Full Moon Meditation – 17th October

FULL MOON MEDITATION
LIBRA SUN REFLECTED BY ARIES MOON

October 17 – noon local time

Libra the mediator and diplomat – what is our quest for mediating between Nature and our Human cultural transitions? How do we fulfill our creative and harmonizing destiny to bring heart-centred creative inspiration into our landscape?

Our ancestors created symbolic rock and earth structures as expressions of their inspiration.

Peterborough Standing Stone - it looks big close up, but is it the smallest menhir. in Britain? It lies eloquently outside the museum, and ready to dance to the local mine artist! It has been moved from its original position and well regarded ny mehir hunters…. creating a spectrum of time back to very different times.

Within a few kilometers are ‘Robin Hood and Little John’ - encapsulating a legend of how St Edmund was shot by arrows from local legend of the famous ‘archers’. These timeless monuments intermingle with modern life and a scatter of fascinated wanderer/researchers/writers/artists in general.

Priory of St Mary Thetford – although discarded, current tourist information invites curiosity and admiration for a former ‘energy driver’ in the landscape. See below for ‘Michael and Mary Line’ dowsing. We can sense it, and the years in which it was used for gathering devotional and mystical resonance.

THE SONG LINES OF BRITAIN

THE ICKNIELD WAY lies under the Michael Line through Bury St Edmunds, and out to the ‘Seahenge’ on the Wash. This modern Michael Line ends at…. And goes through the ‘Milky Way’ gateway of the Bury St Edmunds landscape Zodiac.

It completes its journey through Dorchester’s …. Camp, the Avebury ‘Capricorn’ Zodiac (researched by Anthony Thorley and a small group of researchers in 2003), Glastonbury, Dartmoor, Exmoor, Bodmin Moor, (The Hurlers three stone circles) and Cornwalls stone Circles, including St Michael’s Mount.

Along this line are churches dedicated to St Michael, and follow earlier sanctuaries at which sound, song and other resonant practices (chanting and other) were enacted, including the philosophies of the star constellations which are teaching stories for initiation. All these constitute our British ‘song line’ tradition. We follow with our own traditions of song and chant, instruments and resonant steps of love and admiration for the beauty of Nature.

Original position of Seahenge at Hunstanton before replacement in an artistic fashion at Lynn Museum. This image below shows the enthusiastic energy of recreation by artists who deeply admire the whole site and contribute much to public knowledge.

https://nexusnewsfeed.com/article/ancient-mysteries/seahenge-a-subaquatic-monument-of-the-european-bronze-age/

‘Seahenge’ – the ancient 4,000 yr old timber circle, before it became carried off to the museum, at Hunstanton, the end of the Ickneild Way, shows the ancient significance of our relationship with water. The wooden posts can be blessed and admired in the museum.

WIKI: Seahenge, also known as Holme I, was a prehistoric monument located in the village of Holme-next-the-Sea, near Old Hunstanton in the English county of Norfolk. A timber circle with an upturned tree root in the centre, Seahenge, along with the nearby timber circle Holme II, was built in the spring-summer of 2049 BC, during the early Bronze Age in Britain.

Luckily, Holme 2, its twin has been left in place to do its work of wonder:

Holme 2, by https://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=10631

The link to Seahenge with Peddlars Way, see National Trails: https://www.nationaltrail.co.uk/ and https://www.nationaltrail.co.uk/en_GB/trails/peddars-way-and-norfolk-coast-path/

Down the ancient pathway of Icknield, human compassion has had sway. The measurements show a distinct relationship with Libra, with its two sunken logs aligned in the centre. It is now compared with Stonehenge for its alignments, as a eliptical ‘lunar egg’.

https://stonehengeology.com/holme-2 - at the end of the Icknield Way, extending NW from the Michael line. This discussion considers the site as an ‘observation’ platform, capturing the sun’s rays and moon’s glow on the surfaces of the wooden posts, some of which were flattened as reflective surfaces.

Libra offers us a quest into this ‘twin’ polarity between human observation and intuitive reaction. The two circles of the Bury zodiac show how cause and effect were depicted artistically, involving earth sanctuaries, and creating a ‘vesica’ at the overlap. The ‘eye of the hawk’ encoded in the name ’Hawks leys’ in the vesica.

The hawk represents: intelligence, independence and adaptability. These are the inner ‘teachings’ of the vesica, the overlapping of intellect/reason with intuition, creating love wisdom, and intelligence in action in our role as ‘mediators’ of our environment and relationships.

The Bury St Edmunds Zodiac, by Michael W. Burgess -https://www.cantab.net/users/michael.behrend/repubs/j_geomancy/v2n4/pages/burgess_bury_st_e_tz.html

Michael Line passes through Hawks Leys in the centre. It shows a symmetry of two circles with a vesica ‘portal’ which signifies its importance to the Michael Line. A symbol of balance, Hawks Leys is in the very centre. . The element of precision is impressive:

‘The centre of the Bury Zodiac is, like that at Nuthampstead, the remains of a wooded equilateral triangle, here called ‘Hawk’s Leys’. Around this, and touching or enclosing every figure except the hound can be constructed the twin circles of a vesica piscis, where the diameter of each circle passes through various significant points. The whole structure of the zodiac is underlain by geomantic distances expressed in whole number multiples of the ‘x’ unit (discovered by Michael Behrend), where ‘x’ = 295.3 metres. The diameter of each circle is 21x. Extended eastwards from the centre, the main E–W axis of the vesica hits Haughley Castle, at a distance of 75x. Using this as a radius, it is then possible to draw a ‘great circle’ around the zodiac, touching no less than 14 important geomantic sites, including the easternmost vertex of the Cambridge Vesica (discovered independently by M. Behrend). Also, the main axis extended westwards passes through the Hadstock ley centre, another major point on the Cambridge pattern and on an extended radius of John Michell’s Whiteleaved Oak decagon. I have no space here to list further examples of geomantic relationships within and without the zodiac, except to note one last important detail: from centre to centre, the Nuthampstead and Bury zodiacs are exactly 150x apart.’ https://www.cantab.net/users/michael.behrend/repubs/j_geomancy/v2n4/pages/burgess_bury_st_e_tz.html

LONG GROVE HAWKS LEYS (from the website of Arcane Landscape Trust)

‘An ancient woodland called Long Grove at Hawk’s farm sits just outside the village of Rede. The name Rede itself may derive from ‘rode’, the old geomantic unit of measure discovered by Dr. Heinsch in 1975 [1]. Rede is the highest village in the whole of Suffolk, with Long Grove approximately a mile away from Great Wood Hill, the highest point in the county, both of which fall on the Newmarket Ridge. This elevation may also have aided the creation and associated surveying activities required of the terrestrial zodiac (for more information, see ‘Seven Wonders’), centring on this point. The landscape effigies, constellations in and around Bury St. Edmunds fit roughly within two interlocking circles that form a vesica piscis, the centre of which falls on Long Grove [2].' https://arcanelandscape.com/hidden-history/long-grove-hawks-ley/

Toulson [4] reports that Long Grove at Hawk’s Leys farm, presently a ‘V’ shaped area, was once itself called ‘Hawk’s Leys’ and was also originally triangular in formation. Reminiscent of a ‘wedge’ or an arrowhead, this ‘V’ shape in Peruvian legends represented the navel of the world, the centre – the Hub of the Universe and it is no surprise therefore that this symbol is referenced at the centre of the Bury zodiac. Small woodlands with names associated with ‘Ley’ or ‘Lee’ mark the centre of other terrestrial zodiacs across Britain and seem to have been a common feature for our ancestral landscape planners, such as Cross Ley Wood at the centre of the Nuthampstead zodiac, with Cross Lees being near the centre at Ongar.

The track back from Long Grove.

Hawks, a renowned solar symbol means sacred or holy – the Great Light Father, were kept in the Sun-god’s temple by the Egyptians. Their god Horus was regarded as the ‘Hawk of Gold’ and was said mystically to mirror the contents, stars, comets, sun and moon of night sky [5].

It has been suggested that the large ovoid granite boulder which now sits on the green at Hartest once marked the centre of the terrestrial zodiac, sitting majestically in the centre of the woodland at Hawk’s Leys [6].
The close relation and proximity of such a large and rare roughly cubic stone megalith (presently worn to 4 x 4 x 3 feet), so close to the zodiac’s centre affords a more symbolic and evocative explanation than the standard one, that it was dragged to it’s current position downstream in 1713 to celebrate he peace of Utrecht in the war of the Spanish succession.’

The Hartest Stone.- centre of Bury zodiac.’The name 'Hartest' is thought to mean either 'Stag Hill' or 'Stag Wood'.[3] It is claimed that there are no other villages, towns or cities in the world of the same name’.Wiki.

TWO CHALK RIVERS WEAVE THROUGH BURY ST EDMUNDS:

The polarity of experience, observation and intuitive response creates an environment of cultural innovation.

The Lark and the Linnet are so-called, we imagine, because of the ‘singing sound’ of both living rivers and the birds’ songs. They seem to caress the environment around and below themselves. While visiting Bury, we find the two ‘chalk rivers’, in contrast to the broads which are filled turf-cutter quarries, have a mediating role to play. We are mediators embodying the ‘lover and beloved’, bringing our individual creative potential for connectivity (love in action) into effect.

https://www.burywatermeadowsgroup.org.uk/about/what-we-do/the-lark-the-linnet/

The Lark and the Linnet are musical birds, and the two songs are bringing the landscape into coherence, especially when we listen, hear and love what they bring into our consciousness. Here is a clue to the ‘music of our imagination’ and they way we are the instigators of ‘song lines’ and coherence. We may help to re-biodiversity these rivers, as modern technology has constrained their course:

Past the supermarket carpark, the Lark is on its way to the waterworks.

‘At the time of the foundation of the Abbey one thousand years ago, the Lark and Linnet in Bury St Edmunds would have been teeming with life and biodiversity. We know that during the 14th Century the waters at Tay Fen and Babwell Fen supported large fish populations and Bury St Edmunds had a flourishing fishing industry (Addy, 2012). Until the early 20th Century stickleback, barbot, trout, pike, eel, gudgeon, minnow, rudd and stone loach (Linnet) were present in Bury (Collings, 1936). https://www.burywatermeadowsgroup.org.uk/about/what-we-do/the-lark-the-linnet/

How can we as pilgrims in the shallows of transition, promote the beauty of biodiversity back into the landscape? Love in action employs empathic imagination and infinite humility in listening and accommodating to ‘unity in diversity’ – a diverse creative flow coming together on the intuitive prompting of innovative vision.

THE ARTS AS MEDIATORS BETWEEN SANCTUARIES AND EARTH ENERGY LINES

The earliest earth structures we have archaeologically excavated are the ‘art forms’ of burial mounds and ritual circles of the Megalithic culture with their uncanny measurements of the cycle of Sun, Moon and Venus. They reveal traditions of St Michael and the Archangels. Who are these beings extending down the Michael Line, fed by the churches’ chants? It has been found that the orientation of the Fosse Way and Michael Line includes the solar and lunar cycles, and connect on their way to landscape mounds and monuments such as the Rollright Stones, initiation caves such as Royston, and onwards down to the SW peninsular..

He suggests we are learning to:

• To ‘protect ourselves from the toxic and broken energies in the subtle environment. In Incarnational Spirituality, this is called “energy hygiene.”
• to stand in our unique incarnate identity and generative power.
• to connect with the world to be an active, positive, contributing force for wholeness, particularly within the subtle dimension

MEDIATING WITH NATURE:

As our living environment holds a subtle intelligent potential for creative adaptability, we engage with this at the same time as holding a mindful conscious awareness – and in the natural world, this has an impact. We are now exploring what that impact may be, and the layers that have been introduced over time and history. We are learning to read the ‘book of cultural incarnation’ as well as the ‘book of Nature’, and how humans and planet have interacted to produce a synthesis of knowledge and evolutionary response.

MEDIATING THROUGH SOUND:

The QUEST of the SUN in LIBRA: how do we embody a vision of love in action through the arts, what are the elements of our mediating activities?

See:’ Soundscape Ecology: The Science of Sound in the Landscape’
https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/61/3/203/238162

SOUNDSCAPE ECOLOGY: … ‘Since Rachel Carson's seminal work, Silent Spring (1962), nature's sounds have been inextricably linked to environmental quality. Because sound is a fundamental property of nature and because it can be drastically affected by a variety of human activities, it is indeed surprising that sound has not become a more universally appreciated measure of a coupled natural—human system (Liu et al. 2007).'

We might all agree that harmonic vocal sound has a profound effect on the human body as well as the landscape itself. The evidence is in our own inner awareness when singing in natural environments. As pilgrims we might at some point have experienced the power of the Tibetan singing bowl, instrumentals such as the horn, or didgeridoo or the human voice, etc. There seems to be generated a profound stillness and sense of subtle connection.

HOW THE MICHAEL LINE AND FOSSE WAY MEDIATE BETWEEN SANCTUARIES

We acknowledge the perpetual choirs, and the traditions of chant in our landscape. In particular:

GLASTONBURY, A LEADING EXAMPLE OF MEDIATION

On the site of the ‘Perpetucal Choir Circles’ - https://perpetualchoirs.webador.co.uk/

‘The three perpetual choirs of the Isle of Britain: the choir of Llan Illtyd Vawr, Glamorganshire; the Choir of Ambrosius in Ambresbury; and the choir of Glastonbury. In each of these three choirs there were 2,400 saints; that is, ther were a hundred for every hour of the day and the night in rotation, perpetuating the praise and service of God without rest or intermission.’ https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Triads_of_Britain

The Fosse Way through Bath (see Yuri Leitch: /the Legend Conference 2023: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFsHTxjOF3E

The two gateways of the Milky Way are Sagittarius-Scorpio, and Taurus-Gemini. [See Mary Caine’s ‘The Glastonbury Zodiac: Key to the Mysteries of Britain, Amazon.]

The chapel of Mary Magdalen and almshouses, Magdalen Street tucked away behind the main street, opposite the Abbey. The Mary Line anchored to link with the Michael Line.

The Michael Line passing through:: Burrow Mump St Michael’s church sits on the horn of The Sagittarius figure in the Glastonbury Zodiac - a gateway to the Milky Way between Scorpio and Sagittarius. https://roostandroam.co.uk/burrow-mump-burrowbridge-walk-somerset/

(This church has a view to the Tor in the distance, and has submitted to being home to the flock of sheep, and so is covered with very nutritions droppings, as I recall!)

Glastonbury sits between the Michael Line and the Fosse Way from Bath, Street on the Fosse to the East. It represents a major key to the landscape mysteries.

It is no wonder it carries so much significance for the Aquarian Age, and the power of its hilltop is an energy point fed by these two symbolic alignments in the British Zodiac. Amongst the Michael Ley is the Mary Line:

Avebury, the next major British sanctuary from Glastonbury:

‘Leys may be defined as lines of energy running over-ground in straight lines, often reflected in the paths of ancient trackways and subsequently Roman roads, and in alignments of prehistoric and historic sacred sites in the landscape. In modern times they were first described by Alfred Watkins in his 1925 book ‘The Old Straight Track’.…’ https://landandspirit.net/tag/michael-and-mary-line/

The Michael and Mary Lines as dowsed in Avebury: a creative entwining and complementing of energy quality. https://landandspirit.net/tag/michael-and-mary-line/

Michael and Mary Lines interweave:
https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/527-the-st-michael-line-a-straight-story/

St Mary’s Church Bury.

Old Abbey and the priory ruins.

The Old Priory - the new Cathedral tower in the background.

Dowsers in Bury pick up the Mary Line.
https://dowsingdiaries.blogspot.com/2010/11/bury-st-edmunds.html

‘The Sun and the Serpent’ (Hamish Miller and Paul Broadhurst https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_0l-IXU9S4&t=17s) said that the Mary and Michael Line almost touched by the choir in the North-South transept and we found the Michael line and followed it to a small pillar where strangely, instead of going onwards, it went in a circle round this pillar.’ (Sian and Jackie)

‘We went back to the Michael Line which we followed out of the ruins by St Martins Chapel and then through the grounds to the Mostow gate which took us out into the town. We returned to the gardens where we sat and re-routed into the Mary Line, which we followed out through the main gate.’

Norman Tower, Bury.

‘In conclusion to our mission to compare our experience with that of Miller and Broadhurst, we agree that the Mary Line goes up Abbeygate Road and that the Michael Line runs through the Norman Tower side,,,. However we disagree with the two lines meeting whin the ruins, we reckoned they were about 20 to 30 feet apart, although experience has taught us that laylines flow and so can move.’

CONCLUSION

Libra is about balancing inner with outer observation and learning through exacting measurement of the landscape and temples.

Using previous writers’ experiences and outcomes, we can weigh up our own findings and come to new conclusions.

As mediators, our ancestors’ ‘song lines’ are ready for re-investigation and interpretation, thus adding our own creative energy of scrutiny and intuition, blended together.

Bury St Edmunds to Hopton on Sea, the last lap of the Michael Line, is there for questing the Michael and Mary ‘balance’ of energies.

It is a way of balancing our ‘felt sense’ of the energetic landscape, with our questing ‘rational’ observations. Thus the creative dialogue with the ‘spirit of place’ creates new resonance to aliven the old tracks.

Gatekeepers Caroline McCausland and Andrew Clarke lead groups of singers as our modern songline enhancers… and the public have their enthused musicians too. Tibetan singing bowls are also used to create inner space and Nature’s dialogue.

The singing bowl with wild flowers placed on an ‘altar’ stone of white quartz, used by our ancestors to build their barrow on North Molton Ridge. The knowledge of the properties of quartz rock for divination purposes is widely known. Our songlines ‘balance’ these sanctuaries with subtle, dowsable energy.

At Withypool, Exmoor, a hidden stone circle of white quartz is hidden in the heather, but we can enliven the site with our modern instruments and voice. Nearby, Cow Castle is accessible through an ancient path lined with white quartz markers. and in the centre of Exmoor, huge vertical boulders of white quartz still stand in the old Simonsbath Ashcombe Garden quarry. All over Exmoor we find evidence of ‘singing stones’ of white quartz.

See Michael Tellinger’s research into the properties of quartz;

1. Pyroelectric – generates heat
2. Piezoelectric – generates electric charge when subjected to mechanical pressure
3. Can store data and information and is easily programmable – as evidenced by it’s rampant use in electronics and computers.
4. Amplifies energy and has consistent energy output – has been used in watches, for example.
5. Is successfully used in crystal healing and Reiki to balance the chakras.
6. Improves cellular regeneration, nail and hair growth via the intake of silica gel supplementation.

https://blog.crystalrockstar.com/amazing-ancient-secrets-revealed-using-sound-energy-and-crystals-crystalrockstar/

MEDIATION - THE EFFECT OF HUMAN INCARNATION IN THE LANDSCAPE

We act as a ‘carrier’ of resonance and symbiosis – capable of triggering biological connections creating with beneficial subtle energy.

David Spangler (lorian.org) speaks of our human power in mediating with nature: ‘The fact is that each of us is like a power station of subtle energy; we are each a generative source, capable of contributing mightily to the wellbeing and evolution of the world. Learning how to stand in this identity and become powerful sources of wholeness is what Incarnational Spirituality is all about. It affirms our ability to live and act successfully in both domains of life, the physical and the subtle, working in partnership and symbiosis.’

Editors: Charlotte Yonge and Rose Williams, October 2024.