The Perfumed City Spring

You never know when an exciting opportunity might arise. I was in Liverpool with M seeing a film at Picturehouse – a small cinema complex in the FACT building in the centre of the town. The film was “Mad To Be Normal” – a biopic of the radical psychiatrist R.D.Laing, played by David Tennant. The film was excellent, and we came out of the cinema on a real high, so to speak.

Then we met our friend John Kirby who had also been at the screening. We had a chat about the film, and it was one of those occasions where you don’t want the experience to end. John mentioned that he had recently been to the sacred spring next to Liverpool Cathedral, and had we been. I had heard him mention it before, but had never been either to the spring or to the cathedral and so, with it not being far away, we decided to pay a visit.

As we approached the cathedral building, all still in good spirits, I crossed the road and “bumped into” the edges of the energy of the building. It felt antithetical to my current energy. As such it was not a pleasant feeling. My lower energy centre felt like ti has been punched, and I felt the energy of the building to be oppressive – weighty and unwelcoming to me. I stopped dead and put up some energetic protection quickly.

Everyone else saw me draw up quickly and began to slow, intrigued by my reaction. I asked around about how everyone else felt. They were fine – excited even, Just me then. I felt that “my kind” were not welcome within this building. I now began to understand why I had not felt inclined to ever visit the site even though it was less than half an hour away from home. I must have been past it a hundred times, yet had never wanted to go in. Now, as I approached it with protection around me, I began to understand why I felt that way.

We deviated from the main approach, heading to the left of the cathedral entrance, and through a tunnel carved into the sandstone of the escarpment upon which the cathedral is built. The tunnel to St James’ gardens was momentary relief from the oppressive energies which I was actively keeping at bay,

Below the cathedral and in the dip of the cemetery gardens the feeling lessened substantially. Despite the tombstones the feeling was noticably lighter, from my perspective. John of course knew where to find the spring, and led us directly to it – with its central prominence at a clearing in the centre of the quarried-out walls of the green space.

The source of the spring

We felt the energies of the spring and it was light and feminine, from my take on it. I stood next to the spring and allowed my mind to be directed towards the source of the waters – would it be some con and actually derive from a nearby broken pipe, or was it something more ancient and special?

My mind was taken downwards, then swiftly it was plunged deep below, into the rocks and between rock strata in continual stepping and dropping motions until I felt the powerful presence of a large underwater flow – possibly a large lake, aquifer or wide current of water. This was primal water making its way to the surface here. Then it was surely a natural and sacred source of good clear water, albeit a chalybeate spring.

Guardian grove and a curious whiff

Looking around the garden space we could see many old trees, including four beautiful poplars at the base of the exposed quarry wall. As they were “in our path” as we approached the path which leads up the quarried walls, I stopped and stood giving thanks to the spirit of the place for preserving such beauty and such a good energy imprint in the midst of a city centre.

As we walked up the slope which would have been the trackway for the carriages carrying the stone out of the quarry I stopped to remark on some beautiful hawthorn and horse chestnut blossom – we smelt the blossom and it was a lovely reminder that Spring was in full flow.

Moments later there was another perfumed smell – a strong odor which arrived on the air. This happened at exactly the point on the path where we were directly opposite the large main window of the cathedral. Was it a ley line crossing, I wondered? A cardinal point? We all smelt it, and it was so noticeable that we all stopped, and began to sniff the air around us. We exchanged confused looks. Where was it coming from? There was no-one around us. I looked over the edge of the quarry wall – nope, there was no-one below us either. Where was the smell coming from? We checked the blossoms on the trees which were 20 feet away from us – the perfumed smell did not match at all. The smell that we smelt was more like a perfume. Yet, it was not a modern perfume that any of us recognised. It has an “old” feel, if such a thing is possible. We checked again if anyone at all was anywhere near to us – nobody!

We shrugged. It was a mystery -a sweet little mystery. I tried to connect to the smell to determine what its origins were, and all I could get was that it was a human who was no longer alive which had produced it, and that she wanted to draw our attention to her. She did not wish to be freed to pass into the light, but just wanted to be noticed, as she had been in life when she had worn the perfume in order to make herself more noticeable.

Seems as though the dead keep repeating their habits without end. Yet I would not liberate a spirit without a compelling reason to do so, and this did not feel like one of those occasions, so we all decided to leave it as what it was – a reminder that there is more to life than we are often aware.