I was in bed, trying to get to sleep but you know how your mind spins and you try and clear your mind but nope, it's not going to let you get to sleep. Then I started coughing. How annoying, especially as I didn't have a cough before I tried to get to sleep. So I got up and got a note pad with the intention of writing my thoughts down. I wrote three lines. Then I thought 'I know, I'll make a video blog' and got my son's tablet, which then turned out, didn't have a video function. So I made it using my iPhone, not at all flattering and the picture quality is pants but you can hear me. Incidentally, the cough went as soon as I'd finished. Hmmm!
I realised afterwards that I'd gotten some dates wrong. I don't know what it is about me and time but when I try and recall things and the date they happened, I can't. Usually I try and gauge how old my son was when it happened and that usually gives me a good idea what year it was. Seriously! Lorna fell out with me prior to 2002, so I can't have gone with her to Wales in 2003-4. Luckily I take lots of photographs and I can check the dates, only the Anglesey pics were pre-digital camera, so without going through hundreds of negatives, I can only approximate the dates to when I was still living in my flat, so 1999-2001. How pants is that?! The Petre Ifan trip with my first visit to Stonehenge and Silbury Hill was in 2004 but just me and my son visiting our friend Red in Tenby.
That is the result from a lot of personal trauma that has blocked out so much good information. I remember all the bad but only get flashbacks of normal things I did as a kid or teenager or pre 2002. You don't need to know the ins and outs of it but it defined me for a time, I think 12 years on, I'm finally working my way through it all. Anyway, the video is about 40 mins of me having an honest chat about my beginnings with finding my clairvoyance abilities and the person who was a very important part of that. It's also a look at how hurt can create hate and what a waste of time that is. I do regret that Lorna and I never made amends before she died, but I do believe she has since, as I describe in the video. So here's me, saying thanks Lorna. I still remember the hurt but I now remember so much more of our time together as friends. RIP.
What I'm about to share with you now is very personal. It is about my spiritual path and how I was given the name Blue Crow. I'm a bit wary expressing it as it goes but I think it's time.
Back in the day of forums, we had to invent a user name. Remember those? Lots of well known goddesses and the such were used. I used to be IckleSlaine after my tattoo of an ickle Slaine McRoth (2000ad geek n proud). This was circa 2002. I then shortened it to Slaine, which I used for a few years.
Ickle Slaine
I went to work for the MOD in 2004 at RAF Henlow and outside my window was the Hunter gate guardian and some chestnut trees that these two crows used to sit in. I always did stare out of windows as a kid and not much has really changed. I'd just started discovering my spiritual path. I had been down the spiritualist route and was the Secretary of the SNU church in Letchworth GC. By 2004, I had discovered that what I was had a name and that was 'pagan'. Everyone had their paths and discussed these at length and of course, people had their 'spirit' names. Usually these had some mystical creature in them and they often assumed a whole new personality (online) to match their character name. Yes, I went there, character name. It is too easy to get caught up in playgan roleplaying... yes I went there too! Aren't I naughty lol ! I think what I'm saying is that a fair few of these people were full of shit really. They did it because it was fashionable and because the big kids on the forum did it too and looked cool and knowledgeable. Fair enough, it's easy to get caught up in it all.
The point is, at the time, I didn't really know what path I was on. I had been told by three shamans (proper ones, not like the latest fad of wannabes DON'T GET ME STARTED ON THAT FFS) that I was a shaman. I had no idea what that was, other than the American Indian sort. I did some research and found an excellent book called Shamans through time - 500 years. It was a big fat book of written accounts by anthropologists, missionaries and that ilk who'd gone into the world to study/explore/convert and had found shamans in near enough every culture. Their accounts vary from Christian bias to those who went to live with the tribe for a month and learn how the shaman works in their community healing the sick etc. The original term of shaman was used for a tribe in Siberia but it has since become a generic term throughout the world. Not that the know-it-alls on the forum cared, if you weren't from that tribe in Siberia you weren't a shaman and you were a fake. 20 posts per page, 15 pages later... I'm still being flayed for daring to 'come out' as someone who'd been told I was a shaman but didn't know what that meant. Oh My Gods, it was horrendous. Nearly a decade has gone by and it still haunts me... and that's why I get wary sharing! Nice way to help someone on their path isn't it? So much for peace and love! Don't get me started....
View outside my office window on a foggy day
Anyway, I digress!
One of the many lunchtimes gazing out the window, I was daydreaming (also normal) and I wondered what my spirit name was. The crows were out front, playing about, looking for food, chasing off the magpie (usual stuff for them) and I got the name 'Blue Crow'. It was just there, in my head. I asked why and what it meant and I received no reply. It was about two years later that I was told what it meant.
I was writing a lot of poetry at this time and here is one I penned about my friends the crows at work. My friend Cliff Carr turned it into a song and has performed it at Avebury, which is a bit surreal hearing your words being turned into music.
Crow he calls
Oh how he calls to me
‘Pick up your ears and listen
For I have much to say!’
Can you not hear the call?
Can you not understand?
You can see crow everywhere
You can hear his calls
Loudly he cries his message
Over and over again
I pick up my ears and listen
To what he’s trying to say
‘Come follow me!
Go deep within yourself
Close your eyes and slow your breath
Spread your wings and fly’
‘Fly above it all and survey the land
Call out what you see
Feel the earth and skies unite
Ride the updraft of the breath of life’
This is the path of Sacred Law
This is the call of crow
These are the words that reach my ears
Crows call penetrates my soul
December 2004
Time flies and roll on December 2007 and I had that 'aha!' moment and then it made sense.. for a short time because you're not supposed to make sense of your life, only the lessons passing through it at that time.
Blue is the sky
That envelopes us all
Blue is the healing rays
Blue is the deepest seas & skies
Crow is the Keeper of Sacred Law
Truth of Time kept
Blue Crow is the Keeper of what covers us all
The whole world
All times
I hold it all
I cannot unlock these secrets I keep
Only Time will reveal them
when they need to be
So there you have it. How I got my name and what I was told it means. It's hard to believe it's been six years since all that happened. I will probably write more about it when I get to the letter S on the blog project. Blimey, just thought, that will be nearly at the end of this year... who knows what will happen til then.
That last paragraph of the last poem may need some explaining. All I can say for now is - it's a past life thing.
Well it's the early hours of Friday and I'm itching to get my next blog out. I've lit a candle on my altar, lit a shalimar joss stick (so hard to get hold of now) and have some Nigel Shaw playing. What's this... and some honey jack and mead to hand. Ace... so let's start.
To be or not to be
To be standing in the sun
To be bathed with light
To be intouch with yourself
To be surrounded by natures beauty
To be part of spirit
To be one with it All
To be one with it All
Standing in the sun
Arms stretched out wide
Twirling in the sunshine
Absorbing the healing rays
Soaking in the light
Feeling elevated and free
At one with it All
A physical body
A free spirit
As it should be
We are all connected. You've heard of the 7 degrees of separation and those on Facebook, are always amazed by 'mutual' friend connections. With the advent of the internet, this is becoming a very small world indeed. There are other ways of being connected of course, those who are open to the All can link in to people and the places around them. I haven't tried to explain this before, it's more difficult than I thought.
The moment you climb over the sand dunes and see the vast expanse of the sea. The salty air whips your hair in gentle wildness, the waves crash on the beach and the gulls cry. The sun breaks through the clouds and beams on the sea. Or maybe the moon reflecting millions of smaller moons on the forever moving surface. That moment you feel in awe of the scene, the rawness of nature and feel that awesome connection to the All.
(Click the pictures to view full sized)
Whitby Regatta
Oh the moon! You step outside to empty the bins and look up to the clear nights sky. Stars and planets beam their lights down and we feel part of it All. Small in the great Universe but still part of it. Or my personal favourite, you're lying in bed and the full moon fills the world with silver. So you open your curtains and lie there in it's silvery liquid magic. And it is magic to me.
That moment you're standing near trees and can hear the wind blowing the leaves, reminding you of the sea as it hits the beach. The feeling of growth under your feet as the roots reach down, the bark and the endless patterns before you as it envelopes everything, the colours of the leaves and the dapples the sun makes. The sense of beauty and life and life within this living ancient thing. Connection to the spirit of the All.
The way you can stop walking in a seemingly plain place and stand there, still, absorbing the life around you. The birds calls - mating, protecting, warning, greeting. The little usually unseen creatures darting past like you're not there. The grasses waving in the breeze. The river eddies swirling, rippling, running forever on as life goes on under it's surface. The clouds up above - huge rain clouds or high wispy ones. The colours of the day as it starts and ends - the world as it becomes lighter and darker.
Princes Risborough
Watching our creatures of the the world. That moment an owl swoops across your vision as you drive along, lit up by your headlights, a ghostly wonder. I love seeing owls, it makes me smile. Or seeing a huge buzzard being chased off by a gang of crows. Crows... I could watch them all day! They don't take any shit of anyone, regardless whether it's prey or maybe a great hulking grey heron. They stand their ground, chase off any invaders and protect their territories. Their calls change in the year too. You get the spring time calling of their territories, their body bobbing up and down with each shout, tales go up. Then there's the mating game shortly after this. They seem to go somewhere for a couple of weeks in the summer and you suddenly realise it's been rather quiet outside, the usual racket has dimmed. Then they are back. Crows are fun to watch. I used to spend hours gazing out of the window at their antics. That is where my name comes from... which is for another blog!
White Crow
Crow at Castlerigg
Then there are the extraordinary places. Those truly sacred places built to honour something long gone from a world that demands evidence and proof or reason. Yet these places tap into something deep inside our psyche and wake us up. We are drawn there, we feel the need to gather there, to raise our cups and give thanks to our ancestors who built them thousands of years before us. These places can be a great stone circle, a burial chamber, a henge or perhaps ancient woodlands with trees that saw out world wars, some times hundreds of years old, standing guard, watching over Time as it sifts past. We connect to our ancestors there, we wonder how they built these great stone circles and why. The scenery is usually wild and spectacular too, add the rising or setting sun and the world around this space explodes into colour.
As I said to Warwick Davies whilst filming at Long Meg last summer; each place is different, each place has it's own special kind of energy. Long Meg is peaceful, serene and calming. Castlerigg was described by a friend of mine as buzzing and feels like you've been sandblasted clean. Stonehenge is a wonder. You drive down the road and there it is - a WOW feeling, inspite of the fences and the fact it's being milked as a giant cash cow. Avebury - each part of it is different. It's best to go when there isn't a Gorsedd on! I find it peaceful and it radiates great power too. My favourite place is Uffington White Horse. Over 3000 years old, 'ta'int how a horse looks like, it's how it be' (as Terry Pratchett so aptly describes it via Granny Aching). The sky is huge under that hill and those hills just pop out of a relatively flat landscape. It's almost like someone has tried to fold it into pleats too. At the bottom of the hill is Dragon Hill. At the top of the hill a mile up the path is Waylands Smithy. You can't help but stand on that hill, by the Eye and get lost in the world surrounding you.
Filming at Long Meg
Long Meg and her sisters
Uffington White Horse
Avebury
Stonehenge
Uffington White Horse - one of my all time fav pics
For those moments you stand there, connected to All around you. It takes your breath away. You are aware of that moment that you are part of it All. All of this without adding people, ritual, ceremonies, mead or a specific day of the cycle.
Meridians - we are all connected. Before getting absorbed in coloured candles and all the trappings of ritualised dogma, take the time to connect to the Universe first. Plant your feet in the richness of the life all around you. Feel the life forces in everything. Become part of it All. Otherwise, without that connection, you have no real power because you cannot truly understand what you are not really part of. How can you heal if you cannot connect to the Universe, to channel it, to be the vessel? Exactly!
I'm proud to say that took all of these images (more here). I see the world and capture it for a moment. My final word is you can find beauty in anything if you plug in and open your eyes, all your eyes.
