HallowQuest Lesson Three
Tasks:
1. As you go about daily in your locality, feel the different energies of the streets, green places, buildings etc. Which areas make you confident, unsure, depressed, etc?
Most of the area around the hamlet where I live is fairly neutral. There is an area at the top of the small hill to the north – where three roads meet – which invokes mixed feelings in me. There is a large roughly triangular grass area in the centre, with trees. One Oak, to the west, has a great welcoming energy. The trees to the north cast a much darker feeling. I intend to draw a map, and dowse the whole triangle.
An old isolated church on a hilltop a few miles away is a spot that draws me. I’d like to find out more about the age of the church, and the site, there’s a pool right beside it too.
I like a certain spot on the edge of a field facing east nearby, from where I can see the iron age fort on the hill.
I think such spots are, for me, often linked to specific trees, often Oaks.
2. Choose an area in your locality which according to you is in need of healing. Do what you can practically e.g. clearing rubbish. In addition, every day actively beseech spiritual help and send it to the area choosing a card if appropriate to focus your meditation.
There’s a certain spot on the hill where lads park up and drink cans, and natter I guess, and throw their rubbish into the hedge and ditch. I clear cans from there, and recycle them. I hadn’t thought of a card or photo yet to keep calling that area to mind for a focus.
3. Choose a local area which according to you feels unsafe. Dedicate it to a specific deity, archetype, healing energy or power and invoke its help e.g. by prayer, meditation, ritual. Give it a nice name (the area) particularly if you usually think of it by a nasty one.
It occurs to me that the stretch of motorway which runs just tow fields away from my house is probably the biggest threat near to me. I often see blue lights rushing along there at night, or see lanes of stationary traffic. I think that associating it in my mind with some of the qualities of Helios, the Greek god who drove the chariot of the sun across the sky could be a good. The folks in their vehicles need to be awake, seeing clearly, and not deviating from their set course. That might help quite a bit.
4. Create a closing affirmation to end each meditation e.g. 'From that world to this world I return from (card name) to my own time and place.
“I have walked with/in ………..
and followed my quest.
Now I step back through the doorway
and travel in my journal.”
Meditation.
There didn’t seem anywhere in the house big enough to spread the cards out – so I put a white sheet down in the garden circle, and did it there. I took a photo, but I don’t think it will be good enough to see details, just to remind me of the occasion.
First thing I notice is that sitting at ground level doesn’t really give you much of a viewing vantage point. (Perhaps it’s not supposed to – reminding you that you are down there walking the board, not ‘up there’ with your ego, feeling above it?)
The grass underneath the sheet is very long, and so very uneven. The resulting Mandala is slipping and misshapen, sometimes smooth and aligned, sometimes rough and twisting. Okay, that seems clear enough!
When I laid out the cards I was tempted to reverse the positions of the Seeker and the Flowering of Logres (they seemed better the other way round) – but now that I look at them I see that as I step out as the Seeker I will first come to the Grail Court, which indeed I will in a few weeks.
I chose though to sit in the shady corner, which turned out to be the Sword court. I already feel affinity with the Sword (from path-working not connected to this pack) so this felt fine too.
I stopped there, because even though I was sitting on the ground at the end of the garden with a sheet, a deck and a book, everyone in the house had to come down at some time and see what I was doing – so not very meditative really