The Alchemy of Harvest

Virgo must surely be the most misunderstood and undervalued sign in the zodiacal wheel. For beyond the popular image of an innocent virgin, secretary or nit-picker, lies an experienced mistress of purification, discernment, and sexual control. Virgo is the only woman in the Zodiac and one of only three remaining in the whole heavenly sphere. Two of them were chained in the Greek cosmos - Cassiopeia & Andromeda - but Virgo remained free, as the sole representation of the Goddess in the constellations of the night sky. To the Greeks, she was Demeter, with her wheat sheaf, or ear of corn, overseeing the grain harvest and holder of the key to the secret of agriculture. To the Egyptians she was Isis with her child Horus and in the Christian cosmos, Mary with the Christ child. She is a virgin in its older meaning, certainly, as one who owns her own body and chooses when and with whom to unite! Virgo marked the Summer Solstice around 5000BC, and her departure from there is said to have coincided with the end of the Golden Age.¹ She left in disgust, some say, at how humanity had fallen from grace. So, like the mystery school initiates who invoke her return, we are re-imagining her on The Alchemical Journey this month as the Great Goddess that she once was, as we invite her qualities into our lives.

The Virgo phase represents a critical moment in the alchemical year, when the crop must be cut down in its prime, harvested and its essence extracted. In the human life cycle, Virgo represents the rite of passage, where we find out what we’re really made of. This is marked in traditional societies by being cut away from familial roots, through circumcision or ablation, or other initiation rite. We experience Virgo whenever we are examined, judged, cut down to size, as wheat is sorted from chaff. Just as our Leonine experiences have helped us realise and express our confidence and creative potential in life, so our Virgoan ones have set us to task. The harvest goddess shapes and moulds our spontaneous impulses into practical, useful, sustainable projects that serve the greater good. She strips away our indulgences, hones our creative instincts and transforms our promises into everyday miracles, like golden wheat being turned into the food that nourishes a community.

Virgo is ruled by Mercury the wily magician, whose skill and cunning knits together the fabric of life into a seamless dance, his magic embedded in the details of life. Our task in Virgo, then is to sweep, to clean, to tidy, to order, to polish, to wax, to sharpen, to distill, and to become still ourselves as we perfect the ordinary tasks of life. Through bringing mindfulness to our repetitive actions, honouring time, work and our body’s rhythms, we actually open up the possibility of transcending those ritual structures, and entering a liminal space between worlds where transformation can occur.

This puts me in mind of the 1970s rite of passage film, The Karate Kid, in which a young American wannabe is trained by a Japanese zen master, so that he can stand up for himself against a local bully. In one classic sequence, as part of the boy’s karate training, he is set a series of menial tasks, waxing his teacher’s cars, painting his garden fence, sanding the floor. This goes on for days with no apparent connection to karate, until the boy eventually snaps and accuses the old man of exploiting his trust just to get his household chores done. His frustration then turns to revelation in an extraordinary scene, when he suddenly realizes that in the embodiment of these repetitive actions he has actually learned a series of powerful karate moves which are now second nature to him. As with the alchemists, as they attempt to imitate and perfect Nature’s own creative process in their laboratories, these repetitive trials offer the ritual service necessary to precipitate our inner gold.

In the Glastonbury Zodiac, Virgo is “Old Mother Cary”, her figure drawn by the River Cary, a name suggestive of the Celtic harvest goddess, Ceridwen, mother of Taliesin. The river which rises at the springs of “our lady” paints her flowing robe at Wheathill, her swollen belly at Babcary and her breast at the bronze age barrow, Wimble Toot. She holds her sheaf of wheat at Keinton Main-de-Ville, where her hand rests.² These associations continue to enchant our journeys into this landscape temple, which meets us with new synchronicities on every walk.

If you’d like to keep following the journey, please join our mailing list, as I will continue to post a monthly article online. You’ll now find on our website a YouTube film about The Alchemical Journey, superbly crafted by Kevin Redpath & Tim Knock. We have two events lined up in September. On 12^th /13^th September, Anthony Thorley and I are running a weekend for the Isle of Avalon Foundation, entitled “Living the Glastonbury Zodiac”, where we’ll be exploring the origins of the Zodiac and how we can work with it practically in our lives. We’ll be walking in two of the zodiac figures. Our next Alchemical Journey workshop is for Libra, on 19^th / 20^th September, “The Alchemical Wedding: Beauty, Balance & Partnership”. Happy harvesting!

Leo: Alchemical Gold & All That Glitters…

Ever had the feeling that you have a much greater destiny in life, a royal or heroic path? Ever feel like the people you encounter in your life should really be laying a red carpet before you as you arrive? This probably sounds a bit over the top, and one might well be embarrassed to admit ever entertaining such fantasies. Before we dismiss the idea, though, let us indulge the Leo phase of the annual cycle we now find ourselves in, and consider how our personal narratives are stitched together. After all, our life stories are never just a collection of random personal events and circumstances; they are woven through with mythic, archetypal themes that entwine themselves around our everyday experiences, even when we are largely unconscious of them.

We all have the ability to identify ourselves as a King Arthur, a Cleopatra, a Luke Skywalker, or a Lara Croft, and it can inspire us to rise to the challenges we face in life, go beyond our fears and limitations. To have our hearts suddenly ignited with an uncommon enthusiasm, to be in the presence of an inexplicable synchronicity or otherworldy power, to glimpse the possibility of who we are, how we may once have been and what we may become.

This month, as the Sun passes through the sign of the Lion, the Zodiac seems to grant us permission to let the divine light within us shine out in the world. We can take our cues from nature - sunflowers turning their proud faces toward the Sun, or the golden fields of wheat and corn swaying elegantly in a royal summer breeze. The work of the alchemist is mimetic; it seeks to imitate nature’s transformational cycles and evoke their symbolic power. So during this season of fruition and growth, we should celebrate the glory of who we are and allow the natural warmth and confidence within us to radiate out.

Children have no problem playing kings and queens, goddesses and heroes. It just pours forth effortlessly from their creativity and their joy. As adults we’ve become serious and significant, careful to distinguish reality from fantasy, but the line can never be clearly drawn. So let’s welcome this great fire sign of Leo and honour those Leonine characters that bring colour to our lives and invite us to trust the spontaneous impulse to make things up in the moment, play-act, and lose ourselves in fabulous stories.

To experience ourselves within a mythic setting through dreams or visionary journeys, even just being here within the enchanted Isle of Avalon and its great Zodiac temple, is to be in touch with the heavenly half of our being. We should be careful not to overly literalise or personalise this imaginal experience, though. Trying to steal fire from the gods to inflate our individual identities invariably leaves us chained to the impenetrable rock of self-importance! Better to honour that great solar power from which we draw each inspirational breath - allow its fiery force to shine through us and radiate out of us, whilst tending the candle flame of our own personal destinies with dedicated humility.

There is a wonderful character in alchemy, the Green Lion, often depicted swallowing the Sun and causing blood to flow from it. Green is the colour of transformation, and of the earth, and the lion can be seen as the alchemical flask to which the “sun-that-bleeds” surrenders itself. After a series of initiatory stages, the green lion reappears as a king marked with seven stars regurgitating an eternal sun of pure gold, a celestial lion of the verdant earth impregnated by the immortal heavens. Part of our journey into the Leo archetype, then, is to distinguish which Lion / Sun we are dealing with - the golden light of our heroic lion-heart or the glittering ego with its polished surfaces and grand gestures!

On The Alchemical Journey workshop this month, we practised being seen by each other and exposing the truth of our hearts. It is one of the most simple, yet profoundly challenging processes that we do on the course. As each person stood before the group, we gently coached each other to distinguish for ourselves that aspect of our nature that is continually trying to impress others, from that which is naturally, effortlessly impressive. What we realised through this exercise is that when we allow our innate presence to shine joyfully through us, our ordinarily inflated egos gradually begin to fall into line and give up trying to run the show!

Our next Alchemical Journey workshop is Virgo: The Alchemy of Everyday Life on Sat 22^nd & Sun 23^rd August. It will be held upstairs at The Avalon Conservative Club on Glastonbury High St. This is the month where we really get down to the business of harvesting our gold. The price is £125 for the weekend (some concessions available). See our half page advert for more information. I’m still here living in Glastonbury, so feel free to get in touch. My number is 07869 133759. Have a great month!

The Mystery of Home

One of the key questions that we pose during the Cancerian phase of the Alchemical Journey is “what does home mean to you?”. What emerges from our enquiries continually is that home is a place of peace or solace, connection, effortless joy, love, warmth, a place to return to, a place that sustains and nourishes us; time and again, the answers seemed to echo each other. Invariably, home is re-called by participants as an experience of being 'at home', surrounded by the natural beauty of the world around them, a return to a temporarily lost connection to the natural world and the divinity implicit within it.

The Greeks have a term oikos, which I find particularly helpful as I ponder this same question myself. It is from oikos that we derive our root term ‘eco’, and it is translated as meaning ‘home’. It is a richly conceived term though. While it can refer to a human experience of home as the place where you live, or originate from, it can also be a temple, or an astrological 'house'.[1] It embraces not only a place, but also an experiential desire or search for home, which incorporates the building and caretaking of temples and precincts, wherein the gods may be accommodated, and wherein both human and divine may dwell together. Our modern term ‘ecology’, coined by the naturalist Ernst Hackel in 1869 to describe the relationships between plants, animals and the environment, thus suddenly seems to carry a more profound, mysterious connotation. It embodies a spiritual longing for return, a desire to reconnect to one's home, to one's roots.

Few things are more important to us in life than finding a home, and we may spend much of our lives searching for that experience. Thomas Moore speaks of the experience of enchantment, “thick in the air”, when we experience, albeit momentarily, this oikos, and how we are “haunted by its elusiveness”, when we lack it. Martin Heidegger describes the experience of being 'at home', as an experience of authenticity, something the human beings tends to encounter only as rare, but profoundly enlightened moments. For Heidegger, these moments exist among a vast sea of inauthentic experience when we feel cast adrift from the experience of being at home. Maurice Merleau-Ponty talks of moments when the distinction between subject and object temporarily dissolves in our perception and we recognise that we are genuinely connected to that which we perceive in a way that no longer renders us separate from it. Such realisations are momentary, and seem to exist outside of the delineation of normal time and space. Or practice of making a home for the soul, then, is one of creating a temple that can accommodate the possibility of such momentary exaltation.

So home must be something more than just shelter. It must embody a sense of belonging, a sense of being in the right place with the right people around, in the right kind of environment, engaged in activities that feel right and that allow the soul to penetrate our experience. For Thomas Moore, ecology is the ‘mystery of home’, a mystery that can embrace more than just the place where we live, for our sense of home can even extend to include even the planet itself as our home; enough that it might inspire us to act to protect and take responsibility for it.
[1] Moore, The Re-Enchantment of Everday Life, p. 41-2

Cancer: The Alchemy of Memory

Re-Membering Where We Come From

As the ever turning wheel of the Zodiac now enters the phase of Cancer, I like to remind myself of what really nurtures, nourishes and supports me, of what is sacred in my life. Considered in many spiritual traditions to be the gateway through which the soul enters incarnation, this is the sign that beckons us to reconnect to our roots. Cancer is immortalised in the heavens as the Crab whose once nipped the ankles of Hercules to remind him of his origins. Somewhat lacking in sensitivity, that great brute of a hero simply crushed that divinely sent creature beneath his feet. In thinking about this myth, it struck me how our own modern Herculean egos can act in a similarly insensitive way towards our own past, our heritage and ancestral lineage. In striving for individuality and independence we may all too easily over-rule our soul’s irreconcilable need for belonging and continuity as a kind of childish homesickness. So I always welcome this phase of the wheel, as it draws me back to the source, to the wellspring, where I can drink deep of Memory’s healing waters, remember where I come from and re-vision what I may have come here for.

Mnemosyne the Memory Weaver

Cancer is the sign that evokes Memory. The Greeks knew her as Mnemosyne (mother of the Muses so beloved of poets and artists) and she is no mere archivist or record keeper. Rather, she is pregnant with imaginative potency, a spinner of yarns, a falsifier of facts and a literalizer of fictions. So it is with our own memories, which are never just factual accounts of what has happened to us, but rather a collection of mythic strands woven through events and circumstances, conjuring images of the past which our minds quickly assemble into a convincing order. So in the Cancer phase of the wheel, I court Mnemosyne with care, re-weaving the stories that feed my soul and reconnect me to the ancestors.

Solstice Crab

The Sun reaches its zenith at Summer Solstice as it enters Cancer, and with tentative, crab-like caution, appears to pause, stand still, before descending. In many traditions, this is the time when the Sun God begins his descent into the underworld. So the energy of the Sun succumbs to that of the Moon, Queen of the Night, whose ebb and flow might echo in our moods, making us more psychically sensitive and closer to our emotions. For here we are, deep in the belly of summer, the trees pregnant with their fruit, their roots drawing deep for water and sustenance.

The Imaginal Memory Theatre

The Greek philosopher Plotinus coined the term epistrophe, to describe the desire inherent in all things to “turn back” toward their original guiding principles or root metaphors, their archai (archetypes). The movement of the crab and the rhythms of moon and tide seem to embody this quality of turning back, as they echo an instinctual longing for home, for roots. One of the most compelling characteristics of the zodiacal wheel, the centrepiece of most western mystery traditions, is that it seems to preserve the integrity of those root metaphors. So when people come to learn astrology, it often feels more like remembering, exposing a tacit knowledge of its imagery and symbolism that already exists within us. I always take care to foster this quality of remembering in my courses through experiential work as it enlivens the learning process. As we enter the Zodiac, I remind people that we entering an imaginal temple, a theatre of archaic memory, through which we may release the alchemical potency of its images and symbols.

Finding the Source

Here in Glastonbury, of course, we are privileged to have those zodiacal images inscribed in the landscape, courtesy of the extraordinary imaginings of Katherine Maltwood in the 1930s. Each month Anthony Thorley and myself ritually journey along the pathways that delineate each sign in the Glastonbury Zodiac, and we are continually met with profound synchronicities. In preparing this month’s workshop, we quietly mused over how exactly we should approach the Cancer figure, it being the least visited in the wheel, located on relatively featureless low-lying land. Seen from above, the figure appears to cradle the divine child in the Gemini figure in a quite remarkable way. Guidance came in the form of a ‘chance’ meeting with a fellow zodiac enthusiast, who took us to see the recently uncapped wellspring on the land adjoining her house near Compton Dundon. Around the spring, this very special lady has created a beautiful sanctuary garden, and, it just so happens, this spring actually feeds the waterways which draw the Cancer figure in the landscape. Not only had we been shown the way in which we should approach the figure, we had actually been taken to the source of it!

Next Workshop...

Our next Alchemical Journey workshop is Leo: The Alchemy of The Heart on Sat 25^th & Sun 26^th July. It will be held at Meadway Hall, Compton Dundon (about 3 miles south of Glastonbury). On Sun 26^th July, we will walk in the Leo figure of the zodiac, which is one of the most dramatic figures in the wheel, and the first that Katherine Maltwood discovered. The price is £125 for the weekend (some concessions available).

The Alchemy of Gemini - Betwixt & Between

As the days get longer and the sun rises to its zenith in the sky, so the alchemical carousel turns again and we enter the sign of Gemini. The dialogical exchange of the divine twins invites us into the mysteries of the air element and Nature responds with a rich variety of sounds, colours, scents and textures. The blossom of Taurus has attracted bees and butterflies and the pollination cycle is beginning in earnest, carried on winds of change. Endlessly darting from flower to flower, the Gemini messengers buzz and flutter happily from one source of interest to another, spreading the news, stirring nature’s alchemical mix and heralding the arrival of summer. It seems like everything is up for grabs in this hubbub of trade and exchange. We find Nature’s theme reflected in the Christian calendar with the festival of Pentecost or Whitsuntide, which remembers the story of the holy spirit coming as a rushing wind, carrying divine “wit” and inspiring the apostles to spread the word of Christ’s ascension.

Changing the Buzz

The bee is an apt animal totem for Gemini and its activities are so obviously essential for the sustainability of life. Yet, as we know, the bee population is declining at an alarming rate, and one of the contributing factors, it seems, may be the electromagnetic radiation emitted by mobile phones and wireless internet signals, our modern Geminian pollinating devices. The airwaves are now saturated to near exhaustion with our half-baked human jabberings and it appears to threaten the very essence of life.

The Sacredness of the Air

Many indigenous cultures, past and present, recognize the air, the wind and the breath (that we moderns have secularised and commodified) as aspects of a sacred power. It is the sensuous medium through which they live and have their being. Moreover, spoken words, drawing their communicative power from this invisible realm, are still considered by many indigenous groups to be the “structured breath”,¹ which voice the intentions of the spiritual powers. And for those who have their sensitive antennae intact, the sacred air through which we all breathe and think and speak is still perceived as being richly endowed with myriad elemental beings, carrying with them the spirit of our interactions.

A Tapestry of Evocative Language

Gemini carries the power of Hermes or Mercury, the god of language and communication, trade and commerce. All that is betwixt and between comes under the auspices of this duplicitous messenger, wordsmith and riddler. So, on the alchemical journey this month, with this wily daemon at such close quarters, we are paying extra attention to what we are thinking and saying! Gemini always reminds me to choose well from the web of words and stories and to voice them with more ritual care. We do well to remember that words do not simply label things that are already there, but can also carry an incantative power which reverberates in the aether, echoing back and forth as the great tapestry of life is woven.

Including the Middle

The alchemy of Gemini can re-enliven our awareness of the more-than-human otherness of life, help us reconnect to those emissaries of the air that dance between worlds. Daemons, elves, sidhe, little people - a plurality of spirits marginalised by our disenchanted modern worldview - still close enough to this world to be occasionally sensed in certain special places, yet elusive enough to escape too close a scrutiny. But, if we are to re-enter such a perspective, it will take a suspension of our logic, literalism, hasty judgments and singleness of vision; we will need to embrace metaphor, ambiguity and the “middle” that Aristotle would have us exclude. The rewards are great, though difficult for the analyst, to glimpse for a moment a deeper truth in that enchanted realm where the bard and the ovate - speaking in tongues - still hold court.

The Bull's Injunction!

This month has really been a journey for me in the art of embodiment. My arrival at Abbey House in Glastonbury has slowed me right down, from the pace of inner city Bristol to the tranquility of this retreat with its magnificent grounds and the hallowed turf of Glastonbury Abbey, which is considered by many to be the most sacred ground in the whole of Christendom.

Taurus is not a sign that features strongly in my own natal chart, though I do have a Taurean mother, so was inculcated early in the slow, deliberate ways of the bull. Money, food, safety before all else...frustrating for an Aries who wanted just to risk his heart, but profoundly instrcutive in hindsight, especially as I embrace this alchemical journey around the wheel.

I have reflected a great deal on our extraordinary Taurus weekend - which was so physical in nature - perhaps the least verbal workshop I have ever run - and how appropriate that is for this earthy sign. It was as if there was nothing much to say - it was much more appropriate to hold it in the sensory domain. We were fortunate to have no less than four people present in our band of 12 with their natal moons in Taurus - holding the space for us to drop deeply into that bovine energy!

Yesterday, Colette and I walked again in the Taurean figure of the Bull in the Glastonbury, such a sensuous walk, spectacular views and, as we played merrily under a hawthorn bush in full blossom, with sun beating down upon us, on the bull's left horn, the syncrhonicity of the season was alive and potent in a really quite remarkable way.

This is a piece I wrote in response to the first Taurus walk that we did over the workshop weekend.

The Bull's Injunction
A bull stands before me, solid of stature, single of gaze
Watching, his eyes penetrate to my core
Waiting for me to make the first move
Implacable, caring nothing for my sweet manipulations.

"Oh please step aside and let me past, you are blocking my path. I mean you no harm. You are in my way, and I must progress."

And the bull's reply?

"I do not block your path. I am your path. You cannot by-pass me. You must pass through me. Become me. Ingest my bovine spirit.

"Do not make an object of me, for our destinies are entwined. You must sacrifice that which is within you, that which is afraid of your true Taurean power. You cannot manipulate me with words or clever schemes. For I am your medicine on this turn of the wheel.

"My medicine will slow your thoughts, release the hunch in your shoulders, ground you in your body sense.

Stand squarely before me. Claim this sacred ground that we share. Do not shirk me. Be the Bull that you are!"

bright blessings,
John

A Poem for Beltane

Oh, to be here in Glastonbury on a bright May Day morning, to celebrate with kindred spirits. How at home I feel here honouring the wheel of life! Here's a poem I wrote, inspired by this morning's ceremony:

Beltane fire,
Crackling with life
Each lick of flame a line of verse
An enchantment to bewitch and befuddle
Reason, suspended, must dance like a fool

Jumping the fire, wild awakening
A chanted spiral takes me deeper
Eyes meet 'midst a cluster of memories and longings
Each glance of recognition inebriates my senses
A momentary glimpse
Perhaps
A precious shred of the mystery
To which my soul is wedded, entwined

Dance, my heart, around the may pole
Jack's erect and true, capped with a crown of blossom
Here he stands, the tree of life
The axis mundi around which we merrily play
Weaving our way
This first of May