Rituals

31^st January 2023

I’ve been working with small churches for the past two weeks, connecting them with the Spring Brigit flame and the Magdalene flame energy.

Catholic Church of St Edward the Confessor.

The first work was in the Church of St. Edward the Confessor, a small Catholic place near what used to be Otterbourne Manor (the place still exists but is diminished in size). I had been driving one of my daughters to work in Chandler’s Ford for a couple of weeks and had passed the church on my way there. On my first drive, I noticed a Brigit flame in the building and wondered about it, but did nothing. I thought it meant there was already one there. Later, driving to my father’s, via Sparsholt, I passed the little church of St Stephen and saw a magenta flame there. Again, I thought it meant there was already one there, so I ignored it, wondering instead who might have planted it.

On the way back from another Chandler’s Ford journey, a full bladder forced me to stop in the church of St. Edward the Confessor to wait until the traffic subsided and to find a toilet. Inside, the church is quite modern, having been built in the early twentieth century. As I approached the table altar, behind which is a striking stained-glass window, I saw, with my inner eye, hands place a large, wide shallow bowl on the altar. It reminded me of the fire bowls they use outside in Egypt, to keep warm in winter. In the bowl was a small orange flame and I had the impulse to blow energy which ignited it so that it rose to the ceiling.

I next saw the Was-sceptre symbol anchor the flame into the lava layer below the earth’s crust. The upper part of the symbol went into the sky and there was a date palm behind the altar to which it connected. In the ancient Middle East, the Date palm was seen as the tree of the Goddess, the dates her fruit, the only food in an otherwise arid desert. I have worked with palm trees while living in Egypt and anchored many energetic palm trees, especially where people live at subsistence level. The feeling then was that the people would always be fed from the fruits of the Goddess. They would not starve but would have what they needed. (The palm tree, in ancient Assyrian religion represented the connection between heaven and earth and was sacred to the Goddess Ishtar. The Goddess, in her many guises, is often depicted as residing in a tree, giving her ‘fruits’ freely).

The Palm means Life. Pure and simple. Especially in dry times.

While I was in Luxor, I read a theory that the Was-sceptre represented a giraffe. The bottom of the symbol represents the cloven hoofs of the giraffe, which are quite dainty, while the hook at the top, represents the head. The ‘foot’ of the sceptre touched the earth, while the ‘head’ could reach up to the heights and get the fruits from the tall palms. It was a medium between the food of the Goddess and earth. The symbol, in mythology, is associated with the god Set, who is the god of the hot, dry desert, an arid place where there are few resources. It is a staff of power, wielded by the priests. It symbolises the power to bring the Food of Heaven to earth and only those who could act as mediums between divinity and humanity could use it.

Other theories abound around the meaning of the symbol, of course, but in the course of my work, the Was-sceptre is always used to anchor flames deep beneath the earth’s mantle, and to anchor the flame to a higher level of the earth’s energy field. The sceptre itself is a strong ‘holding’, a rod of power, a connector. It keeps the energies stable, and in place, because the flame is an active energy.

So why was an Irish Goddess flame of Brigit being anchored by the use of Egyptian symbols in a small Catholic church in Chandler’s Ford? As I tuned in, I tried to sense what it might mean. What came back was something about the origins of Christianity being from the Middle East. Jesus was born there, after all. There was something about reconnecting the energies of this church to its origins, reconnecting it to its roots in Jerusalem. There was something about the original, unsullied beliefs around the goddess being brought back to common consciousness. That the Divine Feminine was once an equal partner to the Divine Masculine, each one valued for its gifts.

This was a small community church, albeit well used, and the hub of the Catholic community, yet it was the start of a series of connections between other, smaller, churches, all of Saxon origin and mainly Church of England. I was raised a Catholic, and attended a convent until I was ten years old, going to mass every Sunday, which I hated. But out of choice, I also went to the evening devotions. This I loved. There was a sense of ancientness here, between the incense filling the church and the hymns reminding me of ‘Faith of our fathers’, my favourite hymn. All those dungeons, fires and swords! back then, I felt very connected to an energy that seemed far removed from the God we were being taught about in school and at Sunday mass.

When we relocated from the country to Dublin, I was educated in a private, protestant school and lost that religious connection but I loved the school, nonetheless. It was child-centred, as opposed to God-centred. Now, between the two educations, I had a fairly good idea of the difference between them and how it made me feel.

Years later, living in the UK and at an Initiation workshop in Glastonbury, myself and another attendee decided that, rather than go to the Goddess rituals that everyone else was attending, we would go to the local Catholic church where they were having a healing service. This was a new experience for me and a reminder of an older one. As I watched the Catholic ritual of communion and wine, in my eyes, the priests were enacting an ancient Egyptian ritual. The roots of these rituals came from the temples of Egypt. The woman who had come with me had seen the same thing, which was amazing to me. Even more interesting was that I could see the effect that the ritual was having on the wine, but also saw that it had no effect on the bread. And yet, at that time, only the priest drank the wine. Now, of course, it is different and everyone gets both. However, the bread is still nothing but bread, but the wine is charged with energy.

But that experiment taught me that the Catholic ritual was a very ancient, energetic process, with a deeper connection to a ‘Mother’. Yet it was the Spring Flame of Brigit being anchored here, in Chandler’s Ford, Brigit herself being a Goddess who became a Catholic saint. She wasn’t destroyed by the religion but rather incorporated into it. She is also a goddess of light and fertility, the returning sun after a dark winter.

I thought I was finished here, so went to look for a loo. When I came back, I was ‘instructed’ to do more so I stood in front of the altar again. This time, a magenta channel of the Magdalene descended with a small magenta flame inside. It reached to the floor and high into the sky, a veritable pillar of fire. Again, I felt the impulse to blow and when I did the magenta flame expanded until it filled the channel. I was given a portion of this flame to transport somewhere else. I already guessed that it was for St Stephen’s church in Sparsholt.

On my way out, I found the holy water font and blessed myself with it. On impulse, before I left my house that morning, I had applied holy water I had gotten from Arundel cathedral last year. This is another ritual that we have forgotten the original purpose of: the application of holy water in an equal-armed cross as you enter a sacred space. This entering ritual was to open the energy-field for the ensuing ceremony. The energies generated by the Mass fed you, energetically. After the ritual Mass, on leaving the building, you then applied holy water again, this time to seal the energy-field so that all the energies you absorbed would be retained, much like sealing the energy-field with the raku symbol after passing a Reiki attunement. Originally, the Mass was an attunement, but not in the way we pass attunements today. In the original Usui Reiki system, Mikao Usui ‘attuned’ his students every time they met. He shared the energy with them by sharing his own Reiki-field. They sat in that energy for the duration of the meeting, their fields open and receptive. In the original Catholic Mass, this was the way it was done too. The energy of the ritual was shared and absorbed. It was a ‘communion’, a sharing; an attunement. However, after the Synod of Whitby, that all began to change, Celtic Christianity, with all its blend of Christian and Celtic beliefs, was replaced by Roman rites and rituals… and control.

Having written this, but not yet posted it, I was with my father when the local village magazine came. Inside was a list of ceremonies for Lent, one being an ‘Ashing Communion’. This is where they put ash on your forehead, again in an equal-armed cross. (That cross signifies equilibrium). I wondered what the ash meant. The palm used in Palm Sunday is burnt and applied to the forehead. In Roman times, penitents wore ashes and sackcloth to repent for their sins. Now, everyone is a sinner, by all accounts. BUT it was the palm, and again, we come back to the pagan origins of Christianity, which feel far more real to me. The palm, sacred to the Goddess, is still being used in Christian religions, which has to be a good thing.

I’ve put the link at the bottom of this page so if you want to visit the church and partake of the energies there, feel free.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faith_of_Our_Fathers_(hymn)

Naqada Culture

https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/saints/edward.shtml

https://www.stswithunwellsparish.org.uk/sted

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synod_of_Whitby

After our first day’s information about the Female Mysteries of Spring, we went back the following week to learn about the Male Mysteries.

This time we stood on the second largest barrow, where we had seen the Elder the previous week. As soon as we tuned in, he appeared and he instructed us to sit.

I felt as though I was in a class, as it would have been held centuries ago, but I was male. There were five or six of us being trained. The elder explained about our role in the Spring festival. We were a new cohort, and this was the start of our training. The Elder would instruct us on how to serve the Mother, both in what we did, as priests in training, and for the rest of our lives. What we were being shown was male priest training, rather than simply something for the festival rituals.

He explained that male fertility was connected to the waterways: the rivers and to the sea. I saw the Itchen river in my mind, running around he base of St. Catherine’s hill. As we were being shown the connection between the river and the hill, an image of Silbury Hill, near Avebury, with the water all around the base, popped into my head. I wondered if, in ancient times, the waters also rose at certain times of the year and flooded around the base of St. Catherine’s; the mound a pregnant belly that emerged from the waters of life.

Water carries fertility, like seminal fluid carries sperm. This is how they understood it. Because many female fertility sites were connected with waterways i.e., Stonehenge, Stanton Drew, etc., it fell to men to hold the energy of water-fertility. They were the active principle and the female was the receptive.

The Elder, having explained about the importance of water to these young men, then went on in a more serious tone. He handed each one a rounded, river pebble. He told them that the water had shaped these stones, tumbled and smoothed them over many years. The water had the power to shape the hardest material, BUT, the stone was of the earth and the river ran THROUGH the earth. The water, on its own, was simply water. The Mother, Earth, was the channel/river-bed through which the water ran, it ran through her body. She was the foundation of all.

This teaching was to curb feelings of power the young men might harbour, believing that because they held the power to fertilise, this meant they were more powerful than the earth itself.

At that point, to continue the lesson, the Elder told us all that we would now go to the other side of the hill, but to bring our stone with us. This was a couple of miles across the land for them, but necessitated a car-ride for us. From last week, we knew the men had their training by the river and that by the time of the Spring rites, they would proceed from there to the top of St. Catherine’s.

We drove around to the other side of Winchester, and tried to find a car-parking space close to the river. That proved tricky, as now everyone goes for coffee and a walk beside the canal! Because we could not find a space, we went to the water-meadows at. St Cross Hospital, where we had access to the river. This was better as it was the more natural part of the river; the part currently flowing alongside St. Catherine’s Hill is the navigation canal built in the late 17th Century.

We stood by the river bank and waited for the Elder to tell us what to do. We still held the stone. Because the Elder was not physically real, the stone he gave us wasn’t either. But, I had one in my pocket I had picked up somewhere. I’m always picking up stones! It didn’t have to be physical, of course, but it made it feel more real.

Itchen River, St. Cross Hospital, Winchester.

Standing by the river’s edge, the Elder told us that we had to throw this stone into the water. But, in throwing it in, we were handing over our ego, or sense of power and personal Will to the Mother. We were acknowledging that we, as men, served her. We were not master over her. In order to serve, we had to let go of all our attachments to power over others, over the tribe, over the land. We were making a commitment to serve her as she wished to be served.

It was a very solemn, and thought-provoking exercise. If we, as young priests were unable to let go of our male ego, our need for control, then we would be unable to serve in a fertility capacity and therefore would not be able to officiate at the Sacred Fertility Rituals, such as the Spring rites.

Because I was, effectively, a young man in this experience, I felt the seriousness of what I was doing and when I felt I was ready to give up my need for control and power, I threw my stone into the water, giving it back to the Mother, from whence it came. I accepted that she was more important than me and that I willingly sacrificed my need for power and control.

I was aware of the other young men in my group. Some were reluctant to let go, not fully understanding how it would impact on their lives. They were not ready. Some might never be and would go on to do other work within the tribes. But, for those, who were not quite ready, they would be given the chance to continue their training and repeat the exercise the following year. But that also meant, they could not be chosen to be a candidate in the current year’s Spring Festival. There was no judgement around this from the Elder, as they were only human and he understood the challenge of the sacrifice.

This experience, and the previous week’s one, was an amazing glimpse into how our ancestors worked with the very potent Spring fertility rites. The exercise, by the river and on the barrows, was quite a powerful one for the young men; the fear of letting go of personal power was palpable.

By contrast, the women’s rites felt free and joyful. There was such excitement and light-heartedness as they began the rites. But the men’s seemed quite serious, as if they had more to learn, more to let go of. But all were young. From late teens to early twenties. An appropriate age for Spring.

Next week, we’ll be up on St. Catherine’s Hill. It’s the culmination of the Spring festivities, the joining of the male and female energies, the festival that ensures fertility for the coming year. I am looking forward to seeing what we experience then. All we have to do is avoid the coffee-crowds.