Quest on Sunday

Greenwich Park, looking uphill towards the Observatory and Wolfe Monument

What awakes me at 5.30am, on a Sunday morning? Well, initially, Margot the cat, but I could just feed her, let her out and go back to bed for a well deserved snooze...well, it was what I had in mind... but, when I got back upstairs, tea in hand, my senses settling into place, that wasn't going to happen. This week has been full of synchronicities, and has altered, or perhaps re-tuned my perceptions. So today, I thought I might try and sift through, find the thread. I have always been aware and felt very connected to the ancestors. My ancestors, your ancestors, alot of my craft workings are concerned with re balancing their energies in the landscape, or at least connecting with them and hearing their song and story. Its what I'm here for I guess, because I've always been consumed by history, archaeology and feel more affinity for the past than the present a lot of the time, but not in an escapist nostalgic way, but as in reviving and uncovering the treasures that informs our lives today, in honouring our ancestors we are respecting ourselves and tribe...where would we be without them?
I received a copy of Jack Gales, "Goddesses Guardians and Groves" (Capell Bann publishing) A book about the sacred landscape and energies of Greenwich Park, essentially. It is an interesting book, written in a very personal style, which I liked very much. The more I read, the more I was connecting to Jacks experiences, and it opened a closed door on some of the encounters I had had in the area when I was a teenager. As a teen, I completely shut the world of spirit out, I wanted to rebel, be a punk, get pissed and take speed...there was no tomorrow and I wanted nothing nothing to do with it! That, however,( and very fortunately) didn't mean that spirit had given up with me, thank the Lord and Lady! My "committee" kept an eye on me, and every so often showed me things that I couldn't ignore, quite a few of these moments happened in Greenwich Park. Standing at the top of Wolfe Hill, on a crisp Autumn morning, just dawn, no doubt returning from an all night shindig in Blackheath Village, I stood awhile gazing at the lights and returning day. Its a wonderful view, ever changing even from my perspective. There was no Canary Wharf when I was a teen, no Millennium Dome, Nat West Tower etc... but for a few moments, there wasn't even a Royal Navel College, or any of the iconic vistas beloved of this spot, it was an uninterrupted scene of round houses, settlements and what looked to be terracing. Fires and smoke, just folk getting on with their daily lives, the river seemed further away, but it could have been the low tide. It was a tiny moment, and then I was standing, gob-smacked with the busy dawning of another 20th century day in front of me.

Holda

All week, references to Greenwich and its environs have been popping up, like relatives you'd forgotten you had, am I being asked back for some specific reason? I am intrigued, and understand enough about the mechanics of spirit to know that this isn't random, it is timely to my process. Jack Gale talks of the very Northern Tradition of some of the sites in the Park, Northern as in Saxon and Teutonic. There is a Saxon cemetery, and Saxon round barrows. He speaks of the "Snow Queen" a very forceful energy that holds sway in that area, he relates her to "Holda", the Saxon Goddess, and of all the "Winter" references in the Park, Snow Hill, the Snow well etc...interestingly, I adore this place in Autumn/Winter, and it is the time when I feel a keen opening up. We all have our seasons I suppose, and the close of the wheel is mine. Time for a quest perhaps? More questions than answers, and that is just as it ever should be, the journey being the most important part, rather than the destination.