A Cyclical Story of  Mixed Magic and Healing Light: adventures past and present of a stay-at-home mother and striving to be knight

There is a knighthood of the Twentieth century whose riders do not ride through the darkness of physical forces, as of old, but through the forests of darkened minds.

They are armed with a spiritual armour and an inner sun makes them radiant.

Out of them shines healing, healing that flows from the knowledge of the image of man as a spiritual being.

They must create inner order, inner justice, peace and conviction in the darkness of our time

Karl Konig

She realised, with a mixture of dread and relief, that her armour must be donned at a moment´s notice. That, like the image of the ninja she had married, she needed to be stealthy, swift and agile. Prepared to find darkened minds right here, now, amongst apparently enlightened companions . 

She was careful to protect her little corner of Eden and her immediate family but now she understood with gravitas that the required strength to keep her force field in tact might be directly proportionate to her ability to heal herself. 

This current task required patience, diligence and practise every morning and every evening and many times in between. Inside her tiny body, shrunk now from swollen carrying of life and the subsequent sacrificial nurturing from her own milk, mistletoe berries of light bloomed and busied. They set about fixing not only the strain of carrying two babies at once but age old wounds received in distant places when she was still clumsy with her armour and reckless with her soul.

Mistletoe was the sacred plant of the magicians of old. She holds her sphere, her integrity even when growing on different trees. She has no roots in the ground but exists surrounded by the lightness of air. Her nourishment reminds mothers to keep their own wholeness whilst offering daily healing to their families.

Tossed into the stormy seas of double motherhood, not too long before the spreading years of cronehood, she had been forced to notice her allies.  She acknowledged the care of her harmonising inner sun and that of her beloved twin flame. His quirky sense of humour and his great capacity for affection buoyed up the boat and patched many a leaking board. 

At night as well as celestial beings above and elemental beings below, the little family are also protected by a legendary lioness that prowls in the darkness and sometimes wakes the fellow feline Mama from sleep with soft and threatening growls. And by day by the intertwined branches and roots of a circle of thirteen strong sessile oaks, a delicate birch, a tall Scott´s pine, a flowering cherry, and a spreading sycamore. Firmly skirted too by a hazel hedge, young willow, alder, brambles, nettles and the odd holly. The emerging crone also tends the lemon balm to sooth troubled tummies, the strawberries that bring added sweetness to their lives, the mint that brings freshness, the purple black knapweed to complete the rainbow of colour and the gentle lavender. 

A messy fledgling robin, (Petirojo, little red, in Spanish, the chosen totem of her distant sister in law) has joined the family now, along with their kind eyed Jolly (Jack Russell terrier crossed with a Border Collie) who barks and plays and sleeps on the sofa (a slightly out of place item here) when no one is looking. And the tiny Mama Wren who shouts from the hedgerow and feeds her chicks tirelessly and with admirable dedication.

Life bursts from the sedum roof which shines white flowers from the succulent buds of its leaves and with the sturdy hand built hexagon of oak boards build the inner fortress of this family home. There live insects, butterflies and bugs a plenty. Inside, the piano brings music and the delicate dance of sadness and joy, the free standing cast iron bath brings comfort to aching limbs, the hand crafted kitchen inspires culinary creations supported by the warming traditional range cooker, the books on the bookshelf inspire and inform and the circular windows and the clear perspex lid cast light and shadows as of life itself. 

A few metres away, the night time stronghold and the first to make it over the bridge of the Slough moat nestles Felicity, the tiny house on wheels. There they sleep: Mama, Papa, the toddling twin boys, tucked up under patchwork quilts lovingly crafted by their dear Auntie. Guarded from harm by angel wings and modern art: colourful canvases donated by their artist Uncle and a shrine with figures, feathers and figurines gathered from all corners of the globe.

The breeze whispers and the brook babbles. The pond sits slightly stagnantly where blue dragonflies and red damselflies hover and cardinal beetles make love. The kingfisher honours them occasionally with his fleeting, iridescent presence.  Dragons fly and Damsels too, Cardinals and Kings visit. The golden froglets that could become princes right there by the mint patch and the magical princess yarrow that heals so many ills. An Eden, for now, a haven, for now a fortress working to banish beatifically the fear of dark minds.

And yet here, as everywhere on this green earth, foes and friends mix and mingle. It is only with great vigilance and attentiveness that hearts and minds can be aware of careless talk and shared stories which become fretful fears and slowly, subtly drive a wedge of separation between even the most brilliant minds. 

Words like flitting butterflies and steady streams must now be carefully chosen and crafted. And so through the perceived darkness bring clarity and polish suns. The softness of love, laughter and babies skin maintain warmth and stoke inner fires. The spark of inspiration brought by creativity and craft, by the filtered dappled oak light and the peace of small things help hearts return again and again to their rightful home. 

Now she starts bringing into the fold of these creative words those abandoned inner children that cry and wail and stamp their feet. Their stories must be heard too, their fears soothed. Or their old fears are easily fuelled by new stories of the giant machine of robotics and misused technology and the pandemic of heart wrenching stories of pain and suffering. These fears are dangerously accompanied by the apparent panacea of the age old promise of eternal life. The ultimate temptation made flesh, or made machine looms, spawns fear, casts the net of control and sits back content and smiling.

With this world story kept at bay, with no mainstream news or newspapers,  the days pass, apparently peacefully. Whilst inside souls are forging to strive forth in light from young and older. The days slowly take on their own rhythm, their own order, find their own meaning. Slowly, as the panic of early motherhood subsides, purpose creeps back in again. This time with an urgency never felt before. The conflict being that slowing down daily time is a way to ensure the urgent purpose is fulfilled, or at least nourished sufficiently to be kept alive, to be kept afloat in the raging waters of troubled times.

Fortunately she knows that there is an army waiting, a fleet of ships, a squadron of aircraft, transformed and liberated from the prison of years of silence and invisibility of youthful ignorance. An army of experiences gained and wisdom offered from unexpected places, backwaters and forgotten names.

Amongst that army are some orphaned children. Riding in the back of a battered truck down the dusty roads of a South American coastal town a small boy offers and even smaller girl, with dimples and dark ringlets, a dead fish, both grinning outrageously. A group of abandoned boys fry chips in a broken electric frying pan and nearly set fire to their temporary home. One of the boys from this same group offers a well loved teddy bear, one of his very few possessions, to a young woman from far away. A lifetime later, it is loved again sleeping in the chubby arms of a boy with a very different destiny. These abandoned children, now adults, still hover in dreams playing and dancing and singing praises to some elusive god. Their stories overshadowed by alcohol and drug abuse, large families in tiny shacks at least filled one heart with determination and courage.

Not so far away in time or space, in a rainbow nation, a boy, of a similar age, falls from a classroom chair when cleaning the blackboard and bites his lip. In recovery from drive-by shootings and seeing a local man stabbed he sits on that same young woman´s lap and sobs inconsolably. He too lends his name to perseverance and conviction.

Here on the house walls and shelves gather a jumble of material treasures that sing songs of these stories and more. Every item weaves part of the web that holds the children of this land and extends to countless others. Suspended from the ceiling are two bows with arrows, to honour Artemis´s courage and Cupid´s accurate arrow of true love. On a chair is a Sealskin to keep alive the transformation of the women of the land in their cyclical dance of life. Reminding the inhabitants and visitors of the Selkie Seal folk and the sea that´s just a little too far to visit every moon. Red deer stag antlers honour the doorway bringing grace to the masculine and harmony with surrounding nature. The nearby leather workshop holds secrets of grounding tired feet gloved in soft deer, goat, horse and cow hide. Honouring the four leggeds and feeling the Earth under two legged feet means the connection with her cannot be so easily lost.

There are echoes of snippets of life protecting the Earth that comfort and distress. In Crow Wood, land that has become an integral extension of daily life, a man concerned with the same old destruction of forest cuts to the heart of a hawthorn hedge. Hawthorn leaves and flowers, a remedy for a broken, wounded or irregular heart. A hawthorn hedge that held the gateway into a magical meadow. Many moons of many years ago she stayed, one frosty night, in a tree house that was built to protect the trees from the modern machine. From a nearby tree a man fell to his death. 

She calls on old allies of lessons learnt through struggle and fright to meet now with love these unsettling whispers. She musters understanding enabled by years of frontline struggle on protest battle lines, courtrooms and police cells. And it is not just the children but justice too that echoes in her mind, that calls in her dreams. Community squat cafes where she exercised her calling to be a diplomat between the political anarchists and the free party people. Aspire, written with an anarchist A. A disused church with a spire. A place to aspire to be…..aspirations for a better world. Where she abseiled down the spire and jousted down the aisle on a bicycle. There she found her people, her tribe. Everyone finding their place to shine. Tear gas and police brutality sent her running to seek more established protest stories protected just a little more by the public eye. She was arrested for sitting in the road and protesting about weapons of mass destruction. Charged for her conviction, like many others, with ´breach of the peace´. 

Her love of the world and its people bloomed with when she first spread her wings abroad. Quest Overseas was the name of the first official expedition she joined to South America, when she was barely an adult. With them she trekked into the heart of the Andes, all she needed in a rucksack on her back. Tanned and strong she explored the depths of her swelling heart whilst meeting the challenges of altitude sickness in a snow storm, rats running over her in mud dormitories, young love in an icy tent, and butterflies with iridescent wings the size of her face.

Ghosts benevolent and vile hijack her path at every turn and now, she sweeps out forgotten rooms to heal her, guide her, steadily, steadfastly alongside all of her current family, friends, allies, guides and angels, to her aim of inner order, justice, peace, conviction and more sunshine. 

POSTSCRIPT….Winter is the Summer of the Soul: a reminder to nourish our soul during the dark time of the year. Cancer, or pre-Cancerous conditions are when winter takes over our beings. So now she resolves again, drop by drop to fill her being with sunshine each and every day…..