A Yew and a Mirror Darkly

Have you ever been sitting comfortably in front of an open fire, munching on fine food, and chatting about philosophical concepts, and then suddenly you’ve jumped up and driven fifty miles into the middle of nowhere to visit a tree? We have.  We had been discussing “the purpose of the purpose”, in other words, we had been asking each other how we could know why we did many of the things that we were directed/instructed/guided to do on our quests. Was there some overriding overall ultimate aim that we could fathom, or which we could begin to put together if we asked the right questions? Where did we get the answers from?

The purpose of The Purpose

Before I relate today’s tale let me take you off on a little philosophical meandering. What is the purpose of The Purpose. The Purpose is defined as being the reason why your are on a spiritual path. If you are on such a path then you must be heading somewhere. Is it possible to see the destination, and does that have any value for the seeker?

We discussed this and come up with a couple of points from it:-

1. We are far happier having a path to walk along than not having one at all and being aimless – walking the path is fulfilling in and of itself
2. The Purpose might be far larger than we can encompass in our lifetime, and may indeed span other lifetimes – how can one life know even all of its own current purpose, never mind the purpose of all of the possible lives it may have lived?
3. Our purpose may be guided by other forces that have interlinking, overlapping, and even at times contrary purposes. We may not be able to divine their intentions, never mind relate those directives to our own overall purpose and see how they relate.

This all seemed rather much out of our immediate control, and a far greater contemplation than our tiny minds could encompass. The only control we had ourselves was to make a choice about whether we acted upon the information we asked to receive. Yet living life without purpose was just “filling in time”.

I recalled the words of a very wise woman who has been dealing with such questions for a long time. She said that we just had to ask the very entities that were giving us this guidance. If they couldn’t answer us, then why would we feel we needed to do the task? We pondered this. Did we know any good guides that we could both talk to about our current quests? Kal said. well why don’t we go to the Llangernyw Yew? We always get answers there! We downed our drinks in one gulp, and paid the bill for our food quickly. We were on a mission!

A section on protection

We arrived in the middle of the village in the middle of the night. I like balance. The stars were clear and the sky was an inky blue backdrop upon which the stars hung like dancing diodes. We both craned our necks in awe and drew long breaths to fill our lungs with the splendour. Without fear or trepidation of any sort we made our way up through the graveyard in the ambient streetlights from the road. I put up a mote of protection, but knew that it was unnecessary. Nevertheless, I don’t like unexpected surprises, and it was good practice.

These days when it came to psychic protection I now had my choice of “protectors”, having acquired different shielding abilities from various sources:-

1. My own inner energy protection expressed as a shell of three rotating spheres
2. Archangel Michael’s swinging sword that described an aura of protection around me
3. Ash’s assistance with any psychic alarm bell should anything attempt to come into my aura uninvited

NOTE: I’m now re-iterating to myself that MUST remember to actively decommission these protections and to thank any helpers when I’ve finished with them. It’s really too easy to forget such vital components. I forget this so often, and it’s just laziness, not consistent with a strong will and an experienced practitioner. Also, it leaves energy trailing around which can be linked back to me, and that’s just asking for trouble one day.

I used my dowsing rods to lead me to the spot where it would be most beneficial for me to ask the questions I wanted to ask. Actually I only had one question: “Why is it necessary for me to take ownership of the four places identified by Bran?” Those four places were discussed in my previous post “Bran, Corvus and taking possession”, and they were the places I intended to visit on Spring Equinox, March 20th this year. The places are:-

• Dinas Bran hillfort
• Moel Ty Uchaf stone circle
• Caer Caradog hillfort
• Bryn Beddau stone circle

It took me several minutes to clear my mind and retreat into a trance-like state where answers could be heard. Once I recognised that I was in that space I asked the question once and clearly, then stood with my hand on one of the yew’s sturdy lower branches, waiting to see whether the tree would respond. Sure enough, deep rumblings could be felt down in the earth, and via my energetic connection points into the land.

The answer from the Yew came in three successive visions:

PART 1: Taking ownership is truly linking to the land.

I was shown Arthur sitting on a mountain top. As he sat he was merged with the land. The phrase came to me, “Arthur and the land are one”.

PART 2: Merging allows healing.

Only when Arthur and the land are one can the land be healed. Because I wanted to heal the land, it was my destiny, then I needed to learn how to merge with the land in order to perform such healing.

PART 3: The gold jewel-encrusted mirror.

This was saying ‘Don’t be distracted by the prettiness surrounding the central element. The mirror – the reflection – is the important bit’. I was shown all the Arthurian archetypes merging into one in the mirror, once I stared into it. Was this “The Lake” that “The Lady” inhabited, perhaps – a journey into The Otherworld?

I understood the first two images. For me it was clear that I needed to re-emphasise something that I was in danger of forgetting, or losing by not having made it an integral part of my work with the land. In order to heal the land I needed to be one with it. That was the essence of the Arthur archetype – “Arthur and the Land are one”.

The mirror image was more intriguing. It was deeply symbolic, and had many messages that poured out from it, like a waterfall of esoteric knowledge spilling from a lake. It was saying that I needed to focus more, to focus on the integration of the archetypes rather than their differentiation. I felt like I was being told to use all the lessons I have learned, rather than pursue the glittering prize of learning about one at a time. Also, I needed to avoid distractions, those glittering jewels that distract from the main goal.

But now I was back to where I had started that evening, because the driving conversation has been “The purpose of The Purpose”. What was all of this for? That will have to be discussed in more depth soon.