Full Moon Meditation – Leo / Aquarius

LEO (PLAYER, LEADER) SUN FULL MOON AQUARIUS
1st AUGUST 2023
12 NOON

The Guardian Trees along the Rivers Ouse and Fosse which bring the city to life with their trickling poetic lyrics: a dialogue of love bringing life to the city sanctuaries. The tower in the city walls also enshrined with guardian trees, as we walked through the city to the Minster. The overview effect was of being in a woodland shrine of old…. Re-enlightening he sacred spaces.

Where the rivers met, St George’s chapel used to sit. This area creates the ‘root chakra’, the chapel lies within an ancient pilgrim route through the city to the Minster. Through the ages processions were made from here through the town to the Minster.

OUR PILGRIMAGE IN 2018 – The poetic leadership of the land revealed.

The lantern represents our own ‘holding the light within our hearts’. So we dance with nature, sharing our love and re-igniting the light of the universe within the landscape.

We began attuning with the map and lanterns. In true Leo style we exercised our spiritual leadership in the landscape in the NW outside the city walls, a traditional sacred direction for working with a wheel of life. The NW presents the beginning of the Celtic year, therefore the seeding point for new light, a specially arranged sacred space, in which to ignite our intent to travel through energy centres in the land.

Attunement with Lanterns and the ‘heart’ shaped diagram of the city walls. Through the city the rivers dance in perfect balance, male and female, heart and mind.

St George’s Chapel site: Beginning at the junction of rivers, near the site of St George’s chapel (now under a car park), we gathered the water energy with our lantern.

During our walk up the city chakras, we used our three lanterns, representing the triple nature of earth energies within the human chakra system. We realised we were following an ancient path laid out for earlier pilgrims.

Thanking the guardian and water-weaving trees.

Our images inspired by the landscape began like this:

We lit our lanterns three
Under the eyes of birds, trees
And the expectant City angel
The two rivers of York
Meet to encircle and hold
the heart of the city
Like cupped hands,
Their energy flowing gently
In and out with the North Sea swell
That takes Atlantic streams
Into the heartland of Britain.

Our lanterns three at the confluence of the Fosse and Ouse.

OUR PILGRIMAGE IN 2019 – building on our ancestors’ sacred sites through pilgrimage in the sign of Leo.

We incorporated a pilgrimage with Paneurythmy both in St Mary’s Abbey gardens, and within a pilgrimage to Thornbury Rings energising the land with pure poetry. It provided a wider reference point to the heart-shaped city. It was a celebration of an even older sacred landscape, which seemed to be part of an even wider alignment.

St Mary’s Abbey, also outside the city walls, in the NW, and seems to provide a balance of intuitive peace feeding the heart’s ‘good boundaries’. The yew trees in the Abbey garden create sanctuary, being outside the walls along the river bank, seeming to symbolize a gateway for river pilgrims into the city’s heart.

DANCING IN THE THORNBURY HENGES

We danced Paneurythmy to honour the inspiration of this ancient land.

‘The area around the henges continued to be utilised into the Bronze Age with around ten round barrows built within the local landscape and an avenue of timber posts of unknown purpose leading into the area between the central and southern henges… It is now thought that they would have been covered with locally sourced gypsum crystals making them glitter in the sun and perhaps echoing the chalk earthworks of the south of England...’ http://www.stone-circles.org.uk/stone/thornborough.htm

Thornborough Henges immaculately created in the design of ‘Orion’s Belt’ star constellations. A triangle in the landscape links Harrowgate and York with this sanctuary. What is its true secret we wondered?

LEO’s QUEST:

What does Aquarian Age Leadership (or pilgrimage of the soul) look like in reality? Is it intended to create a collaborative diversity for the community? Is it about improvising with the ideal of community, in playful, creative, colourfull ways (like the ‘Riding of St George’ procession in previous centuries) celebrating through the arts? The images above show how the balance of male and female, reason and intuition, weave inside and outside the protective walls.

There is an element of organic growth in planning for an Aquarian ‘leadership role’. How can we incorporate individual vision? As we could see the difference in the trees and the quality of water energy, the ‘Leo leadership’ of this great city was softened with green parks and guardian trees lining the streets….Nature inspires human construction. As we walked we left behind the artchitecture of Roman and Scandinavian conquerors, the French invasion of 1066, and other elaborations, still honouring the past. We built our modern celebratory pilgrimage through the arts, a journey into a new creative Age.

SACRED GEOMETRY REVISITED:

How can modern ‘holistic leadership, use modern beautiful geometric templates for planning and goal setting?

Six circle flower/seed vision mandala in graphic template
[thanks to Charles Gilchrist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ezISpBGE3c - downloadable on freepick.com].
It represents six planning questions: Where, when, how, who, why, what?

THE ‘IDEAL’ six petal rose, six petals, is used by some as a template for ORGANIC GROWTH AND LEADERSHIP. It reflects qualities of openhearted encouragement, listening and welcoming unity in diversity, balancing experience with reflection, co creating and piloting a new vision of love. We use experimental enquiry (playful and open to interpretation) in order to allow the emergence of good boundaries.

‘All living things share natural principles that allow them to grow, stay healthy, be adaptable, develop resilience, become connected and pass on what they’ve learned.’ https://www.thinklikeatree.co.uk/

Natural law: bridging the compromise between ideals and reality (Peter Dawkins explains), brings a new Aquarian intuitive style leadership, which could involve organic planning designs with the help of the six-petalled ‘flower of life’. It presents our unique incarnation: an expression of expansive organic life, fragrant with beauty and infinite love.

Love in action evolves like beautiful petals of consciousness, through shared questing, reminiscence, celebration and intuitive agreement. This playfully holistic vision, invites contributions for co-creativity, demonstrating love in action as the ‘rule’ for organizating harmonious action in which we are all connected in heart and mind.

THE GATEKEEPER CELEBRATION OF 40 YEARS IN JULY 2023
….AND CELEBRATING OUR ‘INNER POET’ THROUGH PILGRIMAGE IN CYGNUS.

CYGNUS – THE ‘SWEET SWAN’ with a double signature within its constellations.

‘This constellation straddles Capricorn and Aquarius and is in the inner circle of constellations which provide the north pole star over the millennia. …The Celtic symbol for grace and beauty is a swan. Druidic bards would wear cloaks of swan’s feathers to help them connect with their muse, their poetry. We don’t have such cloaks, but we often pilgrimage to the Rollright Stones at the equinoxes and solstices to dance the Paneurhythmy which is a sacred dance of beauty and grace.’
(Sarah Dawkins: https://gatekeeper.org.uk/2020/06/sarah-writes-from-cygnus-the-swan/)

In this area of the star map we find the creation of plays, sonnets and poetry of the ‘Areopagus of Poets’ centred around Shakespeare’s works. Enquiring about creative leadership, we are absorbing the lyrical style of the ‘PURE POET’ of the spirit of the land… its exquisite precision alignments, and the storytelling of the stars’ wisdom within the landscape around us. How are we being guided to evolve our imagination and brain power through the impulse of Nature herself?

We celebrated the spirit of the land with David Furlong and Peter Dawkins who explored the artfully designed wisdom stories handed down to us, and energy the alignments far and wide. We gathered to become pure poets, to mirror the spirit of the land, which is our own, sweet pure poet inspiring us with love and wisdom.

Gathering the lanterns of our hearts on Sunday, we visited the Rollright circle, where Peter Knight and Susan Wallace quietly used rhythm and poetic attunement to bring healing energy, a pulse of loving attention. The rain gentle pattered down, a sense of intimacy gathered in our thoughts. Then we completed the day by travelling to Compton Verney, representing the ‘alta major’ place of inner guidance. At this stately home with crafted garden arts installations, we joined in with children and families to be inspired and learn from this poetic enhancement of a most beautiful landscape.

….. the poets set off through the woodland and the lakeside… to play and dance:

Paneurythmy is a deeply symbolic dance of the spirit, creating a rhythm of heart and mind, that passes lyrically through the body, mind and soul.

…thus prepared, we then set off over the bridge to talk to the trees….

Improvising poetry with the group’s silent walk we hold four questions given to us by our Avebury landscape poet Angharad Wynne:

1. What is the overview of the landscape we are in?
2. What is the character of a tiny 1” square of ground near our feet?
3. What does it feel like to stand in the shoes of a feature in the landscape, how would I relate to the wider environment?
4. What does the ‘angels whisper’ say to me?

With these four focus questions, the poets set off along the lakeside and listening to Nature, received her inspirations.

[A silent walk of poets…. all our senses attuned in silence together within the same beautiful landscape of huge, old trees and a lake of swans…. ]

…… and Nature fluttered and danced, seeding our thoughts with inspirations:

Beside the lake and through the trees…. ‘Fluttering and dancing in the breeze’

…standing in the shoes of this great fir tree:

Trees stand deep and still
So patient, waiting
So generously dark
Its bouncing leaves
Watching the sun, hoping.

Water ponded,
Bonding the tree roots
Drinking in our hearts.
So I breathe
Your hearts’ dreams,
Your roots, everything.

Evolution is crafted here
Nature’s love revolving
Through our blood and bones
Like a poetic song
Of dreams and illusions
And our hearts home.
[Charlotte]

THE PILGRIMS’ COLLABORATIVE POEM

(the landscape sang its song into our hearts and love came into action)
Chorus of Peace and Joy
Spread the sinews of your heart
Mini Dragonfly lightning
Fairy flowers
Love, love, love
Wild Breeze
Popping Seeds
Cedars standing tall
Harmony entwined
A Whispering door
Peacock butterfly
Dark timeless womb
Path not taken
Breath of life
Decay to live
I breathe your hearts
Rippling grasses
Shining water
Misty Cobwebs
Birdsong spreading gold dust.

Editors: Charlotte Yonge and the Cygnus poet-pilgrims, 2023.