Stuff on Celts, Druids, Standing Stones and suchlike.

Entanglement – we are all linked.

If anyone wants proof that we have a long way to go in understanding the way the Universe works, look no further than entanglement. Einstein hated it. He called it “spooky action at a distance”, trying to prove with others that it was a flaw in the theory of quantum physics.

It’s nothing to do with earphones getting tangled, annoying though it can be. Here we are talking about events at a quantum level which defy what we consider as reality.

At some deep level, it appears to be a fundamental component of the Universe. “Entangle” two photons by producing them together, change one, the other changes instantly, no matter how far the distance between them. It has been proved to work time after time. And not only that, it works instantly, over vast distances. Even though as Einstein showed, you cannot travel faster than the speed of light, disruption of entanglement is somehow an instant process.

Physicists can’t explain it. Well, that’s not strictly true. There is one explanation, but it’s such a mind boggling explanation, that most people shy away from it.

The explanation – that everything is already connected! You, me, the stars, every atom in the whole Universe.

And I rather like that!!

Fogou – what are they?

In Cornwall they are known as Fogou, meaning in the Cornish language, Caves. (In Cornwall alone it is estimated there are over 2,000 fogous). In Scotland as Earth houses, though they are more usually called Souterrains (from the French, under the ground). Widely found across Britain, Ireland and Europe. Some can be quite complex tunnels, but usually they consist of an underground passage or tunnel with a narrow opening at the far end to just let a small amount of light through, but certainly not wide enough to exit through.

So what purpose did they serve? No one knows, we can only speculate. Places of refuge, of storage, or ritual shrines?

Above are two photographs of a Souterrain visited in Scotland on the Isle of Skye. In photograph 1 you might just distinguish a pair of wellies, (yellow, top right), put there to indicate that this particular souterrain was flooded. Which added considerably to the atmosphere as I and my companion went down and into it. As with most souterrains, the floor sloped upwards toward the end of the passage providing a little space to sit above the water for one of us at least.

And as for the question asked at the beginning? I am no wiser, but it didn’t feel as though this particular passage would serve any purpose as a storage means, especially given the effort taken to construct it. A place of refuge. Too low, too narrow too cramped to hide for long from attackers. A place with a ritual purpose? For some kind of initiation process perhaps? Sat in the gloom of a Neolithic construction some 2-3,000 years old with the water lapping about, most certainly!

It is as it is meant to be

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And it was thus.
A Retreat. The mix of lack of sleep, inner contemplation, the challenge of solving/understanding a Koan. A process anointed by the passage of centuries, a path followed by – perhaps millions? – over the centuries.
Somewhere on my own personal journey on that Retreat I understood something deep, profound, something moved me to tears of joy. An insight, no, deeper than that, an understanding that this IS the way the Universe works.
It is, as it’s meant to be, for better, for worse in our short term view, but it is as it is meant to be.

Begin it now!

goethe — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe 1749 -1832

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment that one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.
One of many pearls of wisdom from Goethe.

A thin place

What is a thin place? It’s a location where the gap between this world and the spiritual one is at its thinness. In my experience, Dale Abbey is such a place. Not the Abbey itself, forlorn, forgotten ruin that it now is, but the cave nearby. Legend has it that in the 12th century there was a baker living in nearby Derby who was a very holy man. He decided to give up his livelihood, and become a hermit. He travelled to the village and made his home in a cave which today remains in good condition as the photograph shows.

His reputation spread, to such an extent it is said that the Abbey was founded to be close to this holy man. The cave/hermitage is easily accessed though the path up to it is steep in places. Inside the cross carved by the hermit is clearly visible, and the sounds of the outside world die away. I stopped there for several minutes, and said a prayer in the stillness, easily imaging the presence of that holy man.

As I left, the stillness of the day was broken by a small gust of wind that came and went, stirring the leaves at my feet, as though to say , “Welcome friend, may God be with you.” It was special moment in a special place, a thin place indeed.

Maeshowe tomb – with a door that can only be sealed from inside it?

Maeshowe is an exquisite feat achieved by a group of builders who lived and worked some 5,000 years ago on Orkney. The mound is 35 meters in diameter, 7 metres high inside, and despite the passage of five millennia, warm and dry within. Running off the main chamber are three cells that it appears can be sealed with stone slabs which now lie on the floor. There is also a blocking stone at the entry to the entry passage which seems to be designed so that it can only be closed from the inside. And at each Winter solstice, the rising sun shines directly into the tomb, rising in the fold of the hills of the island of Hoy opposite, and shining directly over the Barnhouse standing stone located several hundred meters away.

But is it a tomb? Variously described as a Chamber Cairn and a passage grave, the fact is that when it was excavated 1861 there was only one skull to be found inside, although it was also clear that it had also been used by the Vikings to shelter from inclement weather, and as a result, has the largest single collection of Runes in the world. But that is another story.

It seems unlikely to have been a tomb only, or at all perhaps, but for what other purpose would the people of the Orkneys put up to 100,000 man hours of work and transported stones weighing up to 30 tons? We shall never know, we can only speculate.

The site www.maeshowe.co.uk shows photographs of past winter solstices shot from inside the tomb as well as some spectacular shots taken of the interior.

Namaste – I bow to the Divine in you.

Your soul. I honour.
Greetings from afar.
Words. Of welcome.
Words of friendship.

Echoes. Down the ages.
Voices long gone.
Namaste Dear Reader.
Namaste.

Namaste is such a wonderful term. It recognises the soul that dwells within each of us, and the journey from birth to death that we all of us must make. Yet it is so difficult to see the soul in another. It is masked by our perceptions, and by how the other chooses to show themselves. Are they arrogant, self-centered maybe, a braggart, or perhaps good company, honest and caring? They too will have been fashioned by the vicissitudes of life, for better or for worse, which also shapes the face we present to the world.
But it is you and I who decides what to see, how to judge the “other” stood before us. And it is so difficult to move beyond our perceptions.
And this is the challenge. Namaste, to see the soul in another, to see underneath the surface. That does not mean to accept arrogance, or misogyny, or wrong doing, but to remember that, within that persona, there is another soul there, making their way along the same road that you follow.

A Neolithic sauna – or a sweat lodge?

I had never seen one before, or even read about them. Yet when I did some research on the web, I discovered that over 300 had been discovered around and in Birmingham alone. Apparently they are quite common place.

What are they? They are called “Burnt Mounds” and they consist broadly of a mound of shattered stones with a nearby trough. The latter is always water-tight, and the one in the photograph can be clearly seen. They date back thousands of years, to the Neolithic and perhaps beyond, and there is even evidence that they were used as late as the 14th century AD.

But for what purpose? Some theories suggest cooking. The stones would have been heated up in fires, and then dropped into the water to heat it for cooking meat. The flaw in this argument is that no evidence for cooking has ever been found in the many locations where they have been used. No bones, no remains from the preparation of meat.

A better explanation that seems to fit the facts is that they were saunas. It is easy to picture a group of hunter-gatherers warming up the water with the heated rocks, and after a hard days food gathering, relaxing, for a moment out of the wind, the rain and the elements. Apparently in some locations signs of post-holes have been found, so perhaps some of these “Burnt Mounds” were covered to keep the heat and the steam inside. A Neolithic sweat lodge maybe?

I rather like to think so.

The archer, the arrow and the target are all One

I based a chapter in my book, the Wisdom of Rhiannon, on the famous book by Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery. As a Western visitor to 1930’s Japan, and a lecturer in Philosophy, Herrigel found it almost – but not quite – impossible to learn the Way of the Archer.
It involves not using the mind, not taking aim, but instead stilling the mind, holding the bow steady until “it”, as Herrigel’s teacher called it, determined when to let the arrow fly. At that point, and only at that point, did the archer, the arrow, and the target become one. To Herrigel’s frustration, his attempts to hit the target by improving his technique, the strength in his bow arm, and his concentration, all failed, and only resulted in his Master’s increasing ire. Always the guidance was to wait until “it” determined when the arrow should be released.
And then comes this passage toward the end of the book:
“Do you now understand,” the Master asked me one day after a particularly good shot, what I mean by “It shoots”, “It hits”?
“I’m afraid I don’t understand anything more at all,” I answered, “even the simplest things have got into a muddle. Is it “I” who draws the bow, or is it the bow that draws me into the state of highest tension? Do “I” hit the goal, or does the goal hit me? ….. Bow, arrow, goal and the ego , all melt into one another, so that I can no longer separate them. And even the need to separate has gone. For as soon as I take the bow and shoot, everything becomes so clear and straight-forward, and so ridiculously simple ..”
All is One!

Magic or medicine?

IMGP5041_face0 Writing “The Wisdom of Rhiannon” was a test of my beliefs. I was trained as a physicist which fashioned me to see the physical world in which we live in a certain way. So I was challenged in trying to determine what “powers” did the Druids have; any, or was it trickery, or a good knowledge of the natural world, for example, in predicting eclipses? What was the nature of ancient knowledge? Certainly there is evidence of quite remarkable medical knowledge, for example, trepanation, a delicate surgical technique for making a hole in someone’s skull, with evidence that the technique dates back as far as 6500 BC, with plenty of people recovering from the operation.
And this was my difficulty. How did ancient peoples “know” what to do, let alone the Druids? Where did their knowledge come from? And what was the extent of it? My scientific training taught me that observation, experimentation, theory, and more experimentation were the only ways to classify and understand the world. But then there are people like Rupert Sheldrake, a scientist, who talks about morphic resonance, fields which reverberate and exchange information within a universal life force.
Could the Druids, amongst others, “know” when to trepan, could they “know” which herbs to collect, how to prepare medicines from them, see into the future, could they perform “magic”? But at that time I decided this was a step too far for my rational mind, so the Druids in my book are broadly simply clever people who are well read and educated.
And I think I was wrong!
If I had read Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer’s book, Extraordinary knowing: Science, Skepticism, and the Inexplicable, I would have changed my mind, just as she was forced to change hers, moving from a hard scientific paradigm to a much more open minded view. In a book full of challenging examples to the rational of conventional science, there was one example I really liked. The very successful brain surgeon who waited by the head of the patients he was scheduled to operate on until he “saw” a white light; it might take minutes, or hours, but when he saw the light, he knew his operation would be successful. His difficulty was, how to teach the technique to medical students and other surgeons, so he didn’t, because he would have been laughed at, ridiculed, after all, everyone knows that medical science doesn’t work like that!
Or can it?