, we (the butterfly group) went to Rhandyrmwyn in Wales, not far from Coleg Elydir, and what happened then, in that valley, was the inauguration of what became the Gatekeeper work. A year later, after many meetings, Stanley Messenger asked us if we would like to go to Springhead in Dorset as a group and study butterflies with him. Stanley knew a lot about butterflies, and he wanted us as a group to get to know butterflies well.
So we went to Springhead 9-11 July 1980. After studying the butterflies in the Springhead gardens, we walked on into the fields beyond. As we were about to walk through a gate from one field to another, I saw that we were moving from one ‘space’ or chakra to another, and that there was a wall of energy at the hedge and gate. I thought then that this was a good time to introduce the group to the ‘Gatekeeper’, the guardian spirit, for them to inwardly ask permission to go through the gate into the new ‘space’, and for them to feel the change as they walked from one chakra or area into another. This they did, and they all felt the change; so on the other side of the gate we sat down on the grass whilst I explained about the Gatekeeper as the Spirit of the place.
Then Stanley remarked how he had noticed hedge-brown butterflies in the hedge each side of the gateway, and explained that they are also known as Gatekeeper butterflies because they are usually found in hedges and associated with gateways. So, there and then, we decided that we would call our group ‘the Gatekeeper group’, with our symbol being the Gatekeeper butterfly.
The Wrekin Trust conference on the Scottish Isle of Iona in September 1980 was really the first public launch of the landscape temple idea, with an ideal landscape temple to experience and learn from. It was a test to see if, as a large group, everyone was capable of loving and listening to nature enough to work properly with its energies through pilgrimage. Listening is a key to pilgrimage work because it sensitises our body and expands our awareness. Also, it enables us to feel and recognise the energy gateways, and that’s not only good but also a safety thing. If we recognise the gateways, it means we’re listening, we’re in tune, and at each gateway we’ll meet the ‘Gatekeeper’ and be given guidance as to what’s appropriate to do.
Soon after, the Gatekeeper group decided that our work with landscape temples, holy places, earth energies, butterflies and the creative arts should be made into an educational charity, and eventually, on 5 May 1983, Gatekeeper Trust was born as a UK registered charity.
The charitable Objects of Gatekeeper Trust encompass a broad spectrum, and anyone of any path should be able to come into Gatekeeper work. The 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.”
What we’re trying to do is recover knowledge in a new way and share it, so we can stimulate a world culture working with an awareness of the landscape. I don’t think people would come unless they already have an inner attunement to that sort of work. I don’t think it’s an attunement with a particular path of life or teaching method.
I think it transcends those bounds. It’s an attunement with the recognition of the Earth as a living temple. And those that have had this recognition very strongly in the past, in past lives, and have worked with it, I think they’re the ones who are called to Gatekeeper. My sense of it is that, in the times we are living in, there’s a mass of knowledge being allowed to emerge into human consciousness in the hope and the optimism that mankind, as Sir George put it, will take the greatest step that we’ve ever taken, and go into a Golden Age. Man is like the mediator, the go-between – the mediator between heaven and earth, the metaphysical and the physical.
One of the reasons for the importance of pilgrimage today is that by moving through the landscape in love we are releasing energy from matter and making it flow in the pathways that make up the structure of the light body of the Earth. And by doing this in pilgrimage mode, we are in a state of consciousness where we are in tune with the archetypal design and intelligence of the temple of the planet.
Intelligence is actually a form, a form of light, a form of wisdom that shines with light and gives delight, so when we do this work, we’re building the intelligence of the planet, by being in tune with it and increasing it by making these pathways of light. And it is a fact that wherever we walk, we are moving a focal point of energy, which is ourselves, onto different parts of matter, so wherever we touch, we are going to release that bit of matter and convert it into energy. And then as we walk along, we will draw it along with us. I can actually see it when it is released in a loving way; it’s drawn along like a white ether after us, like a sort of white ethereal cloud of energy.
Even if pilgrims don’t understand the fact that they’re helping to build the light body of the planet, and transmuting matter into spiritual substance, the very fact that they’re pilgrims means they must have a sense of service. To be there as pilgrims they must have a sense of the sacred in some way, and they must also be enjoying it, or they wouldn’t do it. So something in them is calling them to do this. The very fact that they’re doing it means they are in some sort of state of love, they have some sort of understanding, and they are serving. Now that for them is an initiatory process, and it’s helping to build their own body of light as well as that of the planet. At the same time, that process releases traumas and such-like in their own being, which is locked-up energy, and so they’re healing themselves, which also helps heal the planet.
Pilgrimage today is about healing the land and healing oneself – they go together – healing and transmutation. The role of Gatekeeper Trust is being a gateway for people to come into an understanding of the Earth, and to work with it in service, particularly in terms of its chakra systems. It’s to serve the Earth, and the Divine within it.
I see the Earth as a temple. I see Gatekeeper work as working in the temple to make sure it’s healthy, its energies are moving correctly, and it’s transmuting into a form of light.
There have been many achievements of the Gatekeeper Trust, a lot of them very subtle. On a subtle level I think it’s done an enormously good work in working with the landscape energies in this country and other parts of the world, which has set certain things in motion which are affecting the lives of millions of people in a subtle way.
It’s difficult to put any outwardly demonstrable things on this, but you can take individual people who’ve been involved with Gatekeeper, or been touched by it, and you’ll find their lives have been transformed. The same with places. It is initiating something. Gatekeeper Trust has initiated a landscape temple work, and it has initiated a process in people that gives them healing in a much more rapid way than they would otherwise have had, and led them into the ability to do a greater work of service for the planet.
As soon as a powerful thought is created, – which can be done by an individual, but is even more powerful when you’ve got a group of people and their thought is concentrated to a certain end with a certain knowledge, – that thought is broadcast worldwide and is picked up by other people.
I believe we are revitalising old structures, but we’re also working to build new structures. It’s a mixture of both. And all this is done by linking in with the mind of Gaia and working with her to design and build the new temple of the world – a temple of light and delight.
© PETER DAWKINS 2024