Monday 29 April 2013

Eostre's Blush

Hagalaz hands loose land;
Eostre courts her husband
with petticoat Fritillaries
Celandine, Anemones.
A rushing springtime flush.

Tuesday 23 April 2013

Spring Plans

Spring Plans

The Celandine and Wood Anemone's are out across the woodland and it's finally time to lose my winter beard. The big shave happened this morning so the warm part of the year has hopefully arrived. I started growing it a couple of weeks before Samhain and usually it's shaved by Eostre - so it's been a long time with the beard to match the length of this winter!
After a beautiful sunny and warm weekend there are many aching bodies, not least mine. The ice and snow kept riding to a minimum and now the summer bikes, road and mountain, are in full use. It's great to go to bed physically tired and really needing the sleep.

Now it's time to start physically getting fit and ready for my big gework ride - travelling the ancient landscape from home westwards to Chanctonbury Ring and the sky temple there,
then south via trails I've not ridden for a year to Cissbury Ring to honour the land Alfs
and finally a drop to Sullington Warren and honouring the Ancestors
It's tempting to think that this was the Iron Age Celtic spiritual landscape. Where Cissbury was the hill fort used to defend the tribe in times of troubles, the second largest in England built around 250 BCE in the Middle Iron Age. Chanklebury, a Sussex dialect term for Chanctonybury, is highly likely to be the temple associated with the people who lived in Cissbury but Sullington Warren with it's 9 Round Barrows forming a barrow cemetery. These are likely to be much earlier than the hill-forts, formed in the Bronze Age, at the same time as other Barrows at Cissbury. However, I found the place to have an energy that Chanklebury and Cissbury do not. As with all these big gework rides preparation and timing are the key. I'm hoping to be able to ride it at Litha.

Second Seed

The garden has had the hedges trimmed, the lawn mown and the second set of seeds (Cherry Tomato, Courgette, Sunflower, California Poppy, Nasturtium, Marigold, Cerinthe & Apple of Peru or Shoo-Fly plant) have been sown; so now it's finger's crossed for them to take. The first seeds have been planted on - Sweet Peas, Beefsteak Tomatoes, Larkspur, Chard, Leeks & Lettuce. It's good to start getting the garden into shape and to be enjoying sitting outside. It seems like an age since last I was able to. Indeed some reports say it's not been this warm at the weekend since September!

Wednesday 10 April 2013

Viewpoints on the Gods

The Gods don't cross water.


Neil Gaiman's American Gods provides a fantasy writer's perspective in that the people bring their Gods to the land they live on, it is a dance of culture & the environment. Personally I can't definitely answer the question, it relates to the Gods so who can say for certain!
From my own English perspective where the Gods have crossed from the continent to this archipelago my Gewessi view is that the landscape influences them as much as as it influences the people who live on it. I don't think the Saxon Ingwe is quite the same as the Danish Ingvi - perhaps the difference is like people. I am not quite the same person in work as I am in the pub.... The Thunor that I hear riding his chariot along the South Downs Way is not quite the same as the Thor who fights the Jotuns in Norway or Iceland.  The environment shapes us & our gods.
Whilst people may travel to all corners of the globe the spirits of the land do not
I state this on the Gewessi Path page it means that whilst Gods may travel the Land Alfs do not. During Blot I honour the Gods, the land Alfs and the Ancestors. Above I say that the Gods are also influenced by the landscape and that the people bring their gods with them as part of their culture but, like people, a new environment subtly changes them so that after several generations of integration and relationships with the landscape and it's land alfs they are something different and new. The Alfs do not travel and stay within the environment as they are an integral part of the land.

If I'm adopted I don't actually know my cultural heritage 

Yes you do, if you wish; it's your adoptive heritage - fostering and adoption are clearly mentioned in the Northern Tribes lore from the Irish books, the Welsh Mabinoigen and on into the Icelandic Sagas.  The gods are not genetically but culturally interested. The Icelanders are an interesting mix of mostly Nordic males with mostly British & Irish females (some willing but perhaps the majority less so).  These two cultures merged to create a unique cultural literary flowering based around a single set of gods.  This has influenced the whole modern fantasy genre.  Also DNA testing will make it possible to trace your ancestors route to where you are now. This would form part of the perennial psychological debate around nature (i.e. genetics) or nurture (i.e. adoptive parents). There is a balance to the two. Sometime nature overcomes nurture and sometimes the other way round.
The aim, in my opinion, of this path is to identify the positive and discard, or at least recognise and mitigate, the negative patterns & influences.  The Druidic philosophy suggests that your spirituality should enhance your life and the life of those around you. The Gewessi path says that you should use the 9 values as a set of values with which to improve your living environment.

Friday 5 April 2013

Wolstonbury walk 1

From the belly of the earth mother

Wolstonbury walk 2

To the east of the Hawthorn trees

Eostre affirmation

Eostre ceremony
Walking Wolstonbury
Spirit's energy low.
Easterly hard flint blow;
Earth rebirth with quartz energy.

Vernal Equinox
Normally my Gewessi reaffirmation to the land occurs at the mid way of a bike ride.  This winter has been wet and snowy and this year, with a slight head cold and more miserable weather, my enthusiasm for riding had taken a battering.  I had intended to travel to Chanctonbury Ring, a sky temple probably dedicated to the Thunder god of this land, between my cold and the weather it was not going to happen.  I now reverted to tradition and decided to perform it on Wolstonbury hill, as I have done since starting on this Gewessi path a decade ago.  Mountain biking was out of the question though as the hill becomes a claggy mud fest partly due to the 3 riding schools that nestle around it's base.  So a walk it was after dropping my son at the station (off to meet up with his girlfriend, his first girlfriend... Oh the worry!).

A new path, climbing up hill, into farm mud, over stiles, spotting the path's route.  Funny I know the Bridleways between the Arun and the Ouse so well I rarely need to use these skills anymore, a footpath provides a new perspective, I ignore side tracks and keep to the path.  Thinking about this cold, biting wind and how it's catching the cold in my right ear which is aching, painfully.  A stone catches my eye and I stoop to pick it up.  It's a flint, typical here.  It's razor sharp down one edge and angular, hard all over.  Like the Easterly wind...

The Flint Wind
The stone had been trying to tell me something, I realised a few hundred metres later as I crested the brow of the hill.  Although the view was interesting, providing a new perspective on a familiar place, I didn't want to follow this path to it's end; I was on naked rambler way.  The memory of the day this path was named raised a chuckle though I think my friend is still trying to erase the image from his retinas.  Retracing my steps I followed a sheep track North.  All the time the flint wind was harrying me, biting at exposed flesh.  Finding where I wanted to be I jumped a barbed wire fence, feeling schoolboy naughty about not sticking to the public path, then headed toward the top of the hill and the Hawthorn trees.

Reaffirmation
I know these two Hawthorn's well having communed with them many times over the years.  The trees form a wind break, their protection obviously popular with the Welsh Black Cattle used to keep the Downland grazed by the tufts of black hair hanging from the thorns.  The dew pond to the East has been renovated and I take some moments to cast the circle, honour the Gods, Land Alfs, Ancestors and re-affirm my connection to this land and this Gewessi path.  The flint wind ensures the moment is short.  Normally I would offer some water to the trees as a gift but this year the Downs are over blessed with it so I can only offer my thanks.  Shivering I meander off the top and into the ancient landscape.  No one knows why our Neolithic ancestors carved this huge shelf into the top of the North West side of the  hill; for flint, as a stockade, for ritual or some other unknown reason.  I like the mystery that is contained within the space, it has fascinated me all my life.  I continue on the paths, letting whim, land magic or the transrational guide me.  In the womb of the site I find a path, one I'd not walked since my kids were very little.  This path is like a birth canal, a hidden culvert into the open landscape from this, the belly of the earth mother.  I follow it and the Awen flows, my affirmation accepted and I feel reborn.

Reborn
Soon it is back to the mundane slip, slide and spatter through the clag fest that are the trails round Wolstonbury.  Walking boots caked in the chalk-clay dough that weighs on your feet and strengthens your legs.  The tread's grip is negated leading to many a slip, slide and waahey which builds core strength, it's a fully body workout.  Holding onto trees, avoiding treacherous thorns (rose, bramble, black and hawth) and squelching through the deeper mud baths I return to my starting point at Pyecombe with a smile and my spirit a little warmer inside from the land magic. Waes hael from and to the land, in the giving and the receiving.
Pics to follow