Gemini Full Moon Meditation

Sun in Gemini, (Innovator) Moon in Sagittarius (Seer/Visionary)

June 14th 12 noon

Gemini ‘the Lover and Beloved’ - love of the landscape creates beauty, and represents an inner rapport between our soul and personality. By acting in the role of a ‘pure poet’ of wisdom we express the intelligence in the landscape and the Gemini twins within us.

Artists speak the language of love through paintings and sculptures down the ages: ‘English Gardens and Grounds’ by Jan Siberechts, 1627.

Reinventing mythical ‘Gardens of Paradise’ symbolised a new hope in the Rennaisance: 1627-1700. Gardens began to be created at specific places in the landscape, as Euroopen cultures engaged in dialogues, innovative designs were shared, plants exchanged and philosophies symbolised as the cultural Renaissance blossomed. Since then we have been re-imagining gardens of great stately homes and where botanical innovation has been cultivating plants from worldwide. Now we can nurture thousands of unusual plants in a world wide network of plant sharing. Loving the Earth and understanding the beauty of her wisdom, we draw on this as gardeners, bringing about the flowering of culture and incarnating the spirit of love.

Myths and stories old and new have emerged from local tales of those living in the land. At Alderney Edge near Manchester, in the sign of Gemini, near Macclesfield and its re-created landscape zodiac, Castle Rock anchored the mythology which seems rooted in Arthur’s Round Table and Merlin, nearby a local pub: ‘The National Trust car park is next door to the black and white timber Wizards Inn.’
https://aparentsguidetothenationaltrust.wordpress.com/2019/08/05/alderly-edge-castle-rock-stroll/

Castle Rock, Alderley Edge

Wizard’s well, Alderley Edge

Druids Circle

[https://www.shutlingsloe.co.uk/tag/alderley-edge ‘Shuttlingsloe, a Blog about Myth and Mystery in the Countryside’ - photos by Andrew Galloway www.goromgorom.co.uk]

Alan Garner’s stories imortalised this landscape through his modern mystery tales and over the years these places were created to capture its spirit of place.. ‘The Hill was my playground, teacher and world’. He grew up at the foot of the Cheshire cliffs. ‘....where I learned to see, hear and feel: the grassness of grass, the rockness of rock, the treeness of tree, the skyness of sky. From the cliffs of the Edge I saw fields, villages, hills, mountains, Manchester, Wales; but they were shapes and patterns that had nothing to do with me. … Then, one clear day, I looked out from the Art Hall, the highest room in the school, and I saw the Edge. It was far off, but it was still there, and always would be. I grew up in the moment.’

[‘https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/may/11/alan-garner-on-alderley-edge]

The ‘silver wheel’ of Arachne the Spider, in the 13th sign of the Macclesfield Zodiac

A local Gatekeeper Group walked round Macclesfield over ten years between the 1990s and 2000, and identified this area as the ‘Silver Wheel’. It was conceived as the ‘Taurus’ star map by Crystal Hogben (who also wrote a booklet about the Bridgnorth/Kidderminster landscape zodiac ‘A Whale of a Tale’ who she believed to be in Pisces) …., and since then deep analysis and research have shown it to be positioned in Gemini in the British Zodiac developed by Peter Dawkins. Could this relate to the AA line on the cusp of Taurus and Gemini (Manchester) opposite the cusp of Sagittarius and Scorpio (London)? Certainly Manchester seems to have become an important metropolitan city balancing with London.

The star wisdom myths involved seemed to be rooted in a deeper ancient wisdom, Peter Dawkins identified mysterious accuracy of ancient visionaries in building the British landscape Temple:

‘The extension of the London to High Cross axis, carried on north-westerly beyond High Cross, forms the cusp of Gemini-Taurus. This cusp and its opposite ecliptic cusp of Sagittarius-Scorpio form the two Alpha-Omega points (referenced symbolically as the sigil ‘AA’) on the ecliptic circle. These two places are where, in the sky, the Galactic Equator crosses the ecliptic of the Celestial Zodiac and provide the only two fixed points on the ecliptic circle by means of which time can be calculated reasonably accurately from the movement of the Sun around the ecliptic as seen from the Earth. The diameter between these two fixed points provides the principal axis of the Zodiac, from which the twelve signs are set out. In the sky the Gemini-Taurus ecliptic cusp is pointed at by Orion’s Finger, whilst the Sagittarius-Scorpio ecliptic cusp approximately marks the location of the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy. (This Galactic Centre is pointed at by the imaginary tail of Scorpio and arrow of Sagittarius.)’ https://www.zoence.co.uk/zodiac/british-landscape-zodiac/

Possible new templates of wholeness and connectivity emerging through the arts.
[graphic by Peter and Sam Dawkins]

This is a way of creating ‘living imaginal mythology’ which morphs around our local landscapes, built of human spiritual aspiration and downright hard work with spades! For more information about the research done on this area, watch for our One Day event in September 2022 at the Birtles Reading Room, Over Alderney with Gary Biltcliffe and Caroline Hoare. Their discovery of the Belinus Line (‘The Spine of Albion’) begins to make a fascinating story of magical alignment and connection between England and Scotland. www.belinusline.com. They built on Guy Ragland Phillips’ book Brigantia a Mysteriography.

Meon Hill

…. and

Middle Knoll

Meon and Middle Knoll: ‘The carvings on the ancient crosses in the churchyard also allude to the axis mundi. Remarkably, only 18 km (11 miles) NNW of Whalley, the alignment passes near a hill called ‘Middle Knoll’ just north of the tiny village of Dunsop Bridge, which is the nearest natural feature to the exact centre of Britain if you include her 401 offshore islands. In Scotland, the alignment passes through Pitlochry in Perthshire, the most geographically central town in Scotland, Inverness, the capital of the Highlands, and the prehistoric centre at Lairg, the centre of Sutherland.

‘...Therefore, I believe the Belinus Line is Britain’s north–south axis mundi of sacred centres. According to Ordnance Survey, the small Lancashire town of Whalley is at the centre of Britain when surveyed without its outer islands. The carvings on the ancient crosses in the churchyard also allude to the axis mundi.’

https://belinusline.com/discovery.php - Copyright (c) 2020 The Belinus Line - Gary Biltcliffe. Design (C) 2021 Blackcap Computing Ltd.. All Rights Reserved

The Ancient Philosophers knew how to measure our islands, and then turned them into one great synthesis of a geometric pattern or ‘sacred landscape garden’ is lengthy alignments of sanctuaries.

Communicatively innovative with our polarised ‘Gemini’ imagination, we are the seers with new vision that is bridging between the personality and the collective soul of humanity. We are mapping our local lands anew.

Poet’s view: My world extends from Exmoor, as I link with my navigating ‘mouse-mat’ (central image)) - I am a mouse, collecting the seeds of my landscape beauty. Each of our cozy home landscapes co-crate a collective planetary home of beauty.

If our vision is for planetary beauty, we already have our inner ‘cultivator and gardener’ developing our environment through sacred geometry and the blossoming of our creativity, gardeners of Natural Beauty. Each flower and plant holds a key to our personal answers. Within our sensory embrace of a flower our inner sacred geometry responds with intuitive connection, and this geometry forms a myriad of forms as we dig and plant. Our memories transform. Our emotions merge together into deep joy and pleasure.

Arts in the landscape involves our creative input to local landscapes, and our openness to each-others’ joy and sense of infinite connection. This mandala is a draft of moveable images, all changing places as we engage in our reminiscences of gardens, and aim to build a local group.

[‘Local Chelsea’: Charlotte Yonge and Val Schenn].

Mandala work in progress, inspired by Devon landscapes using the images of national gardens portrayed in the Chelsea Flowershow (see also Rose Williams’ report on her visit).

Adding to the traditions of symbolic gardening of the soul seeking the ‘pure poetic wisdom’ within the land, listening and reflecting it and gaining new knowledge of the divine inspiration in and around us. It uses images representing elements of personal vision, the inspirations of careful planting design and presentation in national garden design events like the show at Chelsea. It forms a ‘Vision Mandala’ of natural images speaking to the collective ‘garden vision’ of a local group.

What would happen when we connected our islands together from locality to locality, cultivating new artistically designed templates that connect invisibly with the whole planet? Earth’s planetary wisdom inspires us to be Creative in order to discover new knowledge of life’s inherent wisdom and divine perfection.

We made our vision through a candle mandala, (see below) which is portrayed at the centre. It is a map of Europe and we stated our intent to hold the vision of a future Age of Harmony in our hearts. The circle is a circle of Prayer Cards representing the pilgrimages to the sacred landscapes in the British landscape star map. During 2017 we began ‘gardening and cultivating’ this mysterious, artistic design which revealed itself as we loved each corner of it.

Two meditation mandalas with reminiscence images representing the Wheel of Life.

'Two artistic conceptions of the wheel of life as montages, with 'Prayer Cards' and candle mandala from Purley Chase Weekend 2016. These recreate reminiscences of the Gatekeeper Wheel of Life programme 2017-2018 with images of mandalas from pilgrimages around Britain lead by members of the Trust. [photo montages by Charlotte Yonge 2018]

Purley Chase Centre: The gardens in the background are of of the gardens of Purley Chase, at the centre of the British Zodiac, near Oldbury, Hartshill and Athelstone (Arthur's Stone) where it is believed the first 'grail king', Bran and Beloved, was based. This is where the Trust first developed the concept of the Gatekeeper Wheel of Life project. Images from successive pilgrimages 2019-present have been accumulating in our archived articles.

The beautiful Maia Landscape Temple conceived by Peter and Sam Dawkins with pilgrim groups and based on the myths of the ‘Isles of the Hesperides’..

As collaborative visionaries, what can we do to let images play and form future visions of our life as spiritual gardeners? The lover and the beloved encapsulated in our listening to the land and to the evolutionary message of beauty, sacred measurement and discovering the divine wisdom in the land which unites our sacred purpose of seeking the truth and understanding:

Co-editors: Charlotte Yonge and Rose Williams, 2022.