Imbolc 2016 p1 – Bursting the Bag of Light

I had the feeling that Kal was with me since the morning of the 2nd February. He was impelling, encouraging and inviting me to re-start my spiritual cycle of following the year’s special energetic high points. My tarot draw done recently showed the figure Dagonet as the over-arching influence of this year. This is the travelling jester turned knight. That was Kal all over! Seems like I was due to have some fun this year.

My tarot reading for the start of the year had suggested a well as a starting point, and of course as it was Imbolc then a site related to Brigid would be the obvious choice. I decided to introduce her to some of the more accessible wonders of the Cheshire/Staffordshire borderlands – Gawton’s Well and Stone, and The Bridestones.

I am now working with the shaman Julia Welsh. She is becoming a regular and invaluable participant on my journeys since Kal’s ascension. Her knowledge of shamanic techniques is extraordinary, and coupled with her openness and undoubted talent for connecting with the unseen forces, she makes an ideal foil for my own work.

Gawton’s well

The well is now signposted and there’s a semi-passable new path leading straight to it. That kind of takes the exploratory fun out of the journey! So much for requiring effort. The only efforts we needed to take were to keep warm on this bitterly cold early February afternoon.

We stopped just before the entrance and I could tell that Julia was scanning her senses to try to discern the nature of the presence that made itself known as we approached. I told her the tale of my first encounter with the guardian spirit and how it had reared up at me. When I reared back even fiercer it said nonchalantly, “OK, you may pass!“. Acknowledgement paid today, we entered. The entry felt welcoming.

I left my antlered yew staff leaning against a tree that I had last seen Kal sit beneath. It was like a placeholder. He was here and it was noted. I moved where the dowsing rods suggested – to the tree which stood above the well-head. I sat there and connected quietly, luxuriating in getting back into this meditative state of being.

Bursting a Bag of Light

It was like I had sewn myself into a bag (like an embryonic sac). I had closed myself off from my spiritual work. Then a bright light burst the seams of the bag, and let out my psychological and spiritual self. It was pure awen. I emerged through a slit in the sac to embrace the day. “Rend” is the word that suggests itself. I was being spiritually re-born. Born back out into the spiritual world.

Like Taliesin I felt the shimmering light on my radiant brow and I knew that I was being given another lease of life to carry on my work. I was being given a crown of energy – a spiritually uplifting boost and a sort of permission to continue where I left off last August.

Now it was time to find out what my next quest would be.