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"The gravitational field of the Stone breaks life into its parts, into revelation."
-Peter Makem

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The Golden Age

My "Mera" Material is my masterpiece, or should I say, our masterpiece, as a host of sentient beings, many of them unseen by human eyes, helped me to manifest it in written form. I have recovered my lost soul with these words.

It's very hard to explain, but there was a time, very long ago (by my standards) where I was "in" a veil of grace, a powerful place, where I felt and lived in the power of the Gods I believed in. Naturally, those days haven't ended; I still feel and experience my gods and helping spirits. But in those days, (as is often the case) the power was clearer, stronger.

Native American elders tell us that there was a time when shamans didn't need sacred, vision-inducing plants to gain their visions; but as the world slowly dwindles, such things become more difficult, causing people to have to undergo more stringent purifications and techniques to achieve ecstasy.

I think the same principle holds true for a person's life. Where did the child go, who had such bright and imaginative eyes? Do you remember a time when you could amuse yourself in the backyard with a pile of stones and some sticks? It seems that we all go through stages where we find ourselves consciously or subconsciously longing for the vibrant world we once knew. And what madness people put themselves through to rediscover themselves!

My own journey through spirituality has always had, as one of its goals, the "recapture" of those "old" times. I was fortunate enough, very early on, to directly experience the wonder and power of the great mysteries that our ancestors called "Gods" or "spirits"- and to feel, on the deepest level of the heart, the true powers that animate our very world, and our souls. The christians I knew then reserved the name "God" for these feelings, these experiences, but I knew that this wasn't the full truth of the matter- or should I say, I knew it wasn't enough for me.

The powers that brought the Mera material into my world and mind have re-established me in what I always felt, so long ago. I see those powers lurking behind the Gods of my ancestors, and more importantly, when I take the inward spiral, I feel what I felt then. It's like a homecoming, after a long and circular road through history and spirituality. I know that this is where I was intended to end up- the owls themselves announce it. As soon as I established the Mera material in written form, they began returning, to my yard, to my woods where I walk daily. They've been singing and making their calls to me, everytime I set foot outside.


Into the Henge

I was outside a while ago, doing a drumming, and I began by standing in my own "henge" as it were, under one of my birch trees, before the stone-lined fire pit, and I shook the webs of life and Fate with my breath and will, to call my helping spirit up into my chest- with his soft, invisible and powerful presence, I asked him to carry my words to the powers I needed. I knelt on the soft earth and placed my knees and hands on it- when I dove down into it with my eyes and face, I could sense how miniscule my body was compared to the massive Land below. I brought up that power, and prayed to the Earth Mother that I had no trouble feeling, completely present to me.

I bathed my forehead in water from a little clay cauldron-shaped pot that I bought in Wales, and I prayed to the Cauldron-mother to purify me, as the Earth had done. I prayed to be Cauldron Born, and I stood then below the blue dome of the sky, feeling the perfect brush of wind on me. Into myself I brought strong breaths of the purifying wind, opening myself to the power of the Wind and Sky Mother, every bit as strongly as I had the Earth, and she answered me with breaths of wind.

I felt the brilliant light and warmth of the Sun on me, for it was just above my left shoulder, and I turned to face Her, asking her to purify me, as well- She from whom dark spirits flee when she turns her face on them. The helping spirit did his duty; I could feel the presence of the Sun-daughter as clearly as I feel the people in the room with me now.

Lastly I purified myself with fire- the Fire Mother, most powerful and mysterious, blessed me with the clarity of her presence as I hissed like the fiery serpent. My hissing breath "carried" me into a subtle condition that made my heart unravel and feel the sheer magnificence of life and reality.

I picked up my drum and started drumming; a perfect invocation of the Mother of All. And in that center, that circle, after I had gone through the four stages of the walk into the spiral, She came forth into my awareness, and my awareness became Her.

I asked her to show me the company of spirits, and she did- a vision arose of a circle of spirits, arching through the sky and down under the ground. I drifted directly back into the core of the feeling I had as a very young child, the glory of the holiness in Nature, the presence of the Gods. I asked the Mother of All for protection for my wife and child, and I asked her to guide me to Wisdom. I felt my own angers, negative emotions, and the like, fading like ghosts, and instead of asking for some emotional satisfaction which was based on elemental drives and entanglements, I asked for the purity of Truth, for all human beings, and the regeneration of the world.

I could do it- I shook the entire world with my drum, feeling the strands of Fate shake for the entire cosmos. I wanted to mediate the power of healing and truth to the world, that the order be healed and maintained.

But there was so much more- I had come to the core of what my ancestors felt and knew, both my ancestors in the Stone Ages, all the way through the various ages of civilization. This cannot be described, and the heart of the experience is in the Fire Mother. Her clear light and fire of spirit is like my own, and like yours, and like everyone's and everything's- when you "see" her, "come into her presence", you understand, in a way that cannot be explained, your own purity. There is so much more to us, such a beautiful core of power and peace, that life's darkest moments cannot dim it.


Owl Circles

Here is the heart of the Magic of the Very Old Times; I asked for my ancestral powers to be revealed to me, as my owl circled now, a power grown immensely strong in response to my trance. I felt them, in the land, in the air, and I felt how they lived in me. Death has no sting when you feel the chain of life that you belong to stretching back to the dawn of time, still alive right there in you and around you. We are moving, immortal powers and death only changes our focus, never removing us from those we love and what we are.

This is the heart of that magic- the power to make any change, to affect reality in any manner; but what manner would you choose? Purified by the earth and waters, dipped in the Cauldron of the Initiating Goddess, your own vitality made right by the winds and your own spirit made awake in the presence of the Fire Mother at the center of all things, you will choose the Truth, and goodness for all things.

I could feel the Powers, and behind the eyes of every statue of a God or Goddess I had ever seen, I could see them there. I knew what my ancestors in later ages were calling back to. This is living religion, truth and peace. When I finished drumming, I felt a peace and tranquility the likes of which I had not felt since I was a small boy.


The Spiral at Eleusis

As an interesting aside, I believe the great mystery of Eleusis is found in the Spiral and the experience of the Fire Mother, who is the Kore of the Greeks- as I said, I can't explain it, and it is right that I cannot, for the great Mystery fails on the tongue and lips. The secret cannot be said or shared with words not because a vow prevents the initiates from sharing it, but because it literally cannot be said. Remains of the animistic, paleolithic and neolithic mystical complexes of that region of Greece are what went on to become the Eleusinian mysteries, though to be fair, the Mysteries were a long complex of powerful strands, collected over many ages. But the heart of the mysteries remained the same, throughout time, as the archaeology of the Temple itself shows us- the position of the Anaktoron remained unchanged through thousands of years.

I will write at length later about Eleusis, but the entire journey of the mystai from Athens to Eleusis, beginning with their bathing in the sea and fasting, and their 19 mile walk, their drinking of the sacred Kykeon and their entry into the Telesterion, mimics the inward spiral... and as we have discovered from ancient fragments, Heracles, himself an initiate, reveals to us something important about the content of the Mysteries- he says that for him, initiation is no longer necessary, for he says "I have seen the great fire on the Mystery night... (and) I have seen the Kore."

When you have purified with the power of the Land-mother, the Earth itself, and been bathed in the purifying waters, and purified by air and then fire, and come "as far as desire can reach", as far as a human can go, you come to the great limits of reality- the root of reality, the Underworld. There, you are in the presence of the Gods below us, Kore, the Queen of the Underworld, the Fire-Mother. Kerenyi points out her position as a fire goddess in his great work "Dionysos".

There in her presence, if you are strong enough to stay purely conscious, you come to know your own purity, and how you do, indeed, belong among the Gods. Only that which is Pure, as the Greeks said, can go into the company of the Pure, referring to purified initiates going into the company of the Gods. How could you be before me, the Queen below says, unless we are of the same house?

There's your secret: we are all divine. We are all pure, and lifting the covering of earth and water and wind from ourselves reveals the undying fire. Why is this such a scandalous secret? Because the half-wise will not understand what this statement really means: We are all Divine. It is no invitation to ego-mania; it is a statement of restful, loving, and powerful truth which lives at the core of our human experience. Death is not our end; the divine in us cannot kill or be killed; we may be sunk in the mud of human life, but the divine is pure from the beginning. And to experience it relieves you of all uncertainty about your life.

Then begins the new life given by the Gods. Those who have not had this experience will wander lost in the afterlife just as they wander lost now, wandering from one elemental urge to another, from one confusion to another, from one thought to another, from one earth to another earth, one body to another body, one emotion to another emotion, one vitality to another, never experiencing the still, undying clarity that is their true birthright. That same clarity, that fire, illuminates every thing of earth, of water, and of air or wind, but it cannot itself be seen, anymore than the eye that sees all can see itself.

But it can be experienced, here, amid the mixture of elements, here, in the great resonance of the drum, at the center of the spiral, in the trance. What the sacred Kykeon did so long ago, the inward spiral trance can do for us now.

The young boy- the kouros, as the Greeks would have said, is re-awakened, and all the wonder of the world re-awakens with him. To be an initiate literally made a man or a woman, no matter their physical age, into a "young boy" or a "young girl", a kouros or a kore. The kouros is what rose from Heracles' pyre- his own purification by fire- and went among the Gods to be immortal. I have seen the Kore. I have discovered the Kouros, and I exist now as I was always meant to.

Everything ends where it began, because life is a circle, a great circle of completion. That is the true henge, the true magical circle, the true chamber of initiation. I invite all human beings to walk it, to join me in it, and I wish these blessings on all people, without reservation. I trust the great Fate that will bring us all there, eventually.



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All of the beautiful images in this site are from "The Greenwood Tarot"
And are Copyright © 1996 by Chesca Potter.

All text is copyright © 2006 by Robin Artisson